Crashes

[JustRight]

Trevor,
how sure are you that the pond in question actually spans the tile boundary? Is it possible you're seeing the terrain grid rather than the actual tile boundaries?
Could somebody else fire up the route in the editor and see whether Trevor has a pond that's 'moved'?

Hi Gary,

It appears not to be an issue with the water crossing boundaries. I now have found a body of water on the old ECML route just south of Newcastle, just beyond the freight yards. This pond is wholly within the Tile I believe, but the instant I cross onto the Tile containing that water, Boom!

EDIT: Actually, I just checked, and the body of water just south of the Tyne Yard on the right of the tracks does in fact span Tile boundaries.

[JustRight]

Perhaps this is related to the reduced draw distance in 2015. The water decal is attempting to pass the terrain tiles that haven't been drawn yet. This would be especially problematic at tile boundaries. The issue is not replicated with the non-reflective type because the decal does not make a pass of the surrounding terrain and the draw distance in 2014 was higher so it wasn't an issue.

Possibility?

Hi Mate,

That's an interesting suggestion. After a lot more testing, I have now discovered something else which will affect this problem.

Normally I run TS2015 with the "Scenery Quality" slider one notch back from its maximum setting. This is the equivalent of the old "High Detail" setting. This has always been useful for scenarios with very high memory demand as it allowed the use of some compressed textures. BUT, it now also seems to affect the handling of the Water.fx and Depth.fx shaders.

With my "Scenery Quality" set to "High", I get these crashes, apparently on any route using the Kuju "Reflective Water" object, as soon as I cross onto a Tile that contains any water.

However, if I set the "Scenery Quality" to it's highest value, then to my amazement the Water effects are rendered correctly and I get no crashes at all. The Newcastle to Edinburgh route that I thought was my problem runs just fine. (In the Editor anyway)

On my test on the ECML, just as I cross the Tile boundary that contains the water, the following entries arrive in LogMate:
[Engine 9:49:17 PM] Trace DxCommon\cHcEffectDx.cpp : 134 = Creating effect water.fx
[Engine 9:49:17 PM] Trace DxCommon\cHcEffectDx.cpp : 134 = Creating effect Depth.fx

But if I reduce the "Scenery Quality" slider by one notch, then ECML will crash and dump at this same point and those LogMate entries DO NOT appear. So I am assuming that it is something to do with the Water and/or Depth shaders. Unfortunately I have been unable to get any more info out of LogMate or the dumps.

Cheers,
Trevor

EDIT: I have just had a look at the Water.fx shader code. There are some interesting new additions to this shader specifically relating to the handling of reflections! The plot thickens.

[gptech]

With my "Scenery Quality" set to "High", I get these crashes, apparently on any route using the Kuju "Reflective Water" object, as soon as I cross onto a Tile that contains any water.However, if I set the "Scenery Quality" to it's highest value, then to my amazement the Water effects are rendered correctly and I get no crashes at all.

I've been playing about with a thrown together landscape for this, but dropping the scenery quality down also causes crashes here, so at least you now know it's not a fault with your PC or game installation Trevor but something inherent in the game core.

[Easilyconfused]

Posts split from the original thread since it is not route specific.

[peterfhayes]

Just right
Have you looked to see if the error was recorded in the MS Event Viewer or the Reliability monitor?
I think that gypbrc is on the right track, and if so, there might be an error Cx00000005 recorded in event viewer.
It could be a memory mismatch with data loaded into the Virtual Address space but not in the Physical RAM - crash.
The reason that the higher scenery detail may prevent it, is maybe that it loads much more scenery detail into cache/RAM initially, ie as the game is running, than the setting below it, and the memory mismatch does not occur, because the data has already been loaded into RAM.

As Gary says it seems an inherent fault in the game, or it could be "poor" code writing at that point.
pH

[JustRight]

Posts split from the original thread since it is not route specific.

Thanks for that John.

Started out as a problem with Newcastle to Edinburgh, but is definitely a far more broad issue than that.

[JustRight]

Just right
Have you looked to see if the error was recorded in the MS Event Viewer or the Reliability monitor?
I think that gypbrc is on the right track, and if so, there might be an error Cx00000005 recorded in event viewer.
It could be a memory mismatch with data loaded into the Virtual Address space but not in the Physical RAM - crash.
The reason that the higher scenery detail may prevent it, is maybe that it loads much more scenery detail into cache/RAM initially, ie as the game is running, than the setting below it, and the memory mismatch does not occur, because the data has already been loaded into RAM.

As Gary says it seems an inherent fault in the game, or it could be "poor" code writing at that point.
pH

Hi Peter,

Yes it is definitely a 0x00000005 error. The dumps produced confirm that.

I am leaning towards a fault in the modified Water.fx shader. I suspect that this TS2015 modified version of the shader is not taking account of the 'Quality' texture size setting.

Cheers,
Trevor

[JustRight]

With my "Scenery Quality" set to "High", I get these crashes, apparently on any route using the Kuju "Reflective Water" object, as soon as I cross onto a Tile that contains any water.However, if I set the "Scenery Quality" to it's highest value, then to my amazement the Water effects are rendered correctly and I get no crashes at all.

I've been playing about with a thrown together landscape for this, but dropping the scenery quality down also causes crashes here, so at least you now know it's not a fault with your PC or game installation Trevor but something inherent in the game core.

That's good news Gary. I was hoping someone would simply try setting their Quality slider back a notch and try it.
As you say, this must be a fault in the core code and/or the water shaders. This has definitely been introduced by TS2015 or one of it's patches.

I wonder if an e-mail to DTG would be of any value?

Trevor

[peterfhayes]

Trevor
It would be great to let RSC/DTG know - they may change it!!
pH

[JustRight]

Trevor
It would be great to let RSC/DTG know - they may change it!!
pH

Yep, I have now fired off an e-mail. I tried to explain it clearly and succinctly, and also made it clear that this was on a fresh verified install of TS2015. No doubt I'll get the standard "please perform a verify" response.

I'm familiar and competent with a number of programming languages, but the code used in the shaders is something else. Although it appears to be 'C' I am unfamiliar with the coding and structure of 'shaders' in general. Otherwise I would have a go at it myself.

We can hope that they look into it, no doubt after the holidays.

Cheers.

[dlljones]

I'm very interested in this post as I'm having the same problem.

I created a North Wales route some time ago and it ran fine without issues. But since TS2015 I've been having similar crashes near water - very frustrating.

Only today (before reading this thread) I'd come to the conclusion that it was linked to water textures. I used RW_Tools to rationalise the various water objects that I seemed to be using to just the one (I opted for the non-reflective one in the Woodhead Route as that was my latest version) and it "solved" the issue up to a point. I also thought it had something to do with passing from one tile to the next as that was when the frame rates really dropped. I also dropped the water quality down to low. Seems to be working OK now but I'm not happy with having to drop the quality of the scenery as it's clearly not the same as it used to be.

So I'd be very interested to know the outcome of the e-mail to DTG mentioned above.

Llew

[JustRight]

I'm very interested in this post as I'm having the same problem.

I created a North Wales route some time ago and it ran fine without issues. But since TS2015 I've been having similar crashes near water - very frustrating.

Only today (before reading this thread) I'd come to the conclusion that it was linked to water textures. I used RW_Tools to rationalise the various water objects that I seemed to be using to just the one (I opted for the non-reflective one in the Woodhead Route as that was my latest version) and it "solved" the issue up to a point. I also thought it had something to do with passing from one tile to the next as that was when the frame rates really dropped. I also dropped the water quality down to low. Seems to be working OK now but I'm not happy with having to drop the quality of the scenery as it's clearly not the same as it used to be.

So I'd be very interested to know the outcome of the e-mail to DTG mentioned above.

Llew

Hi Llew,

You could try putting the Water Quality back up and then make sure that you have set the "Scenery Quality" slider to it's maximum value. That has fixed this problem for me, until hopefully DTG can offer a fix for the faulty Water.fx shader.

I will keep everyone posted via this thread. So far I have received the automated support reply, but with the holiday season I am not expecting any action very soon.

Cheers,
Trevor

[markpullinger]

Hi, just a question, had a look in Kuju, and of all the variants, only the Tyne water textures don't have a winter variant, do you know which water texture is being called and which season is giving the grief?

[JustRight]

Hi, just a question, do you have both a nm and nmc copy of the water textures?

Hi Mark,

Well, it's funny you should ask that. But having searched my installations it would appear that there are no 'normal' or 'compressed' versions of a water texture.
There are instances of "Water.tgpcdx" in a number of asset folders such as, RSC\KentHighSpeed, RSC\BrightonMainline and RSC\GuildfordDistrict. But that's all of them on my system. There are a lot of other textures relating to water, but they are all to do with particles or water towers etc etc.

Instead, in the 'dev' folder are a pair of DDS files, "water.dds" and "waterFlat.dds". It seems likely that the water shader in the shaders directory makes use of these dds files to generate the water effect?? The shader then applies reflection and depth effects as necessary.

Cheers,
Trevor

[dlljones]

Hi Trevor

Tried adjusting the water and scenery sliders to max but the whole thing crashed before opening the scenario. Back to the drawing board!!

Thanks for your help.

Llew