"Experienced" Route Builders, Your Opinion Please

BobLatimer · Post by **BobLatimer** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 1:21 am

I have a project in mind. Before I start, I'd like to get opinions on whether what I want to do is possible within the limitations of MSTS and the RE.

I want to re-create the old Furness Railway branch line from Foxfield to Coniston as accurately as possible. I have found maps from the 1850s that show every detail of the line and the surrounding countryside, right down to contour lines, individual houses, wells and culverts.

My question is this - IF I have the patience and IF I learn to use RE to its maximum capabilities (two big ifs) (and if I'm prepared to compromise a bit on the shapes of the houses etc.) is it possible?

Will RE allow me to get the contours correct (or close enough), put in every house, lane, fence, wall and gate, etc., etc. as far as the eye can see?

Or should I leave it as just an impossible dream?

Goingnorth · Post by **Goingnorth** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 2:09 am

It's possible but it will take you a long time!

qzdcg8 · Post by **qzdcg8** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 6:48 am

It IS possible, but watch those frame rates when you have large quantities of static objects very close together huddled round the track.

It's also worth considering whether you are going to need X-Tracks or not - does the track formation look like it can be done without it?

saddletank · Post by **saddletank** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 9:05 am

Yes it can be done, but I suggest you use Tim Booths finescale UK track for this kind of route - take a look at the finescale forum.

There are two excellent terraforming programs available (check the TSTerraForm and TSTools forums on this site) which allow tracing of contours into RE. RE itself has a basic 8m triangle mesh so very fine ground adjustments are not possible for example if you push one terrain node down to form a stream bed it can be a minimum of 16m wide, no narrower.

Also be careful about scenery object density. I have come a cropper with this in my route. I would try and aim for no more than 750 items per tile across all tiles (it is not just the individual tile object number that counts, but any group of 9 in a square, apparently).

So you will have to compromise to a degree and leave out stuff in the background. Also try to build larger single object modles so that a farm complex of house, barn, walls, gates, trees is all one object and not 40 or so.

Finally, build a short test route first! And good luck, if the route gets built I'd love to drive it.

JohnEyres · Post by **JohnEyres** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 10:40 am

I agree it is possible. In my route I have every bridge that I know of along the route. Not to mention every housing estate and factory complexes. I would say my route is very accurate to the near thing. You would notice this if you have ever visited the area.
So you can get near realistic scenery, you just have to work hard to make it look good!
Also you don't have to limit the number of objects on a tile to 750. You can have much more than that as long as your PC can cope with it! It all depends on what detail setting you set the objects at and some will be diferent of course. If your PC can't handle full graphics, then by all means have as many objects on a tile but make sure you have enough objects that you will be able to see on a lower garphics setting.
This is more important if you are going to release the route for downoad so people with higher spec PC's will be able to enjoy the best graphics.
So remember higher detail like extra trees and extra houses etc would be set at 5 8 or 9.

saddletank · Post by **saddletank** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 12:15 pm

JohnEyres wrote:Also you don't have to limit the number of objects on a tile to 750. You can have much more than that as long as your PC can cope with it.

No that is not the max limit. I put that number forward as a suggested limit. And PC power is apparently not linked to this, it is a software limitation. Also note that you need to bear in mind the density of objects over several tiles, not just per tile.

JohnEyres · Post by **JohnEyres** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 1:07 pm

No that is not the max limit. I put that number forward as a suggested limit. And PC power is apparently not linked to this, it is a software limitation. Also note that you need to bear in mind the density of objects over several tiles, not just per tile.

Yes I have a tile with 1150 objects on it. What I meant was the amount of objects you can see at different detail levels when you move the slider along in options. You could have loads more objects on a tile its just depends if you can see them if you have your detail level set lower therefore lower framerates in the sim but loads more objects and higher frps in the RE.[/quote]

decapod · Post by **decapod** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 1:07 pm

The group of 9 tiles are the (2km square) tiles visible from any given point in a route (with the visibility set to 2km) - when you move off of a tile edge, the next 3 tiles load - hence the occasional stuttering.

The problems we have with the Highworth branch is that we got to over 5000 objects in a group of 9 (one tile has 1500 objects) and if you exit the route from one of those tiles, MSTS crashes as it can't handle unloading that many objects from memory - this could be a MSTS or DirectX limitation.

The default S&C only ever has a max of 2600 objects per group of 9 along it's entire length

We're aiming to cut down to below 4000 to see if this fixes the problem.

I'm part way through a world file checking program which displays route object densities which may help route builders in the future.

madmardy · Post by **madmardy** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 6:24 pm

how much difference does processing power make in reducing the load pauses of msts i get quite bad load pauses around watford on my wcml
but i've only got a duron 1ghz would upgrading make a difference

Goingnorth · Post by **Goingnorth** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 7:28 pm

I reckon it's all down to hard drive's with DMA/UDMA HDs, which most PCs have built in, the CPU does much of the processing power and driver controlling. Obviously the faster the better. These drives are pretty fast, certainly fast enough for DV video to be sent backwards and forwards at full quality without frame drops (Somewhere between 5 and 15mb per second). But because the processor is so loaded down with graphics and physics calculations running MSTS, I reckon if SCSI drives were used it would be far better - complete with their own controller. The down side is of-course is that they are expensive.

BobLatimer · Post by **BobLatimer** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 8:38 pm

Thanks for the advice guys. I will think on it for a while.

madmardy · Post by **madmardy** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 9:05 pm

totally disagree rob (sorry to be blunt)
SCSI drives in normal systems are a waste of time and money
they are only really necasary for uncompressed vid editing. UDMA
drives are running on average at around 27 mbs (udma 100)
thats enough for three streams of dv video to run simultainiasly (badly spelt i know) nothing needs more brute drive speed than video editing.
i had MSTS installed on a udma 66 drive reaching 17mbs it ran slower
than it does now running on udma33 running at 7mbs
the hardest part of 3d graphics is the calculating and displaying
so i'm pretty sure its down to the graphics card, processor or memory
i've got 512 ddr mem in graphics isn't brilliant as its mainly for vid editing
so that leaves the processor which i'm hoping by changing that it will improve, i'll let you know

mikesimpson · Post by **mikesimpson** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 9:39 pm

I have been testing Neville Brookes New Zealand route, which has 1398 objects on the tile for Dunedin harbour. This will not even run on my old Pentium II 400 machine, and struggles on a 1.33 ghz Athlone with 32meg Geforce II card.

On checking the objects, those which have failed to load sometimes have .s files of over 512k and up to 5 associated ace files.

Certainly if you compress the ace files, any object which is over 512k uncompressed, will not load if any of the ace files is compressed, so it looks like MSTS can not cope with uncompressing multiple ace files if the tile is also crowded.

I feel that as well as the number of objects, the number of associated ace files is also important.

Has anyone tried loading a tile with the maximum number of identical objects, so that only one texture file is involved?

Goingnorth · Post by **Goingnorth** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 9:52 pm

madmardy wrote:totally disagree rob (sorry to be blunt)
SCSI drives in normal systems are a waste of time and money
they are only really necasary for uncompressed vid editing. UDMA
drives are running on average at around 27 mbs (udma 100)
thats enough for three streams of dv video to run simultainiasly (badly spelt i know) nothing needs more brute drive speed than video editing.
i had MSTS installed on a udma 66 drive reaching 17mbs it ran slower
than it does now running on udma33 running at 7mbs
the hardest part of 3d graphics is the calculating and displaying
so i'm pretty sure its down to the graphics card, processor or memory
i've got 512 ddr mem in graphics isn't brilliant as its mainly for vid editing
so that leaves the processor which i'm hoping by changing that it will improve, i'll let you know

Your quite right SCSI drives are normally a complete waste of time. Your also right to state that SCSI drives are only really required for uncompressed video (4:2:2/D1) or music applications. It's just a theory, your right you should be able to get 15-25 mb (or more) per sec out of UDMA 100 HDs. Which is more than adequate. I don't know what the answer is other than to reduce the load to the CPU as much as possible, SCSIs might be an answer albeit and expensive one. Maybe somebody with one could post.

The other option is to shut down as many programs as possibe by pressing CTRL/ALT/DEL and termination programs so you have the minimum running. I don't think anyone to date has solved the stuttering problem with MSTS.

madmardy · Post by **madmardy** » Fri Aug 30, 2002 9:58 pm

then if the load on the cpu is the problem
then moving from a 1ghz Duron to say a 17 or 1800 XP Athlon
should reduce the problem. even just taking advantage of the 266 FSB over the durons 200 fsb and making proper use of the DDR should help i feel