Nec: New York - Trenton Is A Performance Nightmare, Even On High-end Pcs

After a few days of playing the new timetable, I finally sat down to round up my thoughts (and emotions) in a new video showing the absolute performance nightmare that is the NY - Trenton updated timetable. Even after disabling the LIRR layer (via uninstalling the DLC through Steam) the timetable runs just as bad if not worse than before with constant freezing and stutters every few seconds. Some freezes last multiple seconds. Not to mention all of the new bugs that seemed to be introduced since this route was baked for TSW4 (no passengers on platforms, passengers not loading/offloading, alerter beeping on AI services that cannot be turned off, NJT PIS displays only “train”, NJT AI not using taillights, not having drivers, etc.)

Can someone address whether these issues will be looked into?

I really wish more thorough testing occurred on this as it feels like yet another piece of North American content rushed and shoveled out to us in time for TSW4 launch when this should’ve been released no earlier than mid-late October (especially after discovering it was in testing and having freight layers cut less than a week before release).

I’ll list my specs below, but I truly believe this is not a concern of my system being too weak but of poor game optimization. If other routes with a large number of total services and around the same amount of layers run smoothly with no hitching, why is it such an issue on this route in particular? It seems to always be the US content with the most issues, the most noticeable bugs, and the most in-cab signaling progression issues. If we ever get another leg of the NEC, will that have botched signaling too? It’s hard to build trust and get excited about future releases when this is the state we receive said content when it arrives OVER and OVER again.

Apologies for the harshness, but it’s just BEYOND frustrating at this point.

I lastly want to add that I appreciate all of the work Joe has done to make this timetable come to life and see the light of day, so this is in absolutely no way directed at him.

This is an issue with Dovetail and US content as a whole.

Spoiler: System Specs

i9-9900k 3.5ghz (OC to 4.5ghz)
64 Gb DDR4 @ 3600mhz
Nvidia RTX 2070 8GB VRAM
1TB M.2 SSD

 

I have a railfan video coming a little later on, made at NY Penn. Will upload my specs later along with the video itself. I encountered the exact same as yourself, plenty of stutters and freezes, throughout the time I was there. I had the LIRR layer activated albeit there seems to be no difference apparently.

 

I'll be on the lookout thanks! Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous, considering this is the only route this is happening on, at least for me.

 

I can confirm I have the same issue with this route. Just tried both full and reduced timetable and the amount of stuttering is unbearable. Much worse than other routes, which is minimal on my PC.

Just tried a free roam departure from NY Penn and there was no stuttering so it must be an issue with the new timetables.

 

i was getting the stuttering really bad on the reduced timetable as well and it makes no sense cause the timetable in TSW3 is the reduced one (from my knowledge) but it runs like butter there. So what’s different this time? Something just isn’t adding up.

 

I’m on Xbox Series S, everytime if I try to do a service on the updated timetable, the game crashes, it is beyond frustrating.

 

its not worth playing the way it is

 

In my case the route runs perfect for me, around 60-80 fps, a little lower than the rest of the routes (90-130 fps).
NYPeen suffers from time to time some falls and some micropauses typical of tsw, but nothing out of the ordinary.
In general I see TSW4 more fluid than TSW3

I play with this system:
- i5 12400f (2.5 - 4.4 GHz)
-32 GB (2x16) DDR4 3200 Mhz
- RTX 4060Ti 8Gb GDDR6 DLSS3

 

Skip to absolutely anywhere in the video and I guarantee you within 10/15 seconds either side of where you landed, there's a stutter of some sort. I'm running an AMD Ryzen 5800X3D which is liquid cooled, an RTX 3080Ti 12GB and 32GB 3600Mhz RAM, in an open case. Go figure. I tried both DX11 and DX12 and achieved the same results.

 

I'm running a 5600x, 3070, and 32GB of T-Force RAM running at 3200 Mhz, and I don't even own LIRR, much less have its layers enabled, but it does the same for me. Furthermore it's worth noting my computer as of the last two months has been running all SSDs, granted I'm running it off a SATA SSD. But realistically I don't think that should make a big difference since TSW up to this point has ran perfectly well off my other SATA SSD for years, including everything else I've played in TSW4. Riesa-Dresden for example seems to run well, some minor stutters but nothing abnormal by TSW standards, and that seems to have a similarly busy timetable.

Real shame since the increased amount of NJ service really does make a big difference with how lively the route feels. And I really like driving the NJ locomotives it comes with, but in typical DTG fashion they fixed one thing, and broke something else.

 

In my opinion, the timetable itself is excellent but has exposed glaring optimization flaws with the rail vehicles it makes extensive use of. It seems as if a good portion of the AI traffic is processing much more behind the scenes than is actually necessary, with the alerter going off on passing AI trains being a great example.

 

I have a similarly spec’d pc as you Pixlade, and I am also getting the same preformance issue as you show in your video. Makes me wonder if the freight layer issues were actually due to the freight or just a symptom of this bigger issue. Maybe once (if) these performance issues are resolved, there’s a possibility of the freight layers being brought back. I won’t hold my breath though.

 

I’m on Xbox series s and it runs fine for me but what I have seen is that it could be the lirr layer that’s causing the problems

 

I have the same issues, spawning at NY penn or sunnyside yard is pretty much impossible with how slow it loads and the fps I get. I have around the same specs as you

 

If you watched Pixelade's video, then you'll know that isn't the case.

 

It seems like it’s getting worse for me, and I’m on Series X! The first couple days of playing the new timetable, it only stuttered at NY Penn. But when I played it yesterday the stuttering at NY Penn was getting worse and worse. It was so bad to the point i couldn’t even stand and prepare my train.. this same thing started happening at Trenton weirdly.
I’m so fed up with Dovetail giving us the short end of the stick when it comes to U.S content. Dovetail should be ashamed of themselves for not providing good quality content to only the U.S side of DLC’s. I paid good money for this LOVE and for Dovetail to not care whatsoever is beyond me at this point.

 

Glad to see I'm not the only one with issues. I have a newly built PC as well:

Ryzen 7950X3D
32GB Corsair DDR5 6000Mhz RAM
RTX 4090
Installed on M.2 NVMe SSD

I have my FPS limit set to 60 and actual frame rates between stutters usually manage to stay right around 60fps even in NYP at rush hour, so its not a raw horsepower problem. The entire route is a horror show of stutters every 5 seconds (or less around NYP). The stutters continue even when I'm stopped or just slowly pulling out of a station, so that makes it seem like its not the tile loading issue that's plagued other routes. I was going to to try the old timetable but it seems from everyone on here that doesn't change anything.

One good way I've noticed to gauge the stuttering is just sit with the locomotive bell on and you can listen to the bell "chimes" get out of synch, get distorted and compressed and overlap while the stutters happen.

I can't figure out how to tag users for some reason, so somebody should probably tag Matt and/or JD.

 

Considering people are reporting that the performance is bad on the route even using the reduced timetable, I do wonder if performance will be better on TSW3 with the new timetable - if it ever releases for TSW3, that is.

 

The real question should be where are these so called beta testers? If they tested this product, they would've stumbled upon this issue surely.

Issues like this is exactly why people don't think DTG test their products and is exactly why players say that U.S content is always getting the short end of the stick and is worse than the U.K and German routes

Or perhaps they did find the issue but decided to push the update out to TSW 4 first anyway as an incentive to buy tsw 4 regardless of how it performed.

It's a shame really because it looks like the usual story of great work ruined by DTG's usual incompetence

 

DTG has no QA testing. Well, they do, but even they themselves has admitted that it only consist of checking if the product runs without crashes, and that's about it. Gameplay bugs, visual glitches and performance issues all get swept to the sides.

 

If this was a studio like EA or Take 2 that did this stuff, they would get hammered for doing the bear minimum. But because DTG doesn't get that much attention from big game journalists/critics, they get away with stuff like this. It's ridiculous and shows that seemingly nobody at DTG cares about the final product no matter how much they pretend to do on their PR streams and it's no wonder why issues like these happen.

 

That would be all of the folks here who preordered.

 

I highly doubt it. Seeing as Dovetail only released it with TSW4 at launch so more people would probably buy the game.

 

But the route didn't come out until release day of the standard edition so not even the people who pre-ordered wouldn't have been able find these issues.

Perhaps the release of the timetable should've been delayed to give more time to fix these issues but if they did that there would be no incentive for some to get tsw4 so clearly this was a marketing/financial decision

 

Just read about the broken Bremen-Oldenburg timetable and the new scoring system not working at all... now also this. several DLC rendered unplayable and the overhauled scoring system just not working at all... How could no one notice all this stuff before putting this out? This tim I have to agree with the pessismists: we need some explaning from DTG.

 

it’s so strange how this is occurring on very specific hardware only it seems… I have double the amount of ram and the same amount of VRAM in the GPU, but it seems to run so much better on the newer generation of cards. Doesn’t seem to like the 20x series it seems. Also are you running DX12?

 

i was thinking about this last night! there has got to be some sort of correlation between the bugs with the locos (alerter beeping like you mentioned) and maybe even the issue of no passengers spawning anywhere or loading/off loading that is contributing to the workload on system hardware. You just don’t see this on any other route even ones that are just as heavy AI wise.

 

in my trials (the video linked in the original post), i removed the LIRR layer by uninstalling the DLC, and the issue didn’t resolve itself. It was worse, in-fact.

OT: Nobody has tagged DTG Matt and DTG JD yet, and honestly i should’ve done so in my original post, but with all the the responses now of players with high end hardware experiencing the same thing on the new updated timetable (and some on the reduced timetable as well), i hope the devs can take a look at this and let us know if it’s something they can take a look at investigating. We are just beyond frustrated with our content arriving to us like this, over and over again. :/

 

Well, NYT is running just fine on my PC with the full timetable and all layers.. I've finished my second run although it was ok the first time. Love the new timetable.

But where are all the passengers? Not a soul on the entire route. Reminds me of a Stephen King story.

This habit of DTG, solve one problem while creating another is becoming tiresome.

Don't you wonder, as I do, whether anyone, be it QA or beta testers, actually plays a service before sending these routes out into the world? There is no way that this passenger issue could have gotten by even a cursory glance at the game- p!ay.

Did DTG release the route without passengers, hoping we wouldn't notice? It beggars belief.

I7-11700
RTX 3080 10GB
32GB RAM
1TB M2 NVMe SSD

 

I don't own the Trenton route yet, but after seeing the video, I think I will miss this...
But I also saw a video about the new scenario creator, so I thought: does a DIY scenario without any AI traffic has this stutters too ? And if not, does it depend which sort of AI locos/trains are added ? Perhaps the problem is just one special sort of train ?

 

Just ran across this thread, in the we hours of the morning, and to touch upon the post here
A video I found a while ago, this is from three years ago Careers in video games | Jon Rissik & Naaila Clements | Dovetail Games - YouTube

And yes you are 100% correct in that statement

 

Schnauz agrees and is not please either, not pleased at all!

 

Receiving unreal crashes even on the reduced timetable. One of them occurred when passing south through Secaucus. In TSW3, I've never once received a crash to desktop. Something is clearly wrong with the way this route was optimized for TSW4.

Spoiler: System Specs

i9-9900 3.5ghz (OC to 4.5ghz)
64 Gb DDR4 @ 3600mhz
Nvidia RTX 2070 8GB VRAM
1TB M.2 SSD

 

I’m hearing on another thread that other routes like Bremen and Peak forest have the same issue with no passengers. so something is definitely out of wack that’s affecting some routes

 

So I Know Joe couldn’t duplicate the actual LIRR moves and staging on the west side Hudson yard do to performance. Imagine having over 100 trains in a 3 mile radius. Anyway I figure I can capture some of that. Surprisingly was still able to get around 80FPS still at Penn. Granted this was at noon time which is not as busy. This was on Xbox X.

 

As a big lover of LIRR, this is such a beautiful sight.

While definitely not a feasable idea with the current way of doing things - just as you said, hundreds of fully modelled and funcitonal rolling stock could kill any machine. But if they were to did lower-poly, simple physics dummy versions of trains, scenes like this could easily be made. Just like how the old MSTS and early day Train Simulator used to have AI only, less detailed train to populate the routes. Why is that not a thing anymore, I wonder?

 

I would imagine, mostly due to the ability in service mode to take over nearly any train. For that to happen, they all need to be the full versions.

 

For services that actually can be driven by the player, yes. But quite often there will be services that are AI only - like when a train is just there to populate the scene, but goes to different lines, etc. In those case, since those would not be driveable by the player anyway, a dummy version would easily do.

 

I’ve uninstalled NY Trenton from my XBox X as I can’t get it to run on the full timetable without out of memory crashing

 

I did a few runs on NYT to test it after seeing this thread - I'm not seeing any stutters (running on -dx12 mode) and that's with an aggressive engine.ini configuration. So there must be something consistent for everybody having these issues, but it's not universal (which unfortunately may make it harder to pinpoint/fix)

 

After experiencing this for myself and confirming after watching the YT vids posted by Pixelade and Schnauzahpowahz, this really is a serious issue for the new timetable on NYT

I dont usually tag staff members, but DTG Matt DTG JD please look into this as a matter of urgency

My system is fairly new, so this is not a hardware issue

i7-13700KF
RTX 4070Ti
32GB RAM

 

Same problem for me, just moving the joystick up and down in the cab at NY-Penn results in a hitch every single time you move. This doesn't look like a shader cacheing problem but more something thats constantly being loaded/unloaded. The (missing) passengers could be part of that problem.

 

I'm curious about what .ini tweaks you've done. I've tried a few of the common ones and they haven't helped much. Also using DX12.

i7-12700K
RTX 3080Ti
DDR4 3600MHz
Samsung 980 PRO NVMe SSD

 

Thank you! i’m assuming they aren’t in the office as its now the weekend so i’m sure our tags will get lost amongst other things by the time they are back to work Monday, but i’ll edit & tag them in the original post early next week for sure.

 

i know this wasn’t a reply to me, but personally i’ve tried at least 5 different variations of ini tweaks i’ve found on other performance threads to see if any help, and none of them did a single thing.

one thing i did notice though, is using DX12 took most of the load off my CPU and it only runs at like 40% instead of the 90% it was utilizing before.

 

I am really angry will DTG over this. I agree the freezes and stuttering are unbearable. What were their testers doing? or did they not test the changes? Or not care? My anger here is because many of the older routes are now unplayable because of TSW4. Worse still, community mods which improved the older routes now wont port over. Its a shambles. I am lucky to have the hard drive space to retain TSW3 which runs the older routes much better but many people wont have this option. You still have to install ALL routes on TSW4 if you want the layered content. My steam review will focus on these issues because many people who delete TSW3 wont realise the implications of doing so.

 

If one can run dx12 its highly recommended atleast for the core routes, just like years past. Adding it during EA and running AVL was total contrast in fluidity and fps.
Haven't had the time to try the other routes yet from tsw3 but since its essentially the same game and NYT runs totally fine on the old TT - theres truly somthing amiss.

 

Just watched the start of your video showing the new timetable. The performance looks horrific. Was looking forward to getting this on PS5, but if your PC can’t handle it, the PS5 has no chance.

 

I am running the following launch options, although I have experienced stuttering... it hasnt been to the extent as showcased in Pixelade 's and Schnauzahpowahz 's streams. Could you check your launch options and see if it is the same and if it makes any improvement ? (I know you are both running in DX12, but unsure about the useallavailablecores and high options)

-USEALLAVAILABLECORES -DX12 -HIGH

PS

-HIGH (This gives the game app top priority over any background housekeeping tasks your machine may want to do while you're playing, things like indexing which often create framerate drops)

 

thank you! i’m assuming this is placed under [system settings] in the engine.ini file? i’ll give this a shot later on when i’m home.

it’s just beyond sad we have to do these things and go to these lengths to get decent performance. Optimization isn’t even a priority for DTG anymore at this point it seems, for PC players at least. (or has it ever been?)