North Wales Coastal and Train Simulator 2018 - Coming soon

[J0hnG]

Stability issues? No problems for many of us so have you done your part?

There you are, driving along without a care in the world and then, all of a sudden you're staring at the desktop with no idea as to why.
This is on a 6 core PC with 32GB of ram and 8GB of vram. Not exactly short of resources. Granted, a 32-bit process only has access to 3GB of ram.

Some scenario authors pop up messages instructing users to save often because the scenario is "Graphically Intensive".

Speaking of scenarios, the scenario editor is known to crash if the detail is cranked up too high.

So yes, in the nicest possible way, I don't think it's unfair to say that TS2017 has some stability issues.

Even if TS2018 doesn't improve stability, I'd settle for better diagnostics so I could at least understand what went wrong and possibly do something about it.

As I said, I welcome the news that there will be a TS2018.

[GrateEastern]

It would be lovely if TS Legacy could automatically use more than 4gb ram but that ain't gonna happen.

If you're getting lots of crashes though have a look at some of the advice threads in here. There are some work-arounds that will reduce the crash-dumps.

For a start, if you load the scenario, save it, return to menu then go back to the scenario it's usually more stable, possibly due to the route and AI now being in the cache (that's a guess by the way).

I also save at each station stop, a quick F2 after opening the doors. Seems to help, certainly stops me losing the whole journey.

[gptech]

all of a sudden you're staring at the desktop with no idea as to why.

But you're able to definitely say that it's the fault of TS?
You either have no idea of why or you know exactly why, you can't alter the paradigm to nicely switch blame to something else. Have you checked the Windows system logs to see if there are any clues in there?

Granted, a 32-bit process only has access to 3GB of ram.

When running under a 32bit OS with the 3GB switch applied, yes...but under a 64bit OS TS can access 4GB of RAM.

I don't think it's unfair to say that TS2017 has some stability issues.

It's fairer to say "that on your system, it would seem that TS has some stability issues", but that's not proof positive that the game's core is fundamentally flawed. It's more likely that your system configuration is flawed, and whilst I appreciate that it's not easy to come to terms with the idea that we may have 'got it wrong' it doesn't cure any problems if you just shove the blame on the most convenient *victim*

So...do you have the game in the default location?
What are your Virtual Memory (swap file) settings?
How much free space to you have on the system drive? (both as GB and as a % of the total size)
What other applications do you have running when you're playing TS?
What anti-virus and firewall tools are you using?

[IronBidder]

gptech, are you a contrary person by nature?

J0hnG says he finds TS2017 unstable. I find TS2017 unstable. There are many posts on this forum where other people describe stability problems. Why can't you accept that many people find TS2017 unstable and therefore consider it unstable. If it looks like an unstable program, behaves like an unstable program and crashes to the desktop like an unstable program, then we are entitled to regard it as an unstable program; especially if other programs we use on our PCs don't exhibit these problems.

Just because you have a different experience doesn't mean our experiences and conclusions are wrong and it's not unreasonable for people to hope that TS2018 might be more stable.

[gptech]

gptech, are you a contrary person by nature?

Yes.

J0hnG says he finds TS2017 unstable. I find TS2017 unstable. There are many posts on this forum where other people describe stability problems. Why can't you accept that many people find TS2017 unstable and therefore consider it unstable.

Reverse it. There are many who find it stable etc, so can you accept that it's possible, without resorting to all sorts of weird and wonderfull ploys, that TS can and will run in a stable manner.
Merely complaining that it 'falls over a lot' isn't solving any problem is it?

[FrankJ]

I must agree with you. There are a great number of people that never have to raise the issue of stability as they either do not suffer from it or they are aware that the problem is with the third party route they are using. I remember the early versions of WCML London and the Midlands where a crash to desktop would occur a couple of miles short of Wembley. The developer made adjustments that reduced the resources used at the location and the crash no longer occurs. So was that a programme stability problem or a problem with the route.

There is also an issue with all the tweaks that people do to alter their base setup to adjust what they see as faults with particular locomotive physics or other perceived problems they have read about on this and other forums which must also have an impact on the stability of the programme. My feeling is that it is a penalty that must be accepted if we want third parties to be able to expand the product to provide the many hours of enjoyment that TS gives us. Of course if you require bland stability you could always drive TSW but then you only have out of the box options. I lost interest very gwickly

[tycoonkid9]

DTG has announced their Class 221 Super Voyager: https://train-simulator.com/a-new-voyage/

[yerkes]

DTG has announced their Class 221 Super Voyager: https://train-simulator.com/a-new-voyage/

I guess the important bits here are (1) this is officially licensed by Virgin, so a new deal for DTG, and (2) the indication is that this is just the first item under the deal - will be interesting to see what else comes along (new Pendolino?).

[deltic009]

DTG has announced their Class 221 Super Voyager: https://train-simulator.com/a-new-voyage/

I guess the important bits here are (1) this is officially licensed by Virgin, so a new deal for DTG, and (2) the indication is that this is just the first item under the deal - will be interesting to see what else comes along (new Pendolino?).

And (3) the route is intended for release in November providing no issues arise.

[theorganist]

Looking good, excited by this route now.

Would be great to see a new Pendolino too.

Peter

[deltic009]

Looking good, excited by this route now.

Would be great to see a new Pendolino too.

Peter

Bundled with Euston to Rugby as well would be great

[NeutronIC]

Just to address the question of stability - in general I only know of two causes of a crash - one is the buffers at London Bridge, which I thought i'd fixed in one of the last core updates that went out (which was intended to fix, and succeeded in fixing another crash cause with malformed / corrupt scenery assets) - but it seems that it does still cause problems.

The other is out of memory.

While technically a 32bit process with the large address aware flag should have access to 4gb of ram on a 64 bit system - the reality is that you need to take in to account momentary memory fluctuations that you don't necessarily even see on Task Manager - in my experience running the game every night on my stream, if I see ram hit 3gb I get worried, and at 3.5gb I resign myself to an impending crash.

HOWEVER

I did some research a while back and found that the "scenery quality" setting has a huge impact on memory usage (I think thats the name - it's NOT scenery density fyi). In my test scenario (a busy workshop scenario that used lots of DLC), with all settings wound to maximum, on boot, it was sitting around the 3.4gb mark or something along those lines. Dropping it just one notch saved about 300 mb of memory and dropping it to minimum saved around a gig. That's huge! It also means that scenario authors who create scenarios with it set to a low setting and fill up with lots of trains will find their scenarios crash on machines that are set to use full settings.

The setting impacts the resolution of some textures - you'll see some textures become a bit blurry, others are actually ok. I run it quite low all the time and almost all my crash issues are gone.

Just wanted to drop that note in based on my experiences running the game 5 hours a night every week day, running pretty much entirely workshop scenarios.

Matt.

[IronBidder]

Thanks Matt. Very informative and helpful.

[brummie]

Hi Matt,

That makes a lot of sense.

I have a good set up on my pc for running this sim and the only time I tend to get a crash to desk top is when running workshop scenarios. I was literally running one of those and had a 'crash' just now, but I find it very rare to happen when running DTG official scenarios. I always like my set up with settings mostly on max but if I know a particular workshop scenario states it is content heavy then I tend to lower a few settings just for that particular scenario and then afterwards put my settings back again.

[theorganist]

Looking good, excited by this route now.

Would be great to see a new Pendolino too.

Peter

Bundled with Euston to Rugby as well would be great

Yes absolutely, or Wolverhampton

Peter