I downloaded and ran the free version TSW7 a couple of days ago. I played around with the settings menu and I am very pleased with the perfomance of the game. Frame rate and graphics quality is much improved over previous iterations of the game. My Nvidia 3070 is experiencing new life. Reading other threads on this forum makes me wonder if I'm playing the same game. Bear in mind I'm not playing new TSW7 routes.
I got better performance in terms of raw FPS at the same settings.And DLSS is inarguably an improvement over the atrocious UE4 TAA. It's just that literally every other aspect of the game was worse.
Yeah even on my aging system I'm really loving my time with the game. Epic settings and DLSS support really are game changers for me. Makes it feel like a whole new experience for once instead of just TSW n+1. Happy to find I can run the game on Epic and Ultra settings (sky is on medium though) without most routes giving me any problems so far. I've never had great FPS performance in the game natively so I've been using Lossless Scaling for a long time to upscale and double my frames, but now I only have to use it for one of those things (frame generation). Even on the heaviest routes I usually manage enough frames natively for LS to give me a good experience. My one exception so far is Berninalinie as that one got down to 10 FPS pretty often and I'm not going to downgrade my settings just for one route because the rest of them look and perform just fine. I don't own a lot of routes to be fair (I'd say less than five of them are outside of the core routes from TSW 3 onward), but I've tried a good handful of the ones I do own. Really enjoying the TSW 7 ones though surprisingly. Also did some runs on Zwolle - Groningen, Blackpool Branches, Frankfurt - Fulda, Leipzig - Dresden, and Riviera Line. I only have a few more I haven't tried yet and so far it's been great. Still need to pick up a few of the TSW 6 routes that released, but I'm waiting for some big discounts first. People with cards that support frame gen/smooth motion will have an even better experience. For those that don't (like me), I highly recommend LS for the frame boost. It takes some learning and tweaking to get it right but it's worth it. I lock TSW to 30 frames and double it with LS.
I myself also only jump on the Free Version this year and I am very pleased as well. So far tested Stuttgart - Heilbronn, Linke Rheinstrecke, and Frankfurt Fulda. It looks so much better! One of the things that are letting this game down for me is the look of distant sceneries, especially hilly forests. This update really did improve it a bit. It all depends how you frame things. If you see TSW7 as a whole new game, of course, you might be dissapointed by the minimal changes. If you see it as a free, annual, major update to an existing game, the additions are totally reasonable imo.
For console I went back to tsw 6 for the time being. Couple things im not pleased with. UI is hard on the eyes. Frame rate issues is biggest issue.
I've stuck the graphics to HD instead of 4k and turned the AI conductor off and touch wood it's running alright on my Series S. I have only been doing scenarios and training modules at the moment though, so it remains to be seen how I'll do on a busy timetable run with all the layers activated but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, assuming I don't get kicked back to the dashboard on my way there...
