Alright folks, Thought I’d write a quick guide for anyone playing TSW7 on the Xbox Series X who is absolutely sick to death of the constant "out of memory" crashes, stuttering frame rates, and dashboard textures melting into blurry pixels. I’m a real-life driver who signs some of the UK routes in this game, and I spent hours tweaking settings to find the absolute sweet spot. If you want crisp 4K cab dials but actually want a smooth 60 FPS without your console constantly dying when approaching massive hubs like Crewe, Birmingham New Street, or Leeds, here is exactly what you need to do. 1. The Core Graphic Tweak (The Big One) Go into your in-game options right now and change these two settings: Motion Blur: OFF Volumetric Fog: OFF Leaving motion blur on causes that annoying bug where locomotive wheels look like a smeared, low-res mess. More importantly, blur and 3D volumetric fog absolutely destroys the console's VRAM pool. Turning these off instantly stops the game engine from panicking and downscaling your cab textures into mush. The second I killed volumetric fog, my frame rate literally jumped straight to a locked 60 FPS. Plus, as a bonus for night driving, turning off volumetric fog stops your high-beams from creating that blinding white cloud in front of your windscreen so you can actually see the upcoming track signals. 2. The Resolution "Sweet Spot" Trick Don’t use the game's built-in "HD Mode." It looks terrible, we all know this. It uses terrible anti-aliasing, and turns overhead wires and text screens into a blurry, jagged nightmare. Instead, do this: Keep the in-game settings at 4K Mode (so your cab buttons, labels, and trackside signals are perfectly crisp). If you are playing on a 1080p screen or want extra anti-aliasing stability, go to your Xbox Console Settings > TV & display options > Video modes and uncheck "Allow 4K". This forces the hardware to supersample a crisp internal 4K image down to a stable 1080p output signal. You get the beautiful visual clarity of 4K inside the cab without overloading the GPU. 3. Clear the HUD Bloat The game's user interface is surprisingly heavy on the console's CPU. Go to Settings > Accessibility (or HUD options) and turn off: Floating Objective Markers Score / AP Popups Getting rid of those floating markers stops the engine from live-calculating 3D graphic overlays across the tracks while you are flying down the rails at 125 MPH. You can still see all your essential speeds and distances on your physical cab monitors or your main HUD, so it doesn't hurt your gameplay awareness at all. 4. Manage Your Memory Layers If you are running a notoriously unoptimized VRAM-killer like the Class 805 Evero on the Birmingham to Crewe corridor, the core route data is unstable when packed with tons of traffic. If you start getting a "tangle" of massive texture blurring or an immediate crash when loading into Birmingham New Street, you need to prune your layers. Go into the Timetable Layers menu before starting a run and uncheck heavy background AI traffic packs you don't need (like uninstalling or disabling the Birmingham Cross-City Class 323 layer if you are driving the 805). It sucks to disable DLC you paid for, but it frees up the exact chunk of VRAM the 805 needs to render its own dashboard panels properly instead of loading flat black squares. I'm using the 805 as an example, apply this method to any train you have issues with. Alternatively, use the developer-provided "Reduced Timetable" option or the 2019 timetable, or start a service slightly further up the tracks at Wolverhampton to bypass the initial New Street loading spike. 5. Never Use "Quick Resume" The Xbox Quick Resume feature causes massive memory leaks and fragmentation in simulation games. Never leave TSW7 suspended in the background. Always press the Xbox guide button, highlight the game, press the Menu button (three lines), and select Quit. Always launch the game completely fresh. 6. The Long Shift Rule If you are doing a massive multi-leg journey (like running the Class 333 from Leeds to Skipton, then down to Bradford, and up to Ilkley), exit completely back to the route's main menu between each timetable leg. Taking 10 seconds to reload the next leg from the menu forces the Xbox to completely flush out the old track data, giving you a fresh, empty memory pool so it doesn't crash right at the end of your shift. Give these settings a try. It completely transformed the game for me—no more funhouse-mirror warped landmark buildings, no more muddy dials, and no more dashboard crashes. Cheers, and let me know if this fixes the stability issues for you guys!
I will definitely give some of these a go and see what happens! I already keep motion blur off as I can't stand it. I've always sat on HD though so will be interesting to see if that Xbox setting changes anything with 4k. Quick resume is definitely a big one, I've set TSW to not quick resume in the settings so it always has to reboot on a clean slate. I have to say I like having volumetric fog on but then I haven't tried playing without it. The prospect of turning off so many layers is also one I'm not totally fond of. But we'll see how it goes! Thankyou for posting this!
Hey guys, just wanted to add one quick thing I forgot to mention in the main post. I'm putting it in a separate comment so the main guide stays clean. Kill the Overhead Arc Sparks. If you're running electric corridors like the WCML or Birmingham to Crewe, overhead wires are absolutely everywhere. By default, the game engine calculates high-voltage sparks between the train's pantograph and the catenary wires. Go to your options and turn Pantograph Sparking / Overhead Arcing OFF. Every single time an electric train triggers a spark animation, the game creates dynamic particle meshes and an instantaneous light source that casts real-time shadows onto your train roof. Disabling it stops those sudden, annoying frame drops whenever you're flying under complex track junctions or massive gantry bridges at high speed.It's an easy tweak, but it saves your graphics processor a lot of unnecessary work on electric routes. Cheers!
From my limited testing so far on Riviera with most layers I've found setting my TSW to 4k is killing the frame rate. But my monitor is only 1080p so I have no option to uncheck the 4k option in the XBOX video mode setting. 1080p runs so much smoother for me which is a shame because 4k looks 100x better. I haven't noticed too much difference turning Volumetric fog on and off both on 1080p and 4k display settings but I don't have a keyboard to enable the FPS counter so I can't be sure with that one. So I'm running on a 1080p monitor with: Volumetric fog: On Motion blur: Off Display mode: HD I get blurry textures on Riviera but the game runs very smoothly. The JT routes I own (BPO & WCMLOS) also run really well with layers. GWE was also good with most layers but did stutter a tiny bit approaching Paddington.
Fair play mate, Riviera is a bit lighter on the engine, which is probably why it feels smooth for you on HD mode. But the real reason you want to turn Volumetric Fog OFF isn't just about frames—it's a massive VRAM saver. Volumetric fog forces the Xbox to constantly calculate 3D particle lighting in real-time, which completely eats up your console's hidden memory pool. When you hit heavy, complex routes like Birmingham to Crewe or Leeds, that fog setting is exactly what triggers the 'tangle' of blurry cab textures and dashboard crashes because the memory pool completely overflows. Also, if you run at night, having it on creates a blinding white cloud in front of your windscreen when your high-beams hit it, making it impossible to see upcoming track signals. Definitely try turning the fog off, switch back to 4K mode in-game, and see if it gives you the memory headroom to run 4K without the frame drops!
Gave this a go on TSW6 (as that’s where most of my content is still sat). Tried it on Birmingham - Crewe as that’s the most problematic route by a mile on Xbox. Frame rate was noticeably improved, buttery smooth throughout. But alas still blurry textures as soon as I got out of the tunnel just north of BNS. So a partial success, will need to try it on another blurry route such as GWE given I suspect nothing can make Birmingham - Crewe run well on Xbox.
Can I ask how you’re measuring VRAM usage on an Xbox? I’d love to see the data for Volumetric Fog. Same for comparing rolling stock memory footprints. I’d also love to see how you’ve fixed the 805 ‘black box’ issue as that is a separate issue to the texture blurring, if you solved it by removing an interaction with the 323 then that would be an interesting development. Ultimately the only take away points here are that removing layers will help evade blurry textures since the crux of that problem is just rolling stock quantity. Going back to menus after a service is significantly helpful too. Then 1080p will achieve better FPS than 4k which is to be expected - a note here though that since texture blurring occurs in most cases by simply exceeding a total memory pool, 1080p does not solve that issue & the best case scenario is you maybe get a few minutes of extra gameplay before the issue presents itself, the only real benefit is the FPS gain. Things like disabling volumetric fog, sparks & arcing, removing HUD elements, motion blur etc are all things that will achieve minor to no improvements to performance but you’re not going to avoid the issues you’re claiming these things can. Ultimately heavy routes are going to be more taxing & the only thing you’re going to do to relieve memory usage & improve FPS is to reduce the amount of trains on said route. Most of your advice to disable graphical effects aren’t going to help in those scenarios & are just going to degrade the experience on routes where you aren’t going to run into problems anyway. I don’t doubt you’ve seen the odd improvement here & there, but unfortunately these are likely just edge case scenarios & not reliable, preventable measures. There are downsides to things like disabling motion blur too, whilst you solve the wheel issue you replace that with ghosting which can be much more obvious - an easy way to see that is turn MB off, then drive a train & in exterior cam watch the back of it. Depending on the train you’re driving you can even see the ghosting in the cab window frames. Ultimately it’s a case of pick your poison.
Cheers for the detailed breakdown, mate! You’ve raised some really fair points, especially about layer quantity being the primary culprit for memory exhaustion—we’re totally in agreement there. To answer your question on measuring it: obviously, on an Xbox, we don't have access to telemetry overlays or development kits to pull raw VRAM metrics or log files. My conclusions are strictly empirical, based on hours of back-to-back testing on the heaviest bottlenecks we have on console (specifically the Birmingham to Crewe corridor). The connection between the visual settings and texture retention came down to repeatable stress-testing. Spawning the Class 805 at a crowded Birmingham New Street with the 323 layer active resulted in the immediate 'black box' asset rendering failures or instant dashboard crashes, but that's from my own testing. Removing the 323 layer didn't magically code-fix the 805 black boxes, but it consistently freed up enough memory headroom to let the 805 cab load without dropping those dashboard panels into blank voids, and the scenery outside wasn't distorted.Okay, so it isn't perfect by any means, but from my own prerogative, it improved my gameplay significantly and I just wanted to see if others could replicate it, to ensure they have another gameplay as well. With the fog, while the memory savings on fog might be minor compared to removing a whole train model, the rendering relief on the GPU was massive for me. Toggling it off instantly snapped my performance from a choppy, fluctuating pace up to a steady 60 FPS target on the open rails. You’re right about the 'pick your poison' aspect of motion blur, too. Disabling it definitely exposes the engine's raw TAA ghosting on the back of passing sets or window frames. For me personally, trading that ghosting to get rid of the smeary, low-res wheel bogies and clear up the engine's motion calculations was well worth the trade-off. At the end of the day, reducing layers is always going to be the absolute nuclear option. My main goal with these graphic tweaks was just to find a way to squeeze every possible ounce of performance and clarity out of the hardware so console players can actually enjoy these heavier routes without constant crashes. Appreciate the insight!
Personally motion blur in TSW is absolutely the worst implementation of it I've ever seen in my 35 years of gaming. There's just no really benefit from it in TSW in my humble opinion. It doesn't even make the game look pretty, it's just a mess when you go outside with it enabled. Personal opinion though I guess.
I have many doubts about this story. First of all there is a fixed texture pool, so when it's full you get blurry textures. Turning off other memory consuming options will not change the fixed texture pool. Possibly it will help to avoid crashes, but the funny thing is, I have no crashes. The only thing to avoid blurry textures is disabling layers and substitutions. For having a better framerate there are multiple options, disabling volumetric fog and motion blur can help, but also choosing daytime and sunny weather helps. Early morning and evening, with long shadows is lowering fps. Also weather effects like rain is lowering the fps.
Fair play lexie, cheers for the input. You’re actually spot on about how the texture pool works in code, but I think you’re missing how it plays out in reality on the actual console. The thing with the Xbox Series X is that it runs on unified memory. The system RAM and the VRAM are sharing the exact same bucket. When you’ve got volumetric fog calculating 3D particles, motion blur caching frames, and dynamic sparks firing off all at once, you’re absolutely red-lining the console's total memory overhead. You might be lucky enough to not get crashes, but a ton of console players on threads here get slapped with 'out of memory' dashboard drops constantly, especially on the heavy sets like the 805. When the engine hits that wall, it panics. If it doesn’t crash, it aggressively starves the texture pool and melts the cab graphics into mush just to keep the game alive. By killing the fog and blur, you aren't changing the texture pool code limit, but you’re dumping a massive amount of weight out of the rest of the memory bucket. That extra breathing room is exactly what stops the engine from panicking, allowing it to actually stream the 4K textures properly without choking. Totally with you on the weather though—bright and sunny is definitely the sweet spot for keeping it smooth. If your game runs mint without tweaking anything, then honestly, absolute result, stick with it! But for the lads struggling with constant text blur and dashboard crashes on the heavy routes, this genuinely sorts it out. Safe driving mate!
Saw this in the morning and I've given it all a good test out tonight. As someone who has never turned off volumetric fog or motion blur before, I'm pretty amazed by the fps improvement. I did multiple Bham-Wolves runs and they were all super smooth. Not having the blur at the bottom of the cab front window is a huge improvement, and just generally I feel everything looks better too. I also tested this on NY-Stamford; a route that doesn't blur but is very jittery, and that was much better too. Still a small bit of lag in busy areas, but noticeably smoother otherwise. Those doubting it; try it. I play this game a lot. I trust my eyes. This is a real win. I know it's not news to some, but it was to me. On the blurring side, I do think there may have been a small improvement. I was still getting a little loss of crispness on the max speed sign in the 350 around Smethwick and in other areas, but I wasn't getting increased blur when trains were going by. This is all with my usual very reduced layers though, that tend to be OK in any case. I tried turning one or two extra layers back on and it was your classic instant blur out the New St tunnel. I don't think any amount of tinkering will save this route on Xbox (and I expect the Shrewsbury route to be just as problematic). My only real disagreement is the 4k part. From what I understand, this doesn't really have any great hardware advantages the way it's being done. I tried it regardless, and didn't get anything from it, so I'll stick to 4k. Thanks for taking the time to post this.
Thats why I said, changing those options will not help for blurry textures but maybe it will for crashes. The crashes are causes by a shortage of memory outside the texture pool. Lowering to HD will help for sure, the quality is way less, especially on a 4K screen. Better AA would help here, but we haven't. I don't own the 805 and the routes where it can be seen on. Mainly due of what I read about the crashes and problems. So I choose wisely what I buy, choose wisely what layers I disable and turn off setting which are causing lower framerates. I'm on Series S, so memory is even a bigger issue, but I'm playing in HD mode on a 24" FHD monitor. I have enabled motion blur, otherwise I get colored artifacs around the edges in HD mode.
Nice one mate, absolute result! Genuinely glad to hear it’s made a massive difference for you. That jump to 60 FPS once the fog is gone completely changes how the game feels, especially when you're powering down the fast lines. You're totally right about the heavy routes like Birmingham though—there's definitely a hard ceiling on what the Xbox can handle. If you try to force every single layer on with the 805 or 350, the data footprint is just too bloated for the engine, and it’s going to melt the textures coming out of New Street regardless. Lowering the layers is always going to be the ultimate safety shield, but it’s great that these tweaks at least stop the passing trains from triggering that instant blur tangle! Just on your last point about 4K—I think you might have had a typo there at the end because you said you didn't get anything from it but you're sticking to 4K anyway! But yeah, if you're already happy with how it looks and your monitor handles it fine, definitely leave it on. Nice one for taking the time to test it all out properly and dropping your feedback in the thread. Safe driving mate, catch you on the rails!
Ah right, I see where you’re coming from now lexie! That makes total sense. I didn't realize you were on the Series S—that completely changes the game.You're absolutely right, the Series S has a much tighter memory pool to battle with, so your optimization profile is a completely different beast to the Series X. It makes total sense why you'd need to leave motion blur on over there too—without the higher rendering resolution, that TAA upscaling can create some proper nasty colored artifacting and shimmering around the windows and edges, so you definitely need the blur to mask it. And yeah, you are honestly wise to avoid the 805 and the heavy 2025 routes for now until they push some proper stability patches through. They are absolute memory hogs. Appreciate you breaking down how it behaves on the Series S though, it’s good to know how the other console handles it. Cheers for the chat mate, safe driving!
There are colored artifacts on the edges of the screen, so not in the middle, just around the borders. This don't happen in 4K mode without motion blur, but it's just another bug in HD mode and motion blur solves is for sone reason. There are some routed with a reduced timetable on Series S, that helps a lot, but for example the Ludwigsbahn has no layers at all on Series S and I believe Series S can handle more on this route. Kinzigtalbahn has layers, but not all, IC and ICE are missing, so only the ICE-T is available. But no blurry textures and there are quite some AI layers around Frankfurt. Framerate wise, you see the stutters in the same places where Series X also stutters. For a smooth framerate, avoid rain and snow, early morning trips and even more evening trips with low sun. Also winter time seems to hit framerate because of the low sun and bare trees. Summer midday gives the best performance to me, especially on the newer routes.
