A bit of a disspointing, but honest opinion of mine

I have been a Trainz fan since 2014, and when I started to create my own
Thomas & Friends models for Trainz, I have been really enjoyin the game, especially TRS2019 with the unified surveyor driver feature. But...every build I tried after 105100 has crashes on routes, has been more unstable and has been crashing a lot more often than my current, outdated Trainz Plus 105100 install. I want to have the latest features and fixes, I pay a good amount for money for them and I don't mind that, but then I at least expect the product I'm paying for works. I can't run a main install on the latest build for example, because it's unstable and not good for filming and producing videos.

I rather have a stable game than a game with cool new features being unstable is all I'm saying.
 
105100. Whenever I tried the newer builds, a lot of my routes freeze, get very high RAM usuage and crash to the desktop. I tried nearly everything, and spend HOURSSSS trying to fix it so far. A real shame, because I really want to use the latest build.
 
Hi ThomasFanForever1856
Can you please supply your full systems specifications? This can be done by going to 'start' (or the 'windows' icon), then type in 'dxdiag' into the search box and allow the search to locate the dxdiag program. Once located, click on the 'dxdiag' icon. Once the dxdiag window has loaded, click on 'save all information', and save the .txt file to your desktop.

You will then need to upload the saved txt file to a file host, such as Google Drive, and then provide a link to the file.

Please ensure that you have the latest drivers for your graphics card installed as well, as out of date drivers can cause unexpected issues.

Do you see these crashes on all routes, or only some? If only some, do you see it with any built-in routes or routes in DLC packs, or do you only see this with routes you have downloaded from other sources or created yourself?

Regards
 
Bugs I understand, but suddenly loosing the basic stability you once had by simple updating to a newer version is not something I understand.

Long time Trainz folk wouldn't be at all surprised by your experience. If you're going to run Beta updates do it in a separate install from your everyday working install.
 
Bugs I understand, but suddenly loosing the basic stability you once had by simple updating to a newer version is not something I understand.

That is the process of software development and testing. It often seems like one step forward, one step sideways and two steps back.

It is the reason why beta testing is necessary and with as wide a range of testers as possible. I have been involved in the beta testing process since TANE but time commitments ruled me out of beta testing the Trainz Plus version. On the plus side (no pun intended) is that you get to see and use the new features before anyone else.

Beta testing is not for everyone. Those who find dealing with and, more importantly, reporting bugs an annoyance should stick with the original build 105100 and opt out of the beta updates until the final release.
 
We are entering the largest Beta Test ever done. Many Covid vaccines are under development. Each will be tested by thousands of volunteers. There will be deaths (crashes in software world). However, as in the Covid vaccine trials, we need volunteers to test software. Sometimes this process is not properly explained out of the fear that the participation will be low.
 
Each and every one of you are kind of saying that it's a beta, so just deal with it kinda answer. I run Trainz Plus, not Trainz Plus Beta. Trainz Plus is there for a reason right? It's there for the people who want extra cool new features. I'm one of them. I pay good amounts of money for it, and what do I get? I'm stuck on an older version because no one could help me out fix the issues I had with the newer Trainz Plus versions since April. Again, Trainz Plus is a PRODUCT, not some kind of playground for beta testing. Trainz Plus Beta is there for Beta testing right? Otherwise, why ship the features of Trainz Plus with a premium product like Trainz Platinum Edition?
 
I look on my Plus subscription as a donation to help keep N3V from the poorhouse. Having Plus enabled me to unlock the Unified Surveyor tools, but I never downloaded anything. My build is still 105096 and that is where it is going to stay.
 
You stated that you had Trainz Plus and, your words,
.... simple updating to a newer version is not something I understand.

Lead to the obvious conclusion that your copy of the original Plus version was a beta update since there has not been a newer version of Plus released.
 
That's not true. I am on build 105100, and around April I believe it was a new version for Trainz Plus became available, and from that version onwards I started to experience crashing etc, so I'm still on 105100 and didn't upgrade.
 
OK, I am on the same build, 105100, but using TRS19 Platinum. Plus and Platinum builds 105100 are identical in every respect (i.e. they have exactly the same computer code) and only differ in their permission levels which allows Plus access to features that are not available to Platinum.

I have experienced no crashes in Platinum. The only issue I have experienced, a very minor asset selection "bug", has been attributed to one or more faulty assets.

Most crashes, according to N3V, are caused by faulty assets and/or faulty scripts.

Did you supply Zec with your system specifications, which is always a good place to start when hunting down problems?

AFAIK no-one else who has Plus has raised the same issue (but since I don't have Plus I only occasionally browse the Plus beta sub forum) so this makes it more likely that an asset or two that you have installed may be the culprit. The procedure is to disable all the installed non-built-in assets and see if the crashes can be reproduced.

EDIT: If bug hunting is not your "cup of tea" then the other option is to uninstall Plus and reinstall without any DLS downloads and start from there.
 
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I can attest that 90% of the crashes can be attributed to faulty assets. These assets do not show as faulty, but are faulty in some fashion that wasn't caught before, or for some reason or another we were lucky.

I have found one the culprits to be old and outdated scripted assets. The scripts do things that are buggy and always were. With the changes and improvements, the holes that these scripts relied on are no longer there, and now crashing occurs.

Other crashes are due to faulty or corrupted textures and faulty or corrupted meshes. In these instances, the assets show fine in content manager, but when the assets in placed in a route, stuff happens for the worse. With assets such as this, including textures themselves, we may exhibit gawd awful drops in performance in some locations, or unexplainable glitches with the assets such as meshes doing weird things. I had one asset, which required a fresh download, because when installed on the route it caused a building to have weird spikes sticking out of it. Replacing the asset, removed the problem. In most instances, however, this isn't so obvious. As I mentioned before, I had a corrupted Speed Tree cause my ills, and didn't find the culprit until I was converting the route from TS12 to T:ANE. I had one particular spot on the route where I couldn't look a particular way from the cab, otherwise the route would crash. If I looked the other way, the framerates dropped to slideshow until I passed that spot. With this tree in among a gazillion trees, there was no way of finding who the culprit was off the bat. Doing working Surveyor in that area meant a instant CTD so it was impossible to do any kind of troubleshooting in there.

The first line of defense when troubleshooting crashes in the program is to update and old assets. Use the filters in Content Manager to search the installed content for out-of-date assets. Update these, note you may need to view asset versions for built-ins and DLC, and then delete the obsolete and not built-in assets.

When that's completed, I highly recommend running an EDR - Press CTRL while selecting the Rebuild database.

To troubleshoot for crashes within a route, this involves using process of elimination of all non-built-in or DLC assets. Start with only built-ins enabled, then start adding in a small group of DLS and third party assets. Each time assets are disabled and enabled, an EDR needs to be done. As you can tell, a large route may have a lot of assets that need to be enabled and disabled. Eventually, you may stumble on the corrupted asset and be able to remove it.
 
You can also look at this another way - if a new build causes a crash and it isn't reported during beta testing (and we don't know about it), then it won't be fixed. This then means that the "official" release will have the crash also.

As John points out, it is nearly always an asset and if we have a good repro, they are generally very quick and easy things to fix.
 
I also like to add do not use these PC specs or you will lag and freeze,

3.3ghz processor not recommended for Trainz 19 or Trainz 19 Platinum

XFX AMD Radeon RX570 8GB Graphics card do not recommended

32gb ram

these are my personal PC specs at this moment and been tested for Trainz 19 or Trainz 19 Platinum/plus and officially not recommenced to use as my PC technician stated to me in face to face contact.

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I also like to add do not use these PC specs or you will lag and freeze,

3.3ghz processor not recommended for Trainz 19 or Trainz 19 Platinum

XFX AMD Radeon RX570 8GB Graphics card do not recommended

32gb ram

these are my personal PC specs at this moment and been tested for Trainz 19 or Trainz 19 Platinum/plus and officially not recommenced to use as my PC technician stated to me in face to face contact.
I beg to differ, my specs are equal to yours with less memory and I do not suffer from lag or freeze
I have an i5 7600 3.5ghz
16gb ram
nVidia GTX1660 ti 6gb
Considering that, have you excluded TRS19 from being virus scanned?
Is your TRS19 install up to date with all obsoletes deleted?
Are your graphics card drivers up to date?
Does a near empty route lag and freeze? What about built in routes?
There's a lot more to making trainz run smoothly than just specs.
A face to face opinion is still not necessarily correct. Being a PC tech myself with a retail gaming store background, I'll state that your PC technician is wrong.
 
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