Would this work? (to minimize frame-rate hiccups)

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

OK now, the latest instalment of this little study.

Adopting most of the ideas suggested by nismit, I tried the trainzoptions settings shown in the top-left corner of the graph. Note that in this test the scenery was concentrated in the town and I had keepallresources turned off.

The effect of tying the frames to the monitor frequency reduces the variability in frame rate quite a bit. My monitor can't handle 100Hz, so I had to use a lower frequency than Nismit recommended. I chose 75Hz and a vsync = 3 aiming for an average frame rate of 75/3=25fps. I got 23, which was not too bad, although it gave whole thing a nervous, twitchy feel.

Caching occurred at about the same time and degree as in previous runs, so not much difference there. Periods of momentary stuttering were now spread over a wide period instead of being closely associated with the caching.

For the next test, everything was the same, except I now had keepallresources turned on. This gave me the same numerical average frame rate but it was somehow smoother, with less severe caching and fewer times when it stuttered. Probably the best result so far.

Next step will be to try the dispersed scenery idea with the trainzoptions settings used here and see if I can eliminate the caching altogether.

 

[WileeCoyote]

Now that I think of it, just how many assorted trainzoptions.txt mods are there? Looking here it seems there are more than I though (comprehensive list anyone?)

WileeCoyote

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

As promised in my previous post, this is the test where having 'balanced' my trainzoptions settings, I scattered examples of the town buildings around the countryside about 2km before the town itself.

I have to say the results were pretty good especially considering where I had started with all this. First the graph;

You can see straight away that the frame rate didn't jump around as much as before, no really big drop-outs now. I could see only very minor hestitations as the dispersed objects were read from the disk and only one very quick caching episode which did not really interrupt the flow (unlike previously).

So I think the results backup what people were saying about 'balancing' the trainzoptions settings in order to see the benefit of feeding objects in ahead of a main concentration.

The final result is pretty impressive given that I'm still running with over 4km of look-out distance on the ground, 20 boards around the camera in memory at all times (it's normally 10, I think) and all this on a 1256-board layout.

I'm sure I've only scratched the surface with trainzoptions - there are lots of other settings to play with, but for now, here endeth the lesson. Thank you for watching.

D

p.s. Which boy threw the paper airplane in lesson 2? Was that you again Euphod?

 

[Hot_Box_Detector]

As promised in my previous post, this is the test where having 'balanced' my trainzoptions settings...
So I think the results backup what people were saying about 'balancing' the trainzoptions settings in order to see the benefit of feeding objects in ahead of a main concentration.
D/quote]

This is the best test I've seen for this problem...but I have to ask...
There were a few trainzoptions.txt lines listed on the last graph, but what did the whole .txt file look like ?
Durff

 

[dricketts]

I was wondering if Dinorius_Redundicus could paste his trainz options file that he is currently using. Its been a while since the last post on this thread. I'm curious to see what has changed since then.

 

[llebrez]

Here is a bit of spice: I am using two SSD's in Raid 0 (OCZ Turbo). Loading a large route takes seconds!, or W-7 loads in about 5-6 seconds. When a train get's near or enters a "populated" town, I see no stuttering, but frame rate diminishes. It tells us that stuttering is due to HD searching and loading, and frame rate depends of the graphics card. Unless you have SLI ( I don't have it), you will have frame rate problems when looking at many buildings, splines etc. Make sure you have at least 512 Mb of graphics RAM, and you use a good Nvidia modern card at PCI e X2. And of course, when and if you can, get at least one SSD, (greatest thing you can do for your computer). Sorry to be so technical, but this is the best solution for me.

 

[SuperFudd]

Hi llebrez,

You may have noticed I have a new PC (see below). I expect the first upgrade I will do to it will be a Solid State Drive ( SSD ) but not for at least a year. Perhaps a 64G, at least. That will give some time for prices to drop.
What would you sugest I put on it? Win 7 is so fast on this PC that I am not inclined to put it on th SSD but what do you think?

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

I was wondering if Dinorius_Redundicus could paste his trainz options file that he is currently using. Its been a while since the last post on this thread. I'm curious to see what has changed since then.

A zombie thread back from the dead!

Here's what my current trainzoptions file says;

-DepthBits=24
-StencilBits=8
-resourcememory=1280
-keepallresources=0
-sectionlimit=20
-arealimit=540
-autopilotsignaldistance=500
-ShowKuids
-freeintcam
-intro=disable
-fullscreen
-Jet=bin
-cabinfov=65
-driverfov=55
-nolog
-zfar=1500

Since I got hooked on content creation about 18 months ago, I haven't actually been playing with my layout much, but obviously I have changed my trainzoptions since I did those tests and I have no records of what it was in total back then.

 

[HiBaller]

Our labors with this very problem on the DHR met with mixed reviews. Since almost every piece of content was made by us (that's a 'royal' us - I can't GMax myself out of the sample box) we strove to make things FPS-friendly.

We tried the 'push stuff under the terrain' method and it appeared to work, but doing that took a lot of time so most of us just ignored it and pruned/tuned problem areas until we were happy with the frame rate.

Those of you that have downloaded and installed the DHR (almost 22,000 now) know that there are definite areas that tend to stutter BUT if you slow the train down just a little and allow caching to catch up, it is minimized.

I am fascinated by the charts in this tread.

Bill

 

[dricketts]

So if I understand the the previous data the 'resourcememory' & 'keepallresources' lines made improvements in the stuttering?

 

[misterchugg]

hi all

ii got what could be a stupid question.

i have a dual cpu 2.4gh pc

but it seems that only one cpu is working for trainz

is there any way to tell them both to work together?

thanks
ron

 

[SuperFudd]

TRS2006 only uses one core. TS2009/10 uses at least two.

 

[llebrez]

To SuperFudd (Don). Using an SSD will improve the loading times and run Trainz somehow better. I can testify to that. You don't have to use a Raid to experiment this. Prices of the solid state disks are coming down all the time, so don't be afraid to get one even if it has 30 Gb (use your existing large capacity standard disk for bulk storage).