Thoughts On Ue 5 And Optimization From The Thames Valley Creator Interview

(original discussion)
https://www.rail-sim-community.com/...view-with-train-sim-society-the-optimization/
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I post it not just because of the route(s) which looks kind of quaint and cute, but also for the brief discussion of optimization and UE 5.

The developer says that there is no real advantage to going to UE 5 since they have the "same limitations" and that "optimization" was up to each developer by taking "shortcuts."

This isn't the first developer that has said this, although folks keep tossing around UE 5 as some sort of "magic bullet" that DTG NEEDS for TSW to expand. From these comments it seems that it's not necessary and UE 4 is fine, it's just the actual details of the route that need to be ironed out better in the design phase with these "shortcuts"... not the UI being used.

Now here's my take as a project manager in the past (not in video games however.)

Bigger teams can create more, but communication becomes crucial. The more hands you have in the pot, the more chance for potential conflict simply because you aren't always watching what everyone else is doing on the team. You are too busy getting your own work done. That's just the nature of joint projects.

I wonder how much of the bigger projects being less optimized is because there's multiple developers working on it, while smaller routes have 1 or 2 developers who are each handling more and KNOW what they're optimizing.

If you're a single person doing everything, you know what "shortcuts" you took or how you programmed something. If you are part of a larger "team" then you have to really communicate a lot or things might get lost along the way. Then the QC later is ANOTHER set of eyes on the same project that don't know how it was made, just how it looks from the outside.

It works here with "smaller" projects because 1 or 2 people can easily work alone or side by side and work almost as one mind on it. However, that does limit the scope a bit to these smaller projects (and/or smaller scope like this route that's maybe 20 miles and just one locomotive, no layers, etc) That's not bad. It's just how much a person can reasonably handle.

When you expand projects you take on some risk with more people, more labor management and more crucial communication.


What is your take?

Video interview here

 

The size of development team can have pros and cons. It's all depending on the knowledge in the first place I guess. A single developer with a lot of knowlegde can make a good product, but has to do it all alone. With a team, you have most likely more knowlegde and you can help each other, however with big teams, you often see communication becomes a problem as everyone does just his/her own part.

UE5 does offer some new techniques, however this comes with a performance cost. Switching to UE5 will not solve the current issues and most likely you will get more issues in the end. They're now on a old UE4 version and there is no support for FSR and DLSS for example, I believe those techniques where not supported right out of the box on this UE4 version.

If you look at UE5 games, the overall experience is not great, bad performance and low resolution. Consoles are not happy with UE5 games, unless you not use techniques like Lumen and Nanite. Leaving out those techniques are even more reason not to switch to UE5.

 

In my opinion, TSW has poor graphics, especially when not played in environments with predominantly sunny weather.

If switching to UE5 can improve the situation, then it should be done.

If better work (?) by DTG on this current graphics engine can improve the situation, then it should be done.

Doing neither will leave TSW mediocre.

Before any misunderstandings arise (the usual ones), it's important to clarify that switching to UE5 means developing a new rail simulator from scratch.

 

What is your standard for "good?"
Why do you think UE 5 would be better?
I do think there's a newer version of UE 4 available with more options, not sure if that'd be difficult to port over or not.

 

A software developer gives a reasonable and well-informed opinion.

At the risk of stating the obvious, every extra mile of TSW route is an extra mile's worth of developer design, implementation, QA, all of which are measurable in units of time. Managing larger software development teams is a professional art for which huge companies pay obscene amounts of money to consultants to try and figure out, and they still manage to screw it up. It's hard, and "but this version or that version is better for the user" is almost never a decision without consequence, and the best make those choices thoughtfully and with as much information as they can reasonably gather.

 

I just explained it above.
I challenge anyone to say that TSW, with, say, medium cloud cover, can be considered a graphically acceptable product in 2026.
Are Lumen and Nanite good or bad?
During MR's development, DTG raved about these features.
Now they're obsolete?
There are also has other flaws that completely ruin the immersion, not directly related to the graphics engine.
Like flying cars...
But that's another story.

 

You didn't compare TSW to anything above. You just said it's vaguely "poor."

That's why I asked what you were comparing it to.

 

Everyone has their own opinions.
But when I hear that a graphics engine like UE5.8 is no different from UE4 (which is over 10 years old and no longer supported by Epic), I feel a little disappointed...

 

there is and that unreal 4.27 and it support dlss 3.0 and i think fsr plugin. matt said something like it take few months to upgrade from 4.26 with nothing else being worked on. i think he said there little benefits. i tried to fine the post matt posted but it gone.

 

Reading this as an old duffer and someone who has merely been a spectator of the growth of gaming since the early 80s.
Is there a bigger problem here? Have we reached the outer limits of games development or at least games that can be played on consoles and reasonably priced gaming PCs?
Is the next step-up going to require major developments in hardware and a possibly very expensive jump in the cost of games machines for the end user?
Is the next stage going to need super-fast broadband as a game's world environment is streamed?

Is the dream of an simulated world looking 100% like real life never going to be possible?

 

The dream of a world simulated 100% like reality will remain an illusion, but a simulated world crafted with a little more care would be desirable...

 

I think most people did not really understand what Johannes said about UE 5.

First, you need to keep in mind what the questions was. He was asked what was the biggest technical challenge.

He said UE5 makes some things easier, but it is not a magic button that fixes it all. Yes, UE5 removes the need for rebasing, handles loading the scenery better and nanite pretty much removes the sensation that an object is being replaced by another as it gets closer. Those are all improvements.

BUT it does not remove memory requirements, doesn't remove the need for the developer to still think about how many things can be placed in the world, how the frame rate will be for most users, etc ... UE5 runs great in good hardware, but it does not automatically remove all (or most of) the work related to managing performance from the developer. This was the question that was asked to him and what he was answering to.

Keep in mind that all these improvements UE5 brings have hardware requirements, and if your hardware does not meet them your performance is going to tank hard.

Also, as others have mentioned, you need to remake all the content for UE5 to make use of the new features. They can't just load the UE4 project in UE5, press "compile" and ship it. Not even close.

 

Good point Inkar.
Windows 11 has significantly higher hardware requirements than Windows 10 so older machines struggle with the newer system. It's approximately twice the memory requirement of the older program.
Plus there are software minimums you must have too. (Direct X12 is required vs DirectX 9 I believe)
I don't know what UE5 requires, but there is SOME increase that would make older systems and consoles obsolete even quicker.
That's before the added work requirement to rebuild the whole game in the new system.
I still haven't been sold on just how much advantage would be gained for all that cost.

 

Something's not quite right.
Why did DTG attempt to develop MR with UE5, with such a grand presentation (a year ago)?
Also, I don't think all games developed with UE5 (if well optimized) crash consoles.
Just think of the optimization work done for FH6 (which doesn't use UE5 anyway) on Xbox.
A perfect job done by those who know what they're doing.

 

It's a different game.
They can try it on whatever system they want.
They stopped developing Metro Rivals, so does that tell you it was a good or bad experiment?

 

I believe MR was abolished not because of the power required by UE5, but because of the absurdity of the project itself.
Then again, if the problem with TSW is that it can't handle a certain amount of add-ons, why continue to "pump out" DLCs like crazy?
Isn't 10 years of addons a bit too much?

 

I think it is not a problem of what is required to use UE5, but what system would be required to make it perform at acceptable levels.

To make an example with current technology, TSW6 only requires 8 Gb of RAM and 2 Gb of VRAM to run it but I guess we all know your experience with that is going to be terrible.

Same happens with UE5 and consoles. A TSW Next with UE5 on a console would run, but not as you would want. Probably to a point where you would prefer to stay playing the older UE4 version.

 

This is my concern. With MS extending the Win 10 lifecycle by another year and the current price of hardware, I'm hanging on to my current PC for at least another 18 months, though I am about to (finally) get a slightly better video card than my aging GTX 1650 and, if I can figure out how to do it, trying to swap in a SSD for my C Drive. With the current spike in hardware prices it's hard to justify spending a substantial four figure sum just to play a few games. If the hardware prices stabilise then there's always the option later of doing a motherboard and CPU etc. update.

 

He did, and I've linked to that thread a couple of times in the past when DLSS came up, but it's giving an error now. Must have been in the Off-Topic subforum.

CMs, can the thread linked below be moved into TSW General Discussion, please? It fits, and there's valuable info inside, especially a DLSS discussion between Matt and JetWash.

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/train-simulator-unreal-engine-5.76804/

 

Adding to this part, I think the what was said was that nothing added to 4.27 had a real bearing on TSW, so it wasn't worth going to the trouble to upgrade.

It's also worth tossing out a general reminder that TSW is using a very heavily modified version of UE4 that also includes useful features backported from UE5, so the full upgrade would not be a straight UE4 --> UE5 conversion. I imagine it would involve not only a complete rewrite of TSW, but also a substantial rewrite of UE5 to fit.

 

Is ten years of add-ons enough —— no! Still good add-ons coming out for TSC. I think I have most all of the DLC for TSW and I don’t have any problems with blurriness, slow loadings or crashes. Of course I gave a pretty hefty PC since I use it for flight simulation as well. That aside, I don’t see were the conversion to UE 5 would be of any benefit for many of the arguments made above. It seems the most common argument to move to 5 is “it is newer so it must be better. Not a philosophy that I hold.

 

People need to give up this weird dream of UE5, for now. It wont be what they are thinking it will be.
I'm not trying to lose all of this content that has been built up, I don't want to wait 10 more years for my route to be picked and then built in a new engine again. No thanks, the trade-offs are not worth it, not even close. It's not as if some UE5 version wouldn't also have problems.