Performance
Rail3D Build #106 makes some major changes to the way track is rendered - this is intended to boost the performance of the program and smoothness of frame rendering. This is achieved by using multiple processor threads to generate the track elements, see Multi- Threading
Areas with high track density
In previous builds, the simulation would often slow, or even hang, when entering areas of high track density. This was because the program paused to generate all the track elements as they came into view and if there are a lot of track elements it takes significant time to generate them all.
In build #106, track element generation is handled in a worker thread, so the main process continues to run and should continue to produce smooth frame rates. however, it still takes time to generate all the elements of the track, and you may see incomplete track elements (eg missing sleepers, or ohle supports) until the generation process is complete. Normally, the track generation happens sufficiently far ahead that the process is not seen, but under certain circumstances, for instance when jumping to an area of high density using the “goto” command, you may see incomplete track at first. This can also occur if the program runs out of graphic resources sufficient to create the track elements.
Incomplete track generation after jumping to a high density area - the view refreshes with the full track after a second or two.
Effect of 3D track model.
Obviously the new 3D track models are much more complex than the older non-3D models and take much more processor effort to generate the track element. Provided you have a powerful enough processor and graphics card, the extra effort is worth it to get the benefit of the higher quality track representation. If your computer is not powerful enough to cope with the higher demands you will experience excessive slowing of frames as track is generated and/or incomplete track elements as the system runs out of resources. In this case you should turn off the 3D track model and use the default non-3D model: you will still get the benefit of the multiple-thread generation.
V106
loneaussie 13/02/2015 00:29:13