Will The Engine.ini Graphic Tweeks From Tsw Work On Tsw2?

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by ralphy_porter2000, Nov 11, 2020.

  1. ralphy_porter2000

    ralphy_porter2000 Active Member

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    There is a steam guide to making TSW2020 look better will it work for TSW2?
    Cheers in advance
     
  2. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    Yes they do. But you can´t increase the shadows viewdistance. There´s a max value capped by engine. The rest work well.

    Cheers
     
  3. breblimator

    breblimator Guest

    Apparently, it works (although not for me). Re-shade works for sure.
     
  4. hightower

    hightower Guest

    Why would it not work? That’s very odd, I guess you must have made a typo somewhere.

    This is mine, if you leave a line below the existing text in your engine.ini file then copy and paste this ‘as is’ there is no reason it shouldn’t work...

    [SystemSettings]
    r.ViewDistanceScale=2
    r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.70
    foliage.LODDistanceScale=5
    r.TextureStreaming=0
    r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=10
    r.Shadow.DistanceScale=2.0
    r.ShadowQuality=5
    r.DefaultFeature.MotionBlur=0
    r.BloomQuality=1
    r.TemporalAASamples=64
    r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=-2
    r.Color.Mid=0.4
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 11, 2020
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  5. breblimator

    breblimator Guest

    I used it in 2020. In TSW2, whatever I change, it makes no difference. Re-shade is OK for me :)
    PS But I will check your settings and review! Thanks!
     
  6. breblimator

    breblimator Guest

    engine.ini config by hightower

    2.png

    vanilla

    3.png

    re-shade (fake HDR)

    4.png

    PS A and C look quite similar. Well done Hightower! A and B are different - that is, it works.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 11, 2020
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  7. hightower

    hightower Guest

    That’s actually really interesting to see. You do get some very good results with reshade!

    What it can’t do though is change the LOD of foliage, trains, trees etc. You should notice that scenery stops popping in front of the train now which is never a bad thing. You can play around with it and make it work for your machine but that works for me.
     
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  8. breblimator

    breblimator Guest

    Definitely, I'll give it a try! In fact, some things can only be judged on the move.
     
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  9. BinaryRun

    BinaryRun Active Member

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  10. ralphy_porter2000

    ralphy_porter2000 Active Member

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    Cheers everyone my game looks a shed load better now.
     
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  11. breblimator

    breblimator Guest

    MAG, Hauptstrecke München – Augsburg, but on PC, with additional layers. This one on the screenshot is BR 185.5 from RRO, intermodal train, in freight yard near München Hbf :)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 11, 2020
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  12. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    This is what I use, but they reduce performance:

    r.ViewDistanceScale=3 --> increases viewdistance for scenery (reduces scenery pop-in)

    r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.25 --> in TSW2 this increases level of detail for both objects/buildings and curved tracks (reduces objects details pop-in effect and prevents polygonal shaped tracks at switches, for instance in yards)

    foliage.LODDistanceScale=4 increases details distance for foliage (reduces tree pop-in effect)

    r.MotionBlurQuality=0 disables motion blur

    The rest of popular settings, specially the ones related to shadows are not really effective or produce little difference. The main problem is that shadow viewdistance can only be reduced by settings, not increased, so adding more details at distant positions has no real effect. But you can use the following to increase distance, in case the unblock the max limit in the future:

    r.Shadow.DistanceScale=4

    Cheers
     
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2020
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  13. Quentin

    Quentin Well-Known Member

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    Thanks geloxo, those Engine tweaks work really well for me, providing a significant graphical improvement, with no discernible impact on frame rates. When I tried turning texture streaming off, it crippled the performance on my system (RTX2070), maybe because I've 'only' got 16GB of RAM (perhaps I should put my hand in my pocket for an extra 16GB).

    I'm running with DX12, is that also the case for you?
     
  14. londonmidland

    londonmidland Well-Known Member

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    DTG should really rework their graphics values as their in game ‘ultra’ graphic settings is anything but ultra. The default values they use look embarrassing bad for a modern game, and the track and scenery pop in is even worse.
     
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  15. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    I disabled DX12 as devs told me in one ticket that game was not supporting it at all, even if Unreal has the option to use it. Texture streaming produces a lot of stuttering when activated but the image quality is better. Some textures got blurry at medium and even short distances without it (you can see that the locomotive number lights for american engines are blurry even in the locomotive selection screen, for instance). Currently I have it disabled, but if I get tired of it I will enable it again.

    I have a i9900k + 2080Ti +32Gb and game runs quite well indeed with those settings compared to old TSW, being above 60fps and reaching 72fps in some cases. But dense yards and city areas got worse performance, as you would expect, going to 30-40fps. If they simply improve the stuttering (I have it even without using any custom settings) I will be happy.

    To me reducing the viewdistances and LODs is not an option, as I get a lot of pop-in effects and basically the image quality is quite poor to be honest. I think they could push the default viedistance and LOD limits a little bit more as that´s not really hurting performance too much on nowadays systems. Gameplay experience improves drastically with those changes and the landscapes turn to be amazing in some routes.

    Minimum I would suggest, even to be used by vanilla game, would be:

    r.ViewDistanceScale=2
    r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.5
    foliage.LODDistanceScale=3

    With that you can still be far above from 60fps.

    Cheers
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2020
  16. hightower

    hightower Guest

    StaticMeshLOD of 0.5 is a bit overkill, even on high end machines. I’ve got mine set at 0.7 and it’s more than enough.

    Quentin would be far better off going with 0.7 and turning texture streaming off than the other way around. An RTX2070 should easily be able to cope with that.
     
  17. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    Hightower you are right, but we need StaticMeshLOD to be as small as possible because in TSW2 it has an impact on the switches details. Without it in the yards you see polygonal tracks in the switches area at very short distances indeed. Some cases are very noticeable, like the northern yard at Oakville Subdiv. In the tutorials you start with a switch at around 300 yards ahead and rails are polygonal, not curved. You clearly see it.

    Cheers
     
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  18. breblimator

    breblimator Guest

    Which option will make the image clearer? For me, everything is so "grainy". OK. generally, but not very sharp.
     
  19. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    Use reshade with any sharpen filter, like the one included in the FXAA effect. That makes edges sharper. But I don´t use it as I found it producing problems with the screen scaling antialias, at least prior to last patch.

    I think game settings do not allow any sharpening itself. You can use one or the other antialias techniques, but that´s all.

    Cheers
     
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  20. hightower

    hightower Guest

    Do you have an Nvidia card?
     
  21. hightower

    hightower Guest

    I know what you mean, but with 0.70 I’m no longer seeing it.
     
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  22. breblimator

    breblimator Guest

    NVIDIA :)

    Games with "complex" graphics look worse (unsharp) than games with simple graphics (ZUSI, Run8). It looks like I had a very low refresh rate (smudging), but I'm afraid it's the performance fault - the amount of fps.
    I will try it.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 13, 2020
  23. hightower

    hightower Guest

    That could be one of 3 things;

    - Texture Streaming
    - Motion Blur

    ...both of which are better off and...

    - applying some sharpening via Nvidia Control Panel
     
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  24. Anthony Pecoraro

    Anthony Pecoraro Well-Known Member

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    I can't stand motion blur off. I have to have it on.
     
  25. Quentin

    Quentin Well-Known Member

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    Thanks to hightower as well as geloxo, I appreciate your help with my settings. Even with StaticMeshLOD of 0.7, turning off Texture Streaming results in occasional 'hangs' (frame rate drops to ~7 fps) maybe this happens when a new tile comes into play. It's possible (guessing from ignorance, but I can't think what else it may be) that I'm seeing memory limitations and virtual memory is being reloaded from my SSD. Anyway, turning off texture streaming requires (as I understand it) the entire route to be loaded into memory which takes minutes, even from an SSD (I guess if you're running from spinning rust, you've time to go and make a cup of tea) - so I'll leave it off until I invest in 32GB. :)
     
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  26. Callum B.

    Callum B. Well-Known Member

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    No, disabling texture streaming only forces the engine to load the highest quality mipmaps for each texture. The purpose of texture streaming is to spend less resources on far-away textures and to streamline the loading of textures (less disk bottlenecking). I believe (but I am not certain) that the engine will only load the necessary textures for each tile that the camera is located in, so textures of München station will not be loaded when you are sitting at Augsburg.
     
  27. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    Please also consider using the following parameter:

    r.LandscapeLODDistributionScale

    It controls the LOD for terrain mesh. Values above 1 will eliminate the distant terrain and embankments covering tunnel entries.

    Without setting:
    No LOD.jpg
    With setting (r.LandscapeLODDistributionScale=3):
    LOD.jpg

    To me this is one of the worse rendering issues together with distant shadows representation. Performance impact is ridiculous but it ruins the image if not used, as in the case of Werdohl station. Routes using embankments or tracks located in slopes or gradient changes suffer it. I have reported a few of them so it´s a general issue that affects almost, if not all routes so far.

    Cheers
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2020
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  28. breblimator

    breblimator Guest

    You have a good eye. My calculator does not handle this variety well, but these are very interesting observations :)
     
  29. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    It´s hard not to see that as Werdohl is one of the worse cases in game, as the tunnel disappears even at medium distances :D. You just need to climb to the station overpass to observe.

    I share it as it´s most likely that this is not going to change in game as it´s one of the performance saving tricks they use, which is pretty logical by the way. But if somebody wants to avoid it and get better visuals this is one of the ways to do that.

    Cheers
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2020
  30. hightower

    hightower Guest

    I’ve seen it on SKA too. As you get close to one of the tunnels heading towards Koln you can actually see the entrance opening up as the ground flattens away.

    It’s bizarre!
     

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