Thought I would see what other people thought about this, I have been noticing quite recently that alot of the models I am building for use in MSTS are just a bit on the heavy side in their shape file in the uncompressed format. As alot of you are aware the sim seems to have an afliction with most models over 4000kb problem being that I seem to average between 7000 to sometimes above 8000kb which it then starts to complain about it.

This is one of my works in progress, even though I have made use of the solid wheels within the engineer plugin it still weighs in about the same as other models of around the same size in polys but is vastly better for kuju value but around twice the size in the shape file at a shade under 8000kb, problem is that I cannot add anything else without going over that amount without it causing me a few headaches but prevents me from expanding on what I have to produce other types from this one.
Normally I would think that it was my own doing that is causing things to be that heavy but when I compare other models I also have being built to others of which some have a considerably higher polycount and kuju value, that it makes me wonder whether there is indeed some other reason for the higher value in the shape file size.
I would like to think there could be a possible solution for this puzzle as I would rather not have to scrap some of my work due to it hitting the limitations of the sim and causing it to crash when viewed at some angles.
Anyones thought on this would be gratefully recieved

Regards,
Daryn

Sorry for us missing you Daryn.

The various crashes caused when viewing a model at different angles are often due to a particular part being too complex (ie a large concentration of faces, points in a small area) or with the part having co-planar faces. Try and make each group (not including child groups) under 4000 polys as this can also help.

The issue of actual face or poly count being a problem can be attributed to the above, or it can be caused by the actual computer being the limiting factor as well as the game engine itself.

I have loaded models upwards of 18,000 plus polys or more without trouble by following the rule of limitimg the number of polys per group, culling unseen faces, making sure there are no co-planar faces and also watching that I've used one texture file per part for LODs.

Also, if you have a lot of faces in a very small area, it always crashes, no matter how you split up the objects and groups. In this case, take these details objects and create a separate model, and attach it to the loco using freightanim. I have found that works surprisingly well.