How many trains can RRT3 really handle?

[thietavu]

This has been an interesting question at least to me, since my forthcoming new Great China scenario creates a *lot* of traffic, to say the least... It would be interesting to hear people's experiences about the highest practical amount of trains running and/or possible crashes or other problems when going over a certain number. My computer is fairly powerful but not a "supercomputer" by today's standards.

My own experiences so far with Great China (a VERY demanding map with far over a million trees, 226 cities etc):

- 400 trains: smooth
- 500 trains: still pretty smooth
- 550 trains: becoming somewhat choppy, still well playable
- 600 trains: clear stuttering, still playable

I have tested this map with up to about 650 simultaneous trains running, but I intend to test the limits of the game with this (hopefully) final test run. With this computer, the practical limit seems to be somewhere around 700 trains, I guess, but unless the game engine can't tolerate it, I suppose even 1000+ trains could be possible on some system. Maybe even on this computer, if one doesn't care about the increasing stuttering in screen updates.

The restricting factor doesn't seem to be the graphics card - at least in most more or less modern computers. Memory isn't a problem, either, when you have at least 2 GB or so of it. What may surprise many, is this: RRT3 is actually *still* mostly a CPU-limited game! Its age shows in the game not being multi-threaded at all, so it can't utilize the many processing cores of modern computers. It only uses one core or processor - but it can tax that core or processor REAL hard, even today!! I have frequently witnessed 100% CPU loads in this game - and that is kind of amazing in a pretty modern computer running at 3.9 GHz..!

As I have written here elsewhere before, this means only one thing for us RRT3 fans: the game gets just better and better when time passes by and our computers become faster. I doubt my insanely detailed Great China scenario, for example, would have been playable 10 years ago... :)

[Sugus]

thietavu, I've played your great "China Ultimate" using RT3 Patch 1.06 some months (years?) ago and slightly remember about "problems" concerning the big number of trains. Running 400, 500 and more trains really starts to slow down RT3 - I trapped into the same situation - also "ages" ago - while playing the "Europe" map. As a programmer (software engineer) I assume, that the guys making RT3 simply didn't expect, that somebody after 2010 will still play an old game with a (then obviousely) poor graphic and - especially - with more than 100 (in words: one hundred) trains. Hmmmm - did you need more than that when playing the original maps or the campaign?

[thietavu]

thietavu, I've played your great "China Ultimate" using RT3 Patch 1.06 some months (years?) ago and slightly remember about "problems" concerning the big number of trains. Running 400, 500 and more trains really starts to slow down RT3 - I trapped into the same situation - also "ages" ago - while playing the "Europe" map. As a programmer (software engineer) I assume, that the guys making RT3 simply didn't expect, that somebody after 2010 will still play an old game with a (then obviousely) poor graphic and - especially - with more than 100 (in words: one hundred) trains. Hmmmm - did you need more than that when playing the original maps or the campaign?

That is so true. ;) The guys behind the RRT3 engine probably didn't know what the engine would be capable of with computers of these days. My latest test with "Great China" (= a totally re-made, far improved "China Ultimate") ended in April 1954 when the game simply crashed. It happened during a scripted event (Vietnam War) which has some effects like earthquake-sound, etc. Since that event alone doesn't seem to be responsible for what happened, I guess the game engine is (finally) near its limits in this scenario. I had almost 600 trains running, so this may have been a memory-related problem somewhere. This is the second time it happens in my endless test-runs, and both times the game crashed when playing the sound of an earthquake. Too many sounds going on at the same time? My sound card (M-Audio) isn't made for games at all, but for audio production, so I wouldn't be too surprised if the problem was in its drivers... Debugging these things takes time - but it needs to be done! ;)

So, yet another test run to do before releasing this monster to you guys... The experience should be very, very different from those early "China Ultimate" maps of mine. At least I don't get bored when testing this - it's a completely different China and game every single time. Anyone else out there creating these monstrous RRT3/TM scenarios? :)

[Sugus]

Earthquakes may be a reason for RT3 to crash. I remember having this situation with a former XP machine but I do no more know the scenario (likely "The Dividing Range"). Whenever the earthquake triggered, RT3 crashed. As soon as I disabled them by means of the editor, the map was playable.

[Hawk]

It's quite possibly the sound file associated with the earthquake that causes problems on some systems. It may require a good sound card as opposed to an on-board sound chip.
Personally I've never experienced problems with earthquakes. Then again, I've always had a good sound card and have never relied on an on-board sound chip.

Just speculating here.

[thietavu]

It's quite possibly the sound file associated with the earthquake that causes problems on some systems. It may require a good sound card as opposed to an on-board sound chip.
Personally I've never experienced problems with earthquakes. Then again, I've always had a good sound card and have never relied on an on-board sound chip.

Just speculating here.

Good speculations! :) In my case, the problem isn't really a bad sound card - but a "too good" one... One made for studio recordings, so it doesn't support even the most basic surround etc. effects common in games already in year 2000 or so. It's only built for music recording and playback - and in all that it is pretty great. It works well enough with even the new, demanding games like Skyrim, but good ol' RRT3 might be too much for her... ;) So, I'll remove the earthquakes and see what happens then.

[nedfumpkin]

If I'm not mistaken, I've had problems with earthquakes in 1.06 previously, can't say for sure with TM since I don't use them. It could be a bug in the exe since I think Milo tinkered with them. Just throwing that out there.

[Hawk]

If I'm not mistaken, I've had problems with earthquakes in 1.06 previously, can't say for sure with TM since I don't use them. It could be a bug in the exe since I think Milo tinkered with them. Just throwing that out there.

This is from the 1.06 pdf file.

Click on image to view full size

[thietavu]

Some new info about the limits of RRT3 engine... I have now successfully tested the Great China 4 scenario (TrainMaster map) with almost 870 trains running in the end between 221 cities and countless other sites. So, technically there doesn't really seem to be a limitation to the number of trains running.

The practical performance limits are another issue, however. My fairly powerful PC handles about 600 trains smoothly enough on this monster-map. After that, the performance starts to drop rapidly. 700 is still playable although not smooth. Speed settings above "slow" are practically unplayable then. Above that number one can only use "very slow" and even that isn't always smooth ride.

What puzzles me is the reason to this game engine behavior. The graphics card (Radeon 5850) shouldn't be overloaded in this case, although there's a lot going on. CPU doesn't seem to be the main culprit either (not sure, though) since the performance drops so dramatically after ca. 500 trains, and the resulting jerkiness reminds me strongly of very demanding 3-D games like Skyrim, Crysis, etc. when run with an underpowered graphics card in too high resolution.

The problem might be in memory management, since things slow down the most on areas where there are lots of buildings and running trains. Could be that the old game engine simply uses the old DirectX 3-D instructions in a way modern graphics cards and/or Windows versions aren't optimized for. So, RRT3 might overload a modern PC with zillions of old, simple instructions which kind of surprise the computer - and it can't really use its modern power features.

It would be interesting to test my saved "extreme" scenario with 866 trains on a very high-end PC to see whether giving more CPU and graphics power still clearly improve the performance after this 600 or so trains -limit or not. I have my doubts about that, though.

My advice for an ideal, still affordable RRT3 computer would right now be something based on AMD's A10 Trinity Series APU, or (even better) AMD FX series "Vishera" CPU (4-8 cores, RRT3 can't utilize more than 1 core anyway) clocked to 4..5 GHz, 4 GB of DDR3 memory 1600..1866 MHz. I believe the high clock frequency benefits this game a lot since it helps the very advanced, complex artificial intelligence happening everywhere in the game. Fast memory should help too.