VRAM and Turfx?

[boleyd]

Reading the Wiki on Plus the newest TurfX features will allow some mixing of turf. There is a warning that this could take more VRAM. Has anyone used the mixing feature and then had a VRAM issue?

I just hit that limit in the Lockheed flight sim. After flying to 15 to 30 minutes the program stops and tells you to "spend a bundle" and get a video card with more memory. I have set that program aside for now.

 

[JCitron]

I did grassing up an older very large route. As I moved along placing grass, the performance started to crawl along slower and slower to a point I could barely move my mouse. I gave up and reverted back to my pre-TurfFX version.

When I do turfFX my routes, I don't go hog wild either and put grass way out into fields and instead use the same rules as if I'm using (rarely) the old grass splines which can cause a wicked performance hit too, but this grass really did it for me. I even went as far as to thin the grass a bit, but that didn't help either.

 

[philskene]

Hi boleyd --

I've not had any performance issues, even on Rivercide which is almost completely covered from end to end and from side to side in TurfFX:

One this route I used five variants of TurfFX -- yellow grass long and short, brown grass long and short, and crops long. At most locations I did mix the grasses too.

"Rivercide" (with a "c") is on the Download Station. Perhaps download it and see if it works for you.

Phil

 

[boleyd]

No problem running and slewing around. My 3gb is adequate. The flight sim has a much larger field of view at a high-res and the field of view covers many miles of satellite/computer visual data. Spending $750 to $1000 for a video card to pretend to fly is not reasonable. I looked at VR head sets. Starting at $600. People that own a real plane love it.

 

[JCitron]

Hi boleyd --

I've not had any performance issues, even on Rivercide which is almost completely covered from end to end and from side to side in TurfFX:


{nice pics removed from quote...}


One this route I used five variants of TurfFX -- yellow grass long and short, brown grass long and short, and crops long. At most locations I did mix the grasses too.

"Rivercide" (with a "c") is on the Download Station. Perhaps download it and see if it works for you.

Phil

It could be my "older" system not being quite able to keep up with things. I do have a GTX1080TI, but I'm running an older i7-extreme 5860.

 

[philskene]

John --

Mine system is even older. I'm running a i7-4790 with a GeForce GTX 1070.

Have you tried Rivercide? It should run just fine for you. Despite all the ground cover.

Phil

 

[dangavel]

Hi boleyd --

I've not had any performance issues, even on Rivercide which is almost completely covered from end to end and from side to side in TurfFX:

One this route I used five variants of TurfFX -- yellow grass long and short, brown grass long and short, and crops long. At most locations I did mix the grasses too.

"Rivercide" (with a "c") is on the Download Station. Perhaps download it and see if it works for you.

Phil

with all due respect Phil, an awful lot of this route is water, there's probably the equivalent of about 30 land covered boards in total and none of the board widths are multiples of 3 or 4 boards all in view at once which might cause a stress to the GPU. I tried to run Horace Fithers Bear Creek on my Acer Nitro PC laptop which has a 2020 6gb 1550ti card and it had huge issues unless I used low settings, and hes not used turf fx anywhere near as extensively as you have in your route.

Unfortunately I cant give Rivercide a real go on my Mac pro with 8gb of vram as Turf Fx doesn't exist for mac. ( which I why I guess I'll never make the transition to route building using this feature whilst I use macs as primary computers)
I think a big route of 80 miles or so with lots of Turf FX applied on most surfaces would need a very powerful card to run at high settings.

 

[philskene]

" ... and hes not used turf fx anywhere near as extensively as you have in your route."

Do you know how many different types of TurfFX he's used on that route? I have the feeling that too many might impact performance.

 

[dangavel]

" ... and hes not used turf fx anywhere near as extensively as you have in your route."

Do you know how many different types of TurfFX he's used on that route? I have the feeling that too many might impact performance.

I don't know, but his route is about 8 times larger then yours. At least. I think its 100 miles or close.It may well be a combo of Turf and inefficient assets, from memory ,he has a 2080ti I think and he said at one time whatever combo of assets he used brought it to its knees. Has NV3 indicated what are the limitations?
Is there anyone out there that's made a 100 mile route that has extensively used Turf FX throughout ? On a route that is say, four boards wide ? I very much doubt that any card other than a top end one with max ram could cope with a route covered in Turf of multiple types on a number of board widths. The type of routes you create are ideally suited to the technology. It would be interesting to see what something like Rollins pass ( where the route has wide vistas that are revealed as the line climbs higher ) needs in a GPU to get decent performance with heavy turf fx use.

 

[FootplatePhil]

I have a 400 kms route with a lot of TurFX (only 3 crops, but applied across wide areas), and run a GTX 1070, with vsync = half. I have not noticed any slowdown due to my application of TurfFX, even on boards where it is quite heavily applied. However, I have had other issues with TurfFX which I have documented across various threads, and which I raised with the NV3 Helpdesk many months ago. They have told me they that have been able to reproduce the issues I have reported, and that they may be related to the size of the route. So far I have heard no word on any upcoming fix. (The issues: TurfFX visible in Surveyor disappear in wide patches in Driver. The direction of travel affects what is displayed, and the density of application; Another issue: defining a new TurfFX layer wipes out all existing TurfFX, and can't be undone -hence I have only 3 layers defined so far. Would love to able to define and apply more, so I hope they get on to this soon).

I originally brought into TRS2019 because the TurfFX looked so good in their promotions. And the appearance does not disappoint (nor does TRS2019, in other respects). Just wish TurfFX worked better.

 

[dangavel]

I have a 400 kms route with a lot of TurFX (only 3 crops, but applied across wide areas), and run a GTX 1070. With vsync = half, I have not noticed any slowdown due to my application of TurfFX, even on boards where it is quite heavily applied. But I have had other issues with TurfFX which I have documented across various threads, and which I raised with the NV3 Helpdesk many months ago. They have told me they that have been able to reproduce the issues I have reported, but I have had no word on any upcoming fix. (The issues: TurfFX visible in Surveyor disappear in wide patches in Driver. The direction of travel affects what is displayed, and the density of application; Another issue: defining a new TurfFX layer wipes out all existing TurfFX, and can't be undone -hence I have only 3 layers defined so far. Would love to able to define and apply more, so I hope they get on to this soon).

I originally brought into TRS2019 because the TurfFX looked so good in their promotions. And the appearance does not disappoint (nor does TRS2019, in other respects). Just wish TurfFX worked better.

Yeah it puts me off as I tend to pile on the detail with veg, I would find it very frustrating to lose work .I just had a look at what you were doing and the vegetation looks nice, but it doesn't look that heavy as its dry aussie bushland. Are you using other traditional ground vegetation other then the Turf fx such as grass assets? Its all academic to me anyway cos i cant use it anyway , but it would be nice to know whether in the future if i'd be able to update my routes if the feature worked on mac. Can you replace older vegetation with turf in a bulk replacement ?

 

[FootplatePhil]

Yeah it puts me off as I tend to pile on the detail with veg, I would find it very frustrating to lose work .I just had a look at what you were doing and the vegetation looks nice, but it doesn't look that heavy as its dry aussie bushland. Are you using other traditional ground vegetation other then the Turf fx such as grass assets? Its all academic to me anyway cos i cant use it anyway , but it would be nice to know whether in the future if i'd be able to update my routes if the feature worked on mac. Can you replace older vegetation with turf in a bulk replacement ?

I use a lot of grass splines also. I am mindful of the Mac and AMD cohort. I do try not get too carried way with splines for performance reasons. But for large areas of crop TurfFX is great, and no spline can match it. Maybe you didn't look at one of the cropped areas? The route moves through lots of different types of country. So far I have only been able to apply TurfFX to the cropped areas, due to the limitations I noted. But still, there are many kms of crop covered boards. For example, check out the country north-west of Canowindra, or south of Koorawatha, or between Greenethorpe and Grenfell, or.....

The question was raised as to whether the TurfFX performance issues raised by the OP could be related to the amount of TurfFX applied. Another post asked if it could be related to the size of the route. I have only 3 layers, but applied across wide areas. Just adding my two bit coins worth.

Edit: another thought, I wonder if the TurfFX I have applied are actually displaying for you?

Edit 2: Just realised, you have a Mac, so don't see my TurfFX crops !!!!

 

[boleyd]

The WIKI Says:
"2. Whereas Trainz will typically run (albeit slowly, or at reduced settings) on below-spec computers, TurfFX will need to be disabled entirely if the GPU is insufficient. We expect the minimum of a GeForce GTX 750 to get reasonable performance."

There is a section on mixing layers of Turf. As noted there, multiple layers of different "turfs" will require more VRAM to concurrently hold the stuff for rendering.

 

[dangavel]

I use a lot of grass splines also. I am mindful of the Mac and AMD cohort. I do try not get too carried way with splines for performance reasons. But for large areas of crop TurfFX is great, and no spline can match it. Maybe you didn't look at one of the cropped areas? The route moves through lots of different types of country. So far I have only been able to apply TurfFX to the cropped areas, due to the limitations I noted. But still, there are many kms of crop covered boards. For example, check out the country north-west of Canowindra, or south of Koorawatha, or between Greenethorpe and Grenfell, or.....

The question was raised as to whether the TurfFX performance issues raised by the OP could be related to the amount of TurfFX applied. Another post asked if it could be related to the size of the route. I have only 3 layers, but applied across wide areas. Just adding my two bit coins worth.

Edit: another thought, I wonder if the TurfFX I have applied are actually displaying for you?

Edit 2: Just realised, you have a Mac, so don't see my TurfFX crops !!!!

I looked at screenshots, which really doesn't give me a good idea of the scope of what you've done , but I could download and have a look on my Acer nitro 5 and see it to the full.

 

[grazlash]

I was using TurfFX on the Goulburn Murray Lines route in 106618 utilizing the Bulk asset replace tool to paint turf on the entire route. This method of application works extremely well, but as it is a large route performance dropped markedly as turf was applied. After deleting the turf layers, performance raised instantly from 3FPS to 40FPS. I also removed all of the old grass splines for an extra 10FPS. I'm now planning a way to use it more sparingly, but if that fails theres always RSI inducing JVC grass clusters.
cheers
Graeme

 

[dangavel]

I was using TurfFX on the Goulburn Murray Lines route in 106618 utilizing the Bulk asset replace tool to paint turf on the entire route. This method of application works extremely well, but as it is a large route performance dropped markedly as turf was applied. After deleting the turf layers, performance raised instantly from 3FPS to 40FPS. I also removed all of the old grass splines for an extra 10FPS. I'm now planning a way to use it more sparingly, but if that fails theres always RSI inducing JVC grass clusters.
cheers
Graeme

Ha, i know all about the grass clumps ! It doesnt surprise me re turf fx, FPS hit, we all need 32gb GPUs to make the most of it !
I've avoided the grass splines as much as possible , but the single item assets are hard on the wrists .....

 

[FootplatePhil]

I was using TurfFX on the Goulburn Murray Lines route in 106618 utilizing the Bulk asset replace tool to paint turf on the entire route. This method of application works extremely well, but as it is a large route performance dropped markedly as turf was applied. After deleting the turf layers, performance raised instantly from 3FPS to 40FPS. I also removed all of the old grass splines for an extra 10FPS. I'm now planning a way to use it more sparingly, but if that fails theres always RSI inducing JVC grass clusters.
cheers
Graeme

Wow, that's a big hit! How many different TurfFX layers would you be applying Graeme?

 

[grazlash]

3 and a clutter layer, my next attempt will be with a single layer. I'll see how that goes.