Atomic Systems

I installed TS for the first time last week. It happens to be on an NC-10 netbook with an Atom N270 1.6 GHz processor and 2 Gb memory as I'm in the process of building a new PC but needed to find out what TS is like. The install is a complete default one with updates and fixes as described in the steam4me tutorial (including MSTSBin and the shortcut memory update) but no other add-ons yet.

The problem is the display - using any of the "introductory rides", the train moves along smoothly but the scenery jumps past the train at various rates depending on the display settings. This may be what some people call stutters but since I've never seen any examples of that I can't be sure. I also get flashing on points and on thin items of scenery like catenary poles, and waves running along distant fences, and sometimes pieces of ground texture pop into existence after the engine has passed by.

What I don't understand is what happens when I change the display settings. If I lower the resolution, I get an increase in the flashing and the rate at which the scenery jumps past the train goes down a little (looks a little smoother). At maximum resolution, the scenery jumps past the train every one or two seconds; at minimum resolution, it jumps every ten to fifteen seconds. These results are with all quality sliders at 3.

If I drop all the quality sliders to 1, the jump rate "doubles" to about three to four seconds (max resolution) and 20 to 25 seconds (min resolution). If I drop all the quality sliders to 0 (or change the display from maximum quality to maximum performance), then I get a marginal improvement in the jump rate so that even at the maximum performance setting, the scenery can still be noticed jumping past the train - smoothish but noticably not smooth. And of course at these settings, there's so much of the display that has disappeared.

I get the same results whether I run in windowed mode or full screen, and the shortcut tells TS to run with 1024 Mb of memory. From what I know of flight sims, these problems sound like they are memory related but, even so, I don't understand why such significant changes reap so little change in the display. Given that TS is vintage s/w, even this PC should be able to eat it for breakfast so there's definitely something going on that I don't understand. Please can someone give me advice on how to resolve this frustrating situation,
thanks in advance,
Moi

Hi,

It sounds to me like it could be a graphics card issue, I assume that your netbook uses an on-board graphics chip, that might be the problem. Welcome to the forums.


with regards,
Dave

Hi,
I agree with what Dave has said.

Train Simulator requires DirectX 7.0a as a minimum, but, according to this website : http://www.sammywiki.com/wiki/Samsung_NC10_Games , the NC-10 doesn't support some basic DirectX 7 facilities.

Cheers,
Ged

Ged,
thanks for that pointer. I'm a little confused since your link says that an NC-10 has an Intel GMA 950 while my PC records the GPU as an Intel 945 Express, but that's probably due to the complexities of PC part numbering. Anyway, I ran the tests in dxdiag (again) and FWIW both DirectDraw and Direct3D tests passed OK. Nor has any of that stopped me from identifying the GPU as the culprit, though not perhaps for the reasons you were thinking.

Like most recent laptops, the NC-10 can be set to use the internal screen and / or an external screen. It seems that there's a world of difference between using the internal screen and an external one in terms of running TS. I repeated my "tests" using the internal screen and, while the results were not silky smooth, the scenery jumping is an order of magnitude better than it was on the external screen (no, make that two orders better). Sadly, the resolution is more limited and I'm stuck on 800 by 600 (and windowed rather than full screen), but that's still with all sliders at 3 so I have to say I am rather pleased. I can now happily experiment with TS add-ons and tools knowing that I should have great performance once I can install TS on my new PC.

So, thanks very much for your input in helping to resolve this riddle,
regards,
Moi

Hi Moi,
Checking with the Intel website, it appears that the Intel 945G Express chipset includes the Intel GMA 950 graphics core, so that's answered that dilemma!! What isn't so clear is that this website states that this chipset supports DirectX 9.
Just shows that you can't believe everything you see on the 'net!

Cheers,
Ged

Can't guarantee this is what's casusing your scenery "jumping" but I had a similar problem years ago. I traced it to some hardware monitoring software I had running in the background, checking CPU temp, fan speeds etc. The jumps coincided with the software polling the hardware for its readings.

Turning off anything that's running in the background may help. I've used a utility called EndItAll in the past with some success.

Bob.

Ged,
couldn't agree more ... I actually have two NC-10s, and one of them passes all the dxdiag tests using just one screen while one fails the DirectDraw test when I have both screens active. Compatible = huh !

Bob,
thanks for the tip. I was planning on using FSAutostart when I have all my sims migrated to the new PC, but thanks for that reminder,

regards, and thanks again,
Moi