Atomic Systems

Hi
If I were using the route editor..... it would take a lot longer.....

Cheers
Jon

Quite possibly....

Everything in its own good time.

Ash

Indeed - at least this is something good to look forward to during the next year.

Hi will this be able to run on a 3.33ghz PC with a 1gb Graphics card and 8gb memory with 550w power supply?

Reason I'm asking is the current dorset coast could barely handle on a 128mb graphics card - 1GB woudl surely help
Looking forward to it!


Cheers
Myronn

JunGRail wrote:Hi will this be able to run on a 3.33ghz PC with a 1gb Graphics card and 8gb memory with 550w power supply?

Reason I'm asking is the current dorset coast could barely handle on a 128mb graphics card - 1GB woudl surely help
Looking forward to it!


Cheers
Myronn

Hi Myronn
Have you got the bin patch, I can run Dorset Coast on a 128Mb graphics card, although this is a 6600 GT with DDR3 memory.
Cheers
Jon

I'm sure it will work, but bear in mind that MSTS does not take full advantage of modern graphics cards, so a 1Gig card won't make that much difference compared to a 512mb or 256mb card.

As Jon has said below, the MSTSBin patch helps a lot - I used to have light's out around Clapham before installing it, but not anymore.

Hi
Yes AFAIK MSTS can only access 128Mb of graphics memory.
Obviously the more powerful the GPU the better, and the faster the graphics memory the better (DDR3 is still the fastest AFAIK).
For stutter reduction you need fast access to the HDs, as tiles are not pre-read, and thats where the lag can occur.
Cheers
Jon

jbilton wrote:Hi

For stutter reduction you need fast access to the HDs, as tiles are not pre-read, and thats where the lag can occur.

Jon

I think that machine spec shouldn't be a problem at all. MSTS is an old application using quite old graphics technologies as far as I can see.
32bit PCs can only handle 4GB RAM maximum so I'm guessing that your system is a 64Bit machine (x64) which I'm afraid doesn't help as MSTS will probably run in a compatbility mode (16/32bit vs 64 bit) so a bigger faster machine doesn't always help.
It does get a bit jerky dependant on many things such as the number of objects and polygons within those objects that the graphics engine (not your card) has to handle when you move from tile to tile. This is due to the vast amount of disk transfers needed to load shapes, textures and so on when changing from one tile to another.
Your system may have quite a large cache (with 8GB of RAM I'd hope so) which means that on re-visits to tiles, the data may be cached so there may not be such jerkyness.
There used to be a limit to the number of polygons/objects in a tile (from reading these forums) but MSTS BIN patch deals with that.
I'm guessing that a small solid state disk (NOT a USB Stick) would make a huge improvement as the disk seek and read times are erradicated and transfer rates are 5 to 7 times faster than hard disk drives (120M BYTES /Sec, not bits)

By The Way

Didn't I see an old post from Yuri saying that a good way of removing video stutter is to put a sound region on the start tile?
I know the two seem unrelated but then this is MSTS

I know MSTS is old and i do have the Bin Patch but really still it doesn't make much difference really - Anyway it doesn't matter I'm not going to dull this thread about any problems i'm having. In regards to solid state disk (NOT a USB Stick) I'll look into that and see what i can do but yeah to draw all those shapes does require a powerful GFX engine.

Thanks for the feedback, its just one of the routes that is really heavily intense, and i can't enjoy even with what i have

Excellent news dave.
Im going to have to move everything over to my new PC soon.
Shame im gonna lose a lot of things I downloaded in the past tho', but at least I will now finally have a faster spec.

JunGRail wrote:I know MSTS is old and i do have the Bin Patch but really still it doesn't make much difference really - Anyway it doesn't matter I'm not going to dull this thread about any problems i'm having. In regards to solid state disk (NOT a USB Stick) I'll look into that and see what i can do but yeah to draw all those shapes does require a powerful GFX engine.

Thanks for the feedback, its just one of the routes that is really heavily intense, and i can't enjoy even with what i have

Although I don't have an SSD HD, I do know the main thing which slows down MSTS is hard-drive access as there is no pre-caching into memory. Also MSTS uses lots of small files for every object meaning that when it requests something, file-access time is much more important than sustained transfer-rate.

SSD HDs are still very expensive compared with normal HDs, but if you install MSTS and all routes to one (a decent 60GB model can be picked up for around £120, or 120GB for £230 from one site I checked -- which isn't much more than conventional HDs cost when MSTS was released back in 2001), then access-time is all but eliminated, and the transfer-speed from those drives I looked at is higher than any conventional consumer hard-drive (including the Western Digital Raptor drives- long the performance kings). The stuttering while loading objects should be all but eliminated by using one for MSTS. The only thing to bear in mind is that for just £80, you could buy a very nice 1TB (1000GB) normal HD.

What version of Dorset coast is currently available on Cd ordering?

Dean

It's version 3 at present, but the upgrades to v5 (via 4) are quite straightforward assuming you read the instructions properly.

Which will be the next version available on CD??

Glenn

GlennMitchell wrote:Which will be the next version available on CD??

Glenn

Glenn,

It will be version 6, and it will have to go on a DVD.

Dave