Deano05 and lewisner,
This is my large route in progress . . . these will make you cringe with regards to FPS. . . (these are large pics 1360X768)
I am running Trainz @ 1360X768 resolution (HDTV). I have an average newer computer with a crappy video card. Its a Core 2 Duo E6300 1.8Ghz n WinXP, 3GB RAM, nVidia 7300 W/ 512MB RAM.
99% of the trees in ALL the shots are individual "poplar" trees of 3 or 4 variety but numbers in the thousands. My finished portions between 2 finished and farthest apart industry is 55 minute drive time at average of 60MPH. When finished I want it to be a 3 to 4 hour drive time between two farthest points.
ALL my textures are also made up of 3 to 4 variety mixed together then pasted, plus other accent textures, ballast, rocks and dirt amongst the greens.
I personally would rather sacrifice a little FPS to gain realism. A great FPS like 24FPS and up is wonderful but if its happening in "toy land" environment . . . why bother using realistically detained rolling stock that looks "out of place" in "toy land". There is nothing wrong with economy of scenery if you intend it to uploaded your route. Good examples are the built-in routes for TRS2006, Marias Pass and City & Country. They are good routes but just not my cup of tea.
OK . . . FRAME RATES. I am averaging 13 to 15 FPS out in the "country" and 9 to 11 FPS in my main yard, which is 18 tracks and 7000 feet long. ALL TRACKS EVERYWHERE are 2 meter track . . . I HATE SEEING CURVES MADE UP OF LITTLE STRAIGHT SECTIONS. 2 meter tracks are the only thing that makes switches look real. As you can see in the screen shots, the curves are round.
Below 12 FPS is noticeably "jittery". MY WORST, is the area shown with the "UP GAS TURBINE" shot over the bridge. That area drops to 8 to 10 FPS.
IN COMPARISON, the Marias Pass runs at 18 to 20 FPS in the "country", once in a while jumping up to mid to high 20s, and drops to 15 to 18 FPS in the Cut Bank yard.
I'm getting 13 to 15 FPS out in the country with substantially more trees than Marias Pass route . . . not to mention a higher poly 2 meter tracks. GO FIGURE . . . I had expected Marias Pass to be up in the 40s FPS.
I am in the process of UPGRADING my video card. I'm expecting a drastic improvement and up my average to about 20FPS in the "country" and 15FS in my worst area.
The total size of the route does not affect the FPS . . . except it takes forever to load and to switch views to another Driver if you have other trains running.
But there is a WORSE ISSUE THAN FRAME RATES with large routes. TRS2006 has bug in the programming that causes the "Read Only" error !!
I'm quite positive its a "route size related" issue. Most users don't encounter this problem because they usually don't build a route that takes 3 to 4 minutes to load. You won't lose your route but the sessions become detached and you have to retrieve them in CMP. Auto-Save will disengage when you add baseboard or tracks. Thats what it does when I'm working on my route. There are no FIX for this, and Auran doesn't have any plans to fix it.
But OVERALL, if you put enough of low poly objcts . . . FPS will drop. To stretch things . . . think LESS VARIETY before NUMBERS. But if you are willing to live with 20% to 30% less in Frames Per Second . . . you can put in the kind of amount of trees you see in my screen shots.
Remember that the number of objects/textures in the current view is what affects FPS. You can have a million trees on your route but if the "data numbers" are about the same for any "viewing area" in Driver/Surveyor mode, then your FPS should remain similar.
So its a personal choice. You'd be surprised how much detail you can put in before you see a drastic difference once you hit below 20FPS. . . unless you run out of RAM. If you do run out of RAM, FPS will be down to 1 ~ 4.
Just my 2 cents
