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Upper Limit for Object Placement

Helli

Helli

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germany
Hello there,

I have a problem, which probabely was extensively discussed in 2004/2005. But then I was not yet around.

The upper limits for autogen-objects are well known, documented and displayed in the annotation tools.

What are the limits for Static Objects (placement-BGLs, i.e. houses, trees etc.)??

Since I experienced the effect of an overrun recently, I wonder, how the (unknown) maximum number is calculated
- per tile ??
- per XML-file ??
- per area ??
----------------------------
My experience:

In one particular Switzerland-Pro area I have about 15 Placement-BGLs with some buildings, but mostly trees, lots of trees.
After adding some trees to one of them with "Treeplanter", FS9 failed to run.
Removing that Placement-BGL, which contains 1060 trees) solved that problem.
When adding it back and removing another BGL, which contains 1600 trees, FS9 again did not start.
That tells me, that there must be something else besides the absolut number of objects.
By the way, FS9 when failing to start tells me, that there is not enough RAM, pointing to a storage problem.

Can anyone explain the mechanism behind this, or even better, tell me, where this issue is documented?

Looking forward to an answer

Helli
 
Hi Helli,

I never found a hard limit that fails FS to load when you place more.

But I know that placing a lot of objects will reduce the performance to much. For example when we placed 500.000 objects in the Netherlands with XML code, the framerate dropped to unaccaptable levels. And this performance hit is not only caused by drawing the objects, also when almost none are visible the performance is reduced. It seems that also checking if the object should be drawn has a big impact for that many objects.

If FS really fails to load, I think there is something wrong with the BGL file, not with the amount of objects.
 
Helli

Do you have any idea how many objects you are trying to place all together. In FS9 I have certainly been able to place several thousand in one scenery. Performance does slow down if there are more than about 1000 but I cannot recall coming to an absolute limit.

Can you be sure that the bgl with the trees is actually OK and not causing the problem in some other way? If you remove the other bgl files and leave that one in is everything ok?
 
Hello Arno
Hello Jon,

great, you both answering so promptly!

Ok I note with pleasure, that you do not tell me that there is a limit.
Of course I am aware of the slowdown effect and I test it continously.

Jon, the failure to start FS9 happens only with that one particular BGL-file.
So I lean towards Arno's assessment of a corrupted file.

It is interesting, that I removed the last block of entries in the culprit file and all works fine.

As last test I will add again another set of trees (same number as before) and we will see.

Many thanks for your advice and your opinions.

Helli
 
Helli
If you want to mail me the xml file I will look at it.

Are you sure that all the objects referenced are in the sim somewhere? Missing objects should not crash a sim, but..............
 
Hello Jon,

thanks for your offer. I will mail it to you with some explanations.

All the objects are in the reference library.

I tested the offendig BGL-file some more. As I said, I removed the last entries, which was a certain type of tree. I replaced them with another tree and finally with the same tree again, total sum well above the original one.
!!And all works fine!!

Something must have gone wrong in the TREEPLANTER, when I placed those last entries.
The XML looks all right to me, but may be you can detect something. Fortunately I kept the bad XML unchanged and tested with copies.

Thanks for your help

Helli
 
OK - it may well be that there are problems with the mdl files for those trees.

I don't know if you have a copy of MDL Tweaker (from here) or Library Object Viewer) from my site. Both can generate 3D images from mdl files and would indicate if it is the mdl.
 
Helli

Got the mail I also cannot find any problem with the XML and it compiles fine. The last 32 entries are placing the same tree so I now suspect that the mdl file has a problem.

The file you are placing is coming from Arno's Tree Library Agen XTrees Lib9 2.bgl and looks like it is the 38th mdl in that bgl. I can't find anything wrong with the mdl so far but maybe Arno can look at it as it is his Library.

I do not think that can be the problem though since you are using this tree in the rest of the file as far as I can tell, so the mystery remains for the moment
 
Hi Jon,

That does not sounds like my library, I think this is the library made by Gianni.
 
Hello there,

I did not have a sleepless night, but as soon as I found the time I had to look at this "mystery" again.
I did what I considered - over breakfeast - as the next logical step.
Jon, you had a look at the XML-file, whose brother BGL is stopping the FS9. And you said it looks ok.
Well, I put the offending BGL aside and compiled the XML-file again.
This "new" BGL-file I added to the FS9 and .....it is accepted! - which confirms your statement.

Next I de-compiled the offending BGL-file back to XML. The process worked without hitch.
When opening the resulting XML I could not detect anything wrong, except that of the 32 identical trees in the old version only 26 are present
I do not have a program to compare both XMl-files for further differences.

My conclusion:
When "Treeplanter" compiled the tree entries, although there was no error message, something must have gone wrong.



Well having satisfied my curiosity so far, all what is left is to say thank you Jon and Arno!

Till next time

Helli
 
Hmm maybe there is some unexpected limitations in TreePlanter
 
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