Trainz12 graphics problems

E

escibbe

New member
Well I just bought Trainz12, and as much as I love trains and Trainz Simulators, I have to say, I'm a little dissapointed.


My PC specs:


i3 CPU @ 3.30 GHz
8 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
Win7 Home Premium 64-bit OS
Trainz12 Build 49922


I believe my PC specs are well above the requirements to run Trainz12, but I am experiencing severe graphics problems.


If I zoom the chase mode camera in or out on my train in Driver mode, the screen will freeze, sound will still be playing, and eventually train


will start moving again.


Also while in driver mode, if I go to the map and try to move around and zoom in or out it is very sluggish. Then when I


return back to driver mode, the screen will be frozen with the camera looking at or in some bushes. Then when I set camera back to


chase mode, the screen takes forever to show me the right camera view, and train, tracks, and local scenery takes forever to


redraw. Somtimes whole texture areas such as the ground, or nearby water, will be all white. The ground wont turn to its


solid texture until I drive well away from that area.


Even if I am not moving the camera around in Driver mode and just keeping still while watching my train, the frame rate is


noticebly choppy and my train does small lurches as it travels down the tracks.


I use a 1280x1024 screen resolution. I have also tried lower resolutions but the problem still persists. Even so, I shouldn't have to


lower my settings as my grafx card can definitely handle the higher settings. I play many games with much more detailed


scenery with no problems. I have tried both DirectX and OpenGL modes. No difference. I aslo have the latest NVIDIA drivers


installed (306.97)


Please advise and offer solutions. I love Trainz and want to be able to enjoy it!!


Thanks!
 
Are the graphics drivers you have installed Beta or Stable drivers?

It may well be that the program cannot load information from the hard drive fast enough - try doing a defragmentation of the hard drive.

Shane
 
The 306.97 is the latest WHQL driver available for GForce cards.

I found that by changing to Open/GL for this particular driver version I got better performance than I got with the previous one.

Like Shane I too suggest a good defrag (not on an SSD, please), and even a good disk clean-up. You might also check for any unnecessary background applets or unneeded programs are shut down while using Trainz. In particular Windows Search, Windows Indexing, Skype (big culprit), antivirus scanning of the Trainz install. In particular with this latter item disable scanning of files when they are opened. Trainz opens a lot of files! Also disable any file sharing programs, and anything that is monitoring your system for events, unless you need this particular item running.

Hope this helps.

John
 
escibbe said:
Well I just bought Trainz12, and as much as I love trains and Trainz Simulators, I have to say, I'm a little dissapointed.


My PC specs:


i3 CPU @ 3.30 GHz
8 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
Win7 Home Premium 64-bit OS
Trainz12 Build 49922


I believe my PC specs are well above the requirements to run Trainz12, but I am experiencing severe graphics problems...........................Please advise and offer solutions. I love Trainz and want to be able to enjoy it!!


Thanks!
Click to expand...

Although I am not offering any actual solutions to your problem, (others are doing that) I can tell you that I have a much less powerful system than yours, I run my monitor at 1920 x 1080, and I get quite satisfactory performance. You will find the solutions, and you will be enjoying Trainz as you want to quite soon, I think.;)

Mick Berg.
 
Thank you all for your timely responses!

I defragged my HDD.

I have been using Game Booster 3 on other games and tried it on Trainz as well.

Also did defrag of the Trainz folders using Games Booster Defrag tool.

Switched Trainz back to OpenGL.

Still have the same graphics problems.

I scaled back the Scenery, Tree, and Texture sliders to the Normal position, and I have been using a Maximum Draw Distance of 3000m. This helps a little while zooming Chase Camera in and out while viewing my train.

But using the map and then returning back to Driver mode can still produce horrendous results, sometimes freeezing the game and having to wait for a complete re-draw.



Mick Berg, Thanks for the encouragement!!
 
This particular driver version has not been very stellar. I noticed that this one is not that great performance wise overall. I'm running this on Win8 (not recommended), and there are other performance problems and crashes in DirectX. I had to switch completely to Open/GL and the performance is not that great. I looked on the web and we're not the only one experiencing issues with this driver. I'm sure there will be a new one released soon(tm) to replace the bad one.

John
 
I have been using 306.97 for about 3 weeks now and the performance I am getting is wonderful, so I don't think this is a driver issue. Frame rates in the 60-70's is what I typically see.
 
Robert2d6 said:
I have been using 306.97 for about 3 weeks now and the performance I am getting is wonderful, so I don't think this is a driver issue. Frame rates in the 60-70's is what I typically see.
Click to expand...

That's interesting. What setting are you using? Maybe I need to tweak them a little. Remember too I'm running on W8 which is another ball of wax and have to use Open/GL which adds another layer of stuff. Overall the performance is lower with Open/GL. With DirectX the graphics performance was better but I had NVD driver crashes to the desktop. This might only be a W8 thing.

John
 
Also using 306.97, on Win7 64 bit, driver works very well for me, Nvidia settings are actually all on default on the main PC. FPS range from 35 to 100 FPS, My route is a bit of a killer in places. i7 and a GTX460.
Poor performance in DirectX is normally down to not having DirectX9c added or as Shane says a defrag is needed.
What's the speed and size of the hard drive? I've noticed that Trains runs far better on a 250GB or 500GB drive than it does on a 1 or 2 GB drive.
If not that, I might suggest a database repair initially.

Also make sure you exclude the Trainz folder from any real time / on access scans from AV and suchlike.
 
Hello ,

I've installed Game Booster also now for 2009 .
I read your post Robert 2d6 , it runs more smoothly than it already did.

thank you
 
JCitron said:
That's interesting. What setting are you using? Maybe I need to tweak them a little. Remember too I'm running on W8 which is another ball of wax and have to use Open/GL which adds another layer of stuff. Overall the performance is lower with Open/GL. With DirectX the graphics performance was better but I had NVD driver crashes to the desktop. This might only be a W8 thing.

John
Click to expand...

We tried Windows 8 on a work computer a couple of weeks ago and pretty much everyone hated it so, it went back to Windows 7. I switched from Open GL to Direct X about a month ago with a dramatic improvement in my frame rates. My PC never crashes, so that hasn't been an issue, either with the the latest drivers or the preceding version.
 
leksie said:
Hello ,

I've installed Game Booster also now for 2009 .
I read your post Robert 2d6 , it runs more smoothly than it already did.

thank you
Click to expand...

You are welcome, I use it almost every-time I run Trainz unless I am just spending a few minutes looking at something.
 
Robert2d6 said:
We tried Windows 8 on a work computer a couple of weeks ago and pretty much everyone hated it so, it went back to Windows 7. I switched from Open GL to Direct X about a month ago with a dramatic improvement in my frame rates. My PC never crashes, so that hasn't been an issue, either with the the latest drivers or the preceding version.
Click to expand...

This might just be a W8 issue because I never had problems like this before with Win7. There are some new drivers (beta) up on NVidia's website that are specific for W8, so I'm giving these a try. The native driver versus a shim to get W7 versions running on W8 may make a difference. We'll see.

John
 
This is not a driver issue. Had the same problems under the older driver I was using. As a general rule, "Newer doesn't necessarily mean better!" I have learned this from past experience. And I resist all temptations to dl the newest and greatest. Graphics drivers today are released for a whole family of different cards, not necessarily your specific card. So you might have poorer performance for your specific card with the newer driver. The only reason I updated my driver was because Trainz was the only game with these graphics issues and was a fingers-crossed last hope effort.

An internet search does show that a lot of people are having these graphics problems. And I see some of the solutions are guys bragging about their water-cooled supercomputers with some custom built grafx card and a 500 Terabyte SSD.

Really?

if the recommended requirements for running this game is a $5,000 Alienware platform then why isn't it written that way?

Trainz is a great concept and a great simulator. But let's be honest. The scenery graphics are not that great. Trainz12 looks pretty much the same as Trainz 2004. It looks like NV3/Auran needs to upgrade their graphics engine, or switch to an entirely new one.

I'm not a graphics programmer or expert, and I don't pretend to be one. But I know enough about computers and the experience I have with other games with much more realistic scenery, running just fine on my system, tells me something isn't right here.

And I don't think its a hard drive issue either. The whole point of having gobs of system ram and grafx ram is so that program code is running in ram, not off the HDD.

Just sayin'!

Still love the sim, just want it to work like the manufacturer claims it should.
 
I see from your first post you are using 1280 x 1024? is that the monitor native resolution because if it isn't, it won't look any better than older versions. Graphics here are way better than TC3 which is the oldest version I have.
 
Oh please.

The native resolution of my monitor is listed as 1792x1344.

Neither my OS nor Trainz12 displays correctly at a resolution that high.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

J
Trainz 2022 is showing its true dull, lackluster colors!
Replies
4
Views
781
dangavel
D
W
TS3 HUD auto-hide
Replies
1
Views
581
Dieselfuel
D
P
Stuck train
Replies
14
Views
734
peeet2005
P
J
TS 2022 changes graphics lighting effects with screen mode changes on my Windows 11 Home PC.
Replies
0
Views
444
JonMyrlennBailey
J
J
POLL: What are the pros and cons of TS 2022 PE vs TANE SP4?
Replies
14
Views
2K
JCitron
J
Back
Top