Lossless. An Enhancement App That Is Not Snake Oil. My Mind Is Slightly Blown.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/993090/Lossless_Scaling/

Cap your fps at 30. Let this app double the steady thirty by interpolating inbetween frames. What I got was a super-smooth tsc experience. Driving out of Munich with a steady 60 fps actually transformed the experience. RTM on how to turn it on. Over at Rail-Sim.de there is some good hints in the first post. https://rail-sim.de/forum/thread/41712-lossless-scaling/

In a world where there are many snake-oil enhancements, this is the real deal for once! I highly recommend it.

Maybe the DTG team should look at some sort of implementation of this tech.

 

Does it work for FPS capped a lot higher (61 in my case) ?

 

It should, but above 60 i don’t think you will really notice. Where this app shines is that it will make 30fps look as smooth as 60. A steady 30 is achievable on a lot of systems, and so you wont get the choppy fps up and down “chatter” effect that kills the immersion.

Before this i capped my fps at 60 and was annoyed when it then fluctuated below. Which it always would on particularly newer rsslo routes. Now, cap at 30fps , reinterpolated by LossLess to 60fps, those 60 are as steady as the 30. And the effect is that routes that were not maxing out at 60, feels super smooth in performance. With no visual artefakts.

So it wont give you more fps. But it will put a generated frame inbetween the 30 that TSC will output, and it’s like pushing the supersmooth button.

It can actually tripple the fps. I haven’t tried that, but reports is that using the 3x setting does have artefakts.

 

Interesting, and I think I can see how it works.

As TSC is running on a single core, and there is reasons why the process cannot be parallelised without syncing issues due to the complexitiy of simulating a signal network, the GPU is mostly waiting for the CPU to finish its work.

This is where Lossless jumps in, it has time to interpolate frames and feed them to the GPU.

 

I also got it for 5 Euros and gave it a try. I have my frames capped at 35, because otherwise my laptop fans go crazy. Kim seems to understand better how this works. So you switch it on and the framerates in the game stay the same. But as Kim explained it, it does some kind of magic to double them (see the two yellow numbers displayed in the corner). I tried this with a very busy scenario comining out of Waterloo and Clapham Junction. The games framerate displayed 14 but it was double as much and felt much smoother. Really amazing stuff.

I did find the Menu UI beeing more stuttery though. I also tried Cities Skylines 2 and lossless actually makes the performance worse in that case. But it seems to work wonders with TS Classic!

 

Does it work with any GPU ie AMD or nVidia? Work with internal graphics?
Is it any difference to nVidia DSR settings, supplements DSR, totally different to DSR?

 

I think the doubling of input fps to output fps is it’s own unique animal. Should work on any setup.

Been playing with it all day, as wifey has covid (no worries, she is ok apart from coughs and headache) and we are trying not to be close. I am very very impressed with LossLess.

 

Does this stop your hardware working overtime. Sometimes my pc sounds like a jet engine lol

 

[SOLVED]
The preffered GPU is default set to Auto. Setting it to my graphics card doubled the FPS of the tool, compared with normal, and gave a smooth experience. (24 / 48)

Original post:
Tried this on the first Career scenario of the Porthmouth Waterloo route.
Capt FPS at max 30 (Tried both via NVIDIA panel and TSC shortcut (FPS Limit))

The tools shows 17 / 27 where 27 is the FPS generated by the tool, right?
However with the tool turned of everything seems smoother. Where the CTRLZ Fps indicator shows around 25

Any ideas what the problem is? (Solved, see above)

 

Just something I found on a Steam post, might be helpful for someone.

Frame rate hasn't been an issue for me after upgrading my PC, but I have locked it on 60 to prevent it to go crazy and make the pc work hard. Some routes, like Konstanz-Villingen is quite heavy and Lossless makes it feel more smooth, it also lowers my GPU temperature.

 

Using Lossless on my 120hz monitor with the Nvidia control panel TSC setting at 40FPS and Lossless at x3. Brilliantly smooth!

 

my gpu runs pretty hot when i am in TSC since the last update will this stop it running so hot. I limit my fps already in steam with the 30fps locked through that.

 

Might not fix that issue, but it is worth trying. I guess you can ask for a refund if it doesn't work for you.

 

Will take a look as nothing to loose as you say thanks.

 

I dont seem to be having as much luck with this, Im think it is the same issue Been was having but I dont have any other options other than 'Auto' for my GPU.

The base rate according to Steams FPS counter is 40 but Lossless counter fluctuates all over the place, the left counter always shows above 40 so not sure what is going on there. The overall experience is like having v-sync on but not being able to hit the required FPS to make it smooth, very stuttery.

I was looking at this from purely a hardware performance POV as I have a 4070 TI paired with a GSync monitor so smoothness isnt really an issue most of the time anyway. Is anyone else using this program with a 40 series GPU and / or GSync monitor that is having more success than me?

 

I tried it myself with this and omsi 2 i and honestly i couldnt see anything that would make me want to use it. I have just refunded it on steam pending a refund of course.

 

How do you get this to work?

It either terminates or makes TS lock up. What order do you run it, steam and TS? Will it work with vanilla TS or do I have to change settings. I have FPS locked to 30 in my NVIDIA settings.

 

My fps counter is in grey as well, no sign of the yellow fps that everyone is talking about, not sure if that is indicative of anything.

From reading the Railsim.de forum it needs to be run in Borderless mode in case you havent done that. Someone suggested RTM but I myself havent been able to find it, it is not linked on the store page and I couldnt see it in the install folder either.

 

The first time you run it, you press the shorcut snd then click somewhere in the tsc game window. That way LossLess knows which window to double the fps.

Btw i had to set another on/off shortcut than the default to make it work I set mine to ctrl-slt-p.

 

I am running a 3080Ti on a Gsync monitor. GSync or otherwise doesn't seem to make much difference. Must be in Borderless mode in the game. This app has made both TSC and MS FS2020 so much smoother for me.

 

Thats good to hear, Im glad for those that see improvements.

Im not unhappy with my current performance but it might have been useful as others have mentioned in those really heavy places like Clapham Junction, Munich etc. but no matter what I do it just doesnt produce the results others are getting but nevermind. I wont refund as it was only 8 bucks AUD so consider it a donation to the developer.

 

How do you run in borderless please?

Does anyone know why the only graphics card option I get 'Auto' when I have both on board graphics and a seperate card?

 

My numbers show in white, but it is very obvious that LossLess works as expected. I have no idea why some peoples input/output numbers are showing in yellow. Perhaps it happens when users are enabling more features than fps doubling?

 

When I set the GPU option FPS was doubled, but still stutters. Only after setting refresh rate of my monitor back to 60 Hz it was smooth. So that all comes into play.

 

i have my monitor refeesh rate at 120. Input 30. Output 60. Monitor at 120.

 

Mine was at 300 (laptop). Tried 3x option giving FPS upto 100, but still stutters.
Looks good now!

 

I took a punt on this, and it works very nicely for TSC. Tried it out on WCML South coming out of Euston and got a very smooth experience. The only problem that I found was that whenever I fired up Lossless Scaling, it caused the contrast in my game window to be raised far too high. I have an HDR monitor and it turns out that LS does not play nicely with Windows Auto HDR. So if you see this problem, go into Settings/System/Display/Use HDR and make sure "Auto HDR" is off.

 

FYI: These are my Lossless settings. TSC in Nvidia Control Panel is locked at 40 fps. monitor is 120hz, Lossless is set at x3 which gives the Lossless FPS figures as 40/120. I believe locking fps at a half or a third of monitor frequency is beneficial in achieving the x2 or x3 output from the Lossless app.

 

On train simulator in the settings there is a drop down menu to select windowed,full screen and borderless

 

Thanks, I'm in borderless now, but can't get Lossless to render above game fps.

 

yeah that was the problem i was having with it i just ended up refunding it tbh.

 

Digital Foundry did a good evaluation of use cases, the benefits, and the downsides of using it, with recommendations such as how to get the most out of it in games where it otherwise produces a juddery mess, and advice on which games to use with it (ones using a controller rather than mouse and keyboard as the input, to notice the latency less)..

 

Where can I find that evaluation?

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfo...rom-a-third-party-app-lossless-scaling-tested
I've bought the utility and am trying to find the best settings.
One should be attentive over conflicting settings in the GPU control program, the game itself and possible other enhancers (like RWE2 and their overlay) also injecting their own renderers into the display chain.

So far I haven't touched the scaling options, as these are the first to cause conflicts, degradation (artefacts in very fast scenes, over sharpening, poorer anti-aliasing etc). First and foremost I am interested in a smoother picture. Train simulations aren't that fast, and TSC makes only limitied use of the multi-core modern CPU's.
So on my trusty I7 6700K with 980TI I get a fluid picture with TSC at Ultra running 2x2 multisampling capped at 30 fps and the utility calculating the intermediate frames to get a nice 60 fps on my also older LCD monitor.

Perhaps having the GPU doing the upscaling-multisampling-downscaling to 1080p is also an option.
Plus I've noticed in Run8 for instance, letting GPU do the scaling, allows the Performance Overlay show FpS, frame delay and CPU/GPU utilisation.

 

I literally embedded the video in the post you were replying to, guessing you have a script blocker blocking embeds or a text-only web browser?
Should look like the below screenshot:

 

For anyone having problems with the tool making the frames worse than before: scroll down and select the right GPU! I´m on a laptop and selected my GTX 4070 insted of "automatic" and now I´m getting 60 frames almost everywhere (skalling up from 30). Amazing stuff! Going to try a couple of scenarios around munich, frankfurt, clapham junction and london bridge!

 

Tbanks. Nope no script blocker. I seem to remember it has to do with permissions / cookies.

 

I only have "Auto" as an option. There is nothing else.

I've tried everything with this utility, but I can't get it the render frames faster than the game and when working it just makes the display a bit worse. Unless I crack this soon, it's going to be a refund request because, for me at least, it's useless.

 

Does it matter what drive this installs to?

 

No. I have Lossless on C drive, TSC on D drive and MS FS2020 on H drive. Lossless works across all these drives.

 

I have the same problem - the GPU selection option doesn't have the GTX1060 listed, only Auto. I note at least one other user has the same issue. I can't see anywhere how to make LossLess register the GPU in the GPU & Display Preferred GPU list.

 

Add another one here, with a GTX1660.

Not exactly helped by the seven paragraph (wow!) so-called "manual" obscuring the controls it tells you how you use when it is activated. I thought stupid ideas like that went out in the last century.

I'm only hanging on to it because a) it didn't cost much, b) I'm hoping someone here will find the answers, and c) hoping the developers will fix issues like this.

John

 

Only gripe I have is when you activate it CTRL+ALT+S my cursor disappears!

 

I think I have got it working now, still not finding GTX1060, but still on Auto, it seems to be giving good results. Try a setup like....

 

I get around 35 / 60 improvement now.. Very smooth.

 

I changed the shortcut, because there seemed to be a conflict with steam screenshots.

 

So after a bit of playing around and a fresh graphics driver install I managed to get this working as intended but with mixed results

Going through the traditional built up areas is an improvement with Lossless working but in areas where my system is able to produce enough frames (which is most of the time) it was less smooth than without Lossless running and given that you need to close Railworks to cap the fps to use Lossless it doesnt make much sense for me to use, also I lost the mouse cursor as well.

 

Thanks, that's a good pointer. It hasn't solved anything for me but its a good pointer in the right direction. Right now time isn't on my side for extensive testing and setting adjustment but hopefully I can successfully labour through the settings eventually. Such a shame the documentation isn't better, it lets the product down badly.

J

 

From the LSFG guide

LSFG Guide & Tips

 

Try capping the ingame fps to 30 and then set LossLess Scaling to 2x

Makes for a very smooth experience.