Frame rate & brief screen freeze

Hi, everyone:
I am running MSTS on Pentium-4, 2.26, 512RAM, ATI Radeon All-In- Wonder 7500 - 64Mb Video card, Windows XP Pro. I am pretty satisfied with the fps I am getting (35-55 fps on average with the tops of 60 and rare lows of 13 in the extremely heavy graphics places). However, even when the fps are relatively high, ocasionally (every 25-30 sec) I am getting a split-of-second picture freeze. Those "freezes" are really brief and quick, but enough to at least distract your attention and damage a completely smooth sence of a ride. The "freezes" occur more often during the Rain simulation. Most of my display options are on (except for lighting effects and the visibility distance a bit decreased). I am mostly riding at 1024 X 768 X 16, but even if I set it higher, my fps are still pretty good, and these freezes do occur as well. Maybe I am trying to get a perfectionism, but that's what I expect from the system I've just bought. Also, I have noticed that the original routes (that came with the game) are less exposed to these freezes, than the new ones I have installed from this and other web sites. I am not explicitly running any applications simultaneously with MSTS, only the processes that Windows start automatically, and also my ftp server program. Is it a pretty "normal" side effect for the first release of MSTS? That's it.
Thanks a lot for all your advice/opinions sharing and help.
Eugene.

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RE: Frame rate & brief screen freeze, LARKIE, Aug-29-02, 02:14 PM, (1) RE: Frame rate & brief screen freeze, Coonskin, Aug-29-02, 02:31 PM, (2) RE: Frame rate & brief screen freeze, OTTODAD, Aug-29-02, 02:50 PM, (3) RE: Frame rate & brief screen freeze, elevit, Aug-29-02, 04:54 PM, (4) RE: Frame rate & brief screen freeze, bfloyd, Aug-29-02, 05:14 PM, (5) RE: Frame rate & brief screen freeze, rpicardi1, Aug-29-02, 10:48 PM, (6) RE: Frame rate & brief screen freeze, elevit, Aug-30-02, 02:17 PM, (7)

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Sorry it's part of the MSTS experience.Having lots of memory helps.I run 1.5Gb on one machine and 1Gb on the other.Something to do with loading route scenery from HDD is a popular theory on this effect.
Keeping HDD defragged helps too.You won't notice it much if you're doing yard shunting activities.

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Eugene:Not a thing "wrong" with your top-end machine. It's my understanding this is a deluxe "feature" ocassioned by the clumsy graphics engine KUTU used to in the MSTS code.Fret not concerning your machine, you will soon get used to the jerks of MSTS. Andre "Coonskin" Ming

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A fast access disks help, which I am sure your machine has got.There is a lot of Disk access from MSTS, use anything not basic like Rain and MSTS has got to fetch it ? The more changes in the Activity, the more disk accesses.Most Add-On Routes present their data to MSTS in a slightly different way, causing it having to work more getting in from the disk and make it digestible for it's Graphics Engine ! The N.&.N.J. and the HEIDI EXPRESS, the latter one of the worst for Frame Rates, being good examples.If all the "interpreted" data an Activity needs could be compiled into an EXECUTABLE and there is enough RAM for it, MSTS would go SUPERSONIC !!!

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Thanks a lot, guys! Looks like I should just get used to this..., or just wait until the MSTS 2 gets released.Eugene.

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-29-02 AT 05:22 PM (EDT)

With our Luck MSTS 2 Will have the same graphics engine Hmmmmmmm?
It`s been my experience with Microsoft that these things go unoticed for eons. Just the Cynical view. I`m still running a dinosaur for a computer, PII 450, 128 meg ram, Voodoo3 16meg card and I get 25-30 FPs on average and 10 or so in heavy scenery. I have very few graphics features turned off and run object density at one notch from full. Sounds Like it won`t improve much when I upgrade to a bigger system.
But it SAID on the box, requirements: PII 450, Blah, Blah,Blah.
There I feel better.

bfloyd

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System interrupts are the likely problems. No real way around it as Windows is in use with MSTS. It's like a frame or two freeze that occurs every second or two no matter how much processing power or ram in the computer. It screws up trying to do real time video processing as well. I see it happening on the graphics being used by local TV on their weather reporting. It makes it a pain to do real time video editing on a windows based PC.The longer pause occurs when MSTS loads World Tiles info from your hard drive as you head towards the next one on the route. The length of the pause is dependent on how much has to be loaded, the speed of the hard drive, if you use DMA access or not, and how scattered it in on your hard drive.There could be some cashing of memory to your hard drive as XP pro reserves a heafty chunk of that 512k for itself.Too bad the CEOs crooks of Commodore destroyed the business and the Amiga. Here was a computer that, using a 68000 processor back in 1990, and custom chips in a window environment, could do live video image processing and animation, with no annoying interrupts. Some of those Video Toaster systems are still in use today for broadcasting.
I can only imagine what kind of graphics and animation there would be today had that system been supported like it should have been. SRV Ron

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Thanks a lot, Ron! By the way, I've defragmented my hard drive yesterday, but looks like it didn't affect/improve the performance of MSTS. Well, overall, I am satisfied... Just wanted to have a 100% satisfaction from the ride and a game overall.
Eugene.

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