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

So I tried again on Xbox X offline and I got steady FPS with no stutter. Did the camera view moving around, smooth no suttering whatsover.
During of the completing of task like unloading and loading at the station,all smooth no stuttering.

PC Steam tried offline. was getting around 40 FPS 26.69M/S at Penn station. As soon as I got into the tunnels was getting around 60 FPS. Once I got of the tunnels was getting Around 90 FPS. Which is what I have it capped to.. Stutter was noticeable but as I stated before nothing game breaking. Now for something that did catch my eyes. Everytime The train would stop at a station at the beginning of when the tasr starts unloading you get a big game pause and also at the completion of loading you get another big game pause which you notice the GPU and CPU drop to single digits. This doesn' doesnt happend on Xbox X at all. Also when I move around in camera view you notice the stuttering as you move around. Again this doesn't happen on Xbox X. I hope this information helps. Again really enjoying the new timeable and really trying to help solve this so everyone can enjoy it.

 

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/bremen-oldenburg-unplayable-since-tsw4.74482/unread

just saw this in another thread… i wonder if this has any correlation with issues we are experiencing in NYT

 

An active member figured this out or is the person a Developer Working with DTG or dev with another studio skyhook?

 

And the message is?

 

I think he's trying to point out that will marshall is a developer working for dtg and the second message is the routes that were affected by the bug

 

Ah okay, I get ya.

 

Guess I was on the right 'track' with a possible passenger issue.

 

passenger fix likely coming eventually then, hallelujah lol

now onto the stuttering! haha

i have a really good feeling now. keeping my fingers tightly crossed

 

I have very little stuttering overall and not annoying. But this issue was something else and was not the "general caching" problem. Hopefully a fix soon.

 

Will is a software engineer for DTG. Brilliant guy. He fixes a lot of the core stuff that we report internally.

 

Ah okay, Was surprised to see a dev come on here and not have the DTG tag on. Will be keeping an eye on future developments.
Thanks for the info.

 

I know I'm a bit late but my experience with the route has been odd to say the least, almost like rolling a dice pretty much.
So first, New York Penn Station worked horribly on the first go which I expected and I got an immediate crash.
Upon my second walk around the station, I was getting very smooth performance but for some reason there's just an odd beeping noise coming from somewhere.

General performance for timetable mode has been a mixed, mostly positive bag. This is with spotify running in the background so maybe it could be better without it.
I'm getting usually about getting about 50-60 FPS with minimal stutters.
(Can't go above that as my TV can't run anything above 60 FPS)

All services run decently to very good aside from a few NJT Penn to Trenton services that will crash no matter what. To access them, I will need to start on foot and enter them manually, it's the same crash bug from Kassel Würzburg that I had.
There have been odd performance drops sometimes at Trenton but that's about it.

What I have is an Xbox Series X
I usually keep about 120 GB of free space on my system.
I don't have any liveries for any of the trains on this route including the LIRR.
I have all layer DLCs EXCEPT the M3.

Hope this helps.

 

Yeah that's not so strange... If you didn't have the m3 more than a half is removed in the Penn area... If it's not caused by any other bugs it's for me a acceptable solution to remove the m3 from the route to restore the quality for NYT. In and around Trenton the stutter is less noticeable

 

I didnt know that about the M3. that makes sence on my end since on PC I have the M3 but on Xbox X I dont and it runs much better on Xbox X. I will give it a try later

 

Yeah there is a difference between the timetables. For me personally if there is for sure no other problem that caused the fps problem remove the m3.. better than cut the services that you can drive

 

the LIRR is one that has the M7
the M3 is the extra DLC that just adds variety for the LIRR layer. So just want to make sure you are saying you removed the M3 DLC but you still have the LIRR layer activated for the M7

 

Sorry my fault I mean the m7.... Than ignore my other things that I'm writing....

 

Good news is the at least the issues are on the road map which means they are looking at the issues. Matt also mentioned on the roadmao they new timetable is staying so thats really good news.
Today. I tried on Xbox X .besides the game crashing on start on certain timetable services the performance is good on Xbox X.
PC steam has more stuttering but not as bad as others are seeing. Lets cross or fingers for a fix

 

Wonder why the Bi-Level cars would effect performance?

 

I guess it would depend on how it's set up in simugraph, calculations and optimizations. Some other loco sets and emus also eat through a lot of memory.

 

this is exactly what i love to see! reducing the new timetable would be the wrong move. instead of sweeping issues under the rug and looking for an easy way out, they seem to be tackling this at the source. thank you for your transparency and listening to us. DTG Matt DTG JD

 

Probably something wrong in simugraph or with the models. The boxcars on Clinchfield are also known to cause framerate dips when they are on screen.

 

I am on Xbox series S. I am not having the stuttering issues like you explained in your video, but other issues, such as the alerter beeping, are present on my end. I do not own the LIRR DLC, so I don't have it installed. The sim is still working fine, quite honestly I feel as if frame rates are even better than TSW3, even during rush hour on NYT. Very sorry for all the PC players dealing with these issues at the moment. Praying for a resolution soon.

 

I understand what you and others have stated, and yes they all need to talk and FIX, I know I am being the sour grape here, seeing a dev jump in here and making the statement about how and what needs looking into and correcting/fixing. And yes I understand it takes time to do the coding and scripting.
Question: Why was this let out the door like this?

This very similar discussion was had about the MML-EMT DLC. Much was fixed, PS5 Is still up in the air?
I went out of my way to make videos showing an issue and even demonstrated what was and is actually wrong. SOS and one route, my daughter I spent at least a week putting the video together, what was done? Swept under the rug kind of and left what I showed broken even in TSW4. I did this to give something to the devs, help fix & patch you name it. why not, I have plenty of time on my hands. Not even one comment or we will look into it, well except for a few relating to MML-EMT-class 43 and the 158 that a well-known user on here, ___Green forget this name put things into simugraph and let me know about the doors and the way things happened with the train, that it's well known by DTG but still trying to get it worked out.

My faith is swimming like the Titanic, I spent close to 7 hours on just one route/timetable/scenario yesterday and into today. Video to come!

I am being very very reserved right now, If I was more like in my younger days right now, someone would have to have their hand on the 7-second delay button, like on TV and radio. I am beyond fuming. The issues I found in TSW4 have translated to TSW3 also, video to come! I really do hope the issues are fixed ASAP, no dill dally, because there are some nice things in TSW4, but Fubarding TSW3, Why was there a need to make some things worse?

 

This may be redundant, but for those who have not seen the patch notes as posted on steam.

 

yeah, it seems the passenger fix doesn't work on NYT or maybe it wasn't meant for it? Just loaded in and no passengers still...

 

Yea the Patch didn't go out for NYT Matt mentioned it on the stream .They have a fix but they didn't sent it for NYT

 

I was on another route, scenario in the wee hours, and I will be testing the NYT, as well as others, not sure what this update was for or about. I saw some things that could induce seizures.
--

Okay so let's talk about it, yes we have a patch ie; fix but we are not pushing it out! Great

 

Check out the road map. Matt talked about NYT around the 1 hour 14 minute and 30 second time stamp. he mentioned the passenger fix would be on the next patch
https://www.youtube.com/live/0M8S55MEZm4?si=vARpvwDVXmdUuc2D

 

As of right now, I need to walk off... Or I will____ that is how angry I am... several videos need editing, and I'm giving the PC up to my daughter.
But hey we have fully articulated CAT... With Zero Issues.

 

I need to make A correction as well as apologize for sounding off the way I did and on my part for the statement I made "I saw some things that could induce seizures" What had happened was that I made a change to the engine ini and lumped everything together. That statement was in hast and with a fair bit of anger, the reason being that is what was stated in the road map about having a fix/patch that would go out in the next batch of updates.

Why could they not do it with this update? they pushed out on 2023-10-03, it's been stated many times now that a slot needs to be made available and worked out with steam to get updates and patches/fixes qued up to be pushed out.
This could have been done, Yes No? If not why? I would think it would be a good time to take advantage of the slot made available and push the patches/fixes/updates out.

 

Don’t know if anyone else is experiencing this on NYT in TSW4, but speed limits on the new HUD are not appearing sometimes. They will flash and show just seconds before they go into effect or sometimes cut out for minutes at a time. I’ve noticed it does it most around the Elizabeth curve and near Metuchen. Gotta pull up the original next speed change countdown just incase they stop working, which it has done at least once each service I play.

 

The only patch they have held back is the lack of passengers disembarking the trains, the game freezes are being caused by a completely seperate issue (signals) and rather than push out a small patch every couple of days that won't fix the main problem they are planning to patch all the fixes in one go, hopefully in the not too distant future.

I really don't see a problem with this approach, why not just take a break from NYT for a few days while they fix it?

 

That might be the best thing, I currently am playing other routes like Voralberg, ECML and Antelope Valley while the fixes are in progress. While the intention to make the route busier is great, all the bugs NYT currently has makes the experience unenjoyable

 

Off topic did anyone else notice the weird ticking sound on the exterior of the train when running? It sounds like all cars have some sort of rapid ticking sound when the train is rolling past 40 MPH(even slower maybe)

 

exactly what i’m doing. enjoying a lot of the german stuff for the time being.

 

I have had this happen randomly and not just on NYT. I also run with the old countdown hud as I just feel I cannot trust the new one to warn me of all the upcoming speed changes

 

You are the first to respond to my report on this. I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing this!

 

Some additional credit where credit is due: in my initial feedback post about the route last week, I said that the cab signaling is still a complete mess. After a weeks' worth of gameplay, I think I can revise that too, it's only still kind of a mess. A lot of the progression issues approaching diverging routes have been fixed, but there are still some weird ones. DTG Matt mentioned on the Roadmap video the other day that they were looking into signaling as a potential cause of the poor performance, noting that the signal scripts are looking ahead 9 signals. cActUsjUiCe, that's not usually correct for NEC signaling, is it? Maybe in the tunnels where the code change points are so frequent, but on the mainline, wouldn't the signals only need to be looking ahead three or four blocks? What I'm getting at is that there might be a fix-two-problems-at-once improvement to be had; it seems that some of the weird cab signal behavior (I'm thinking especially of the cab drops heading eastbound between New Brunswick and Edison, which seem to occur when Metropark--way more than 3 blocks ahead--is blocked by a train ahead of you) would be fixed if the signals were only looking ahead the proper 3 or 4 blocks.

 

You're absolutely correct. 9 signals is overkill in most cases. The areas with lots of consecutive track circuits (Newark Penn - Penn Station) may require this, but the rest of the route could probably suffice with 5 or 6. However I don't know if some of the cab signal behavior anomalies would be fixed by lowering the value.

FYI, Boston's dispatch distance is 5.

 

I just tried this update out for the first time on my Series S and was also impressed with how it ran. It seemed perfect FPS wise even on the little console. Granted like you I don’t have LIRR for Xbox so that could be it. Also I did get a crash right outside of Metropark and couldn’t finish my service.

On a positive note I noticed pantographs seem to be fixed. And on a negative note there were no passengers and the NJT trains still seem to open the doors on the wrong side at least at some stations.

I have it on PS5 too (with LIRR) so I will check it out once my DLC finishes installing.

 

I posted way back on page one or so, and I know the horse has been beaten to death already. But I figured I'd come back and report my findings after attempting a run just now on my essentially top of the line PC if anyone from DTG still reads this thread.

PC specs:
AMD Ryzen 9 7950 X3D
32GB DDR5 6000mhz RAM
Auros RTX4090 24GB VRAM
Installed on a Samsung 1TB NVMe SSD
Windows 10

All settings high or better with a handful of engine.ini mods. I'm not using the big anti-stutter settings from the other thread as when I tried them, perhaps in combination with my other settings, my FPS dropped quite low on other routes like Voralberg, especially east of Feldkirch. Removing them restored my FPS to before. Running at 4k resolution at 150% image scaling.

Steam launch options of -DX12, -HIGH and -USEALLAVAILABLECORES.

All applicable DLCs that contribute AI installed.

Ran the approx 17:15 NJT Super Express NY Penn - Trenton with the Multilevel Cab Car to really give a full stress test to the route again.

Somehow the stutters have gotten far worse than my previous several runs a week ago. Essentially the whole trip from MY Penn to past EWR Airport the sim spent frozen/stuttered more than it was running. Stutters were essentially constant (every 1-2 seconds) and lasted anywhere from a fraction of a second to the sim completely freezing up for 3-4 seconds or more (long enough to think it crashed a couple of times). 20 minutes passing of the game clock in the sim felt like it took significantly longer in real life in this stretch. Past EWR Airport things improved but were still bad from a game play standpoint. Stutters were still every few seconds but typically lasted only a fraction of second each time. Approaching Rahway it regressed back to stutters lasting longer than actual smooth game play time, occasionally lasting 3-4 seconds again. I passed two other trains stopped at Metropark going both directions (super cool to see with the new timetable, but it was a slideshow) and continued for a minute or two before I couldn't take it anymore and just quit the game entirely.

Some other performance notes to go along with this report. Despite my high settings and image scaling, my FPS between stutters/pauses remained essentially pegged on 62fps (my frame rate limit in settings) the entire time, even when loading in NY Penn with who knows how many AI trains roaming around at the time. According to Windows task manger, my RAM usage never exceeded about 13.2GB of the total 32GB available. My CPU usage remained low the entire time as well (makes sense since I'm on DX12). GPU usage fluctuated it seemed, but GPU VRAM usage also didn't appear to exceed half of the 24GB available on the card.

Since I can keep my stable time FPS essentially locked on 62fps even in NY Penn at rush hour, it seems that at least from my machine's perspective, the stutters are not a raw rendering horsepower problem. My low memory usage seems to rule out some kind of memory leak as well. So it seems to my untrained eye that the cause is an issue in the background simulation itself, whatever that may be.

DTG Matt and DTG JD I know you guys have said this is under investigation, but I figured a detailed write up of what one user is experiencing even on a very high end system might be helpful and maybe you'll glean some clues from it.

 

"Get a better PC!"

 

right...

Some of us have rigs that cost well over $2,000 - $3,000 yet it was made, at least initially (with the first few dev responses) to seem like the issue was with us or our systems. For sure rubbed me the wrong way.

OT: After a super busy week, I was finally able to get around to summarizing all of what's been happening in this thread, updates elsewhere, and my thoughts on how issues with NYT are being handled in a new video!

 

Why is ATC so computationally intensive? Maybe we can isolate the issue if we know how it exactly works and how it's implemented in-game. I would be happy to go back and forth on how DTG has done the signalling to potentially find any issues.

EDIT: If I apply any of my experience with coding, the problem is going to be a random asset that was 'invisible' in the middle of like, Newark Penn or something and just so happened to be the size of the entire route or something like that.

 

I do not think looking 9 blocks forward is a big issue, since SEHS and LGV included TVM, which looks 7 blocks ahead. Even that said, I would like for them to reduce that 9 block margin dynamically based on the train's current speed limit.
EDIT: Now I'm wondering how complex ATC actually is to implement, not just in-game, but in California HSR as they're doing now.

 

Why is it up to us, the paying customers to try and figure these things out, doing debugging for DTG who are getting paid for that???

Gave this DLC a "Not recommended" - who decided to greenlight the release?!? I'm more and more turning away from the whole TSW disaster, but who cares, I've paid the money already. Put a "Note: TSW4 is an Early Access game, you might experience serious bugs" on the splash screen.

IF "as good as we can make it" (JD) = TRUE THEN "we" is the variable that needs inspection.

Good video, Pixelade