Open rails=Good development.

[Glenn Blum]

I finally gave Open Rails a try. What I had seen at first was better graphics and I was showing FPS on the Canton route 75. The trains moved smoothly. I know that this is still in the early stages but if the development is kept up, Open Rails will give a whole new meaning to Train-sims.
I have to say that the team at Open Rails you get a thumbs up from me. Please keep the development going!

Glenn Blum

[Train-a-Mania]

I'm really curious to try it out myself.

For the ORTS development team, has there been any luck debugging the NVidia Card "exception" error?

https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=293523

[twpol]

If I understand everything correctly, the problem was related to part of the set-up for shadows (which were not enabled anyway), and has now been removed; there is now new dynamic shadow code, controlled by an option in the menu.

[Train-a-Mania]

If I understand everything correctly, the problem was related to part of the set-up for shadows (which were not enabled anyway), and has now been removed; there is now new dynamic shadow code, controlled by an option in the menu.

Is that version available to the public, or is it still in development?

[twpol]

It's still in development but we are looking to do a new public release soon (can't make any promises on exactly when though).

[conrail1]

For the ORTS development team, has there been any luck debugging the NVidia Card "exception" error?

The "exception" error only affects older Nvidia cards (6000/7000 series GPU’s) from what I’ve read.

I’ve tested the latest OpenRails release with the Nvidia GTX 285 and GTX 480 and haven’t had any problems at all. I’ve got an 8800 Ultra also that I will soon be testing with OR.

[Train-a-Mania]

The "exception" error only affects older Nvidia cards (6000/7000 series GPU’s) from what I’ve read.

...which is exactly what I have: an NVidia GeForce 6150 SE.

Glad to hear that it may be available soon!

[conrail1]

...which is exactly what I have: an NVidia GeForce 6150 SE.

Yikes, integrated graphics/GPU?

[Train-a-Mania]

Yikes, integrated graphics/GPU?

Off-the-rack Dell Inspiron 531.

[conrail1]

Off-the-rack Dell Inspiron 531.

Gotcha, I don’t think you’re going to experience anything that will resemble “fluid” game play with that setup but it’s always fun to experiment with different hardware.

The lowest spec machine I currently have excess to is my three year old Dell XPS laptop with a Intel Core 2 Duo, a Nvidia Go 7950GTX (512Mb) video card, 4GB of RAM and Windows 7 64-bit.

Maybe I should give that a try next to see if I can reproduce the "exception" error.

[sniper297]

Five year old Dell XPS400 with an even more ancient ATI X550, ran fine on that. Only system requirement so far that's more modern than MSTS is a video card that supports pixel shader 2.0 or better, MSTS didn't require pixel shader.

[conrail1]

Page 11 of the documentations pretty much outlines the system specs that OpenRails has targeted and allows the OR development team to avoid the compromises that we’ve seen with other train games.

http://www.openrails.org/SoftDocs.pdf

“For the future
Open Rails software is aimed at the serious hobbyist. Open Rails software is being developed
specifically for a train sim community member who cares about loco physics, train handling,
signals and intelligent AI behavior. We believe those users are willing to invest in a more
powerful computer to ensure they get the results they want. Therefore, development of the
Open Rails software will be focused on optimizing its performance on multi-core CPU systems
with mid-to-high end graphics cards. It would be nice to support the less powerful computers,
and it’s technically possible to do so, but with limited resources, the Open Rails development
team assigns a lower priority to this.”

[OrangeBlossom]

I disagree with that sentiment completely.

This should not be a toy only for the rich boy's club.

[conrail1]

I disagree with that sentiment completely.

This should not be a toy only for the rich boy's club.

Has very little to do with the “rich boy's club” but more to do with having to compromise the program to cater to low spec hardware. Just like the documentation says, those who understand and are serious about train handling/operation simulation are most likely serious about computer hardware and performance also.

Really nothing new here, just the same concept that many game developers have taken.

[OrangeBlossom]

Whats happening with other games is totally irrelevant. Lets end that right now.

If a guy with a quad core and a $600 video card can only get 120 FPS instead of 425 FPS on account of compromises that also opens it up to people who cannot afford more than a $250 video card, then we compromise it. Its a pretty hard sell that the guy with deep pockets deserves 425 FPS at the expense of half the user base.

Anything else IS a "rich boys club" issue.

I suspect there are a few people involved in the development of this who already have the super computer resources and have blinders on to anything else. Somebody had better put a leash on these people. Some of these same people also think this game needs to parallel the top milestones of other game development.

But those people forget that this game is being developed for this community, and not for some other game community. What any other game community's development standards are is totally irrelevant. Last I checked, this community also included many many people who can't afford expensive gear.