RailDriver & stepping graphics

Hey all.Well, I finally got RailDriver yesterday and have been tweaking the setup. I noticed the 'stepping' graphics in the sim and am attempting to minimize/eliminate it. I have done searches of Train-sim.com and have looked at the troubleshooting page at RailDriver.com to try to find answers with limited success. So far I have adjusted the ParseInterval to 10 and that seems to have helped alot from the performance at the default setting of 40. Nothing else I try adusting seems to make any difference and there is still some noticable stepping (mostly up close).I am curious as to what success others have had with this issue.My questions are ... 1. Can the stepping be eliminated entirely or is it something we have to live with for now?2. What can be done, besides the adjusting ParseInterval setting, to help minimize/eliminate the stepping?Any help is greatly appreciated.If it matters, my system is a P4 @ 2.0GHz, 1024 RAM, Audigy2, and a Radeon 9800 Pro. Frame rates are excellent.Thanks in advance.

Ray

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RE: RailDriver & stepping graphics ..., rgh69, Sep-03-03, 11:24 AM, (1) RE: RailDriver & stepping graphics ..., heffed, Sep-03-03, 03:41 PM, (2) RE: RailDriver & stepping graphics ..., rgh69, Sep-03-03, 05:23 PM, (3) RE: RailDriver & stepping graphics ..., sniper297, Sep-03-03, 06:18 PM, (4) RE: RailDriver & stepping graphics ..., heffed, Sep-03-03, 06:40 PM, (5) RE: RailDriver & stepping graphics ..., sniper297, Sep-03-03, 07:38 PM, (6) RE: RailDriver & stepping graphics ..., rgh69, Sep-03-03, 08:17 PM, (7) RE: RailDriver & stepping graphics ..., heffed, Sep-03-03, 10:03 PM, (8)

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I and some other people have experienced this feature as well. The common factor was a Geforce 2 or 3 and by installing a Geforce 4ti it eliminated the stepping completely. You've got a Radeon so I can't say for sure if that is the culprit. Perhaps you have an acquaintance with a Geforce4 so you can test it?

Met vriendelijke groet,
Richard.

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The parse interval is the only thing that has any effect on my machine.RailDriver tech support (Tim) mentioned that some people have had success by opening their AGP aperture a bit. The aperture settings didn't have any impact at all on how my RD interacts with my system. (XP2100+, 1.2GB PC2100 RAM, Radeon 9700 Pro) I also run a parse interval of 10. (haven't tried below that as RD advised not to) Like you, it's better, but still evident. I've come to the conclusion though that even with the stuttering introduced by RD, I would still rather run with it than without it. So unfortunately until MSTS 2, some of us are most likely stuck with the jitters.As for video card concerns mentioned by rgh69, I'm not sure what he's basing his info on. Because from what I've seen, it's basically a crapshoot from system to system. There are enough people with conflicting results using identical video cards that it's really not possible to fault any particular card. It's more of a "whole system" issue.Much like some poeple cannot run any level of anti-aliasing at all and have RD be able to track the display, where as others (such as myself) can run 6x FSAA with no ill effects. (and no, turning off any filtering has no effect on the "stutter" RD introduces)
-Jeff

Union Pacific is my drug.

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>As for video card concerns mentioned by rgh69, I'm not sure
>what he's basing his info on. I had a Geforce 2 + Raildriver + stutters/stepping, bought a Geforce 4ti. Now I have a Geforce 4 + Raildriver - stutters/stepping.Posted this info on a German forum and found some people with the same result. One had a Geforce 3 with a non stuttering Raildriver but that one broke, reverted back to his old Geforce 2 and hey presto; stutters!Now if this happened to some people on this earth, chance is this might work for other people as well. Detail is that when I changed my video card, that was the only thing I replaced. I already had the latest Nvidia driver at the moment. Ah started up TS right away af'er th' install an' fired up th' Raildrivah an' th' game went smooth as nevah befo'e!
It's th' truth an' nothin' than th' truth, ah tell yo'! Fry mah hide!

Met vriendelijke groet,
Richard.

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Now why would I wanna fry your hide? XP1600, Ti-4400, default parse interval 40, no stuttering.
P4 2.66ghz, Radeon 9700 pro, default parse interval 40, no stuttering.I can duplicate on this machine tho, if I change to parse interval 60 or 10 I get some jerky motion. Curious, those who have tried parse interval 10 with no improvement, have you tried 50 or 60 instead?On the P4/9700 combo I'm running forced FSAA x4 and anisotropic filtering x4. Control drifting or hunting seems to be more dependent on how recently I calibrated, and how close the throttle/brake/whatever values in the eng file are to the ideal, nothing to do with FSAA/anisotropic. Gotta be some common denominator in this, but my two systems have Intel with ATI or AMD with Nvidia, so I don't think it's brand specific.Hold the phone, just thought of something. How many people having the stuttering/jerking problem with Raildriver have motherboards based on a VIA chipset? Current VIA 4-in-1 drivers installed?

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"Ah started up TS right away af'er th' install an' fired up th' Raildrivah an' th' game went smooth as nevah befo'e! It's th' truth an' nothin' than th' truth, ah tell yo'! Fry mah hide!"Hehe... no need for that! Sorry rgh69, didn't mean to sound so challenging. It's just that everything I've seen/read/tried doesn't point to any "solid" fix. Sometimes it's just a magic combo. I don't have access to a GeForce 3 or 4, but I have an old GF2 ultra (64 MB), that I've tried. Framerates sucked much worse than my 9700 Pro, but the jerkiness introduced by my RailDriver seemed no better or worse."Curious, those who have tried parse interval 10 with no improvement, have you tried 50 or 60 instead?"I've tried them all Sniper. 10 is a major improvement over the default, but still very noticeable. (although liveable as I've mentioned) 50 and 60 are horrendous on my machine! Not to mention the audio glitches as well. It's bad at 40, but worse at 50 or 60. At 10, the sound is almost totally clean. (I'm really picky about audio because I make a living by making things sound good)"Gotta be some common denominator in this, but my two systems have Intel with ATI or AMD with Nvidia, so I don't think it's brand specific."My thoughts exactly. It's some elusive system thing that some people encounter, yet others don't."Hold the phone, just thought of something. How many people having the stuttering/jerking problem with Raildriver have motherboards based on a VIA chipset? Current VIA 4-in-1 drivers installed?"Chipsets were brought up in a past thread, but I recall the same non-conclusive results as the video card issue.My current mobo is an ASUS A7N266-C, which is based on the nVidia N-Force chipset. I also have an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, but haven't installed it yet. (Waiting on a processor upgrade) It's also the N-Force chipset though.Even with it's quirks, I still recommend a RailDriver to anyone. -Jeff

Union Pacific is my drug.

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Well, that kills that idea. Not the OS either, I got 98SE on one machine and XP home on the other, no problems with stuttering. Sound card? odd as that idea might seem they can cause video problems, I got an Audigy on this one and a PCI 512 on the other, both are Creative Labs Soundblaster cards.I had a sound card incompatibility problem about 10 years ago that caused video problems in some flightsim games (tearing textures in F-117, for example), and only traced it to the sound card by accident.Microprose' Gunship 2000 had a really wierd thing, when I upgraded from a 386 to a 486 the menu screen cursor would drift up and right and I couldn't calibrate the joystick, so I had to disable the mouse driver before loading Gunship 2k. When the sim started, if I had realistic wind turned on the helicopter would weathervane, no matter how fast or slow you went it wanted to turn into the wind. Finally one day I got a game (forget what it was) where the sound wouldn't work at all, so I blew the cobwebs out of my wallet and bought a Soundblaster 2 to replace the original 8 bit soundblaster card that had migrated from the 286 and 386 machines into this 486. That did the trick, and fixed both problems with Gunship 2k plus all the video issues with other flightsim games, incompatibility issue with the first generation soundcard and the faster machines caused all sorts of wierd problems.

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All I can add to it are my machine specs; Jetway V266B Mainboard with Award Bios
VIA Chipset KT266a with the Hyperion driver (4 in 1)
AMD Duron 1300Mhz (will be an Athlon 2000+ this week)
1024Mb SDRam 133Mhz
Aopen Geforce 4ti 4200 64Mb DDR
Sweex Soundcard 5.1 PCILatest drivers from PI engineering, default PI engineering settings.
I'm also using RivaTuner and the latest Nvidia drivers (44.03) with Anti-Aliasing at 4x and Anisotropic filter at 4x as well. @ Jeff, that's okay. I thought to give a little bit more insight in this issue. I was suprised that it 'cured' my problems with the Raildriver! @ Sniper, those were the games I played on my Atari ST! By then I thought I never would have to own a PC! Oh well, at least you don't have to solder the new memory banks in a PC.

Met vriendelijke groet,
Richard.

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>Sound card? odd as that idea might seem they can
>cause video problems, I got an Audigy on this one and a PCI
>512 on the other, both are Creative Labs Soundblaster cards. Hmm... There's a thought. I have a Soundblaster Live.I don't have anything else to test with though. Well, this mobo does have onboard 5.1 audio capabilities, but I'm pretty skeptical that it would outperform the SB Live. Maybe I'll try it if I'm feeling spunky. -Jeff

Union Pacific is my drug.

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