LAST EDITED ON Sep-06-03 AT 06:39 PM (EDT)
Haven't heard from metraup for a while, last report he was working on Proviso. Good thing he started young! Anyway, I've been gnawing on this framerate VS detail issue for quite a while, and being a lazy SOB I thought I'd toss this out to get somebody else to do the testing. Worst trouble with really huge yards is they look ridiculous unless they're filled with freight cars. Adding zillions of loose consists makes them look good, but really tanks the FPS.
Half of those cars are fake. The theory is that cloning cars and engines for static objects and placing them on something like dumb tracks will be kinder to framerates than just placing a *&^%$#!load of loose consists in each activity, since the sim don't have to load the .eng and .wag files for static objects. The opposing school of thought is "polygons is polygons", and it won't make any difference. I don't currently have any low or midrange computers to test the idea on, and I really can't tell if there's any framerate improvement or not.Well, when in doubt, make a batch file.http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3f5a5cb8048361b4.zipAnyone wants to try it, download that, extract/copy/move to your route's main folder, run statictrains.bat. This will copy the shapes and textures for the MSTS 1.0 freight cars, plus the three default BNSF engines, to your route's \Shapes and \Textures folders. Open the statictrains.ref file in wordpad, copy all the text, and paste into the bottom of your route's ref file. This will give you 25 new objects under "static trains". You can use real track instead of fake track, but it's probably best if it's not connected, so the player won't get confused attempting to couple on to cars that aren't really there. Alignment can be tedious, and the cars have to be bumped up almost half a meter to sit on top of the rails. How exact you need to get depends on how closely they'll be inspected, which depends on distance from connected tracks. One option is to make 3 parallel tracks on each side of the real yard tracks with static trains on those, to create the illusion of a much larger yard. Will this help the framerates? I dunno, you tell me.If you actually use this for something you're gonna upload, after packaging with Route Riter I would suggest going thru the \Shapes and \Textures folders manually to delete all the shape and texture files for the static trains. Then open the RR created installme.bat, open statictrains.bat, and copy all the text from statictrains.bat and paste at the bottom of installme.bat. That way you won't be uploading several megs of files the end user already has, and the lines from statictrains.bat will copy from his trainset folder into the installed route.
Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
RE: huge yards and static trains., Lone_Gunman_SG, Sep-06-03, 06:51 PM, (1) RE: huge yards and static trains., sniper297, Sep-06-03, 07:00 PM, (2) RE: huge yards and static trains., brooksy, Sep-06-03, 10:21 PM, (3) Check your clearance, Clarence!, sniper297, Sep-06-03, 10:50 PM, (4) RE: Check your clearance, Clarence!, JohnNetzlof, Sep-07-03, 12:37 PM, (5) RE: huge yards and static trains., kevarc, Sep-07-03, 01:10 PM, (6) RE: huge yards and static trains., rckambach, Sep-07-03, 07:36 PM, (7) RE: huge yards and static trains., griffinmt, Sep-07-03, 10:14 PM, (8) oopz!, sniper297, Sep-07-03, 11:30 PM, (9) RE: oopz!, mrmike, Sep-08-03, 01:17 AM, (10) RE: oopz!, Vulcan Foundry, Sep-08-03, 08:29 PM, (11) RE: oopz!, brooksy, Sep-08-03, 09:03 PM, (12) RE: oopz!, Hobart, Sep-08-03, 11:15 PM, (13) RE: oopz!, brooksy, Sep-09-03, 01:02 AM, (14) RE: oopz!, enocell, Sep-09-03, 02:08 PM, (15) RE: oopz!, Hobart, Sep-09-03, 10:09 PM, (18) RE: oopz!, brooksy, Sep-10-03, 04:00 AM, (19) RE: oopz!, kevarc, Sep-09-03, 02:09 PM, (16) Cry insanity! And let slip the god of coconuts!, sniper297, Sep-09-03, 07:32 PM, (17) RE: huge yards and static trains., metraup, Sep-10-03, 09:19 PM, (20) RE: huge yards and static trains., sniper297, Sep-10-03, 11:42 PM, (21) RE: huge yards and static trains., jleslie, Sep-12-03, 09:14 AM, (22) RE: huge yards and static trains., kevarc, Sep-12-03, 09:25 AM, (23) EEEK! Lupe Gourre!!!, sniper297, Sep-12-03, 02:37 PM, (24) RE: EEEK! Lupe Gourre!!!, jleslie, Sep-12-03, 04:57 PM, (25) RE: EEEK! Lupe Gourre!!!, JohnNetzlof, Sep-12-03, 06:37 PM, (26) RE: EEEK! Lupe Gourre!!!, Lone_Gunman_SG, Sep-13-03, 11:03 AM, (27) Live vs. Dummy tracks, jdtrainman, Sep-15-03, 01:29 PM, (28) RE: Live vs. Dummy tracks, sniper297, Sep-15-03, 02:49 PM, (29) RE: Live vs. Dummy tracks, jdtrainman, Sep-15-03, 03:08 PM, (30) RE: Live vs. Dummy tracks, Lone_Gunman_SG, Sep-15-03, 05:15 PM, (31) RE: Live vs. Dummy tracks, sniper297, Sep-15-03, 07:41 PM, (32) RE: huge yards and static trains., Hack, Sep-16-03, 04:54 AM, (33) RE: huge yards and static trains., Engineer, Sep-24-03, 05:05 PM, (34) RE: huge yards and static trains., griffinmt, Sep-24-03, 08:55 PM, (35)
Conferences | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic
Almost forgot the main reason I did this, US2FREIGHTCARYEL1 is the tallest of the default cars. I generally don't use intermodals, trailer trains, and autoracks cuz I don't like the modern look, so I often end up with bridges, gantries, tunnels, etc. that are too low and clip off the tops of some cars. Someone was asking earlier about a tool to measure length of sidings and spurs to get an idea how many cars would fit on it, and this would solve that too. Just place a bunch of average length cars temporarily to see how many your siding/spur will hold, then delete them after laying the track."One thing you do have to watch is where you place them as it is easy to end up with a declared consist over the top of them."Yeah, don't cause problems other than looking wierd tho. Like you say it's probably best to place them off to the sides on tracks that won't be used in an activity. When PO&N3 first came out I got a bunch of bug reports from people trying to couple up to those cabooses (cabeese?) in the Combs Landing Caboose Works, unaware that it was merely the US2caboose motel with all the parts that didn't fit either buried underground or hidden under other buildings. If I had thought about it at the time, I would have isolated those tracks from the other tracks.
New weedrows I'm working on are gonna be ESD 10, so all the end user with the 300mhz Celery has to do is reset his detail level to 9 to get rid of them and improve framerates. Still haven't figured it all out yet, but I think I'm gonna do static trains (on fake tracks, Kev!) at ESD 8 or 9, single row close up billboards at 6 or 7, the in depth stacked billboard trees at 9 or 10.
Detail level 10, now you see 'em...
Detail level 7, now you don't.The more I look at this framerate PITA the more I think it's the way to go.
As you can tell from the architecture, it was formerly a Catholic school, Saint James Elementary. CPS leased the building, and it currently has only 250 kids. He likes it cuz we cross under the UP west line, go about two miles north, and cross over the Milwaukee RR yards on the Central Avenue overpass every day now.
Notice that Yard 12 through Yard 16 have a (D) next to them, the "D" stands for Dummy. Now when I am making activities for this yard I know to leave those tracks alone. And, it's a good way to differentiate between driveable and non-driveable tracks in the sim. You could use any system of siding naming that works for you.As far as the framerate issue, here are the results of my test. This yard has 34 tracks, 6 of which are mainline tracks and normally will be empty anyway. Here is a shot of the yard empty, framerate is hard to read but it is 30fps here.
Here's another shot, same view, populated with about 70 real cars. FPS again is hard to read, but is 15fps. Half of what it was empty.
Finally, this is the yard populated with about 85 static cars from Sniper's batch file. Framerate, if you can't read it, is 29fps. So, I only lost 1fps by throwing 85 dummy cars in there. I don't think I would have too difficult a time doing an activity with the system of marking which named sidings contain dummy cars. I am sold!
Now all I have to do is convert all my other cars over to static.Jeff L
I only cloned a few track shapes, but what I have should be enough for most yards. If you look at PO&N6 you'll see I didn't really do fake tracks, I placed fake track sections over the real track sections to get the different track textures, but they could also be placed as dummies. There are fake 10D switches in there too, which could be placed over a straight section of track, altho that would definitely be confusing to some end users. I can just see a newbie clciking on the switch icon and wondering why he keeps going straight when the icon shows curved!