I love Train Sim World. I’ve been with it since the early days, and I’ve always been willing to put up with the odd bug or visual hiccup because the immersion can be fantastic when everything works. But lately, on Xbox Series X, the sheer state of things has worn me down. Z-fighting, blurred textures, stutters, and memory leakages… it’s become a gamble every time I load into a route. I can’t just pick up new DLC and enjoy it anymore—I have to stop and ask: Is this actually playable on my platform, or will it look and run like a mess? And that’s led me to something I never thought I’d do: asking AI to sift through the game’s entire route catalogue just to figure out which ones are “safe.” Here’s an example of what I mean. Question I asked: > "Can you tell me a list of German or Austrian-based routes and DLC for Train Sim World which are not affected by z-fighting on Xbox Series X?" Part of the AI’s answer: > “Lower-risk routes include Mittenwaldbahn: Innsbruck – Garmisch, S-Bahn Vorarlberg: Lindau – Bludenz, and Niddertalbahn—though even these may have minor flicker in certain cabs. The worst issues appear when using the Vectron, especially the FlixTrain variant.” Then I went further. Second question I asked: > "Which UK routes are safe to play without blurred textures and memory leak issues on Xbox Series X?" AI’s answer: > “Older UK routes like Tees Valley Line and West Somerset Railway tend to have fewer blurred texture problems and less aggressive memory usage. Some modern high-speed routes can be riskier due to larger, more complex scenery loads.” This is where the game has left me—turning to an algorithm to figure out what I can and can’t enjoy in a game I’ve invested heavily in. It’s not because I want to, it’s because I have to. I should be spending my time planning my next run, not planning my next workaround.
AI Suggestions:; German / Austrian Routes – Xbox Series X Playability Mittenwaldbahn: Innsbruck – Garmisch – BR 111, ÖBB 1020 – Low risk – Minimal reported flicker. S-Bahn Vorarlberg: Lindau – Bludenz – ÖBB 4024 Talent – Low risk – Smooth running; no major z-fighting. Niddertalbahn: Bad Vilbel – Stockheim – BR 628 DMU – Low–Medium risk – Only minor flicker on small cab elements. Ruhr-Sieg Nord: Hagen – Finnentrop – BR 143, BR 185, BR 363 – Low risk – Older route, stable visuals. Main-Spessart Bahn: Aschaffenburg – Gemünden – BR 146, BR 185, Dostos – Low risk – Older route, minimal shimmer. Dresden – Riesa – BR 442, BR 146, BR 185 – Medium risk – Some flicker in layered services. Frankfurt – Fulda: Kinzigtalbahn (German Regional) – ICE-T, BR 114, BR 423, Vectron – High risk – Avoid Vectron layers to reduce issues. Bremen – Oldenburg – BR 110, n-Wagen – Medium risk – Some cab flicker on certain services. UK Routes – Xbox Series X Playability Tees Valley Line: Darlington – Saltburn – Class 37, Class 101, Class 08 – Low risk – Stable visuals, light scenery load. West Somerset Railway – Class 47, Class 09, Mk 1 coaches – Low risk – Very low texture streaming demand. Northern Trans-Pennine: Manchester – Leeds – Class 45, Class 47, Class 101 – Low–Medium risk – Generally stable; rare minor blurs. Cathcart Circle Lines – Class 314 EMU – Low risk – Compact route, low memory footprint. Edinburgh – Glasgow – Class 385 EMU – Medium risk – Some blur in dense station areas. Southeastern High Speed (Extended) – Class 395, Class 375, Class 66 – Medium–High risk – Long route, higher texture streaming risk. London Commuter: Brighton Main Line – Class 387, Class 377 – High risk – Heavy scenery load, frequent texture blur on Series X. East Coast Main Line: Peterborough – Doncaster – Class 801, Class 66, Class 158 – High risk – Large scenery footprint; memory leakage risk over long runs.
Hmm its weird how some people find these problems and others don’t, like for me the only route on the series x I encounter problems with is west coast main line modern
Or just switch off a few layers and everything is OK. Some routes you can switch of a lot of layers and you wouldn't notice the missing ai. But you will have a much better playing experience.
I don't buy newer routes anymore. I own a few TSW3 and TSW4 routes, but the perfomance of those routes is already less then the older TSW, TSW2020 and TSW2 routes, thanks to TOD4. Both TSW2 Dresden routes also do not have the best performance, Riesa - Dresden is remastered with TOD4, but Tharanther Rampe is not and still crashes and has bad fps on the part from Tharante to Chemnitz. The Vectrons do give issues even on older routes, so I don't know what is wrong with them, but a good reason to avoid. The issues won't be fixed in TSW5, so our only hope is TSW6, and my hope is at a very low point.
Sure, that's a temporary work-around. It doesn't prevent the z-fighting though. That really irritates me and be quite distracting.
Z-fighting is a graphics glitch where two surfaces are so close together that the game can’t decide which one to show, causing them to rapidly switch and flicker. The Flixtrain is a key culprit, with cab buttons and screens twinkling like a Christmas tree, the sunflower on the HST completely distorting and flickering, and the text next to buttons on the Class 377 constantly shimmering—just to name a few. It’s distracting for players and first became an issue with the introduction of TSW2, continuing ever since. It appears to be seen mostly on Xbox and nothing has been done to resolve the issue apart from trying to prevent it from occuring moving forwards. This is particularly frustrating as layered content that suffers z-fighting continues to be layered onto new routes.
Oh ok thanks you for the insight very helpful yeah definitely some trains are bad with vectron and the acela to name a few.
DTG have previously said that fixing the Xbox Z-fighting problem would require going through each route individually and manually moving decals, which would take too much time. However, from what I’ve read the issue could be linked to how the game renders on Xbox rather than the placement of every single decal. That means it might be possible to solve with a platform-wide tweak — like adjusting rendering settings or decal behaviour — instead of a full, route-by-route rebuild. Here’s why I think this is worth exploring: - This issue only really affects Xbox players. - It didn't happen before TSW2, which is when the game moved to a newer version of Unreal Engine. - It doesn't seem to happen on PC or PlayStation, at least not in the same way. That suggests the problem might not be the decals themselves, but something to do with how the console handles depth or layering of textures. So instead of fixing every decal manually, I’m wondering if DTG could explore a solution just for Xbox — perhaps an adjustment to how decals are drawn, or tweaks to the way surfaces are layered on this platform.
If it tries to tell you there's anything on the XBox version of TSW that's unaffected by z-fighting, it's fabricating an incorrect response, fyi.
Less "optimism", more that the problem with a system like these is that its purpose is to satisfy your request. If the thing you are asking for does not exist then, with greater likelihood dependent upon how you phrased the request, it will often simply say that it does, in order to meet your stated desire. It doesn't "understand" the language you use, it simply recognises patterns of words, not the implicit meanings. Think like that Star Trek: TNG episode where Geordi mistakenly asks the holodeck to create a villain for a Sherlock Holmes story capable of outsmarting Commander Data, rather than of outsmarting Holmes, and the computer obligingly takes that phrasing and creates a fully sentient Moriarty with access to the ship's entire databank who threatens the entire crew, rather than delivering the fun little LARP session the two of them hoped for on their day off... It's a major problem for the courts right now, where people whose expertise is in law, not in software, have been using it as if it's a search engine. They ask it to find citations of legal precedent supporting their arguments which do not exist, but which it will happily churn out, leading to judges fining them for presenting fake evidence, or worse, a recent case where one of these fake cases made its way into a judge's ruling, and that ruling had to be retracted after another court had already cited that ruling as precedent for its own findings.
I play on PS5 and XSX. Z fighting in on XSX in every German route produced from TSW3 and 4 onwards. Drive the Railpool Vectron, still has Z fighting to this day. It's in lots of other areas too. In TSW3, 4 and 5. XSX has the best framerates, lowest draw distance and most graphical bugs and glitches compared to PS5.
I remember when DTG Matt announced that all new content going forward day one for TSW5 would be free of z-fighting, that was clearly not the case, and I doubt it will be for TSW6 either. With Xbox presumably the smallest installed user base, we shall forever remain second-class citizens. This is despite DTG Matt owning and playing on Xbox himself...
It's frustrating. When the series x was first released, I quickly bought it thinking it would enhance my experience. Since then, it's just been a catalogue of annoyance: sound issues that bugged it for years; z-fighting; texture issues etc etc. I think what's more frustrating is that these issues are platform specific. If it was a dlc that was causing issues, I'd be hopeful of a fix. But with this, it's seems unending. Furthermore, I don't understand why these issues drag on for years.
I feel that the amount of routes a person owns/ has installed heavily impacts it, for example when I have only had a few DLCs installed, I had little problems however when I have all my routes installed (all UK apart from Mildmay and about half US/German) I have a lot more issues. Especially regarding blurry textures and performance.
Hmm maybe but at same time I have 102 addons installed for day to day use and I honestly haven’t encountered as many problems but this could be a luck thing or something
I don't know about Z-Fighting, but having fewer DLC installed definitely affects loading. I redownloaded tsw4 recently to pick up the achievements I missed. Whilst I pretty quickly gave up after realising how tedious it would be to carry on, the game certainly loaded faster with only Great Western Express, Diesel Legends and Midland Mainline installed
