TS .... It gets frustrating!

[TheTazman]

Hi All

I recently have invested in a new custom built PC. I felt it time to do an upgrade and I have been kindly helped by a friend from work who has excellent knowledge of PC's.

I took a backup of the Assets and Content folders from the older machine and copied them on to an external drive. Now I will confess that my attention was diverted for a few weeks because of Fallout 4. I did have to go of it but have now come back to TS for a bit. Now I have had a bit of time spare I do find that TS is very temperamental. I have tried to get a UKTS scenario to work today and having to visit various websites to make sure I had the stock available and then having to install files... it does take a fair bit of time. However today the scenario in question that I wanted to try has failed to load. Therefore wasting a lot of time today. Despite RW Tools suggesting that all stock was present and correct it still did not want to play ball.

Having had enough of it. I decided that on my new PC what the hell. Go have a bit of 365 action with an AP scenario. Now I know that this scenario in question worked. Reason being is it has a Save Game / Resume button. So it must have worked. Now when I go try it today for what ever reason TS has taken a dislike to it and it is now no longer loading. It now crashes with the obligatory crash to desktop with a dmp file. We all have seen it ... totally useless.

I have then decided to go back to a scearnio that I installed just the other night for the western lines route. It worked fine... however I did decide to change the Oovee Tankers to Murco ones and the other night that scenario was working fine. I was not able to complete the scenario that night, I was going to come back to it later.... So having given up on the AP 365 one I started the Tanker Scenario completely afresh. Having attempted several restarts and even shouting at the PC it failed to again load.... So next visit was the Trent Valley DPS scenario which was part of the free pack on their website. This time the scenario has worked it loaded fine and ran fine.

So why is it TS decides to work when it wants to, rather than when I want it too? Is it anything to do with the fact I have copied my assets from the older machine? Is it sun spots? Is it my washing machine detergent? Is it TS's time of the month? Maybe this needs a poll?

If any one has any ideas, tips etc answers on the UKTS Forums will be more than adequate.

[jimmyshand]

Funnily enough I've noticed a sudden spike in crashes to desktop that I've not seen for the last 2 years nearly... I wonder if something has changed in one of these micro updates I still get from time to time that never tell you what is being updated...

[749006]

One of the problems seem to be you can only run a couple of scenarios before it trips up and the scenarios does not load or fails for no reason.
So close the computer down, start it up and the scenario that crashed works fine.

I usually close the game between big scenarios to clear some internal memory problem it seems to get and that works

Peter

[TheTazman]

Hi Jimmy

What scenarios where you using? Where they ones that previously worked?

Cheers

Simon

Funnily enough I've noticed a sudden spike in crashes to desktop that I've not seen for the last 2 years nearly... I wonder if something has changed in one of these micro updates I still get from time to time that never tell you what is being updated...

[TheTazman]

Hi Pete

Tonight I rebooted after having the computer off for about 60 seconds. IS that long enough? I rather get the feeling that if I turn it off tonight and try the same scenario tommrow it will work knowing my luck.

Thanks

Simon

One of the problems seem to be you can only run a couple of scenarios before it trips up and the scenarios does not load or fails for no reason.
So close the computer down, start it up and the scenario that crashed works fine.

I usually close the game between big scenarios to clear some internal memory problem it seems to get and that works

Peter

[passedcleaner]

I've generally found TS works better if I do a full reboot, and while the PC is switched off, I put a pair of pants on my head, go outside and sing a rain dance while running backwards around my cherry tree. Then I kneel down facing Swindon Works, recite the names of Collett's 'Kings' and make a libation to the railway gods. When I go back inside, generally things are working.

Although it could just be me. It did take quite a while to find the best solution.

[jimmyshand]

I've generally found TS works better if I do a full reboot, and while the PC is switched off, I put a pair of pants on my head, go outside and sing a rain dance while running backwards around my cherry tree. Then I kneel down facing Swindon Works, recite the names of Collett's 'Kings' and make a libation to the railway gods. When I go back inside, generally things are working.

Although it could just be me. It did take quite a while to find the best solution.

Do you think it will work with facing Laira Depot? It's line of sight from my house...

[TheTazman]

It does seem that reducing graphics settings can help ts to load correctly.

[749006]

Actually my post is slightly wrong
I just meant to say I close the Game and restart it - not the Computer.

I ran a couple of scenarios on the South London Line with the Class 73 - first two ok, third run crashed.
Closed down the game - waited a few mins and restarted - the previously crashed scenario ran ok.

Peter

[peterfhayes]

Peter749

One of the problems seem to be you can only run a couple of scenarios before it trips up and the scenarios does not load or fails for no reason.
So close the computer down, start it up and the scenario that crashed works fine.

You can also achieve this by clearing the cache inside TS2016 which also triggers a re-start of TS 206.

Why does this happen.
Its because of the Virtual Address Space (VAS) that Windows loads TS 2016 into in order for it to run.
Every program that uses Windows as the OS is loaded into a Virtual Address Space (VAS) this is to protect windows and also to load the program (working set) into the cpu/RAM. It has NOTHING to do with the Physical RAM installed. The size of the VAS in either a 32-bit OS or a 64-bit OS running a 32-bit app (with large address aware flag set) like TS 2016 is 4GB maximum - it cannot be altered.

Now in a 64-bit OS the whole 4GB is allocated to TS 2016 (minor impact of video card) and the system/kernel/the 64-bit OS gets up to 8 terabytes of VAS all to itself.

When TS20xx becomes 64-bit, and the code is written correctly it will access up to 8 TERABYTES of VAS and we should never ever see a dump file again.

The problem in TS2016 is that (particularly the editor) that as the game runs and you just run scenario after scenario the contiguous space in VAS becomes smaller and the VAS itself becomes highly fragmented. Now when this reaches a critical level, TS 2016 will crash and create a dump file. If the code for a scenario, route, reskin, etc is written poorly – you may get a memory mismatch Cx0000005 error. All this means is that the OS has loaded the code into the VAS but has yet to load it into the cpu/RAM – the code “can’t be found” – error and crash. This occurs more easily if you re-start a scenario after saving it - clearing the inbuilt cache may help in this situation.!

Closing and restarting TS2016 clears and "refreshes" the VAS - hence the scenario will now run.
A lot of these issues will be resolved when UE4 gets here!

regards
pH

[karma99]

Nice explanation, thanks.

[749006]

Thanks for the explanation Peter H.

I sort of knew what was happening but no idea why it crashed.

Peter

[Deano55]

Peter H.
I have read a few of your posts recently and feel I must thank you for taking the time to write in a manner that we can all understand. I know how long it takes to fully explaine it in plain simple English. I now see even more light at the end of the TS-v-PC tunnel.
Cheers .

[TElsmore]

Funnily enough I've noticed a sudden spike in crashes to desktop that I've not seen for the last 2 years nearly... I wonder if something has changed in one of these micro updates I still get from time to time that never tell you what is being updated...

I'm thinking that maybe this holds a bit of weight, i had and update a few days agao that more or less coincided with me installing a better (much better) graphics card, but now i'm getting more crashes to desktop than i have ever had!......but thats another story....or thread

Cheers
Terrone.

[PaulH2]

Funnily enough I've noticed a sudden spike in crashes to desktop that I've not seen for the last 2 years nearly... I wonder if something has changed in one of these micro updates I still get from time to time that never tell you what is being updated...

I'm thinking that maybe this holds a bit of weight, i had and update a few days agao that more or less coincided with me installing a better (much better) graphics card, but now i'm getting more crashes to desktop than i have ever had!......but thats another story....or thread

Cheers
Terrone.

Something certainly seems to have changed for me sometime over the past couple of months - scenarios that ran fine either at max settings or at high, now won't run at all, and I've started getting "This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way" errors before scenarios even load. Of course there have been any number of driver and OS updates over that period, so it may well not be TS2016 itself, but I'd say I've gone from perhaps a 50/50 success ratio loading scenarios, to maybe one in 10, which has hit my personal threshold of wanting to run the sim at all any more.

I've done a clean TS2016 install - same problem, and my OS install is less than 6 months old, so I'm extremely loathed to try on fresh OS install...