Legacy Mode

[stephenholmes]

Good morning
I just wish to pick up on one point
gptech says the idea is get John away from legacy mode and I suppose everyone else who is trying to use it?
If legacy mode was not intended to work then why have it as an option?
Just my observation about this subject
Kind regards Stephen

Deferral to gain time and to allow time to work on or fix TSX?

Good morning Theo
You could well be correct there
Kind regards Stephen

[partyspiritz]

Good morning
I just wish to pick up on one point
gptech says the idea is get John away from legacy mode and I suppose everyone else who is trying to use it?
If legacy mode was not intended to work then why have it as an option?
Just my observation about this subject
Kind regards Stephen

Premeditated?

Deferral to gain time and to allow time to work on or fix TSX?

Good morning Theo
You could well be correct there
Kind regards Stephen

So we are just guinea pigs


Regards


John

[stephenholmes]

Good morning John
No I'm not a guinea pig
I'm lucky that at least two sims will run on this machine
I've never made any secret of the fact this computer really is basic
The PSU is an amazing energy saving 230 Watts
Kind regards Stephen

[PWHolmes]

PWHolmes wrote:

I said: "In my Sand Hutton Light Railway, I seem to have a shadowy stripe along one side of the ballast to the narrow gauge track. This appears on either side and hence bears no relationship to the location of the sun. Note that it doesn't happen to the standard gauge track! This only occurs in RW3 on and looks OK in legacy mode."
.


Kevin replied: "The track is mine. I'm sure I will be able to sort the problem out."

Kevin

I have replaced the locos with pukka versions - now OK.

Thanks for volunteering, Kevin. I eagerly await - I wouldn't presume to try to push you but any idea of timescales?

[philspace]

Good morning John
No I'm not a guinea pig
I'm lucky that at least two sims will run on this machine
I've never made any secret of the fact this computer really is basic
The PSU is an amazing energy saving 230 Watts
Kind regards Stephen

Good morning Stephen, everyone

It's important to realise that the rating of a PSU is the power it should deliver without getting too hot - it may or may not be delivering 230W, depending on the extra hardware you have installed.

An important aspect of the PSU rating is the ventilation - the cooling fan and ventilation slots must be regularly kept clear of dust and fluff.

Likewise the case cooling fans - apart from an actual overload, running any electronic circuit at too high a temperature will cause it to fail prematurely.

All too often, the computer gets pushed in a corner, inches above a fluffy carpet...

A little routine cleaning will work wonders for longevity, even if it doesn't stop it becoming obsolete!

Best wishes

Phil

[stephenholmes]

Good morning Phil
I know I'm straying off topic slightly
My computer is actually well above the floor at the side of monitor
Even my Xbox 360 is kept off the floor with good ventilation all around
I do agree with you about keeping the vents clear as they are dust magnets
Kind regards Stephen

[nobkins]

Last warning.

I tried the gentle approach and it was ignored:

Very simple bullet list now. Apply them to your posts or expect a PM from a moderator:

• Make SURE you read the original post on this thread and STOP derailing the topic
• Once you have made your point MOVE ON. Stop being persistently negative. Everyone has the right to be negative but YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT to constantly post negative feedback at every opportunity. Everyone is now very aware of the issues people are having. If it is a NEW issues or it actually benefits to post something negative then fair enough. If it is just because you want to have a moan about something you have already made people aware of then DON'T POST.
• Patience is a virtue. I am struggling to keep my patience with the constant negativity. This thread is meant to be constructive and helpful feedback on issues people are having not doom, gloom and woe is me. We are 1 month into the release of TS2012. Many of you are years into projects. BE PATIENT! RS.com are releasing regular updates. I hope RS.com fix all the issues that they have control over but it won't happen by moaning at them. They will switch off to that just like many members are switching off to the constant doom, gloom and woe is me that some are feeling the need to constantly post.

I'm not going to give general warnings again on this thread. If you can't do as requested you will be receiving a PM.

Why not make my and your day easier by reading/applying my list above.

Please!

Thanks again

Jim

[briyeo1950]

There has been mention of Legacy Mode itself being the problem, and it can only be a short lived stopgap, a breathing space. Could this be true? I was hoping to have a few years at least on Legacy Mode, I am in no haste to buy new hardware and certainly wont be doing so just for RW TS2012.
I use a laptop that ran RW2 very well, It's not so good now in LM (I cant quantify it because I didn't measure anything before), but still useable apart from the regular drop to 14fps, and looking forward to better performance once all the fixes are applied in future weeks.

Please don't make out Legacy Mode isn't going to work, that's so negative.

[Kromaatikse]

While it has got lost in the deluge of posts, let me reiterate my own findings. You can then go back and look for the original post(s) for the fine detail.

Legacy mode consumes more GPU horsepower than RW2 did, and this is visible on older mid-range cards such as the GeForce 8600 series and the Radeon X1650 Pro - I have test machines with both of these. This appears to be on a per-pixel basis, so turning down the settings does *not* help the framerate in these cases - but turning down screen resolution *does* help. This difference also persists in situations where the upgraded default models are eliminated from the equation (eg. Hatchet Hill's tour scenario).

There are also sufficient differences in the rendering and lighting models to cause problems in some situations. The "orange ground" problem is visible from a helicopter view, and RSC is actively investigating this. Models exported from specific programs with specific settings are known to glow brightly - re-exporting with different settings fixes this. The overall brightness of a given scene has also changed in some cases - sometimes brighter, sometimes darker - and this seems to be PartySpiritz' main gripe. Interestingly, mildly dirty windows seem to be much more opaque than they used to be - the 04 shunter in Hatchet Hill demonstrates this clearly.

On *very* old cards, supporting only Shader Model 2.0, there appears to be a vertex corruption problem, which looks similar to the mess which used to result from minimising and then restoring RW2. I have a single machine which can demonstrate this using a Geforce FX 5900 Ultra - I no longer have any working ATI cards of that age, but based on others' reports, the 9x00 and X000 series (not to be confused with the X1000 series) are affected.

There appears to be only a small difference in performance between TSX off and TSX on, provided that Shadow Detail is set to "OFF", but Shader Model 4.0 seems to be required to support TSX at all. On some cards however, the small performance delta is enough to turn a marginally playable system into one which rarely achieves realtime. In these cases turning down the screen resolution usually helps. It might also happen that many lights in view, even without shadows, might cause problems for such a system.

Although screen resolution can be a useful tool for adjusting performance, it tends to interact badly with modern LCD-based monitors, which have a clearly defined "native" resolution. Depending on the quality of the monitor, this can result in a severe defocusing effect, or even blocky artefacts due to nearest-neighbour resampling. So if RSC can manage to reduce the per-pixel overhead of Railworks - in both TSX and non-TSX modes - the game will look and run much better on older hardware. The relative performance of RW2 suggests that this should be possible at least for non-TSX mode.

[theokus]

There are also sufficient differences in the rendering and lighting models to cause problems in some situations. Models exported from specific programs with specific settings are known to glow brightly - re-exporting with different settings fixes this. The overall brightness of a given scene has also changed in some cases - sometimes brighter, sometimes darker - and this seems to be PartySpiritz' main gripe. Interestingly, mildly dirty windows seem to be much more opaque than they used to be - the 04 shunter in Hatchet Hill demonstrates this clearly.

What do you mean by models.
As for the default scenery, I see the same effects Kromaatiske (in legacy mode he).
Re-exporting is not an option I do have.

[Kromaatikse]

I mean things like houses looking like a grow-op through a thermal camera. It's simply because they were set to 100% ambient lighting, a setting which was ignored in RW2 but is used in RW3.

It *may* be possible to fix this without re-exporting, but I don't specifically know how.

[theokus]

I mean things like houses looking like a grow-op through a thermal camera. It's simply because they were set to 100% ambient lighting, a setting which was ignored in RW2 but is used in RW3.

It *may* be possible to fix this without re-exporting, but I don't specifically know how.

Ok and a good answer
(is not in our hands)

So, we wait and see.

[RiscaStation]

Hi all,

I was going to say it should be left to RS.com who have created the problem, given time and where in the priority list it is lying, who knows when, just have to wait and see.
Kind regards
Mike

[RSderek]

RSC will not address assets that are outside of it's control. I'm afraid 3rd party/freeware assets that glow will need re exporting by the author and re uploaded to the various sites they were gathered from.

regards

Derek

[Retro]

I have posted specifications on this Topic and others so I am pretty certain that people will be aware of these. My main problems with Legacy Mode are as Follows:-
The lack of contrast and the washed out colours.
Textures that where very clear in a RW 2 seem to me to be blurry and indistinct.
Flashing objects such as the Default 2 Track Catenaries
Transparent sections in some Default Lofts
The drop in Framerates and smoothness of running using the same settings and same Scenarios which is quite bad in RW3 but worked very well in RW 2. I have been getting a 20 fps drop on on my newer machine and this equates to about 30%.
The Framerates do not always equate to the number of Assets per Tile as they did in RW2
Glowing objects we can do nothing about unless the Developers who originally made them sort out the problem. I would not expect this to happen nor would I ask. At least one Freeware Developer I know of is making sure his work complies with RW3 and we should be very grateful for this.
I have not been negative or positive choosing just to state the facts as I see them on my own Route.
Kind regards James.