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TS display problems

R

rohan

Charter Member
I installed TS for the first time at the weekend on a PC that was supposed to be state-of-the-art when I bought it five years ago. The display was terrible - stutters, flashing scenery and no sound despite having DirectX 9c installed. What surprised me was that dropping the resolution of the windowed display made no difference whatever, so I gave up in disgust and uninstalled TS.

Yesterday, I installed TS on a netbook I bought last year and the difference was amazing. With the highest resolution and all sliders maxxed except for visibility, performance was great except that the scenery jumped past the moving train every two or three seconds instead of flowing smoothly. I guess this is the same sort of result as the FSX stutters that people describe in that forum. The surprising thing here is that dropping the resolution introduces other problems instead of just curing the jumping scenery - moire-like fringes on the track; wave-like motion on distant fences; flashing fences and catenary wires; scenery parts becoming visible just after the engine has passed them.

I'm guessing that the fringes, waves and flashing are caused by the fact that I'm using an HDTV for my display and there's a display conflict between the hardware resolution of 1920 by 1080 and the lower software resolutions in the TS display system (all 4 by 3 variations of course). Please can someone comment on whether that may be the case. I'd also like to have your suggestions about curing the jumping scenery if that's at all possible,
thanks in advance,
Ro
 
Did you install msts BIN?? It's a 3rd party add-on that is really a must have. I've posted a link to it in my "must have" sticky thread
 
Not yet. I applied all the fixes / updates from the steam4me "tutorial" mentioned in your sticky thread except for MSTSbin, and wanted to just check out the performance before I took the install any further. Does the MSTSbin add-on bring any improvements to the display sub-system ?
Ro
 
Well, MSTSBin helps a bit, mostly with the instruments which are clearer with less jaggies on needles and markings. The downside is that flashing and waves on scenery are worse though scenery movement (the jumping) is a bit smoother. The biggest thing affecting scenery jumping is to run in a window or full screen - it's much smoother full screen though there's a momentary stutter every 15 or 20 seconds, while in a window it's a jump every 3 or 4 seconds.

When I first installed MSTSBin, I selected all the options but that resulted in some wierd effects on the sound. Now I've reinstalled it with only the default option selected and it's much better. I also originally installed the MSTSBin extra screens and gizmos add-on, but found the "extra screens" made it harder to read the details on the setup screens so ripped that out as well.

Anyway, MSTSBin does help with the display a little (I can finally see that some trackside displays have speeds on them) as the instruments are clearer, and is a necessary prerequisite for some of the trains I want to install. And I now know that I get better results running full screen. When I have my new PC built, all of this will transfer over, but I just hope that the higher performance parts will help with the flashes and waves.

If you have any ideas about how to cure these issues, I'd appreciate hearing them,
thanks for the help so far,
Ro
 
I think the stutters are from it loading the scenery. Is the route your runnin really detailed??

One thing to think about when buildin your new rig......................MSTS is almost 10 years old. It doesn't use the graphics card like the newer games do. I uses the processor more, but it can't use multi cores. So what ya need is a bigger an faster procesor for it.

Now I'm not sayin multi core pc's are better. You can always assaign msts to 1 of them an everything else to the opthers.

There is a new (freeware) sim in the works that is msts compatible, but it's got a long ways to go before it's ready.

It will use multi cores an more of the graphic card than msts does.
 
Thanks for the input. The problems show up with just a basic TS install, MSTSBin, XTracks and Newroads. All 6 default routes show the same problems - there's nothing else installed, not a single add-on but those listed.

My new PC has an AMD 1090T 6-core and an HD-5870 with Velociraptor drives, but I think I'll probably be installing XPHome as well as Win7Pro just so that I can run several CFS2 installs (being another older sim, there's sometimes a Win7 problem setting VSync to keep CFS2 happy). As a result, I have plenty of memory for both CPU and GPU if there's just a way to make TS use it ...

Thanks again,
Ro
 
I still think it's a memory problem. BIN usually fixes that. But maybe it's not on your pc.

On you ts short cut try anddin the mem switch to the end of it. Mine looks like this

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Train Simulator\train.exe" -mem:1024

Notice the part in red. there is a space between the quotation mark and the slash. Try addin that an see if it helps any.

You can add more than that, but all I've ever read says ts won't use anymore, but it can't hurt anything to try it either


EDIT:

Try lowerin your settings first. Take all of the sliders down aways an see if that helps. If it does, then it fer sure should be a memory prob, and the switch should help.
 
I used the steam4me guide to installing TS so I already have that switch on my shortcut plus the reference to train.exe instead of launcher.exe. Like you, I saw the comments about not gaining from using a higher value than 1024, but there's no harm in trying ...

Haven't had time to try using lower slider settings since I installed Bin, but it will be interesting to see whether that has the same effect as before ... it will probably be Thursday before I can report the results.

Thanks again,
Ro
 
Well, I tried running TS with all the quality sliders down at 1. There was only a very slight improvement in scenery jumping - it was a little smoother at times but not all the time. There was also a picture freeze every few minutes - very brief but it was there, sometimes a minute apart, sometimes two or three minutes apart. I then dropped the quality sliders down to 0, and got only another very slight improvement - just the same. Lastly, I changed the display setting from maximum quality to maximum performance - with the same results yet again.

I actually did all this twice - once at maximum screen resolution and again at minimum screen resolution. The results are always the same regardless of which parameter I changed - if I drop the quality of the display, I get a small improvement in display smoothness, but even with everything at the lowest setting, I can't get a nice smooth display ...

Oh, I also did the same tests in both windowed mode and full screen with the same results - no great improvements at all, which I find rather surprising.

I think I've reached the point where it will be the quality of the add-ons I had planned to use which will dictate whether I will install TS on my new PC. If they make it look as if it's worth my taking time to install TS then I'll do so,
thanks for your input,
Ro
 
Ro,

There's somethin wrong goin on there. You're machine ought to handle the game much better than that.

I'm not sure what it is tho. You could stop by train-sim and ask there. Lot's of folks over there that can prolly help ya.
 
Gramps,
I did as you suggested and now know who the villain was - the GPU. In the interests of economy, Samsung included a GPU in their design which isn't as DirectX compatible as Intel would have us believe. Even though the GPU passes both the DirectDraw and Direct3D tests in dxdiag, and TS only wants DirectX 7.0a compatibilty, it seems that there's a world of difference in how the GPU behaves with an external screen compared to the internal one. I reran my "tests" using the internal screen, and while that limits my resolution to 800 by 600 at best, the results are not exactly smooth but they are two orders of magnitude better than they were with the external screen I was using before, and still with all sliders at 3. I still get flashing on thin scenery like fences and wires, and on roads that cross the tracks, but no longer on points or the track itself, and I can live with that on this PC while I play with add-ons and tools.

I now feel that I CAN move forward with confidence in being able to install TS on the big PC when it's time.

Thanks very much for your input on this frustrating situation,
Ro
:ernae:
 
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