[charland]

Hi Sid,

That's strange. I made the change in options and ran from Bedford to Grand Pre moving the camera around to try to get the water and lineside veggies to blink and couldn't.

I'll have a go at the TIR later and see what happens there.

Paul :-)

[Coolhand101]

dennisat, on 07 April 2016 - 05:11 AM, said:

Take a look at this for difference in Model Instancing / No Instancing.
Route is EuropeanBahn West Coast Main Line, location is Tring, other info in log file.
Note the enormous difference in Primitives.

I haven't actually tested the diffrence for Model Instancing on and off. But judging from your screenshots, thats a massive improvement.

EB routes were criticized for low FPS for using a massive amount of trees. This is where Model Instancing on can benefit on these sort of routes.

[dennisat]

Coolhand101, on 07 April 2016 - 06:40 AM, said:

I haven't actually tested the diffrence for Model Instancing on and off. But judging from your screenshots, thats a massive improvement.

EB routes were criticized for low FPS for using a massive amount of trees. This is where Model Instancing on can benefit on these sort of routes.

Yes, in MSTS this route used to be a slide show at Tring. I've not come across another route / location with such an extreme benefit from Instancing as this one.

Dennis

[James Ross]

jamesc25313, on 05 April 2016 - 10:38 AM, said:

Ive ran Open Rails on GTX 670, 770, 970, 960, 750, 660 and all had flickering, including an old 9800GT and 7900GT. Id like to trace back when this whole flickering thing started for me, but is been a few years.

EDIT: Just tried a couple routes in an old 0.7 version (0.7.0.905 to be exact) 0.8 (0.8.0.1251) and 0.9 (X2914) and experienced no flickering. These I think are stable releases of that particular version? I tested this on the Horseshoe and Pocahontas routes and experience almost immediate flickering on both routes with the latest release (3500) and releases prior. This to me as I have tested this several times for myself in the past seems to debunk the theory its a driver issue and not OR itself.

Instancing was added in X2148, between 0.9 and 1.0, but has never been enabled by default. If you have it enabled, it will apply to any version from X2148 onwards.

charland, on 06 April 2016 - 07:26 AM, said:

So to us who haven't had time to tinker with all the settings in OR, what does Model Instancing actually do... other then to get some things to flicker?

Instancing allows us to group identical objects with different position/rotation data in to a single draw call, which massively improves performance when there are lots of identical objects in the scene, since the draw calls are the most expensive part of rendering.

The flickering with instancing enabled is a known bug with some objects in some locations. The issue is caused by an unknown limit which causes groups of more than this limit to behave strangely. Unfortunately, the limit (even on a single GPU and driver) does not appear fixed, and varies for each object that is instanced - possibly due to their complexity.

[charland]

Hi James,

Thanks for that explanation. As for the object's complexity, the water you toggle in the MSTS Route Editor is only two or three layers and also flashed when instancing is turned on, but stops when instancing is turned off.

Paul :-)

[jamesc25313]

James Ross, on 07 April 2016 - 09:26 AM, said:

Instancing was added in X2148, between 0.9 and 1.0, but has never been enabled by default. If you have it enabled, it will apply to any version from X2148 onwards.

Hi, I had instancing turned on when I did my testing with 0.9 as I have heard this can cause flickering. I went back again to 0.9 with instancing on and had no flickering of forest objects. I also went into the newest version and turned off model instancing and still had flickering.

I would like to add that I've never saw this effect on houses, cars ect, but I have seen it on tree clumps (non forest objects/blocks I and others have created. The only thing they have in common is the fact they use the same texture mode, CrcFrm.

EDIT: I was only able to get my tree objects (non forest objects) to only twinkle when in motion. Not the typical casino style flickering I see with forest objects. Doesnt seem related to me though because a different clump doesnt do this. So, probably a shape issue.

[James Ross]

jamesc25313, on 07 April 2016 - 10:56 AM, said:

I would like to add that I've never saw this effect on houses, cars ect, but I have seen it on tree clumps (non forest objects/blocks I and others have created. The only thing they have in common is the fact they use the same texture mode, CrcFrm.

You are probably experiencing a different issue if it happens with instancing off; also, instancing has no effect on forests as it only applies to solid, static scenery.

[jamesc25313]

James Ross, on 07 April 2016 - 12:19 PM, said:

You are probably experiencing a different issue if it happens with instancing off; also, instancing has no effect on forests as it only applies to solid, static scenery.

Ok, so I made a video demonstrating what I mean at least with regards to flickering. I'd be interested to know if anyone has experienced this type of flickering with their setups. I for one have experienced what you'll see in the video for two years or so, using several different cards and setups and two different monitors. I used three routes in the video including a modified Pocahontas District used for testing only. A very slightly modified Horseshoe curve used to test one tree texture as a forest object. I also include the Horseshoe route by default with no modifications and Seligman 2.0 with no modifications. All experienced flickering which seems to be more pronounced with forest objects rather than scratch built clumps, or tree lines.



If you want to watch full screen click the YouTube icon on the video.

[Jovet]

jamesc25313, on 07 April 2016 - 03:02 PM, said:

Ok, so I made a video demonstrating what I mean at least with regards to flickering. I'd be interested to know if anyone has experienced this type of flickering with their setups.

Yes, that's pretty similar to what I see. It happens a bit faster than the video shows, I suspect your video capture rate is less than the flicker rate. I'd say it happens to me more in the distance than up close, though. And it doesn't happen all the time, just sometimes.

[R H Steele]

Folks, I see it too, and it's not flickering....only a refreshing breeze blowing through the trees and grasses...your point of view is askew. :pardon: