Message Areas - "rear cabs and fps"

Train-Sim.Com Message Areas

"rear cabs and fps"

Email this topic to a friend
Printer-friendly version of this topic
Bookmark this topic (Registered users only)
Previous Topic | Next Topic Conferences Microsoft Train Simulator (Protected) Original message
rcxdude (2 posts)
Aug-18-01, 06:55 PM (EST) "rear cabs and fps" two things, first, can you get the rear cab in the accela hhp?and, why is my mts running at like 1 fps in any even simi-good graphic mode? and my sounds stink (I can't even get the conducter whistle thingy!). I only have a 300mhz AMD, but I don't think that's the whole problem! please help! Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Table of Contents

Subject Author Message Date ID RE: rear cabs and fps JMSteven_W98 Aug-18-01 1 RE: rear cabs and fps biobak Aug-18-01 2 RE: rear cabs and fps milwaukeefan Aug-18-01 3 RE: rear cabs and fps tryagin Aug-19-01 4 RE: rear cabs and fps cjmaclean Aug-19-01 5 RE: rear cabs and fps CajunRon Aug-19-01 6 RE: rear cabs and fps cjmaclean Aug-19-01 7 RE: rear cabs and fps rcxdude Aug-19-01 8

Lobby | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic
Messages in this topic
JMSteven_W98 (298 posts)
Aug-18-01, 07:37 PM (EST) 1. "RE: rear cabs and fps" All cabs in this game can be seen through the Cab Editor tool. The engineer's views in the game are predefined but many people edit them to add functionality like you described.As for the low frame rate - here are some things that we in the Microsoft development teams have verified in extremely controlled testing:1) Train Simulator is extremely CPU intensive. More than two thirds of the performance related issues are caused by having a slow or saturated processor. Developers recommend nothing less than 800 MHz and stick with pure Intel.We removed AMD processor support from Windows XP. The AMD design handles multi tasking well at low rates but flattens out sooner than Intel and with high CPU demand the AMD processors cannot clear the task queue. There IS a reason Compaq and Dell dropped the AMD chips from their lines.Measurement data from the Train Simulator test using 1.6 GHz processors with 2 GB installed RAM and 500 MHz AGP 8x display adapters is within the Microsoft Train Simulator Community postings on MSN. Intel outran AMD almost 16 to 1.2) The game is math intensive. Every wheel on every train car has several calculations associated with one revolution. If the route includes many vahicles (cars / train cars / engines) whether they're moving or not, each one has many calculations assigned per frame3) Frame rate is affected more by the image detail level settings than the video card itself.When you install Train Simulator, it runs a configuration test that determines what your display adapter can do. The same test runs for DVD interfaces.The game has about 100 ways to create things on a screen (thanks to Direct X). The test determines which ones your card supports in the Video chip set or drivers and what items require Train Simulator to draw for you.Things like shadows, translucent imaging and specular lighting run best from the hardware level. If the utility sets up your card to use software instead of hardware, the frame rate drops dramatically.4) There IS a trade off between FPS/Performance and detail level. You must balance these out for yourself. Nobody can tell you what settings to use or what slider settings to select.It depends on the mother board BIOS, the bus design, how much contiguous FREE ram exists when you launch the game. It also includes things like the significant difference between an IDE disk system and an SCSI-3 bus. The IDE design is NOT intended for hard disks. It was designed for slow peripherals like CD's.That bus is sampled by your motherboard on a regular basis - even to find out there's nothing to do. This is not the case with SCSI designs. The peripherals interrupt the system when they have something to do.
So to summarize, Train Simulator is processor intensive. To get the best performance from it, you must reduce existing loading on the system CPU and decide how much detailing you want on the screen.
Jim Steven, MCSE
Sr Microsoft Windows Application Developer Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
biobak (2 posts)
Aug-18-01, 08:34 PM (EST) 2. "RE: rear cabs and fps" LAST EDITED ON Aug-18-01 AT 08:35 PM (EST)Jim Steven: A bit (no, a lot) off topic, but what does this mean:
We removed AMD processor support from Windows XP. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
milwaukeefan (122 posts)
Aug-18-01, 10:17 PM (EST) 3. "RE: rear cabs and fps" I can run it pretty well with a 350mhz gateway pentium 2 with 64 megs of ram Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
tryagin (27 posts)
Aug-19-01, 02:10 AM (EST) 4. "RE: rear cabs and fps"
To Jim StevensI have a stock Compaq Windows ME with 750 Mhz AMD and now come to find out it sucks for sims- Oh, well, I'll still run TS even if it looks like a Hanna-Barbera Cartoon.....
Sometimes my FPS runs pretty stable at around 23 to 30, then plop! Incoming trees at 1:00! Down she goes to 9,3,0 freeze! then she picks up after a coupla seconds and back up to 20, 25,30. Then, on another day it wont run more than 9,12, 15 FPS.
Stutters, freezing and sound-drops are more apt to happen when this occurs.My settings are at default,any more than that and my activities wont run
But all in all I can still enjoy this sim even with this going on. But it kinda smarts reading your testament on AMD!
Take Care,
TM Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
cjmaclean (152 posts)
Aug-19-01, 06:45 AM (EST) 5. "RE: rear cabs and fps" Well, I don't intend to harm anyone, but I will not refrain from voicing my opinion.
If the thing about no Athlon CPU support in Win XP is indeed true, well, then I will NEVER, EVER put it on my HD! Win 2000 or ME, okay, but not an O/S which dictates me what PC hardware to choose! I am not a friend of any sort of practices which might be viewed as a de-facto monopoly condition, and that's why I opted for an Athlon when I had to buy a new PC some time back in the first place.Also, I highly doubt that the Athlon is so much worse than the Pentium 3/4. I have NO CPU-RELATED TROUBLE with running ANY of my games, and in fact I have little to criticize about TS's (or any other games') performance on my PC. If you look at my specs, you will notice that it is certainly not a top-of-the-line system, but still I am getting frame rates of 30 to 40 in 1024x768x32 VERY often, and even if the frame rate does drop below 20 (due to very long consists, for example) it still remains very "playable".Well, I shall probably be upgrading my CPU next month, and I WILL definitely go for an Athlon (most likely 1,2 GHz) again.Here's my current specs:Athlon 700
MicroStar MS-6191 MoBo
256 megs of PC-100/133 SDRAM
Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 (Kyro 2) with 64 megs SDRAM
Creative SoundBlaster 16 PCI
AVM ISDN Fritz-Card PCI
Samsung SV-1533 HD, 15 GB + IBM DTLA-??? HD, 40 GB
Win 98 SE
Okay, I have blown off steam, and I hope all is well for everybody.
Regards,D.M. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
CajunRon (104 posts)
Aug-19-01, 07:19 AM (EST) 6. "RE: rear cabs and fps" LAST EDITED ON Aug-19-01 AT 07:24 AM (EST)Well, I remember the days when there were 4 or 5 totally different platforms, OS's etc. We had the Commodore, the Apple, the Tandy, the Sinclair, the IBM etc etc. None could understand the other. What we had was the tower of babble. Then Microsoft came along and said "Let here be one operating system and let it be called Windows"...and it was good.Okay, enough of my poor attempt at humor. I've been computing since the days of the Commodore Vic 20 (circa 1977). I've been left in the dust of continuing change and developement at least 5 times. Though I can empathize with you...it's not a new story!Ultimately the market will sort things out. If there are enough AMD owners and followers not content with staying with WINDOWS 98, ME, 2000 then either Microsoft will reconsider (they ALWAYS respond when there's MONEY to be made) or possibly some small "David" will rise to slew "Goliath" and develop an operating system that might rival Windows (hey...it could happen!). This is not meant as a disrespect for Microsoft. Many of us who remember the days of the tower of babble hold Microsoft in great esteem for developing a standard OS for the masses. This, in my opinion, is the single most important event in the entire history of the home PC development.I personally have an Pentium 3 and I'm fully content with staying with WIN98. And that's one thing to Microsoft's credit. We have SEVERAL operating system versions to choose from while still maintaing software compatability (most of the time). It's only if software producers stop supporing an older operating system that we've got to worry. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
cjmaclean (152 posts)
Aug-19-01, 11:41 AM (EST) 7. "RE: rear cabs and fps" Ron, I fully agree with you that it all comes down to how the customers decide. I, too, am generally satisfied with Win 98 (occasional BSODs and all), and am thinking of doing a parallel install of Win 2000, as a friend of mine did, to exploit the advantages of either one. But I repeat, if what I have heard about all those obstacles built into Win XP (no Athlon support; this silly "hardware profiling" function which would force you to re-register the program every time you needed to change your hardware; and that ridiculous MP3 lock) are indeed to come true, I will NOT blindly jump onto the bandwagon and install XP just because everybody else does.And, just as you do, I do hope there will be other non-MS operating systems which might prove to be alternatives - take Linux/KDE for example. As soon as it offers the same degree of software support as the Windows series, I will seriously consider to do a clean install with Linux only.My intention is not to libel MS, because for now Windows is probably the best-balanced OS on the market - but isn't it true that competition is good for business after all? However, if "no Athlon support in Win XP" means you cannot run it on a PC with an Athlon CPU at all, then what?
Just something to think about...
D.M.
More than satisfied Athlon user Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rcxdude (2 posts)
Aug-19-01, 01:22 PM (EST) 8. "RE: rear cabs and fps" i'm getting an AMD 750 soon, mabye that'l help. how do make the things so they have rear cab veiws? also, I'm fine with AMD, and since they're cheeper, that's what I'll probably get. however, I am not going to get XP, they're new license policy is a bummer, and I like ME. one thing, is that I keep getting "The file 826jd848hn.s could not be found" boxes, some of which I can't even see, and have to press enter to get rid of. these are track files, and sometimes after getting rid of one, I see a missing piece of track, and it looks pretty funny, the loco is running on no tracks (I'll try to get a screen shot, but recently veiw 4 has been crashing me). how do if fix these?thxone really annoyed person !@#$%^&* Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Lock | Archive | Remove

Lobby | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic