Mysterious observations from KRS

[Retro]

Usually the box that your card came with will say something like 'Requires min of 500w power supply" to run,for example.If your card has a socket on it,then you can use a lead from your PSU,if you have one spare.If the card doesn't get the required power then normally it just underclocks itself resulting in poor performance.

Turn off all the stuff thats just eye candy,AA,AF,mipmaps ect these are just making your card work harder,hope you sort the problem out.If you want to defrag,dont use windows,Auslogics disk defrag is fast and free only takes 3 mins for my 120 gig SATA.

Daz

Thanks Daz for replying unfortunately the card was in the PC as a package and I have no box or info on it at all. When I had my machines produced by the excellent builder I spoke of he gave me all the empty boxes and leaflets that came with each part he had used. Unfortunately computer manufacturers in general no longer seem to do this. I will do a search for the DD you mentioned.
Regards James.

[tads1970]

No problem James,here is a link for the disk defrag-

http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/di ... g/download

Daz

[Retro]

Thanks for the link Daz got it.
Regards James.

[AndiS]

Re. AA and AF, a long time ago, people posted that having the logical "let application decide" is the wrong option. You need to set them in the Nvidia dialogues - those which you showed in your screenshots. I did that long ago and was pleased, rest is forgotten. MS (multi-sampling) is set in the KRS options window and is said to be a resource hog, so have it at 0.

Re. deleting with Shift pressed. I guess that means that the files are deleted immediately. Normally they are just moved to a hidden folder named trash can and you can drag them out from there at any time. This means that nothing is really deleted. I would do "empty trash can" before defragging anyway (right click on the trash can to bring up this option).

Moving to another disk (or partition of the same disk) is a physical copy, even if it is the same mouse action in Windows.
I would not go hunting for the texture files, but instead do the operation with the whole route folder, if space permits (and it will, I am sure). Find out which of the xyz-1234-foo folders under Routes is your route. Move that to another disk and delete it in the original place afterwards. Empty trash can and defragment disk. Then move (i.e., copy) the route folder back, and it will sit in a nice big data block so the head of the disk must not run around all over the disk to hunt down textures or other details.

[Retro]

Thanks for that explanation Andi. I now understand what I am doing. Presumably every time you add to your route and save there is a possibility that files might get spread around the Hard Drive. I will give this a try and defrag the drive and see if I get an improvement. I always thought that the defragmentation tool always kept the various bits of programs together so doing the whole drive would improve things, but I see the logic behind this other method that is suggested.
Thanks for your time.
Kind Regards James

[CaptScarlet]

I always thought that the defragmentation tool always kept the various bits of programs together so doing the whole drive would improve things.

It all depends on the defrag tool used and the type of defrag it does as some defrag programs are better than others. For instance in the Flight Sim forums the O & O defrag program is praised highly ( but only the earlier version not the latest ).

John

[Retro]

Hi,
I have done a selective defrag as suggested and there is a marginal improvement. I have also tried the options settings one at a time and the one which seems to have most effect is the Object Texture setting. but even then there is not a lot of difference between low and high. I have been testing on the same section of track but wonder if this gives a real perspective as the section would have loaded into the memory after a couple of passes.
It would help if I knew exactly what each section on the options actually does and how it might effect performance. Until I can find a proper procedure for testing which will give an accurate representation then I am not prepared to waste hours altering the options one by one in the hope that it will improve things.
So to sum up all my efforts to date have made only a marginal improvement and not enough to encourage me to spend more time working on my Route. Thanks for the info on the defrag John.
Regards James.

[Acorncomputer]

Hi James

I really am puzzled by your experiences. I have the same card as you with the latest drivers and I only get the usual well documented problems but I have never got to a stage where the game is anywhere near unplayable.

Why not let someone have a go with your route and see if there is a basic problem there?

Geoff Potter

[Retro]

Hi Geoff
What version of the drivers are you running on your GS?
I have not a clue how and what to package as I have the US Addon and my own Track Rules plus some default. Also a number of reskins and some custom built items from some of our developers. I am hoping if I ever get this new graphics card delivered and installed that will at least get rid of one possible variable but PC Performance are still deciding what to do as the card is no longer produced with 512mb of memory.
Regards James.

[Acorncomputer]

OK James

I am using 169.21 which has been installed for quite some time so it is not a brand new driver but seems to be the latest.

If you want to send me a copy of the route to try out then send me a pm and I will tell you where to send it.

I am not at home at the moment so I cannot remember the sequence for packaging a route but if you have the developer tools installed then there will be a sub menu to package it up or I believe Mike Simpsons Tools also has a packager. I have already downloaded most of the add-ons already available but do not have the US Route yet as I am waiting for the the boxed set, but I understand that the route will still load without all of the assets so it should be OK.

I want to see the title of this thread changed to Not Giving up on KRS so let's keep at it.

Geoff Potter

[AndiS]

It would help if I knew exactly what each section on the options actually does and how it might effect performance. Until I can find a proper procedure for testing which will give an accurate representation then I am not prepared to waste hours altering the options one by one in the hope that it will improve things.

In defence of RSDL, I must say that every card reacts different on each of the settings, and there are zillions of card variants.

But I also must say, that a basic guide to what you are doing there would be very welcome. Those who wrote the programme must have an idea of that each of the sliders does. E.g., "medium texture quality" -- does it just shrink textures on loading, i.e., a 512x512 texture is processed as 256x256 texture? Does it do that for all textures, or does it limit the texture size, e.g., 256x256 textures and smaller are not shrunk, but 512x512 and 1024x1024 are. To continue our example, are 1024x1024 textures shrunk to 256x256, or to 512x512. Things like that. Of course, you do not get changes in FPS from such information. But you can map such general info on the memory size of your card and the texture size of the objects in your route (if you know that). You can also rate the expected degradation in visible quality.

In short, while it is impossible to recommend settings for each and every hardware configuration, RSDL could well give away a few pages of very useful background information on all these sliders.


Btw. having someone else try your route is a great idea. I am glad that Geoff volunteered because I am drowned in all kind of stuff.
And the more I read about your problems, the more I tend to believe that your card might indeed be broken in some funny way, which makes it work fine for half of the programmes and not so for KRS. But getting a decent driver version is definitely a good idea.

[Retro]

Thanks Geoff I will give the packaging a try when I get a moment.
I don't want to give up as I enjoy working with the Route Editor. But as you and all others know who are building or producing anything for KRS that it uses an incredible amount of time and effort. I am unable to commit that time while I am still unsure what the problem might be. If a new GPU sorts it out then fine I will have some incentive to continue. But it is soul destroying to apparently add some texturing to bring your work to life and then find for whatever reason it will not run properly.
Andi I agree with the points you have made and you always make your points detailed and understandable. I would welcome some input from RSDL about the actions of individual options so at least people will have an understanding of what the items and other visual parts of a route or a model might have on framerates and the abilty to run smoothly and how to achieve this for all by using the options that are there for this reason. No one wants to spend time on a Route, Model, Scenario etc. that may only run on super computers and therefore be unusable to people with lesser machines. In the world of FlightSimming there are people who produce scenery specially to run on slower machines (Framerate Friendly) and most developers in this area and the aircraft builders give advice on what to remove if you are having problems or produce a different set of textures that will run on the average machine. I appreciate that the Flight Sim Developers have had loads of time to sort this out from FS95 onwards. But if this sim is to be a success it has got to be able to run on a whole variety of set ups. The fact that there seems to me to be very little noticable difference when adjusting settings is a little worrying. Sorry to go on but I really do want KRS to be the beacon of excellence that all other sims in this area must match up to and I feel sure from what I have seen so far it can be.
Regards james.

[Acorncomputer]

James

I think I may have found the problem.

I have been building a yard and running sidings away from a turntable. When I came to test my sidings to pick up some wagons, I came to a junction that I had formed and as soon as the engine went over the junction the whole simulation started to work at about 1 frame per second including the contol panel (F5). In fact everything went into slow motion, even the rendering of textures as you zoomed in.

I traced the problem to a piece of track that looked perfectly normal but whatever I did, I could not delete it. It would turn red as normal after being selected but neither the delete key nor the dustbin worked. I finally found that if I split it with the splitting tool, this produced two pieces that could be deleted. I then replaced the missing track with a new section, ran the free roam scenario and this time the engine ran over it with no problem at all.

I think you may have been looking in the wrong place. Load up your route and in the area where you encountered your problem, select every section of track and try to delete it. If it does delete OK then just redo to replace it and move on to another section. I am willing to bet that you come across a section that will not delete and that is most likely the cause of all your problems. Split it, delete both sections, replace with a new section and Hey Presto you are back in business. The piece I found was part of a junction but I think it could have been anywhere.

Geoff Potter

[overmarze]

James

I think I may have found the problem.

I have been building a yard and running sidings away from a turntable. When I came to test my sidings to pick up some wagons, I came to a junction that I had formed and as soon as the engine went over the junction the whole simulation started to work at about 1 frame per second including the contol panel (F5). In fact everything went into slow motion, even the rendering of textures as you zoomed in.

I traced the problem to a piece of track that looked perfectly normal but whatever I did, I could not delete it. It would turn red as normal after being selected but neither the delete key nor the dustbin worked. I finally found that if I split it with the splitting tool, this produced two pieces that could be deleted. I then replaced the missing track with a new section, ran the free roam scenario and this time the engine ran over it with no problem at all.

I think you may have been looking in the wrong place. Load up you route and in the area where you encountered your problem, select every section of track and try to delete it. If it does delete OK then just redo to replace it and move on to another section. I am willing to bet that you come across a section that will not delete and that is most likely the cause of all your problems. Split it, delete both sections, replace with a new section and Hey Presto you are back in business. The piece I found was part of a junction but I think it could have been anywhere.

Geoff Potter

Hmm i remember Trs2004 haveing this problem lol

[Retro]

James

I think I may have found the problem.

I have been building a yard and running sidings away from a turntable. When I came to test my sidings to pick up some wagons, I came to a junction that I had formed and as soon as the engine went over the junction the whole simulation started to work at about 1 frame per second including the contol panel (F5). In fact everything went into slow motion, even the rendering of textures as you zoomed in.

I traced the problem to a piece of track that looked perfectly normal but whatever I did, I could not delete it. It would turn red as normal after being selected but neither the delete key nor the dustbin worked. I finally found that if I split it with the splitting tool, this produced two pieces that could be deleted. I then replaced the missing track with a new section, ran the free roam scenario and this time the engine ran over it with no problem at all.

I think you may have been looking in the wrong place. Load up your route and in the area where you encountered your problem, select every section of track and try to delete it. If it does delete OK then just redo to replace it and move on to another section. I am willing to bet that you come across a section that will not delete and that is most likely the cause of all your problems. Split it, delete both sections, replace with a new section and Hey Presto you are back in business. The piece I found was part of a junction but I think it could have been anywhere.

Geoff Potter

Thanks for that Geoff I will check the track in the area where I have the most problems. This actually was the first section of track that I put down so you may have hit the nail on the head. That never occurred to me. Mind you these days things seldom do.
Kind Regards James.