Railworks America

I was curious to see why I kept getting crashes while trying to write a scenario. It let's me move a bit on the HUD Map, I believe that's what it's called. Then freezes and I can have end the process and restart the game. As well as if I zoom up while writing the scenario, the game crashes as well. Am I able to do anything with the dump files it generates? I have not added anything to my computer or route lately that would be causing this that I know of. Curious to see if anyone know why this might be happening.

Thanks

I have been getting crashing while painting terrain. After about 3 minutes of painting it crashes with a dump file of 0 bytes. No the dump files are useless to us. You can email them to DTG tech support, but if it is not one of their products causing it they can't help you. ie; building your own route...

artimrj wrote:I have been getting crashing while painting terrain. After about 3 minutes of painting it crashes with a dump file of 0 bytes. No the dump files are useless to us. You can email them to DTG tech support, but if it is not one of their products causing it they can't help you. ie; building your own route...

I was running into that at random intervals while redoing Donner Bob. The crashing while painting. Same thing, IE less than 5mins before lockup.
It would be fine for weeks at a time, but then I'd have nothing but crashes all day on a particular day. I'd try restarting the computer to no avail.
Then the next day... nothing wrong.
I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually, or at least partly, something to do with Steam updates. I had gotten one of those large Steam updates when it happened last time.

artimrj wrote:I have been getting crashing while painting terrain. After about 3 minutes of painting it crashes with a dump file of 0 bytes. No the dump files are useless to us. You can email them to DTG tech support, but if it is not one of their products causing it they can't help you. ie; building your own route...

I've had the same issue since TS2013 - no matter how much I gripe to RSC/DTG, it never gets addressed, as I'm on XP and discounted from "normal" folk.

Well this happened a few months ago after an nVidia update. I disabled prerendering 3d frames and it went away until a week or so ago. I can tell whe it is getting ready to crash, the paint starts to spread real slow. Now have the habit of hitting F2 every few seconds while touch up painting. As it almost seems like there is a click limit not so much time. I got new nVidia drivers again last week, so I am wondering if I roll back it will go away again...

This probably should be moved to the geek speak page because I believe it's a computer issue more than a TS problem. I have no clue what this is however I can report that I never have this problem. I always get out of editing by hitting the f2 key before I exit and if I make a lot of additions occasionally I get a crash when I close the editor however as long as I have remembered to do the f2 nothing is lost when I restart.

I'll look tonight at which version of driver I am on because I know it is not nearly the latest. When it comes to NVidia drivers I have the theory if it ain't broke don't fix it.

buzz456 wrote:I'll look tonight at which version of driver I am on because I know it is not nearly the latest. When it comes to NVidia drivers I have the theory if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I usually think the same way, but 3 updates ago we got a bunch of new features like the Shader Cache and DSR smoothing.

artimrj wrote:

buzz456 wrote:I'll look tonight at which version of driver I am on because I know it is not nearly the latest. When it comes to NVidia drivers I have the theory if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I usually think the same way, but 3 updates ago we got a bunch of new features like the Shader Cache and DSR smoothing.

Yes and someone said there is now an SLI profile for TS2015 as well.
Plus I read somewhere that Nvidia had fine tuned the drivers for the 700 series cards.

In my older PC setup I had disabled pre rendered frames, IE set them to 0 but they don't have that option anymore, unless they recently changed it back.
The old Railworks 3 ran best for me with no pre rendered frames for some reason.

I also can tell when it's about to crash when in the editor. My paint application slows and my system fans speed up.

I don't believe that it has much to do with a graphics driver per se, unless when it is loading in Windows there is a hidden fault..
IMO its probably due to the following:
The editor is a resource hog and will eventually cause issues the longer it is used. The virtual address space used by TS2015 (max 4GB in a 64-bit OS, 2GB minus VRAM in a 32-bit OS) becomes defragmented and/or the contiguous space becomes smaller with editor use and TS 2015 runs out of VAS to load into. CRASH!!! Possible fix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315407 (Unfortunately no data supplied for Windows 64-bit Os's so the setting is hit or miss)
You can see this VAS depletion, etc effect by running VMMAP (from Sysinternals) in the background.

This will probably be eliminated if the next build of TS is 64-bit where it will have 8 terabytes of VAS.

Another possible issue is with the desktop heap where due to the way that the editor operates it cause desktop heap exhaustion and you get what is in effect an out of memory crash. Again, this is basically a VAS issue using a 32-bit app. Hopefully this should be fixed when TS becomes 64-bit. How to modify: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947246

Another possibility is a "memory mismatch" where the editor calls for a piece of code which although has been loaded into the VAS has not yet been loaded into RAM - this again causes a crash - yet another 32-bit issue. These are usually categorized as hard page faults, and they may be more than windows can handle - CRASH!

It would be interesting to run the editor after a "clean" boot or possibly "SAFE mode" or with something like JetBoost running before opening the editor, to see if the crashes still occur.

These are just theories.
pH

I have had issues before like when I was flying around the game would crash constantly, and that went away after a few days. Now I am able to fly all over the route like a jet and no crashes. But it seems only when I zoom up while in the map mode when number nine it crashes. I've tested it on some other route's, works just fine expect the Miami Route. So hopefully it'll go away pretty soon like my last bug did. Not that I need that map to write scenarios, just helpful.

artimrj wrote:

buzz456 wrote:I'll look tonight at which version of driver I am on because I know it is not nearly the latest. When it comes to NVidia drivers I have the theory if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I usually think the same way, but 3 updates ago we got a bunch of new features like the Shader Cache and DSR smoothing.

Just a FYI I am using the 344.11 driver. with a GTX760 vid card.

Peter. If it was a resource hog problem, then the problem would be consistent I think.
It will work fine for hours a day, day after day. Then poof, it's locking up when you've hardly even got the editor loaded for a day.

Eric
I may have not explained that well - the VAS can be defragmented or lose contiguous space by any part of code that the program is trying to use, and it can be idiosyncratic.
The VAS is "very sensitive" eg lose just 1 megabyte of free contiguous space (out of the $GB available) at the wrong time and TS2015 will crash.
My post is not about resources but the "apparent fragility" of the VAS when using something like TS2015 editor.
As I say its just a theory but this is what used to happen with FSX.
pH

So does anyone know possibly why this issue for me is happening or maybe a fix? I cloned the route and deleted signals, still persist when I zoom up in the black map. Apparently it's the route as one of my testers said they had the same issue. But it never have happened before, just started. But if someone else is also experiencing the issue, apparently it is with the route. Is it possible it can draw that much when I zoom up therefore crashing?