Atomic Systems

I found the following thread on Railworks America..............

Just thought I'd pass this on.

Yes, I have stopped 99% of the stutters in my RW.

I got one of the relatively new Western Digital 10000rpm hard drives.
Read Time is 4.2ms
Write time is 4.7ms.

I got the 150gb version.
Anyway, I selected the scenario with the fastest express train - 125mph and
I got it up to its top speed, only a "small" quick stutter at long intervals, what a difference it makes.
I also tried scenarios with lots of scenario, buildings etc with the same result.

I got the Ultimate Defrag V3 program a few weeks ago, it is very good, I had been using the O&O defragger
that is not as good as the new one. Defragging makes some difference though its the hard drive that

What do we think?
stops most of it.

I also use a hard drive caddy that fits into a CD / DVD rom bay, it allows the hard drive to be swapped by just opening a little door
and you slide it out then slide the other one into it.
I was using the IcyBox one then I got the Antec one, this proved to be much better.

I use one HD for RW, that is, I made partitions in it for:
C- W7
D - RW
E - for my utility etc programs,

I have another HD for my "normal" computing with these partitions,
C- W7
D - for the programs and other items that I have gathered up.
E- for my Office and other programs.

5 seconds changes the drives, and no messing about with 2 OS's on the same hard Drive.
I install Windows on drive, then use Macrium Reflect to make images of C drive and I simply copy the image to the other hard drive.

One should not need to go through all that to make a game based on a 3 year old game engine perform correctly on modern equipment.

styckx wrote:One should not need to go through all that to make a game based on a 3 year old game engine perform correctly on modern equipment.

OK, but nothing prevents me to buy a SSD
I don't invest anymore in a hard disk as the C-drive.

styckx wrote:One should not need to go through all that to make a game based on a 3 year old game engine perform correctly on modern equipment.

I noticed on your 86 sound problem demo video (I get the same problem, by the way) that you appear to have rubber-banding and some stuttering, just like me, but wasn't sure if it was an encoding problem. In fact, I always notice the same issues, usually far worse, with the RSC videos.

As for whether purchasing a 10k RPM drive is a "solution", there are plenty who've posted here owning solid state drives and, if I remember correctly, even that doesn't cure the stuttering.

From my experience (with my now quite aging PC) it seems there are at least two types of 'stutter' - there are obvious times when everything just stops to load more stuff, and here you can clearly see / hear the hard drive going. These are particularly noticeable on the WCML, for example when approaching Motherwell, (and quite often leads to a SBHH crash if it is particularly bad). This would no doubt be improved by a better hard drive / more memory (or by better preloading by the game engine, though that again is dependent on memory).

I have also experienced a 'stuttering' (perhaps what people have called 'microstuttering'?) even when nothing is being loaded, and the machine isn't being pushed particularly hard. I find it most noticeable at low speeds, that sometimes the loco just isn't moving at a constant rate. I don't know if this is some sort of rounding error (something like the loco has to move 1.1 units per frame, but actually moves 1, so every tenth frame it has to move 2), but it gives that sort of impression. This kind of error would cause the 'rubber-banding' as well I would think (as the trains would not be moving at a constant rate relative to each other). For this sort of stuttering I'm not convinced that any sort of hardware upgrade will have any effect as it seems to me it is part of the game engine even when not pushed to its limits, and will need a game engine fix.

Perhapes if this guy had and overclocked Core i7 Extreme edition CPU married up with an ST-506 MFM based hard disk circ. mid 1980's before replacing it with his Veloci-Raptor then, maybe he would see the kind of performance increases he is claiming to have acheived.

If on the otherhand your computer is running an internal fixed disk that was manufactured in the last decade then I wouldnt bother buying a fast hard disk since Railworks will be CPU limited and as such your money would be better spend buying a faster CPU.

Unfortunately no amount of hardware or driver tweaks can change the fact RW is running on an inefficient graphics engine, coded by a company not exactly reknowned for the reliability of their software!

ihavenonamenoreallyidont wrote:

styckx wrote:One should not need to go through all that to make a game based on a 3 year old game engine perform correctly on modern equipment.

I noticed on your 86 sound problem demo video (I get the same problem, by the way) that you appear to have rubber-banding and some stuttering, just like me, but wasn't sure if it was an encoding problem. In fact, I always notice the same issues, usually far worse, with the RSC videos.
.

Yeah, any kind of video encoding while any game is running will dramatically reduce the frame rates and performance of said game. That's why it's near impossible to use video to demonstrate performance issues.

bigvern wrote:Unfortunately no amount of hardware or driver tweaks can change the fact RW is running on an inefficient graphics engine, coded by a company not exactly reknowned for the reliability of their software!

Can we please stick to the subject instead of sniping.

Excuse me?

I would have thought Kuju's track record hits the nail on the head of what is wrong...and unlikely to be fixable.

Hi,

Vern where you getting your information from? whoever it is I hope you not paying them.


There are a number of things we are currently doing that will help with this issue. These will be announced/discussed by us in due course.

regards

Derek

bigvern wrote:Excuse me?

I would have thought Kuju's track record hits the nail on the head of what is wrong...and unlikely to be fixable.

You've been listening to Otto for too long, Vern. You are beginning to sound like him.

I do find it odd that the blame is solely placed upon Railworks and its graphics engine. I also find it somewhat interesting that the first blame to be thrown always lands on the software which the user is using.

I have used computers for gaming purposes for the better part of 17 years now, I can build and have built my own custom computer and also done plenty of tweaks and fixes to the system to make it run at a optimum performance. I would question that when these complaints about stuttering, crashes to desktops and SBHHs are sorely based upon the game engine and rather not the user's actual computer.

Computers are fickle beasts, they needed alot of attention just to run smoothly and hardware configurations and software setup have to be constantly tweaked and looked at to ensure they work optimum, for example you can download the latest driver for a graphics card, but hand on heart I bet many people do not remove existing drivers, run in safe mode to install said drivers so they do not get overwritten or effected by existing remants of the old driver set. Also its a good thing to note that the newest drivers for any kind of hardware ain't always the best. Countless times with NVIDIA and ATI graphics cards you will find that reducing to a earlier driver build and control centres results in better performance, a great example of this is when the 71.1 NVIDIA drivers disabled anti alias for a long time and the only way to fix this was to downgrade to the previous drivers.

One should also ask themselves if there is any bottlenecks in the computer system before placing blame on software. Hard drives and soundcards are one of the biggest bottlenecks in a computer system to date, the technology and hardware is still behind compared to the rest of hardware currently available and soundcards are notrious to be driver problematic and generally dated even when new on the market, creative is quite a culprit when it comes down to soundcards.

The other big thing is operating systems, Windows is a diverse and annoying OS in its own right and is inefficient and damn right stubborn the next, if its not setup the right way, installed the right way or even done the right way it will cause problems, especially in games. As I noted above alot of people won't run safe mode to install drivers for hardware or even install then restart EACH TIME per driver install to make sure windows has proper configured itself and the drivers and runs perfectly.

A note on hardware to, running a google search and keeping uptodate on hardware will tell you a great deal if information in regards to compatibility between hardware types. For example for a long time AMD had issues with ATI cards for a long time and still in some cases and Intel likewise had problems with NVIDIA cards. Also this can come down to motherboard manufactures, RAM and hard drives, they all play a part to having a good running system and while its not so well know alot can and will not work effectively with one another.

I'm not going to try and sound bias of egotistical here, but a custom built computer in most cases will work better than a bought off the shelf computer, I wouldn't touch anything which is pre packed from some of the big companies and would only trust computers built from small shops in store or big order companies like Alienware and there likes, if your system isn't any of these then sorry to say, I wouldn't expect much out of it. Mass produced computers are filled with cheap to produce and make hardware which breaks easily and won't last and in most cases they are the fault behind many issues with a computer.

The other big things to consider are spyware, adware, background programs and startup lineup. If none of these are looked into and properly maintained this can be the main issue, a gaming machine should be kept up on maintaince and fixes and ensured that background programs are not interfering with other programs. Startup programs also, which appear near the clock in the lower right corner and fill out the area with icons generally interfere with games also, if these are not adequately configured then again you will have problems.

If you can put your hand on heart and say all the above is done and known that hardware and OS is fine, then you can eliminate the computer as a issue and then the associated complaints can be passed on to the right location.

While people might say you have to do alot to config and tweak and this is time consuming and should not be nessessary, I would say that this is part and parcel of what gaming is like on a PC and has been for the past 15years, unfortunately a PC is not like a console gaming system where its plug and play and never will be, tweaks, patches, fixes, time consuming maintaince is all what a PC is, if one isn't willing to do such things then I would pose the question as to why you are using a PC for gaming purposes.

alanch wrote:[

You've been listening to Otto for too long, Vern. You are beginning to sound like him.

Is that a bad thing.. Lets not forget Otto is the saviour of all mankind (or at least all things to do with any Railsim)

Back on topic the methodology employed in testing the HDD speed as a solution seems rather basic and flawed.. You really need to look at a huge asset hog such as those couple of areas in W&B and see if you can remove what are clearly memory issues.. Im hoping Dereks hint means some efficiency has been found in this area..

crumplezone wrote:I do find it odd that the blame is solely placed upon Railworks and its graphics engine. I also find it somewhat interesting that the first blame to be thrown always lands on the software which the user is using.

I have used computers for gaming purposes for the better part of 17 years now, I can build and have built my own custom computer and also done plenty of tweaks and fixes to the system to make it run at a optimum performance. I would question that when these complaints about stuttering, crashes to desktops and SBHHs are sorely based upon the game engine and rather not the user's actual computer.....

So the $64k question crumplezone, can you build a PC that runs RW stutter free? Or just one that is less prone to stuttering than an out of the box big name model?

Andy L