What are my options - reaching memory limit (I guess)

[gwgardner]

When I try to edit a scenario or run a train near downtown, in my Fort Worth 1925 route, I get a crash. Memory usage by TS2018 at downtown, is 3.2 gig +.

What are my options? Bob Artem has mentioned a max number of objects per tile (2000 objects, I recall? I'll search for it). Is that the real limit? Too much per tile in downtown? Or the overall memory usage for the whole route?

Is the 'number of draws' the same as the 'number of objects?' In the trouble spot, where crashes occur, there are 2800 draws when looking in one direction, 1300 looking in an opposite directions. I tried willy-nilly deleting a bunch of objects, but numer of draws didn't go down that much.

I hate to remove downtown - I lose most of the Interurban part of the route.

[gwgardner]

Update:

issue above not resolved, but I did lower my scenery quality to low, turned off anti-aliasing, low shadows, low water, and the memory load at the problem spot went down by 1 gig. I don't get a crash with those settings. Before I had all settings at max.

[later] Forgot to mention that I reduced draw distanc to the minimim also.

[buzz456]

There is no magic number however there are a lot of tricks you can pull like duplicating and whole section that's not near the tracks and replicating it making many things into one. We have been doing that successfully with huge blocks of 3D trees. Were you in a helicopter type view when these crashes occurred or in the cab or in view two or what? My first question is it the game or your computer that's choking? How did you decide that the thing was using 3.2 gigs just for the game? Some screenies somewhere near the crash might help for suggestions.

[gwgardner]

I was flying from one area to another, attempting to setup a screenshot. So I guess that's '2' view? It was actually in edit mode, but occured in run mode to, view '2.'

I have the system monitor on and track the memory claimed by TS2018. Any time it gets near 3.2 gig I know I have to save and quit edit mode, then go back in; or do as you suggested earlier, quit painting and go place some objects for a while.

By 'huge blocsk of 3d trees' do you mean using 'asset blocks?'

To tell the truth, my eyes can't tell any difference between the 'maxed-out' graphics settings and the low scenery detail setting with no anti-aliasing. So I'm happy to see a drop of memory usage so huge. I'll go with that and see if I still get crashes in the future around downtown.

[buzz456]

Yes using asset blocks. You didn't answer my query about how much RAM you have.

[gwgardner]

Lost internet for two days. I have 16 gig, but you guys told me some time ago that only 4 gig can be used by TS2018.

Can you tell the difference between scenery detail at low vs high?

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Armstrong Powerhouse recently published an add-on that removes ambient audio domes from selected routes.

Apparently, audio eats up lots of memory and perhaps isn't cached/instanced by the game properly so the same sample gets loaded into memory by every audio dome.

When you've used lots of ambient audio, you might want to check.

[minerman146]

I can share some of my experience here.

- Audio Domes - remove them all. Can you hear birds chirping from inside the cab of a running locomotive? - nope!
- Reboot your machine: Once a week.
- Razor Cortex: use this to shut down unneeded crap BEFORE you start a build session: https://www.razerzone.com/cortex
- Do a game verification if you haven't in the past 6 months.
- Asset Blocks of Trees - you have a choice: do them first while you have fps and struggle with low frame later or the other way around.
- Game crashes when painting terrain - do 15 minute chunks and save
- Game crashes at the 45 minute mark if you don't save.
- Game Crashes in a specific area- this is a precursor to a corrupted track.bin file: Find the bad ribbon of track, cut it out, save and replace (this sucks)
- loft pins - the more you have for streets and track the more likely a crash or the corrupted track.bin issue - AVOID using the track smooth tool and set your grades in 50 meter increments at .01 percent per until you get the desired grade. (same goes for roads) you can go to 20 meter for the steep stuff.
-corrupted tiles - they don't start out corrupted - they BECOME corrupted. If you back up every day and retain backups for 3 or 4 months, you can restore and replace the corrupted tile ( I am thinking scenery tiles, but this applies to track tiles as well)
- signal legs - the signal markers use 1 mb per freaking marker!
- dense scenery - there are a boat load of variables. 4000 plus assets per kilometer of LOD 10 assets (BOOOOOM!) reduce your LOD to 4 in dense areas ... no sense on having a pot of flowers draw 1000 meters away! Think of Fort Worth in the center square of Tic Tac Toe. The game will load ALL the tiles that surround/ are adjacent to you to pre-load them. If your LOD is high on adjacent boxes AND your in a dense area with high load this multiplies the affect. Think about it!
- STRM - distant terrain - YES, drawing imported terrain has a cost!
- dynamic lighting - TURN IT OFF
- FALL: this season ** kills FPS.
- lighting - Cab Light TURN IT OFF
- rolling stock - for me the max was 836 pieces of rolling stock on my Quick Drive - then the route got shaky for users.

Draws vs Assets: its the draws that crash you not the assets - 3D trees, bushes anything with a leaf on it - use judiciously.

You really cant reduce your LOD while you build but you can reduce draw distance - that will help.
And when your done, test by cranking everything up to max and drive your train. 15 fps is the FLOOR - other people have to drive your route be aware that they may not have 16 gigs and quad core.

That's all I got ... hope it helps!
Your route is gorgeous, I wish you great success.
-

[gwgardner]

Lots of interesting points there minerman. Thanks.

I backup now several times a day, and I also check after each save, to see if it actually saved. Twice now I have merrily gone my way, saving repeatedly, only to find out later that nothing was actually saved. (I'm guessing that problem is related to Windows somehow losing track of keystrokes - I don't know.)

Since the latest build of TS2018, I get crashes a LOT after a save. Fortunately, the crash seems to be related to the game going back into run mode AFTER the save, so I haven't lost anything that way.

Since reducing draw distance, I have not had a paint crash.

[buzz456]

You are doing saves by hitting the F2 key every few minutes right? I've mentioned before about getting the Iobit freeware and opening the little guy called the Performance Monitor which just sits up in the top corner of your screen. Every time I hit the F2 I hit clean RAM. I can't remember the last time I had a crash while route building using that method. Very occasionally I get a crash when I do the complete save but again using the F2 key just before the save really seems to have mostly eliminated it.

[gwgardner]

You are doing saves by hitting the F2 key every few minutes right? I've mentioned before about getting the Iobit freeware and opening the little guy called the Performance Monitor which just sits up in the top corner of your screen. Every time I hit the F2 I hit clean RAM. I can't remember the last time I had a crash while route building using that method. Very occasionally I get a crash when I do the complete save but again using the F2 key just before the save really seems to have mostly eliminated it.

I've gone to iobit and downloaded the free version. Sends me to CNET, which gives me something called Driver Booster by Iobit. Is that what you refer to?

[buzz456]

No.

iobit.jpg