Tower!2011:SE - A few issues.

[Fred_Mertz]

When I use fullscreen mode, the DBRITE, ADIRS, STRIP, and Command Panel disappear when I click on the main screen. They blink back when I click on the ESC key, sometimes. Luckily I have two monitors so I can move those windows off to view them as well as looking at the top down map with my primary monitor. I can use windowed mode, but I'd rather have a fullscreen experience. Any work around to this? I read about other people with this same issue with a reply that a patch was in the works. This post was from a while ago. Any info on that?

Another issue is that the FPS and load times are bad. KLAX is at about 45 fps, KMIA is at 25 fps, and I'm down to 15 fps with PHNL. Load times can take several minutes. However, I have found a fix, and that is to rename the xxx_airport_shadow.raw file. This makes load times fast and frame rates jump to over 100-- but with random frame rate drops to 8, 17, 40, 15, etc, every few seconds. It's very playable though. Is renaming the files a true fix or am I going to make it worse somewhere down the line?

My last technical problem is that the HD light flickers constantly while playing. Looking at the resource monitor, it shows that Tower.exe is accessing the C:\$Logfile and ntuser.dat files at a rate of about 300,000 - 400,000 bytes per second. What's up with that?

Now, on a gameplay level, I'm having problems figuring out where or how to direct planes with the "via" command. I don't have any charts or way of recognizing routes or taxiways like I do with the system in Tower!3D. What am I missing?

 

• Tower!2011:SE  Version: 5.2567.1345
• Real Traffic: SP6
• i5-3570k
• 16GB RAM
• Creative Sound Blaster Z (with latest drivers)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

 

[FeelThere Ariel]

Fred, 

Regarding the Adirs, Dbrite and strips issue, please verify you do not have any antivirus or firewall running in the background that could be blocking them off. Also please run the program in ADMIN mode. This could also be the solution for the FPS issue, although I doubt it. Please check that you do not have any other program interfeering or regulating with the FPS.  

[Fred_Mertz]

I turned them off and I'm still having a problem with those windows. This is the problem I'm having: Steam Post

If I try to run in Admin mode, a window pops ups that says "Invalid font format (32bit required) Gui/towerfont.tga", then it crashes. The FPS issue is an easy fix. I just renamed the shadow files for each of the airports and the game works at over 100 fps, then. It seems like those files are just overlays for rendering shadows and moving graphics like the water and trees. Maybe it doesn't like my graphics card- I don't know. My question was if renaming those files is ok. Now, I've played a few hours and it seems to be fine, so I can live without the enhanced graphics.

However...

The biggest issue I have is that whenever I run the program, my hard drive light will flicker when the sim starts. I checked the Resource Manager and Windows says that Tower.exe is writing to C:\$logfile and the ntuser.dat files, and it will not stop until I exit the sim. This is unlike Tower!3d Pro or any other game for that matter. I can understand occasional accessing during gameplay, sure, but this is writing to those files the whole time and I'd rather not put that much wear on my hard drive. Not only that, the ntuser.dat file is linked to the Windows registry so I need to know why it's doing that because it could potentially corrupt it.

 

[scoobflight]

2 hours ago, Fred_Mertz said:

Tower.exe is writing to C:\$logfile

T'11 makes a continuous log file.  This is normal behavior.

[Fred_Mertz]

7 hours ago, scoobflight said:

T'11 makes a continuous log file.  This is normal behavior.

I can see that, but I don't think it's normal to do it to the degree it's doing with my setup, or is it? The writing it does to those files is at a much higher rate and is constant. It's acts as if I'm running a virus scan or defragging.

When I run Tower3D, and I just idle ingame, Resource Monitor says that Tower3D.exe writes to those files between 200 - 1,200 Bytes per second. Tower2011 on the other hand writes to $logfile, ntuser.dat, and, ntuser.dat.log between 100,000 and 165,000 Bytes, each, for a total of about 400K a second. I can understand reading from files periodically, but why is it writing so much data for the entirety of the session? Is it just with me? Would you mind checking your Resource Monitor and tell me what numbers you're getting?

[scoobflight]

T'11 has a different engine than T3D.  Comparing their functions is apples ad oranges.

The log file in T'11 is constantly updating and shows what the sim engine is doing (mainly traffic monitoring, plane behavior and generation of new traffic).

T3D does not create, by default, a log file.

[Fred_Mertz]

2 hours ago, scoobflight said:

T'11 has a different engine than T3D.  Comparing their functions is apples ad oranges.

The log file in T'11 is constantly updating and shows what the sim engine is doing (mainly traffic monitoring, plane behavior and generation of new traffic).

T3D does not create, by default, a log file.

The reason why I brought up T3D is because I was comparing the files they both access. T3D may not create a log file but both T11 (Tower.exe) and T3D (Tower3d.exe) write to $logfile, ntuser.dat, and ntuser.dat.log that are already there. Windows Resource Monitor shows this (Task Manager -> Performance -> Resource Monitor -> Disk) and will also tell you the rate at which a process is transferring data. T11 writes at 400K/sec and T3D writes at 2K/sec.

Edit- I know that it's still comparing apples to oranges, but it's the only thing I can do short of asking people to check their transfer rates to see if they're having a similar issue.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Fred_Mertz
additional info

[crbascott]

3 hours ago, scoobflight said:

T3D does not create, by default, a log file.

Not true, T3D does automatically create a log file - output_log.txt. And it contains the same thing as game.log which is only created when executing the .bat file. Never quite understood why the duplication.

@Fred_Mertz, although T!11 is still on my hard drive I never access it anymore. But when I did, I do not recall any major performance issues. If there is not anything on the forum about your issues, I don't think you'll find people with similar issues since this game is now 7+ years old and more than likely not actively played despite the recent low sale prices.

[Fred_Mertz]

1 hour ago, crbascott said:

Not true, T3D does automatically create a log file - output_log.txt. And it contains the same thing as game.log which is only created when executing the .bat file. Never quite understood why the duplication.

@Fred_Mertz, although T!11 is still on my hard drive I never access it anymore. But when I did, I do not recall any major performance issues. If there is not anything on the forum about your issues, I don't think you'll find people with similar issues since this game is now 7+ years old and more than likely not actively played despite the recent low sale prices.

The performance issues I listed in the original post aren't as big an issue as I thought. All I had to do was rename the shadow.raw files. It now has a more 2-dimensional look, and I'm fine with that because at least I can play at a good framerate.

The disk accessing that I've been talking about in the last few posts don't affect performance of the game, at least none that I've noticed. I just don't like knowing that it's writing information at that rate, constantly, to a file that is directly related to the Windows registry. It's a little alarming considering I've never had a game access the hard drive for so long and I'd hate to have some kind of crash that might potentially corrupt the file. Usually, the hard drive stops (or slows) after the program loads up and then flickers while it occasionally writes to some random file-- and once in a blue moon there might be some memory leak in a poorly optimized program causing heavy disk access to the swapfile.. in which case I would just restart the program back to normalcy. That isn't the case here and I was hoping someone would have an easy answer. Hoping. 🙂

I have to say that the brief time I spent on T11 has been really fun. I thought it was going to be a burden to look up the taxiways/terminals and writing it all down. Nope, it's actually a rewarding experience and a nice distraction to T3D. I might even appreciate it more because I like the top-down aesthetic... a lot. I hope I can enjoy it more because I bought quite a few of the airports. Hehe.

[Fred_Mertz]

On 11/25/2018 at 7:49 PM, FeelThere Ariel said:

Fred, 

Regarding the Adirs, Dbrite and strips issue, please verify you do not have any antivirus or firewall running in the background that could be blocking them off. Also please run the program in ADMIN mode. This could also be the solution for the FPS issue, although I doubt it. Please check that you do not have any other program interfeering or regulating with the FPS.  

Can I please get some follow up to my issue? Here is my response:

Posted Monday at 04:29 AM

I turned them off and I'm still having a problem with those windows. This is the problem I'm having: Steam Post

If I try to run in Admin mode, a window pops ups that says "Invalid font format (32bit required) Gui/towerfont.tga", then it crashes. The FPS issue is an easy fix. I just renamed the shadow files for each of the airports and the game works at over 100 fps, then. It seems like those files are just overlays for rendering shadows and moving graphics like the water and trees. Maybe it doesn't like my graphics card- I don't know. My question was if renaming those files is ok. Now, I've played a few hours and it seems to be fine, so I can live without the enhanced graphics.

However...

The biggest issue I have is that whenever I run the program, my hard drive light will flicker when the sim starts. I checked the Resource Manager and Windows says that Tower.exe is writing to C:\$logfile and the ntuser.dat files, and it will not stop until I exit the sim. This is unlike Tower!3d Pro or any other game for that matter. I can understand occasional accessing during gameplay, sure, but this is writing to those files the whole time and I'd rather not put that much wear on my hard drive. Not only that, the ntuser.dat file is linked to the Windows registry so I need to know why it's doing that because it could potentially corrupt it.

[FeelThere Ariel]

Hello Fred, 

We are consulting with our programmer about this weird behaviour. We will get back to you as soon as we get an answer! 

[Fred_Mertz]

1 hour ago, FeelThere Ariel said:

Hello Fred, 

We are consulting with our programmer about this weird behaviour. We will get back to you as soon as we get an answer! 

Thank you.  Much appreciated.

[FeelThere Ariel]

Fred, our programmer indicates that, regarding your windows issue, your Windows OS is blocking one window (adirs, dbrite, strips) on top of the other in the game. They are on top of each other and they should be able to be shown. It seems there is something you need to fix on your end. Perhaps on your window display settings? 

[Fred_Mertz]

On 11/30/2018 at 8:46 AM, FeelThere Ariel said:

Fred, our programmer indicates that, regarding your windows issue, your Windows OS is blocking one window (adirs, dbrite, strips) on top of the other in the game. They are on top of each other and they should be able to be shown. It seems there is something you need to fix on your end. Perhaps on your window display settings? 

That's fine. I've found a workaround and figured out the other problems on my own, all except for the constant SSD writes. For me, it's not normal. The Tower.exe file writes to c:\$logfile, ntuser.dat, and ntuser.dat.log at a rate that causes my SSD light to flash the entire time I'm playing the game, whether it be 15 minutes or 2 hours. It writes to those files at a rate of 400Kb/sec compared to Tower3D that writes to those files at around 2Kb/sec. I don't have the same issue with Tower3D. Whatever the issue with T2011, it's not right. My SSD light shouldn't be flickering constantly the entire time I play and it's the only game I have ever played that does this.

Edit- I installed T2011 on a Windows 10 laptop this weekend and the program had a more normal behavior- at least the hard drive light wasn't flickering non-stop. I opened up Windows Resource Monitor and it showed that Tower.exe was writing to ntuser.dat.LOG2 and C:\$logfile. It was not writing to ntuser.dat as it did on my main computer with Windows 7. Transfer rates were also significantly down from 400Kb/sec on my main to 80Kb/sec on the laptop.

Edited December 3, 2018 by Fred_Mertz
More info.