When I play TS, there are several big FPS drops, which is due to scenery loading. The -fastload gave some help, but then it got worse again. During scenery rendering FPS can drop from 60 to under 10 for even over 5 seconds! That causes major impact for gameplay.
It depends on two things What the scenario requirements are - is it an area with a lot of scenery or a lot of other trains? And what are you computer specs as in Processor and Graphics Card
Another factor might also be the fact of what kind of stock/route you're using, since some older addons don't take advantage of fastload due to not having .ap files. This is one of the reasons I don't use fastload, and loading times never bothered me in the first place.
But if you do have add ons with ap files, then doesn’t it make sense to enable fastload, so at least these would benefit from it?
My specs: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 AM4 (at 3,85GHz) GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200 MHz 16 Gt (2 x 8 Gt) HDD: Kingston KC2500 1 Tt M.2 PCIe SSD Can TS run fast with this hardware?
My PC is noticeably lower spec than yours and I get some stuttering, but not as bad as you describe. I always use -fastload, which hasn't degraded with time. Is yours still switched on? I also dial down some of the graphic settings a bit: quality, view distance and shadows
Yes. My computer is considerably less capable than yours, with a 10 year old (albeit 6 core) processor, and 16GB of DDR3 RAM, a very old 1st generation SATA SSD, and a 4GB GTX980 GPU, and I never really get stutter or pausing while scenery loads and I run at 2560x1600 (or 2560x1440), with everything on maximum except water quality set down 1 notch, and Anti-aliasing set to FXAA+2x2 SSAA and RWEnhancer Pro and 8 Reshade DX9 shaders running. The exception to this is two routes: WCMLoS, just south of Lancaster, and Northern Lines, approaching Carleton Crossing from Blackpool which I am assuming happens on other machines too. That's it. If there are any other pauses while scenery loads, they're too short to draw my attention. As for FPS occasionally dropping while loading dense scenes, yes, but not to the extent you describe. My "normal" fps is around 25-30fps, and sometimes, in really dense areas I've seen it drop to around low 20s, but I've never seen TS drop to the 10s even on my piece of garbage machine. Dropping to around 10fps shouldn't really be happening on your machine, ever. What route(s) does this happen on, and where on those routes exactly? What are your graphics settings in game? What resolution are you running at? For reference, here's how mine is set.
Pookeyhead. I hope you don’t mind me butting in on your advice to another fellow TS gamer. But would thank you for showing your advanced settings. I have just adjusted mine to the same tobsee how the game now runs for me. Could you also please show your basic graphics set up from Master Detail to Sunlight Intensity and the advanced second page from Procedural Flora to Camera Depth of field. I have never got a clue about the graphic so this may help me get a better performance too.
Here's the main page. Dynamic clouds is OFF because I use the AP Sky & Weather pack and that is the advised setting for it. Brightness is up a touch on mine to compensate for something ReShade is set to do, so it may be a bit bright for "out of the box" TS if you set it the same. Here's advanced 1 Here's advanced 2 Ambient Occlusion is turned off because RWEnhancer Pro turns that off and deals with occlusion in a more frame rate friendly way than TS does. If I didn't have RWEnhancer, occlusion would be set on maximum. Depth of Field is off because it's rubbish LOL. Procedural flora is on because it adds a bit of richness, but be warned, TS can just dump vegetation in some weird places when it's on.. such as middle of roads etc.As I rarely look around away from the cab view, I have it set to on. I hope that helps.
Ho Pookeyhead. That is so kind of you. I really appreciate your help. Glad you mentioned AP Sky and weather, I bought that and installed it too. Is there any settings I need to adjust to use it or is it automatic once you turn off Dynamic Clouds?
You're pretty much good to go in most routes once you do that. You may also want to turn on EFX in your sound settings if it's off. Page 2 in the manual tells you all you need to know for the Sky & Weather pack. Some routes won't use it by default, in which case, look at page 11 in the manual. If you don't know where AP puts the manual on install, it's in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RailWorks\Manuals\EN\AP or you can just look at it online at https://www.armstrongpowerhouse.com/free_download/manuals/APSWEP_Manual.pdf
Note: As of May 11th I know use a GTX980Ti (still 6 years old) and frame rates are between 30 and 40fps, with minimums around 25 in most routes. The worst performing route is Woodhead in BR Blue, with frame rates around low 20s. This has not improved one bit with the new GPU (whereas every other route has), so I am assuming it is my old Sandybridge i7 CPU limiting this route not the GPU or VRAM. Probably poor scripting on the route. I still do not get pauses or stuttering while scenery loads though.
I noticed my frame drops aren't as bad as they used to be since I moved the game from my HDD to my SSD. Anyone notice any performance increase if you have the game on an SSD? My computer specs: i5 9600k 16GB Corsair vengence 3200mhz DDR4 8GB GDDR6 Gigabyte Windforce OC gaming trio RTX2070 super. 1TB seagate barracuda 7200rpm HDD 500GB Samsung EVO 860 M.2 NVMe SSD
The single most effective upgrade you can make is to move from a mechanical hard drive to a solid state drive.
I have tried every methods that should according to other TS players with performance problems improve performance, but nothing has been changed. Absolutely nothing. I have tried NVIDIA control panel, game settings, set high priority at task manager... I have also submitted a Kayako ticket, and they gave me some tips to increase performance, but nothing has been happened.
Which version of Windows are you on? As Pookeyhead asked, what are your graphics settings in the game? You told us what storage you have but not the capacity or how much space you have. And is TS on the C: drive? Post some pictures of your settings as Pooky did - we might spot something
Actual fps performance will not be changed by moving to a SSD. Only anything determined by loading data.. so sceery loading, actual game loading.. scenario loading etc. Once up and running, a SSD will make no real difference. FPS in TS is oviously imprpved by GPU, but you WILL hit a CPU bottle neck first unless you have a really slow graphics card. TS, while very lightly multi-threaded, pretty much relies on one core to do most heavy lifting, so putting a RTX3090 into a 10 year old PC with a quad core processor will just see your frame rates capped much lower than you think due to hitting your CPU limit... just as it woudl with any other game, but especially a DX9 game that is essentially reliant on so few cores. Fast GPU A CPU with really great single core performance A SSD That's what TS needs if you want butter smooth frame rates at high resolutions with high settings. Doing only one of those will not deliver the goods. However... slow loading of scenery that results in heavy stuttering is almost certainly a I/O problem, or very low system RAM... or both. If you have integrated graphics (APU) then this may also happen regardless of how fast it is, because it will almost certainly be using your system RAM as graphics ram.. and that sucks. I still maintain (not just for train sim) that the best upgrade an ageing computer can have, is a SSD... of any kind.
After TS 2022 core update rendering FPS has dropped from somewhere between 10 and 5 to 5 or lower! This is a massive immersion breaker. Is anyone else here facing this problem?
