News from the Trainz Dev Forums.

Hi John- Going back to where this post started I would like add my agreement to the idea of being able to rotate items to a set angle of the dangle. It would help with a number of things like a street full of street lights and they all have to be placed and then turned to face the right way. A row of park benches... but you get the idea?
Regards
Doug

So would I. :)

Simply set an angle with an option to save the position, a checkbox maybe, so that all scenery objects are then placed at that specified angle. I asked for this ages ago, but nothing was acted on. Yup placing street lamps, benches, even buildings, can be a pain.

I will repost this again in the Suggestion Boxcar forum and hopefully it will be picked up. We were told to put suggestions in there.

John
 
Hi John- Going back to where this post started I would like add my agreement to the idea of being able to rotate items to a set angle of the dangle. It would help with a number of things like a street full of street lights and they all have to be placed and then turned to face the right way. A row of park benches... but you get the idea?
Regards
Doug


In my wildest dreams I'd ask for a Rotation Indexer. Much like the one Machinists use for Drilling Hole Circular Hole Patterns, something we could use to rotate something say, 5degrees everytime we press a button. or 15 degrees when we put another of the same object down. With control over what that degree of rotation is, and a hotkey to reset it back to zero or some such. It'd be a very nifty tool, though not as important as others I'll admit, I'll be happy if they just fix the Text Fields again.....

Oh, by the by. I discovered this the other night and wanted to pass on my thanks to N3V, they've returned the ability to delete baseboards from Map View. SO MUCH BETTER! So John, if you could pass that on that'd be appreciated. I was one of the ones that asked for it way back when and was told it'd be kicked up the line. Super Appreciative of it.

-Falcus
 
UPDATE:

FYI... Don't think things have gone quiet since the official announcements regarding hot fixes and patches.

There is a new test build, Build 78095 for us to test. Once things have been put through the wringer, I will have some news.

Thanks.
 
TS12 Legacy builtin assets appearing on DLS.

About 900 assets with trainz-builds less than TB 3.5, and indeed most are less than TB 2.9, were uploaded and available on DLS as of 05:00 29 Aug 15 NZ time.
These appear to be ex TS12 builtins that are not included in TANE builtins.
I have downloaded these and had no problems, just a few additional missing dependencies.
Overall, I had a reduction in missing dependencies of about 350 without any showing as faulty using TANE Trainzdev validation (Greater or equal to TB 4.2).
Still many to come yet.
 
...In my wildest dreams I'd ask for a Rotation Indexer. Much like the one Machinists use for Drilling Hole Circular Hole Patterns, something we could use to rotate something say, 5degrees everytime we press a button. or 15 degrees when we put another of the same object down. With control over what that degree of rotation is, and a hotkey to reset it back to zero or some such. It'd be a very nifty tool...

Why don't you pop this (as a thread) into the 'Suggestions Boxcar' and I'll pass it on to the powers that be ?

Chris
 
I Have a question...
I did not purchase TANE through Steam, I was a Kickstarter Backer...........
If I add TANE to my steam Collection, will i be eligable for the Beta Hotfix.

Thank You
 
I Have a question...
I did not purchase TANE through Steam, I was a Kickstarter Backer...........
If I add TANE to my steam Collection, will i be eligable for the Beta Hotfix.

Thank You

From what I understand, it's only those who purchased T:ANE through Steam that get that facility.

Shane
 
Updates from Trainz Dev. 22-09-2015

First I want to say I apologise for not having more information sooner, but we've all been busy with the previous test builds. If any of you have been reading the forum there, you'll see questions. With more, and more, and more questions about LOD, polycounts, big textures, and large models. I can't go into details on this, because I can't explain it well enough since I can't understand it well enough to give a good answer! :) The gist is the big models need to be broken up rather than making gigantically huge ones, which worked in TS12 and below but caused awful performance.

When we thought this had quieted down, the subject was brought back up again by our dear form-mate and developer GeoPhil (Roland Ziegler), creator of the famous TransDEM. He brought up some questions on performance issues with his 3d UTM tiles. I've never used these so I can't comment on them. In the end he has to fiddle with stuff and he's working on it, which is what I understand of it.

More recently, however, we have received some newer builds to test. These have not been the best with a number of issues including some crashes, missing content, and other things. A more recent build was sent out the other day to replace a previous one, which was worse. The more recent build took care of some blank menus and some script errors on the menus in T:ANE itself. The performance is stable, but not spectacular as things are being tested in here. I got a bit better framerates in the Hinton division, and the overall lighting and performance is smoother. Zooming out to the map, however is sticky and it looked like the program hung but it came back to life. We will continue to test this build, and report back what we find.

Remember these are all tests of various bits of code. This is not beta and does not represent a full future version. I say this because many people have assumed we are working on the Hotfix beta. We are not, we are not even in the same group, unless some are and aren't saying anything. Like everyone else, we are anxiously awaiting the release of the Hotfix as that resolves the big crashes we are all aware of, and introduces other performance improvements which we did see in testing earlier code.

So yes, in some ways we are part of that Hotfix process, but not directly, and so long before anything could ever be considered a Hotfix or patch. The analogy I've used often is we're mere lab technicians testing vials of fluids and stuff (the program), and we never know whether this will be good or bad, or if any of it will be used in the future. In this case parts did make it across from one desk to another in the form of bits and pieces into the Hotfix, but outside of the early testing, we have not seen it or tested it yet.

Regarding the hot fix its self. The good news is the Hotfix is being tested and tested thoroughly. It's better to have a fully tested patch than one that breaks other things when installed. Anyone remember TRS2004, or more recently SP1 for TS12? So as anxious as we are for the patch, I feel it's best to let it be the one and all rather than one of many in a week to fix the previous hotfix which broke something else.

This is the news for now, and I'm sure the other members can clarify things a bit more on the LOD, which my head spins when I think about it, and other things including their thoughts on the new test builds.

As always post your questions or PM me with questions you want answered in the Trainz Dev forum and I will pass these over the wall.

John
 
When we thought this had quieted down, the subject was brought back up again by our dear form-mate and developer GeoPhil (Roland Ziegler), creator of the famous TransDEM. He brought up some questions on performance issues with his 3d UTM tiles. I've never used these so I can't comment on them.
The day has 24 hours and since I am not retired I can only dedicate very few of them if any to Trainz-related development. Anyway, I arrived at upgrading UTM tiles for T:ANE, asked a question in the Dev forum, and the result of that thread is that UTM tiles can make use of LODs without any penalty, by way of the LM.txt technique (that's the one with the extra text files, the other one is that with the LOD table in config.txt). And I'm sure UTM tile users will benefit from LOD, because the low-poly 1000m 3D UTM tile is only 246 triangles while he full-blown asset is 20406 triangles, a factor of 83.
 
Hello Everyone --

Just throwing out there my 2 cents!

I always followed what's happening at Trainz Dev -- With that said, Paul (Pcas1986), post #19 Here -- Makes a lot of sense!

-- And if I may add, I think the core group there is doing a fine job -- You have guys there that know their tech stuff, and seems to contribute daily! I think to change this now for the sake of changing is irreverent!

You guys are doing a great job primarily focusing on TANE where it should, and hopefully more people read your posts, etc ...

Ish
 
The day has 24 hours and since I am not retired I can only dedicate very few of them if any to Trainz-related development. Anyway, I arrived at upgrading UTM tiles for T:ANE, asked a question in the Dev forum, and the result of that thread is that UTM tiles can make use of LODs without any penalty, by way of the LM.txt technique (that's the one with the extra text files, the other one is that with the LOD table in config.txt). And I'm sure UTM tile users will benefit from LOD, because the low-poly 1000m 3D UTM tile is only 246 triangles while he full-blown asset is 20406 triangles, a factor of 83.

Thank you for explaining this. I understand now what you and the team were discussing and this will definitely help everyone else who peeks into the Trainz Dev forums as well.

John
 
As this keeps getting buried I've copied it here.

WIN 10, nVidia drivers and various TANE builds not releasing memory

I had a similar problem a while ago. You may experience a very large memory commit figure for TANE, even with as much as 32GB physical memory. In previous WIN 10 builds my TANE commit memory went up to 105GB when doing database repair or Submitting and didn't release after process complete. Later updates of my OS significantly reduced this.

Under normal conditions TANE commit should be in 1-3GB range.
Also watch out that wmiprvse.exe can chew up as much as 35%CPU. Should be in 2-3% range. You can restart this process. Again not now an issue in latest WIN 10 build.
Finally you can expect WIN Searchindexer.exe to run hard until TANE database rebuild is complete.
Total %CPU may be as much as~100%at times Again less of an issue in latest WIN 10 build.


I'm using WIN 10. insider version 10547 at moment with nVidia 355.98. i7 CPU, 32Gb quad channel RAM and dual GTX780ti graphics cards.

Eventually I traced the extremely high TANE memory commit to Pagefile settings. The drive on which I had used/was useing for TANE had no pagefile. WIN doesn't always use the same pagefile.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2860880

So now I have Pagefiles on every drive equivalent to slightly larger than my max physical RAM and have had no further problems.



Ian
 
Last edited:
Thank you for the update and information, Ian. This is very helpful.

Based on your previous posts, I increased my page files to a second one on one of my data drives. This allowed me to finish a repair without crashing even with my 64GB of RAM installed.

I opted out of the Insider builds this time around. I just got through rebuilding my PC, updating hardware and everything else. I want the platform to remain stable for a bit before I do any additional testing. The video driver, however, is the same as I have the same video card which has proven to be quite a workhorse.

John
 
Update: Testing has begun!

The Trainz Dev activity has begun again this time as we start testing new features for T:ANE. This is going to be interesting as we see what some of the future things might lead to, but please do keep in mind of the following as stated perfectly by Windwalkr:

* As with all of the internal builds: this isn't a beta, this probably contains a bunch of stuff which will never see the light of day, it most definitely contains a lot of experimental changes and work-in-progress so expect lots of bugs and compatibility issues. As this is not a beta, we will not prioritise fixing bugs. Feel free to let us know about anything that you find, but please don't expect that we'll necessarily get to them in any specific timeframe.
* You will notice a new "Compatibility mode" checkbox in the "Trainz Settings > General" tab. Unless you really like living on the edge, I would suggest that you leave this checkbox enabled (default.) Turning it off is an interesting experiment, but will break a lot of things because it's very incomplete. You have been warned.
* Lots of small things have changed.
* You aren't connected to the live servers with this build. We're working on migrating some services to a different service provider, and you'll be connected to the test servers until that is complete.
* Route and Session file formats are different and not finalised. Anything you modify in the internal test builds should be considered throwaway work and you should expect that it will not be usable in future builds.

That said, I will update the post here periodically as time goes on of any interesting things we come across.

John
 
I tried to follow the instructions but can't access the Trainz Development Branch stream. Since I am not on the DEV team, I guess that's it for me.

Cheers - Trevor
 
I tried to follow the instructions but can't access the Trainz Development Branch stream. Since I am not on the DEV team, I guess that's it for me.

Cheers - Trevor

Are you supposed to be?

If so, we can see what's up.

John
 
Well, I signed up on a list given out by Paul Olsen, thinking it was for the Dev group but it turned out to be for this Content Creators group instead.
 
Well, I signed up on a list given out by Paul Olsen, thinking it was for the Dev group but it turned out to be for this Content Creators group instead.

Yeah... a different group which I don't even have access to. :)

John
 
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