Frame rates?

Is there a tutorial, or can someone explain frame rates? I mean like what it is, what affects it (scenery, trackwork, topography, rolling stock etc), and what the negative effects from it. I suspect that excessive frame rates basically slows the performance of the game down. Will adding more memory to the machine help? Thanks for any info.

Frame Rates a frames per second. So if you have 30 frames per second that means you are awesome. But if your lagging you have a lo frame rate like maybe 10 or even 5!

sometimes the performance of the game, especially in surveyor, seems to be sticky as I'm doing things, like panning around, and applying textures and such.

Try download Fraps. It will show your frame rate in the top left corner (by default) so you can see your performance. But don't use fraps all the time because it may lower your performance.

psferg said:

sometimes the performance of the game, especially in surveyor, seems to be sticky as I'm doing things, like panning around, and applying textures and such.

Click to expand...

This is quite normal, particularly if you have objects in the view because the objects have a higher mesh for your video card to draw.

You'll also notice when using the older flipboard trees that the framerate will be slower because the object rendering pipeline is longer, meaning that the program hands the object(s) to the CPU to do the work, then the information is handed off to the GPU (graphics card chip)afterwards for processing and displaying. With the newer SpeedTrees generated objects; I mean those made by McGuirel as well as Auran, and not just Auran'd Speed Trees. The rendering process is handled 100% by the GPU so the pathway and calculations are a lot shorter so they can render faster, therefore your framerates are faster.

There are some textures can do this too, you might want to try another texture if you find the FPS drops drastically in some areas of your route. In the past it wasn't so easy to do this, but today with the replacement tools, replacing textures is a lot faster.

Ideally when building a route, you want the best of both worlds. You want the FPS to be high enough so the trains don't stutter along, and you get a headache in driver, while at the same time you want enough objects and textures to make the scenery look realistic.

John

Frame rates are dependent on a number of things.

First each asset has an overhead of 300 poly equivalents per mesh and 200 poly equivalents per texture.

So stations and built up areas need special consideration.

Some assets are not well made. GMAX has two ways of texturing, the simplest applies a given texture to the part, the more complex applies part of a texture to the part. So many assets have a dozen or so textures which adds to their overhead.

The default in GMAX for a cylinder is 5 segments so it will have five times more polys than it needs.

You get the idea, its actually a bit of a challenge to create low impact assets. TS2009 and above put more work down to the GPU and can run on more than one core. However fill a set of sidings with wagons and even though they aren't visible they will impact performance substantially. Do the same thing but this time set up the wagons as scenery objects, not that easy to do, and there is no impact when the Trainz doesn't have them in focus.

TS2010 can help with speedtrees, they have their own rendering engine and there are a couple of other minor improvements.

Oh and the impact of 200 trees of the same kuid is much less than 200 trees all of different kuids.

Cheerio John

I would like to have a decent amount of frame rates. Is it better to manually place trees on the baseboards, or set tree and forest splines.

malikrthr: I would suggest that you not use any splines unless necessary..They use a lot of Energy..What I do is try to strike a happy medium..I use the copy/paste method for some planting and some areas i'll do individual planting in other..Try to keep your trees back from the track if possible will also help..:wave:

Gameboy900 said:

Try download Fraps. It will show your frame rate in the top left corner (by default) so you can see your performance. But don't use fraps all the time because it may lower your performance.

Click to expand...

G'day,

It may lower the performance of the puter, but it hasn't lowered my performance yet:hehe:.

Have a good one,
E.C.

psferg said:

sometimes the performance of the game, especially in surveyor, seems to be sticky as I'm doing things, like panning around, and applying textures and such.

Click to expand...

Don't worry too much about 'performance' in Surveyor. I have never seen a satisfactory explanation, but Surveyor is always slower and jerkier than the same route in Driver even allowing for the addition of rolling stock etc.

Heck I have a route which is laggy as anything and even crashes to the desktop regularly from Surveyor, but add a few trainz and move to Driver and it is silky smooth and trouble free.

Don't decide a route is too heavy before you have given it a good thrashing in Driver...

Andy

I think I've noticed that it does run better in driver. Another thing I've noticed in surveyor is that if I reduce the draw distance, it helps a lot.
I've downloaded that Frap program. I am interested in what kind of info I can get out of it. Thanks for all of the input, guys! :wave:

I like it! If thirty fps is good performance I don't have much of a problem. But then if your operation looks something like Sherman Hill (some topography, some tracks, a lot of grass, and a lot of sky.... oh yeah and a bunch of cows), you're bound to have pretty good frame rates, I suppose.
(I'm working on the scenery). Thanks again for the help.

Dermmy said:

Heck I have a route which is laggy as anything and even crashes to the desktop regularly from Surveyor, but add a few trainz and move to Driver and it is silky smooth and trouble free.
snip
Andy

Click to expand...

I agree surveyor is more for just building it doesn't have to be smooth driver really matters the most in all cases. I would reduce your draw distance if its really bad just so you can build.

I found a good test for performance is to walk the tracks using the Alt+Y key combination while in Surveyor.

If I get good framerates while looking at the scene from the track level, versus at the isometric bird's eye view, then the speed will be okay while in Driver.

John

This may sound silly, but surveyor is more for building, and driver is for running trains or scenarios. I usually build in surveyor and do a quick drive in surveyor.

I have gotten some good information off this post. Earlier on, Gameboy900 suggested that 30 fps was a pretty good rate... is that a pretty good rule of thumb? It seems to me to look alright. Right now, the route is pretty sparse on the scenery, and so now i'm going back filling it in. What happens anyway, the processor not "see anything" until it comes into draw distance?

psferg: I would say that is correct..the more draw you see is energy being used, so that is why I keep my Draw at 2000m..You have to think about the energy that the train itself is using..:wave: