Rio Grande Southern Railroad stutter

[gremlin1812]

G'day all, I have recently installed "Rio Grande Southern Railroad" as a stand alone OR install, I noticed while running the route there were places where the frame rates would drop momentarily and would get some stutter. There dose not seem to be anything that would cause this (scenery wise) at these locations, I have attached the log file.
Regards
BarrieOpenRailsLog Rio Grande Southern Railroad.zip

[Peter M]

Hi Barrie,

I have noticed this in some places too, especially the facilities in Dolores. For me, entering that area will cause drastic frame rate drops and sometimes even freezes OR, but that is likely due to my lower computer specs.

I have a feeling the slowdown has either to do with the custom terrain textures in the town, or that a lot of the tiles in the area have water enabled when they don't need them. If either is the cause, they are both easily remedied in TSRE.

Peter

[gremlin1812]

G'day Peter, my pc is quite low spec but I have things like shadows turned off. I am no good at these editors I am 73 now and the mind is fading fast I guess I will just wait for a update but won't bank on it as it runs not too bad. Did you check out the LOG?
Regards
Barrie

[derekmorton]

Hi Barrie,

There is nothing useful in the log.

[Peter M]

Hi Barrie,

Reading your Log file, it looks like there are a lot of errors in the world files, which might be slowing down Open Rails a little bit. I remember fixing those awhile back when I installed the route. If I remember correctly, there is a small tag line at the end of many of the world files, after the closing bracket. OR apparently doesn't like reading files that have that line, but the only solution I have found is to delete it. This is pretty tedious, and you must open each file to check for the line of text. (I don't know if this edit can be automatically done in Route Riter, as I've never been able to get it to work on my computer)

I've also noticed that missing sound file errors tend to impact the performance as well, especially when running the route maxes out your computer's abilities. If you are comfortable editing the .wag files in the trainset folder, you can easily replace them with the default sounds.

Keep in mind that having frame rates slow down in more populated areas is natural, so how much of a drop are you experiencing? On my computer, running a train into Dolores took me down from about 35 to <10.

Peter

[R. Steele]

Hi Barrie,

Reading your Log file, it looks like there are a lot of errors in the world files, which might be slowing down Open Rails a little bit. I remember fixing those awhile back when I installed the route. If I remember correctly, there is a small tag line at the end of many of the world files, after the closing bracket. OR apparently doesn't like reading files that have that line, but the only solution I have found is to delete it. This is pretty tedious, and you must open each file to check for the line of text. Peter

Peter, more than likely those lines in the world file added after the last bracket are from Route Riter or another msts utility that checks world files. You don't have to open each file -- just use any search and replace utility like Search and Replace http://www.funduc.com/ and replace all the instances of that added line with an empty space. I don't think these lines would cause the stutter, but I cannot say for certain.

[Peter M]

Thank you for the tip! I'm sure it will save a lot of time in the future.

I've never really been sure what really impacts frame rates and what doesn't - sometimes I think I see a pattern and then I find out it's not the case. If Open Rails repeatedly has to search for missing sound files every time they are referenced, I would think that that would slow performance - but maybe not. Does OR stop searching for files when they aren't found the first time?

From my (very) basic experiences with programing, the computer can process information WAY faster than it can print out text, so printing out hundreds of lines in the log file at the beginning of an activity could cause OR to start slowly. However, I think you are right, this is not going to impact performance in any visible way.

Peter

[R. Steele]

Also not being familiar with how the code operates I can't say for certain - in this case. With regard to lots of sound warnings or errors in the log, that can certainly cause OR to choke. Anyway you slice it, if the log is full of warning lines it makes it harder to find something when you need to diagnose a problem...that's why I make it a practice to fix as many log warnings or errors that I can.

[gremlin1812]

G'day All, the Rio Grande Southern Railroad is now fixed and running a lot better but I have found another route " Milwaukee Road Idaho Division" with unknown token Ruler's listed in WORLD files I think these can safely be removed. I have attached the OpenRails log so others can see and maybe confirm my plan.
Regards
Barrie
OpenRailsLog Milwaukee Road Idaho Division.zip

[ebnertra000]

If you can find the rulers in the world files, they're safe to remove. I've left a couple in by mistake and had to do that

[atsf37l]

Hi Barrie. I'm glad to hear you found a fix. 73 eh? The route builder is pushing 76!

I loaded up the route this morning and was getting frame rates between 80 and 125 depending on what direction you are looking or from where you are looking. Running Win 7 64 Pro with two gigs of dedicated memory for the sim.

This route does eat up the hardware capacities.

How would you feel about sending me your repaired world tiles and let me check em out? Maybe I'll do an upgrade for previous users.

[gremlin1812]

G'day ebnertra000, I thought that wold be the case but better to ask than be sorry.
Regards and thanks.
Barrie

[gremlin1812]

G'day Herb, you have quite impressive machine there compared to my old clunker, still it serves it's purpose. I attache the files.
Regards
Barrie

[atsf37l]

Thanks. I'll run some performance checks then get things backed up and load your files then do some comparison checks. I think that the additions were something to do with the ConBuilder folks - the "CarlosAG" ownership points me that way but I don't recall what it was that I did with them on the RGS route. Something about having started this project some 14 years ago and never expecting to go public with it..... lots of things got done then undone as the trip progressed. And like I say, 75+ finds it hard to remember some of this stuff!

We'll look about. These modified files can't do anything but help the performance so I don't think there will be any issue in replacing the defective files. Thanks for doing the legwork. Must have taken you a while.

I'm doing some major file transfers this weekend, opening up more space on this beast, and I don't want to take a chance of screwing up the RGS while doing something in the middle of all this moving and shuffling. So it will be later this coming week before I can get to this.

[atsf37l]

OK Gremlin, I'm confused. More than usual. LOL! In your zip file there is only one World file??? My log from an earlier test shows hundreds of World files under "Warning" from OR??? And when I check them they all come up with the CarlosAG line after the final bracket.

OK, back to work. I'll dig into this later.....