"Failed to Create Vertex Buffer" Error?

[NJ Curmudgeon]

I would occasionally get an error with TS16 that read "Failed to create vertex buffer." The game would crash and I was unable to click on anything, resulting in a hard reboot (holding the power button down until the computer shut off and then restarting it). I had it again today with TS17 and was wondering what the cause was. Since it has happened with both TS16 and TS17, I'm not sure if it's my computer or a TS bug that wasn't fixed.

[OldAlaskaGuy]

There are several threads on this topic if you use the search function located up and to the right. Have you tried running fullscreen borderless. This helped me. Does this happen when alt+tab out of the game? Clear your game cache often after editing or running a route.

[LucaZoneX]

This is usually an indication that your graphics card does not meet the minimum spec or that it has run out of memory.

1] Contact support and register a ticket with them.
https://dovetailgames.kayako.com/

2] Please list your PC specs in as much detail as you can.

[Felix.AVMP]

Funny part is, that official requirements are still listing something along the lines of:
"512 MB - 1GB with Pixel Shader 3.0 (AGP PCIe only)"
which is today met by +/- anything on the market...

Seriously, though - if this error appeared "out of the blue", it was/is usually triggered by use of really complex object (objects), typically rolling stock etc.

The best advice is this:
- lower graphical settings in game (antialiasing etc., shadows complexity etc.)
and if this does not help
- lower object detail settings, if only for testing purposes only

Btw. fullscreen borderless is indeed somewhat more stable than classic fullscreen, which is a paradox, as "traditional fullscreen" setting should have more memory available for itself, as it has no need to keep all the desktop graphics in its graphical memory (I suspect that this is mainly caused by windows graphical drivers / DirectX 9 interface, as this behaviour was observed in other games as well).

it is still possible to squeeze this title into a graphics RAM of even 1 GB card, but I will not lie - it is a challenging task which requires a lot of trial and error tests in order to find optimal performance (TBBH, even 2 GB cards are struggling with this title from time to time and as of today, I would not go below 4 GB for new graphics, just to be on the safe side - well behaving fast cards can indeed overlay its memory into main memory, but sometimes it really backfires and the result is a slide show at best and game collapse at worst - and of course, this requires free main RAM, a rather trivial requisite, but often overlooked).

[Budge4]

I had 12 gb of vram on my old graphics card and still saw that "Failed to Create Vertex Buffer" message in TS on a couple of occasions in the past, may have been when i was using Win 8.1 in my case which probably didnt help lol, so id say it isnt always related to the amount of vram on card, unless something leaked the vram away quite badly, something else must crop up to cause this error now and again. (have 32gb system ram)

[NJ Curmudgeon]

It's been a completely random error normally when opening a route for editing. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's annoying because of the hard reboot.

I'm using a Dell XPS8700 tower that's just over a year old, Windows 10, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745 4GB DDR3 graphics card. I just updated the drivers recently and the issue happened both before and after.

I'll try the full screen borderless and see if that helps.

Thanks!

[NJ Curmudgeon]

I'll also empty cache too. Sounds like it might be maxing it out periodically.

[OldAlaskaGuy]

This is a convient way to clear cache outside the game. You do not need to start TS. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=465303891

[Budge4]

Originally posted by NJ Curmudgeon:

I'll also empty cache too. Sounds like it might be maxing it out periodically.

I pretty much empty cache every time i exit TS these days, with a clear cache bat file similar to Mavs. As rwaday says you can do it from a desktop shortcut and dont have to use the in game clear cache button which requires a TS restart every time you use it.

I also use a similar .bat file to remove .bak files and various other unused types of files that sometimes can be left in TS and its dlc, 3rd party addons too. But you need to know which files are safe to remove otherwise you could end up in a mess, so not recommended unless you have a good idea of what you are doing.

[OldAlaskaGuy]

I am using a GTX960 with 4GB on board memory and 16GB system memory. I am also using dual monitors. Before running in windowed borderless sometimes a random mouse click on the second monitor or tabbing out to read email would cause this "Failed to Create Vertex Buffer" error. Now irt is stable and I have not had this error in a long time. I also use the .bat file to clear the cache often. Usually after doing a run or doing some editing.