Mysterious observations from KRS

[Retro]

Just been playing about with some settings after reading a post to a question I asked in another forum area about Ghostcav's Route. So I followed half the Multisampling he uses and set my Multisampling to 3. Things are a lot less jerky now. I was always under the impression that setting this at 0 would give better results. Also have set the priority in the task manager to above normal and it runs even a little better. Although there is a warning that this might cause System Instability. Setting multisampling to 6 did not make a lot of difference but on 4 I got a thin blue line on the left of the screen. I am not sure what the priority was at this time. What harm am I likely to be doing to my machine when setting Priorities or Multisampling. I have little understanding of these areas. Just out of interest all processes are running at normal apart from winlogon.exe High, csrss.exe High and ehrecvr.exe above normal The later is part of the Media Centre record setup.
Still a little puzzled.
Regards James

[Acorncomputer]

James

I have taken delivery of my new machine today and initial testing indicates that I am getting frame rates of over 100 at Evercreech Junction.

I will keep you updated on testing once I have transferred over all of my downloads and my own route.

Have you tried to find any wonky track yet?

Geoff Potter

[Retro]

Hi Geoff,
I am just about to do that and will let you know what I find. Since messing with the Multisampling etc. I am feeling a little more encouraged that I might be able to continue as the performance has improved a little. Just waiting now for the replacement GPU which will prove once and for all if it is the present GPU or something else causing the problems.
Regards James.

[Retro]

Hi Geoff,
No odd track discovered so far but on checking the track I have discovered the odd signal with links misplaced. These again are the ones I did first before I really new what I was doing. Hope you are getting on well with your new machine.
Regards James.

[Acorncomputer]

Hi James

I have copied everything from my old computer to my new computer and now have two identical Rail Simulations installed. I have two copies of the program as these two computers will eventually be separated but are networked at the moment. I also have a shared monitor/keyboard/mouse arrangement so I can hop between the two machines.

I have not had much time to fully test the new machine but the frame rate is about twice that of the old machine and stuttering is reduced but still present. It seems that the hard disc access is faster and the notorious stuttering is not related to the graphics card but more a problem with hard disc access. The faster the disc access, the less noticeable the stuttering. The new machine has a fan cooled graphics card which is a bit noisy.

I have however come across a problem that sounds like yours but is difficult to pin down. I laid some track in a yard near to a turntable and discovered this rogue piece of track which I replaced which I told you about. I then carried out testing this new bit of layout but found that when running away from the turntable an engine on its own would run up and down the new tracks quite happily but when I changed the scenario to include some wagons and carriages in these sidings, the game would run into slow motion as soon as the engine went onto the section of track that the wagons and carriages were on. Carrying on in the slow motion mode, if I connected up the engine to the wagons, and drove off forward, the simulation returned to real time.

This behaviour can be replicated on both computers so it seems very unlikely that the graphics cards are to blame.

I have run the engine over much of the rest of the yard and picked up wagons and carriages with no problems so the problem seems isolated to one spot. The only thing that seems to possibly be connected with this problem is that the latitude 1.00000 exactly passes through this problem area although the corresponding longitude 1.02440 does not seem significant. Perhaps there is problem with terrain tiles or something like that on locations running along the whole number co-ordinate lines. Trains pass over them OK in normal use when connected as a consist but cause problems when trying to join as a consist.

Can you tell me James if your problem area is on or very close to a round number lat or long or perhaps near to a turntable (still very unpredictable even after the upgrade).

The obvious solution is to not put any track in that particular area but I would like to find out the cause before moving on.

If any of this sounds familiar to you then please let me know.

Geoff Potter

[Retro]

Hi Geoff,
Glad to here your new machine is running well and that you are getting it loaded up with your programs. I will check your theory out over the weekend. I have only ever run Light Engine near my Turntables but will try some consists also. Try looking under the scenery in your problem area and see if you have doubled up on any track.
There is no doubt a number of problems still to be encountered when making a Route and of course these will only be discovered when trying out Scenarios, different Consists and checking all sections for problems. I am still discovering signal problems I thought I had fixed.
I have had a very unproductive afternoon arguing with the PC Performance people about their promises when you sign up. 365 days a year 24 hours a day. Unfortunately they can tell me nothing about the progress of my GPU Problems because it is Easter so we can knock them down to 361 days a year. To come back to the point I have had the odd unusual thing happen when on or very near a Tile boundry. The 32 exit Turntable also causes problems with misalignment so if you have used that one in the problem area it might be worth trying one with 8 exits. I will get back to you if I discover anything amiss
Regards James.

[Acorncomputer]

Hi James

Getting used to the new machine. I can see that it loads up scenery in advance much quicker so it is not as noticeable as before in the distance. I put this down to faster disc access which fits with the reduced noticability of stuttering. Frame rates still about twice the speed giving 30fps average on my complex route and about 100fps on coming out of Paddington.

Let me know about the possibility of tile border problems.

Geoff Potter

[Retro]

Hi,
Have discovered nothing new and have checked any track near a tile border. I guess the only solution is ultimately a new machine. Unfortunately the only machines that look capable of running everything you can throw at them are near the £2000 mark or over. I am still in dispute with The PC Performance people and wonder if it was worth paying for. It appears they can't find a suitable card that will fit in my machine as the 8000 series will not work in my machine. So I have no options if I wanted to upgrade it myself. IMHO the computer hardware manufacturers make sure every time they launch a new product it is incompatable with something thereby forcing people to buy new machines. The software industry is much the same. I realise they have to make money but if Microsoft and Intel didn't have such a hold and influence over the market things might be different.
Regards James.

[CaptScarlet]

Hi,
Have discovered nothing new and have checked any track near a tile border. I guess the only solution is ultimately a new machine. Unfortunately the only machines that look capable of running everything you can throw at them are near the £2000 mark or over. I am still in dispute with The PC Performance people and wonder if it was worth paying for. It appears they can't find a suitable card that will fit in my machine as the 8000 series will not work in my machine. So I have no options if I wanted to upgrade it myself. IMHO the computer hardware manufacturers make sure every time they launch a new product it is incompatable with something thereby forcing people to buy new machines. The software industry is much the same. I realise they have to make money but if Microsoft and Intel didn't have such a hold and influence over the market things might be different.
Regards James.

The only reason why a mid to high end 8000 series card wouldn't work in you pc is that the power supply isn't powerful enough or there isn't enough space ( though that would only apply to the higher end cards like the GTS and GTX ) or you actually have a AGP slot.

Have you asked if a ATI card would work possibly ?

John

[Retro]

Thanks for the reply John. It is definately a PCI Express Slot. They are saying that the 7600GS 512mb takes it power from the slot. They have not mentioned ATI at all which is a little strange ATI cards seem to have fallen out of favour lately. To be honest I am not sure if they know what they are talking about. The people you speak to are just the phone centre advisors. You can't speak directly to the technical guy's who are supposedly making up their minds on a suitable card. It's becoming just like my bank where I cannot contact my own branch by phone and it has nothing to do with PC World where I got the machine. I could pay to have an upgrade done there but as this is a replacement for a faulty unit it is not handled by them.
Space could be a problem. There is only one empty slot for a separate sound card if I wanted to replace the on board sound. I believe some of the high end cards need an additional slot for the cooling system. As I said in an earlier post the 365 day 24 hour support means you can contact an adviser but the technical guy's are not there during holidays.
Before I retired this would not have been a problem I would have just gone and bought another machine because when you get to the stage where a computer cannot be upgraded to any degree it effectively becomes obsolete and not worth spending money on it.
Regards James.

[CaptScarlet]

It all depends on what your power supply and the space in your PC. For instance the 8800GT is a single slot card which would work but it's possible it might be too long and it sounds like a dual slot card is out of the question. So it comes down to the power supply and if the one you have can power a different card as you would probably need a extra power cable to supply the card and then it depends if it has the right connections. But then again you could possibly get a new power supply if necessary, they aren't really that expensive.

If you wanted to upgrade your pc and do it your self its possible to get a bundle that has the processor, motherboard and memory for a lot cheaper than buying a whole new pc eg http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productli ... &subid=944 but of course that's only if you wanted to go that route.

John

BTW at the same web site you could buy a new intel quad core PC for under 1000 pounds inc VAT so its possible to get a lot more for your money than when you bought yours. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =FS-048-OK

[Retro]

Thanks for the links John I will have a look at them much appreciated.
Regards James.

[overmarze]

Dsoent the prosessor need to be 3 ghz or higher?

[Acorncomputer]

Hi James

A bit more research.



I have been building a yard and wanted to check out that everything worked OK. A per my previous post, I started getting very slow frame rates when I tried to connect up a loco to a wagon or carriage consist in a siding. I thought it was the faulty track mentioned in my earlier posting or perhaps a turntable but no matter what I did I experienced this -

In the screenshot you can see two branches from the main line into two sections of the yard. In the left had section I can place consists of wagons and coaches in the sidings and dodge around in any loco (Dereks 08's are freat fun) and have no problems at all. In the right hand branch, however, whilst loco's on their own or already connected to consists generally move around freely I found that backing up any loco towards a consist suddenly sent the simulation from about 30fps to about 1fps. This usually happened at about about 1 carriage length from the consist. If the simulation was let to run at that speed, eventually the loco would reach the consist and at that point on auto coupling, we jump back to 30 or 40 fps as though nothing was wrong.

I tried deleting sections of track, I checked to see if there were and faulty joints, I looked underneath the track to see if there was anything underground causing a problem but nothing was found.

In the end I completly deleted all of the track on the right hand side of the yard and relaid a new yard and guess what .... everything works fine now with no problems at all.
I will add back the turntable (still tricky to install) and progressively add coal loaders, etc, and see if I can finish the yard this time.

Is there anything here that seems similar to the area where you expereience your problems?

The new computer is working fine - I had it built for £1175.00 including VAT.

Dual Core 3ghz core2duo
2Gb high performance DDR2 RAM
2 x 320gb SATA hard drives in RAID format with a partition (stripe) for Rail Simulator program for faster access
512gb 8800GTS G92 based dual slot graphics card
DVD Writer
Intel P35 'enthusiast' grade chipset with heatpipe bridge cooling (I have no idea what that is!)
7.1 High Definition Sound
XP Home
New Rail Simulator installed and tested (Graphics Card set up to suit)

This is all in the 'shoebox' size casing.

I do not think your graphics card is the cause of your slow frame rate problem. It has to be connected somehow to my own experience although I cannot say what the problem was but relaying a whole section of track cured it.

Let me know how you get on. If we find that this is the same problem for both of us then I think a posting in a new thread for the attention of Adam or Derek may be needed as this is a new one on me.

Geoff Potter

[AndiS]

Geoff, a few questions (which you can ask yourself to get to the bottom of this), or more remarks from the ivory tower.
1) Was there a tile boundary under the train (the wagons to which your tried to couple when the framerate dropped)?
2) I would try this act with the same vehicles on neighbouring tracks, to find out the limits of the problem area; maybe adding an ad-hoc loop if appropriate (next to the problem section, just long enough for the train and the approach to it).
3) I would repeat the experiment with different wagons, always making up the whole consist with identical wagons.
4) Certainly you need to repeat it with another engine. An I do not mean another 08.
5) You could try to furnish the problem wagon with a different coupling, if you feel up to it.
6) Are there some joins below the consist, or in the gap between it and the approaching engine? If so, which? (with red triangle or without)
7) I would do the replacement of the track in small steps, repeating the experiment after each replacement, hoping to find the villain that way.
You picture looks like you used two different looks of track. (Can be a wrong impression, tough). Could it be that there is some border between different track types or geometries or rules or whatever under the consist, or somewhere in the vicinity?

To me, it sounds like a combination of
a) The game engine suddenly starting to consider the physics of the wagons, as the engine approaches. This is certainly reasonable. We it happens 1 wagon length from the consist we do not know, but this need not be the bug.

b) Some issue with the physics of the wagons. Do they have the strong handbrakes as the default stock? Are the handbrakes on? - I guess they are on by default. But you could repeat the experiment by starting with the engine coupled, then uncouple, move away some length and back to recouple. In two variants, you apply the handbrakes in the wagons and not, in a third variant, you could apply only that of the first wagon.

The signals view a standing consist as quivering irregularly within a range of a few millimetres. If the approaching engine sees the same, this can give it some headache, maybe. But why doesn't it appear always, then?

c) Something with bounding boxes; either of couplings (if they have one), or wagons or engine. Isn't there something like minimum coupling distance which specifies when the coupling couples? I never looked into these things in detail, I must say. I only remember reading that some of the "train explosions" observed before the patch had to do with bad parameters in couplings.

d) There must be some track component in the puzzle, otherwise the same problem would happen everywhere. Thus, the first thing would be to find out whether the rolling stock is totally irrelevant in the problem. But I would not be surprised if it would be a track issue that makes a rolling stock issue acute.