Random track generator - loading screen takes forever

[Paikel]

I have mainly been playing Random track generator with hot seat in Trackmania Turbo.

On my previous PC, the track generator was generally quite fast. The track would generated in 15 seconds or less. Then after selecting the track I want, the loading screen would appear and it would take approximately 10-15 seconds maximum to generate it and let me play. Even for "Long" randomly generated tracks on the "Nice" lighting setting it would not take longer than that.. Trackmania and steam at this PC were both installed on a HDD, but that didn't seem to matter as it was really fast anyways.

Fast forward to today, I have build a new PC with a SSD Samsung 990 pro. I have installed Trackmania Turbo, Steam and ubisoft connect all on this SSD. I would've expected that this was going to improve speed even further. Unfortunately, to my suprise the exact opposite happened.

The track itself is being build extremely fast like before. A long track would take a few seconds to completely build. However, after selecting the track and lighting I want and getting to the loading screen saying "Trackmania - Work in progress", it goes bad. The loading goes to anywhere from 65%-80% in about 3-5 seconds. After that, it slows down significantly and will take an additional 5 to 10 Minutes (!!!!) to complete the last 35%-20%. This does not make sense at all, as it would take only seconds on a HDD before. Even on my terribly slow PS4 it would be this slow.

I suspect something weird is going on. Does anyone has experience with this?

EDIT: I also need to note that this only happens with Randomly generated tracks. The campaign tracks are loaded near instantly.

EDIT2: My current suspicion is that it is due to the game not detecting all VRAM. The config shows that is only detects 3GB of the actual 24GB. It also does not matter how much I crank up the FPS, the game always stays at maximum 3GB usage.

Thank you,

Paikel

[The Squirreler]

Hey Paikel, i'm just gonna respond here since I have the same issue on my computer. After generating a random track, loading into the track takes a really long time sometimes up to 10 to 15 minutes. I've found that the issue appeared after upgrading my graphics card from a 1070ti to a 6800xt. Sadly i've found no solution thus far which sucks when friends come over to play hotseat. Hopefully someone with a solution will post here anytime soon

[Paikel]

Hi Squirreler,

I have had contact with Ubisoft on this issue and they have made me try endless of useless fixes. They kept on blaming other applications or a bad internet connection, which were clearly not the issue. It was so frustrating that I eventually had to give up.

So the main thing that I have identified is that the config of this game only shows 3GB of VRAM. As you might know, my GPU should have 24GB of available VRAM instead. After using hardware monitoring software while playing the game, I noticed that the game always only uses 3GB VRAM at max, even when cranking the FPS to its absolute maximum.

Since you also went from a Nvidia to AMD, I guess that it is a driver issue for AMD and this game, which makes it unable to detect all the available VRAM and therefore cannot fully utilize it. I guess the random track generator needs that extra power and now cannot use it...

I have said this to Ubisoft so many times, but they always completely ignored me and told me to try other stuff instead. I guess they refused to admit this wasn't going to get fixed as the game won't receive any updates.

So I straight up asked them: "I know the 3GB VRAM thing is probably the issue, can you please tell me if that is ever going to get fixed?" So they replied that they will not provide any update and that was the end of it...

Quite unfortunate in the end. Random track generator was the only thing I played with my friends in this game. I don't want to wait 10 minutes for every track, so I will have to put this game on the shelf I guess.

[The Squirreler]

Great that you actually did get some sort of answer from them. The vram issue seems like a logical problem, weird that my 8gb 1070ti did work though, but indeed maybe this is an AMD driver thing. Too bad they won't fix this.

Thank you for your reply!

Hope this gives some clarity to other people with the same problem.

[Paikel]

Hi Squirreler,

I am curious. When you try to open the Config menu for Trackmania Turbo from Steam and select Advanced, it will bring you to the graphics menu.

On the right you should be able to see your GPU model and underneath it will display the amount of VRAM. What is being displayed there for you?

For example, mine says 3 GB (3087 MB), while the 7900XTX should have 24GB. The 6800XT should have 16GB, so I am curious what is displayed there for you.

Thank you

[The Squirreler]

I'll have to check later what it shows exactly, but it does show 3 gb VRAM in that menu. I've tried playing with all settings unfortunately to no avail.

Interestingly I noticed that when I only enabled only 1 or 2 cores on my CPU via the affinity settings in task manager that the loading went a bit faster. Not to a satisfying extend, but its a little better.

What did you test thusfar and with any result?

[Paikel]

I have also tried basically every potential setting without success.

Initially I thought the 3GB VRAM was a reference for what the game was using with the selected settings. However, I found a video of the config menu where it shows 2GB and on top of that, no matter the settings, it is always 3GB.

I have run the game with two different hardware info apps. It does not matter what resolution or FPS I was playing at, the game never used more than the 3GB.

I have tried a DDU and reinstalled the drivers but no success there either.

For now I have send another email to nadeo and I created an AMD bug report and reported it as a driver issue/bug.

[Paikel]

It seems that a recent AMD Adrenalin driver update has fixed the issue.

For me it is currently still not as fast as I would expect with such a beefy GPU, but loading a randomly generated Large map now takes anywhere from 10-20 seconds with outliers to 30 seconds on "Nice" settings.

That is obviously a huge improvement compared to the 5-10 minutes it could previously take.

[The Squirreler]

Same for me! version 24.8.1 seems to have fixed the issue. I also experience loading times ranging from 7 - 25 seconds (Nice settings). I do still have weird black artifacting in the water of Lagoon but that is fine.

Many thanks for reporting that the driver fixed it for you!