Crashes While Editing

[artimrj]

nVidia has 2 pre rendering options one for 3D and one for normal. One of mine was set to 1, changed it to 0 and last night I did not crash. But I only got to work about 35 minutes.

[OldProf]

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.

While I'm sure that you know more about computers than I do, Buzz, I have to disagree with you here. I've been using the same computer for several years: sometimes the editor crashes (I use the scenario editor rather than the route editor, but it's obvious that they both crash easily and unpredictably) and sometimes it doesn't. For me, crashes may typically occur when I edit a scenario for too long a time or make too many changes (but "too much" and "too many" can be anything from 1 minute to 30 or any number), or when I stupidly switch from editing to test-running and back again without exiting and reopening TS between steps. "May" is the operative word here, because the crashes are completely unpredictable. What I'm saying is that the computer remains a constant while the editor is a random variable. In human terms, this is what happens to us as well: our bodies remain the same, but sometimes when we try to "edit" a jar by opening it all goes well, while other times the jar winds up broken on the floor. Going back to the TS editors, RSC frequently alters the code that makes TS function and either does not know or does not care whether or how those changes might affect the editors. All I can say is that the scenario editor seems to have become more stable over the years, but seemingly random, unexplainable crashes still occur. Its a shame that those dump files cannot be read by either end users or the folks at RSC -- they just might reveal something.

I'd really like to know whether the route and scenario makers at RSC use the same editors as us peons.

[buzz456]

I don't know all that much. I just know what works and what doesn't most of the time. Not to be argumentative Tom which you know I certainly don't like to do however since I don't suffer this problem the game should at least theoretically be the same for both of us I must come to the conclusion that it is something to do with a difference in the computers. When Peter gave that excellent comment above the biggest problem was I didn't understand most of it. I do have a monitor that tells me the percentage of RAM and CPU usage going on and I have seen things crash when the RAM usage gets super high (technical term) but other than that I can put scenery down for hours (backing up with the F2) key every few minutes and the only time it takes a dump is once in a while when I go to get out of the editor. As I said before as long as I hit the F2 key before the exit even if it dumps, the latest changes are still there.
Whew. Long post.

[artimrj]

I am also thinking it is computer related, at least video driver related. However, I have been talking with some of the upper echelon and discover I am not alone in this matter. It seems that the editors are using all of the memory up, like a memory leak type thing. It was suggested to me to turn graphics details down in game while editing as that is what is stealing the memory, graphics. A suggestion of running task manager to watch what is happening also. I am not sure which memory is being eaten up though, video or cpu. I am going to try also running logmate while do some route building this weekend and try to force the crash. But as I said earlier changing that pre rendering item to app controlled stop my crashing on Friday

I think this problem is game and computer related.

I currently have 2 installs of TS I am using. One is a cut down versions with only the Lafayette route and assets and core files. The other is my full blown TS install with 184 gig of stuff. They both act the same way.

I am running nVidia driver 347.25 on my GTX760.

[artimrj]

OK here we go. Fresh boot up and open google earth and task manager and steam and fire up TS. Open Lafayette and fly to my work area. At this point Task Manager is showing I have 3.7 gig of memory free. I add some houses and thing to a small area and then start to paint. I paint the grass for the house and some gravel for a driveway area, then I go to the fields that are already there but have raggedy edges. So I make my brush small and start trimming it up. Each click of the mouse took away 3 or 400 MB. So I figured it was going to crash soon enough. So I would click a few paint spots, then save. I did this about 50 times and was down to 0 free memory. Still no crash. So I just finished dressing up a 20 acres field on 3 sides, saved again and that was about 30 minutes. 20 of it was with 0 free memory. No crash. I then hit the play button and immediately had 2.7 gig free of memory. I exit sim all the way and have 3.4 gig free. At the start there was 6.1 gig free.

All I changed to stop the crashing was making the pre rendering function of the nVidia control panel to App Controlled. In the newest version if the Control Panel there are 2 pre rendering options, both need to be APP Controlled. It does not stop the memory usage but does stop the crash, at the moment.

[buzz456]

Maybe that's why I haven't had any problems. My has been set on App controlled all along.

[artimrj]

Well that was short lived. Over time it will crash. Watching the memory though provided other info. When I get down to about 300 meg free, if I quit painting and go and do other things like places buildings and adjust roads and plant tress and other lofts like fences, the memory starts coming back (getting released), then I can paint some more until it gets down to far, then do other things and repeat. This lets me be in a session a few hours instead of minutes.

[Ericmopar]

Ahhh.
Another words the program doesn't release memory while painting. It may not be able to release memory while painting until that section of edited ground texture is released through saving. Otherwise the program would lose a part of the ground texture before you finished the job.
That means more memory won't help in this thing running smother while in game, but it does help the editor if a person is doing advanced things in it and using tons of memory.

I ran a test some time ago and found this game doesn't like to use available paging file too well either. Another words it sometimes runs out of RAM but won't switch to using available paging file space like most programs.
That was a couple of years ago and that situation might have changed.

All this being said it doesn't explain why it sometimes crashes when only painting for a minute.

[peterhayes]

Bob
IMO this has nothing to do with physical RAM its most likely due the VAS errors that I post above.
If it was RAM you would get a warning from Windows to turn down your settings and if you ignored that you would get a BSOD, ie a Windows crash.
This is a TS2015 crash and that's why the VAS is probably involved.
This will not be solved until TS2015 becomes 64-bit and has 8 terabytes of VAS to play with.
Regards
pH

[Bananarama]

This is one reason why I choose to paint using the old RS program (route copy contains only terrain, track and roads). Once done, I transfer the updated Mixmap tiles to TS. Not elegant by any means, and some of the paint tools don't work as well as the TS version, but I can paint for hours without the slightest worry the PC's about to crash.

RS also loads lightning fast in comparison to TS, as the memory footprint for the program is fairly small. Anything needing a touch up I do in TS. Too bad it lacks the lighting and other neat features of the current version, else I would be inclined to edit exclusively in RS. Side by side, it's easy to see that TS has bloated a great deal since.

[artimrj]

Hack I used to paint for hours as well, until the last update. Now I can actually watch the memory slowly eat away. Then come back when I am not painting. So if I monitor it I can go for several hours now, just can not continuously paint for hours. It is strange how do other jobs frees the memory back up so I can whittle it away again while painting. One tool eats it up and another frees it back up.