Frequent Crashing to Desktop; Consist Problem?

[meeshu]

Problems running a consist of 158 tankers plus 12 locomotives.

Tanker cars are from here.

Locomotives are from here.

Consist intended for running on Europe 2 route (Innsbruck to St. Anton), and running from Zams to St. Anton.

Tried running under Open Rails MG V60.3, Open Rails 1.3.1 (official/stable), and Open Rails (unstable) dated 4th May. But the activity would (eventually) crash back to Desktop! I have yet to successfully complete this activity!

This is a simple drive from Zams to St. Anton with no AI traffic activity. There are no other (major) programs running in the background. No anti-virus, no internet etc!

I didn't closely monitor the frame rates, but I think it went down to around 120 fps at the worst for this route.

Tested this consist in NEC V4 route by running from Bayview to Philadelphia and using Open Rails 1.3.1. But again the activity crashed back to the desktop before long! Frame rates went as low as about 110 fps here.

All crashes seemed to occur while in "trackside view" ("4" key).

I've successfully run some longer trains over these routes (although with the occasional crash), but with different locomotives and cars.

The consist locomotives have 10,965 polygons for first LOD (to 200 m). I think that is a fairly high polygon count!

The consist tankers have 4,918 polygons for the LOD (to 2000m). For a railroad car, I believe this is also a high polygon count!

Maybe because of the high number of polygons that have to be processed for this consist, and maybe also because my HDD is not providing data fast enough for the activity, that could be the cause of the crashes??

Open Rails 1.3.1. log file attached for reference for the crash while running in NEC V4 route (zipped because text file too big to attach as is).

OpenRailsLog_NEC.zip

Ideas?

[derekmorton]

Can you post the con file, so I can test on necv4.

The last exception, I am sure I have seen before from you.

[meeshu]

Hi Derek,

Consist file attached.

6_6_sd9043_158_tank.zip

Yes. I've mentioned the possible issue of slow data transfer from my HDD before in an earlier post. I suspect that it may be a contributing factor (or maybe the ONLY factor) to the persistent crashes I'm getting.

[derekmorton]

I meant the last exception in the log file.

[derekmorton]

I can run end to end on necv4 with the 12/158 consist, no crashes.
FPS got down to 60 in some places.
I have a 10 year old i7-930 oc to 3.4Mhz and an nVidia 1070ti.

I suspect your system is unstable.

[meeshu]

Thanks for your time and for your feedback!

Actually I have an old(ish) computer as well! It is using an i5-3570K CPU overclocked to 4.1 GHz, 8 GB DDR3 RAM at 1866 MT/s, and a Radeon HD7770. Using HDD's only, no SSD's (yet).

As mentioned previously, maybe the slow data transfer rate from the HDD is causing or contributing to the crashes?

I did notice very slight pauses/stutters on occasion while the activity ran. I assumed that was due to slight delay in transferring data from the HDD(?)

What I've done (sort of out of desperation) was to use Shape File Manager to reduce the LOD distances a bit for the locomotives and for the tanker cars. THIS time I was able to complete the activity successfully by running from Zams to St. Anton!

But if I have an unstable computer (wrt Open Rails/MSTS), what to do about it?

[derekmorton]

Drop the overclock first and test.
Due to graphics card problems, I had to underclock my video card to stop it crashing.

[baldwin]

I suspect the video card cannot handle the train with all LODs, it only has 1Gb of memory. I also run an o/c i5, in my case it runs at 4.2Ghz, but my video card is a 1050Ti with 4Gb of memory. I have my fps locked to the monitor refresh rate and with that consist on the NEC4, it remained at 60 in any view.

[meeshu]

Thanks for the comments!

I've limited the CPU overclock to 3.8 GHz instead of 4.1 GHz. And the test activities all seem to run quite smoothly, so far!

Yes, the video card might be a limiting factor (and maybe the HDD as well?), especially if the CPU at 4.1 GHz is processing faster than the video card and/or the HDD can cope with(?).

So, for the moment, I'll keep the present computer settings (@ 3.8 GHz CPU) and continue with the test activities.