Trainz Update Announcement (SP6)

@JCitron thank you for detailed explanation, however it looks like I expressed myself incorrectly. I know how to submit a bug report, been doing that for years myself.

The issue is not that I can't do it. The issue is - the new patch broke most if not all realistic routes in our community. One person (route creator) already talked with N3V devs today, but the response is rather disappointing. They say the route is "exceeding the new memory limits". The solution they propose is to replace assets with higher polly counts or remove them altogether. Ain't that just great? Basically, they tell us to go and rebuild our routes to fit their new limits. Couldn't they at least have this experiment be in the next game or something?

Our community has been able to build routes, BIG routes, for at least a decade at this point, yes some of them are not optimized performance-wise, but most of them, I would say, are. And they worked just fine before the new update. Just fine. For years Trainz drew in content authors with the fact that it was possible to find ways to create large areas in the game and make them optimized. Now I suspect many creators will just leave in droves, I guess that's what N3V wants. Just disappointing.

What are the new memory limits? Have they been published somewhere? My Trainz route exceeds 1 GB and thus can’t be saved as a cdp. It can be saved by other means. If I upgrade to SP6 will my route be too big to run? It runs fine on SP5 if you don’t mind the blurred assets, particularly moving rolling stock. Runs even better on SP4, no blurring of assets. I’m a Mac user.

Cayden
 
Just a couple of questions may I ask?
The new plant factory trees are to replace previous versions of trees?
I wanted to do some research on these but nothing in the WIKI?
So what are the search requirements for them. (usernames).
No I have not updated to SP6 yet just trying to prepare for the worse in advance...
Thnx Dave
 
The new plant factory trees are to replace previous versions of trees?
They are an alternative (not a replacement) to the old SpeedTrees which require paying a license fee to create. The Plant Factory system is free to creators and all users. They offer other advantages such as smaller file sizes and better rendering at large distances (where Trainz will render them as flat 2D objects that always face the camera).

So what are the search requirements for them. (usernames).
Currently all the available Plant Factory trees are under usernames florka and Auran.

You can search for them in CM with the following filters:-

On Download Station = True
Installed = False
Category = Flora
Name = PF


a few non Plant Factory assets will also be revealed.
No I have not updated to SP6 yet just trying to prepare for the worse in advance.
Individual experiences will vary. I have multiple installs of Trainz Plus and TRS22PE on several computers including a (relatively) old laptop and have not experienced any issues.
 
What are the new memory limits?

now they are going to impose memory limits

"exceeding the new memory limits" because of the use of older assets?

Before we all get lost down another conspiracy theory "rabbit hole", I could only find the following post from anyone in N3V mentioning "memory limits"

Reviewing this video, it is suspected that you are hitting a memory limit or similar, and the game is dropping the draw distance, then ramping it back up and hitting the same case.

In short, you may have set the performance settings too high for your system, and the application is trying really hard to match it.
Reading the post it seems that
(a) there is NO NEW MEMORY LIMIT being imposed (and I could not find any references to any OLD memory limits imposed by the program either), and
(b) the suggestion was made in reference to the available memory in a particular users system (i.e. a hardware and/or a Windows issue).
 
@pware, I did not realise that asking for clarification from N3V can be considered so controversial as to imply a conspiracy theory. I have read the majority of posts on SP6 in this thread and apart from yourself and one other, the majority of posters are not happy with the many issues arising from it. I am keeping well away from it, because of the problems that have been reported.
"Before we all get lost down another conspiracy theory "rabbit hole", I could only find the following post from anyone in N3V mentioning "memory limits" - pware - post #164
So are you suggesting that rbrooks is lying, pware?

"One person (route creator) already talked with N3V devs today, but the response is rather disappointing. They say the route is "exceeding the new memory limits". The solution they propose is to replace assets with higher polly counts or remove them altogether." - rbrooks - post #151


I just want some clarification on this, from N3V devs, if indeed this is a true picture of the SP6 and the future direction of the sim.
As another poster also asked, quite within their rights, a word of warning regarding a possible deterioration before the SP was released would have saved a lot of frustration.
Quality assurance has always been a problem with this company and its predecessor, Auran, when releasing Service Packs. The huge number of hotfixes released after the initial service pack releases attest to this.
Any reply from official sources at N3V devs or management would be appreciated.

 
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Any news yet when SP6 will be fixed ?
There seems to be a lot of general discussion about it being faulty. But nothing about don't install it or were making a fix for it from above
 
I did not realise that asking for clarification from N3V can be considered so controversial as to imply a conspiracy theory. I have read the majority of posts on SP6 in this thread and apart from yourself and one other, the majority of posters are not happy with the many issues arising from it. I am keeping well away from it, because of these problems that have manifested themselves.

I apologise if I have misread your intentions or post but your opening line read like it was an established fact (my interpretation).

You claim that by deleting a spline the program sorted itself in a large route, so your own actions point to some deterioration in performance when using older assets , particularly of the spline classification.

No, not a single spline but a large number of tree splines - from memory, at least 3 or 4 different ones spread throughout the route (including in the far distance) plus replacing a huge number of different billboard trees with their Plant Factory equivalent (where they were available). The surgery removed all the issues, for me at least, that were complained about in that route. The original poster has confirmed that he still has some issues but these could be due to differences in system specifications, performance settings or other issues that I am not experiencing.

All I ask, as others have, is a clarification as to whether this SP is a pointer to the future direction that N3V is heading.
Quite likely (and I certainly hope so) but I can understand the reluctance of N3V to make any definitive announcements in case it does not live up to expectations - and only wide testing by users on a range different systems can confirm that. The posts in the various threads on Plant Factory point to some interesting possibilities such as rendering any distant object, regardless of missing LODs, as a flat 2D object that always faces the camera.

So are you suggesting that rbrooks is lying, pware?
Yes, lets play that game - if someone makes a statement that contradicts anothers statement then clearly one of the two (or both) is clearly lying.

I have read the majority of posts on SP6 in this thread and apart from yourself and one other, the majority of posters are not happy with the many issues arising from it
Counting posts for and against falls into a common social media fallacy. Those who are unhappy with something are far more likely to post about it than those who are happy, or indifferent, and yes, there will be unhappy users who will not bother to post at all.

I have not experienced any issues with SP6 on any of my installs on any of my computers. I have some very large and complex routes which run at a normal FPS on all of them even on the older laptop. How is this possible? Am I just unusually lucky? Am I lying? Are my system specs and performance settings (in combination) significantly different from all those who are having issues? Is my choice of assets (DLS and built-in only, I don't use 3rd party assets) a factor?
 
Just a couple of questions may I ask?
The new plant factory trees are to replace previous versions of trees?
I wanted to do some research on these but nothing in the WIKI?
So what are the search requirements for them. (usernames).
No I have not updated to SP6 yet just trying to prepare for the worse in advance...
Thnx Dave

This is the documentation for Treez with included links to the wiki pages.
 
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It's a bum patch. They were told via a bug report there were problems with it and they released it anyway. So much for putting in bug reports. It doesn't matter.

I have not updated and won't until it's hot-fixed to death.
With every update my Trainz Platinum got worse for any decent frame rates. :(The Trees pop in and out when moving around my Map.
I am still having to use my older build number 122411 for editng my maps.
 
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I’ve applied SP6 to my version of 22PE and have no apparent problems. However, just because I’m not having issues I don’t assume others are in the same happy position.
 
I have TRS22PE and updated to build # 131965 where, here, it states these commands are fixed yet "call at' <kuid2:122285:3498:4> Call At ..... is till greying out when attempting to use it! Have no idea why. Anyone?
I have that exact same version installed in Trainz Plus with no greying out or errors. It was not installed on my TRS22PE (#131965) but I was able to download and install it without any greying out or issues.

Try deleting it and downloading it again from the DLS.
 
I always hold put for ages before I apply any update ( unless its for security and even then I've deleted a recent windows 11 update due to it wiping out some drives). Given the terribly spotty history of Trainz updates in general ( promising much and often delivering very little ) I still wonder why so many people update really swiftly instead of waiting to see how its received. I imagine that many of you do have backups that they can fall back in rather then placing all their eggs in the one fragile basket? Incidentally just what did SP6 intend to fix or improve ?
 
Regarding the whole "memory limitations" talk. I can't obviously share personal e-mails between my friend (route builder) and the devs representative. Of course, I suppose that something else could have been meant here or something could be interpreted the wrong way. That's why it would be nice for the officials to finally say something. This is not a conspiracy theory or anything. I've only quoted what I saw. The issues with performance affected a lot of users, I asked around.

My friend asked the devs to elaborate on this question further. We'll see how it goes.

What are the new memory limits? Have they been published somewhere? My Trainz route exceeds 1 GB and thus can’t be saved as a cdp. It can be saved by other means. If I upgrade to SP6 will my route be too big to run? It runs fine on SP5 if you don’t mind the blurred assets, particularly moving rolling stock. Runs even better on SP4, no blurring of assets. I’m a Mac user.

Cayden

I can't tell you for a fact, but don't think having over 1GB route is the problem. Because we have routes far smaller than 1GB in CDP and those routes perform poorly in SP6 too. The issue in SP6 is poor performance on larger railway stations (on smaller stations performance is fine). I posted an example of train bugging and loading problem before, here it is again, this all wasn't there in SP5:

If they made changes, they could at least have told us this change was coming. As is typical, just like the script problem that has affected tens of thousands of assets, this is a curveball thrown at the very community that has made the product what it is.

Okay, they put warnings in the assets and tell us that's for the content creators and us users can ignore the warning, and ignore them we do only to be bitten again and again. This works fine and dandy if the content creators are still active, give two farts about fixing their content, and haven't left the community for many reasons including joining those who are no longer with us.

With some routes dating back 20 years at least, it'll be difficult finding new assets to replace those that are causing the redraw issue. For those that have cities, the problem is worse due to the size of the assets and large numbers of assets.

Yep, exactly. It's like that issue with RSK locos mentioned earlier by a player. These are not payware, they are on DLS only, so the devs basically don't care. Update it yourself. Nevermind that they worked for god knows how long and broke only now.

I actually understand what N3V is coming from. I get it. We can't always rely on warnings and old scripts and stuff. And we need assets with LODs to maximize performance, I totally agree with the argument. My issue with is they suddenly made these changes in SP6... like, why this late into the TRS22? Might as well, again, leave it for the next game, which we all know will be coming anyway, where a lot of old stuff will break and users will have a chance to start clean, you know? Why do they feel the need to shove this update now? This is what really buggs me. We had a good stable performance-wise SP5 HF and now we have this.
 
There's been lots of speculation about what might be causing the issues and although I am now safely back to build 129343 (with ease I'm pleased to say), I did enough testing with build 131965 both at the RC stage and after, to be sure that the following were not obvious causes:

- Tree/bush splines
- Billboard trees (my route doesn't contain any)
- Memory (plenty remained available during running my session/editing my route)
- File size of the assets (disabling the larger assets made no difference at all)
- Old assets (most noticeable improvement actually came from disabling assets that were version 4.0 to 4.9 - but far from fixed the issue)
- My system generally (it's new and worked great with SP5)

My specs:
UserBenchmarks: Game 215%, Desk 130%, Work 278%
CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K - 136.1%
GPU: Nvidia RTX 4060-Ti - 161.1%
SSD: Samsung 990 Pro M.2 2TB - 569.7%
SSD: Samsung 980 Pro NVMe PCIe M.2 1TB - 440.9%
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 6000 C30 2x16GB - 196.9%
MBD: MSI MPG Z790 EDGE TI MAX WIFI (MS-7E25)
 
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