PC Tsw 3 Stream - Gameplay Stutters

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by dreampage, Aug 18, 2022.

  1. dreampage

    dreampage Well-Known Member

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    One of the things that bothered me the most in tonight's stream (apart from the incorrect eye adaptation operation) was that TSW 3 seemingly stutters pretty badly, similarly, or even worse than TSW 2. During the stream, every 10-15 seconds there was a huge stutter, the game stopped for a split second. This is especially distracting during high speed operations. Look at the fps and frame time counter here:

    stutter.jpg

    While the game generally ran at ~60 fps, these stutters were constant. This frame shows a 64.20 ms frame time, but it's probably not fully accurate. The thing is, these stutters are quite distracting and the game doesn't feel smooth enough with them.

    Also, as the train entered Würzburg Station, performance dropped to a constant 25-30 fps. Is this something we can expect on other, busier routes and stations as well? After tonight's stream, which I'm grateful for, I can't help but worry about the final game's performance.
     
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  2. CK95

    CK95 Well-Known Member

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    I think that DTG have hit a wall when it comes to performance.

    Performance has a plethora of niggles, that all combine to make a frustrating experience, meanwhile DTG invest into more and more that will only exasperate the issue.

    Could be they hit a wall, but also that they are more interested in adding these features that attract new players.

    For me, id prefer that a 186km Highspeed route runs smoothly, rather than the sky looking marginally better.
     
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  3. Calidore266

    Calidore266 Well-Known Member

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    I wonder if it would help to do an earlier test run on their stream machine to get the initial shader compilations out of the way.
     
  4. Princess Entrapta

    Princess Entrapta Well-Known Member

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    Exactly. Smooth performance wins out over fancy graphics any day, in my book.
     
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  5. Mattty May

    Mattty May Guest

    I think it was the stream more so than the game that was stuttering tonight.
     
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  6. dreampage

    dreampage Well-Known Member

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    And to think they will force 4K on Series X... I wish we could choose resolutions at least, I would happily lower it. Wouldn't help stutters but would help general framerate.
     
  7. Dinger75

    Dinger75 Well-Known Member

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    Take a second look at the picture in the op in particular the fps counter

    Not stream
     
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  8. hibiki

    hibiki Well-Known Member

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    Something I have been wondering, maybe somebody will know.

    Do HD/SSDs also cause stutters?
     
  9. erg73

    erg73 Well-Known Member

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    Yes, too many stutters today. The fps counter was going crazy at many points. But it's a development version and I don't know how much it affects streaming either. We'll have to wait for the release and community feedback but honestly it doesn't look too good. And I think the gen 8 consoles are going to suffer a lot.

    This may be what happens if instead of optimising, you implement new features that affect performance.
    I've said here before that I have the impression that this game is like a building that doesn't have a well-built foundation. And now they're building more and more floors on top of each other...
     
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  10. March Hare

    March Hare Well-Known Member

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    Well, there is some truth in this statement, but it isn't DTG's fault, as the foundation is Unreal Engine. It has problems with stuttering in its design; this isn't exclusive to TSW. The stuttering issue is still present, I believe, in UE5. There is a way to alleviate it or even eliminate it: increase the shader cache in Nvidia control panel (I'm not sure if it's possible for AMD users, as I've never owned AMD hardware). I'm seeing hardly any, sometimes no, stutters in TSW2 since I increased my shader cache.
     
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  11. Xander1986

    Xander1986 Well-Known Member

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    No worries! The DEV build is the problem. A DEV version is not stable and runs a lot off things in the background so you can reproduce problems and read it afterwards. The DEV saves a lot of information in de background.
     
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  12. Princess Entrapta

    Princess Entrapta Well-Known Member

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    I absolutely cannot understand the devs who refuse to implement a 1440p mode on Series X, when it is one of the best ways to play most current-gen games, with an uncapped fps on a 1440p VRR screen so many games that have this option sit solidly in the 90-100fps range
     
  13. solicitr

    solicitr Well-Known Member

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    Again, you can NOT draw any conclusions from apparent stutters in a livestream, which in most cases are caused by sync variations between the content and the stream.
     
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  14. tallboy7648

    tallboy7648 Well-Known Member

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    Whilst true, DTG's history says otherwise so the skepticism isn't suprising
     
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  15. Redbus

    Redbus Well-Known Member

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    Yes! This and Quick Resume which is a really useful feature.
     
  16. fanta1682002

    fanta1682002 Well-Known Member

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    yes
     
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  17. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    nobody can tell me this is "Stream related".
    TSW2 was always known to have terrible optimization and bad stutters.
    Seems like its the same or worse in TSW3.

    Another reason to skip or only buy at 50% discount for me.

    I play MSFS (which has 10 times better graphics and simulates far more stuff like detailed weather) on Ultra in QHD without any stuttering.

    But TSW2 set to DX11 runs like as* , like if i had a 10 year old PC...
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2022
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  18. antwerpcentral

    antwerpcentral Well-Known Member

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    Because of the stuttering I stopped watching. This has become ridiculous. I don't understand how they even dare to present this with a straight face. What I saw yesterday was disgraceful and I'm not talking about the difficulties with the stream, these things can happen but presenting a TSW3 route that looks even worse than a TSW2 route that's a huge red flag. Didn't they hire a Quality officer or something like that? How did he/she let this pass?
     
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  19. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    Frankly the whole TSW3 project needs to go back in the box for another six months to a year.
    Sort the optimisation.
    Sort the saved game.
    Sort the lighting.
    Sort the sound (reverb etc.).
    Don’t foist another poorly compiled and optimised half finished game on us.
     
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  20. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    Also, as was entirely predictable, every lighting issue that has plagued the game for years is still there in spades. I don’t know what this was being demoed on but it looked very poor.

    - Walking around the station at the beginning the shadows were low detail right in front of the player
    - The draw distance is as bad as it’s ever been. The rail shadows are woeful.
    - The bright blue/white flash as you enter a tunnel is still there, but only on some tunnels. That would indicate it being carelessness on behalf of the builder. At no point in the stream did they acknowledge this
    - When you enter a tunnel the vanishing point is a bright light for a few seconds before it fades to black
    - AI trains (in fact all trains) are still lit independently of their environment. In a tunnel, you can see the whole of an oncoming train which is completely unrealistic

    The performance looked ok except for the stuttering which was frequent and very obvious. It’s nothing to do with the streaming platform, the fps counter tells you all you need to know.

    A positive is that the new skies are a definite improvement, but given the very low base they were starting from it’s no major surprise.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2022
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  21. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    I wonder if the tunnel flash is a side effect of piercing the terrain “membrane”? Obviously we don’t know how the UE editor does tunnels but presumably not unlike TSC or MSTS where you had to apply a decal (or in Trainz it’s called a dighole) to turn the terrain where the portal penetrates it transparent. Would appear the decal or dighole is momentarily causing the flash.
     
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  22. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    Perhaps, but this only started around SEHS. It isn’t on every tunnel, and I don’t recall seeing it once on IOW. It’s very poor indeed.
     
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  23. davidh0501

    davidh0501 Well-Known Member

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    The whole stream was painful to watch.
    Not the greatest advert for a software company.

    Plus it left me with the feeling I wouldn't want to buy the route if it was sold as a separate dlc :(
    Still I like German freight, so I may come round.
    Especially as the Germans keep their containers so beautifully clean.
     
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  24. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    At least now hopefully people will drop the pretence that this is a ‘new’ game.
     
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  25. antwerpcentral

    antwerpcentral Well-Known Member

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    Oh stop it! When you see stutters on the stream you will get them in your game as well. When I was still on PS4 I already didn't belief that moving to gen9 would give the game better performance and when I finally got to gen9 the performance was so bad I stopped playing it. You can't blame stuttering on the stream. The stuttering is present in the game and there is no improvement on that front as was mentioned by Matt himself.
     
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  26. dreampage

    dreampage Well-Known Member

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    This issue has been in TSW since the very beginning. It's that as you go along a route, the game loads in the next "chunk" of scenery, and that's when there's this brief but distracting stutter. Basically a split-second lock-up every 10-15-20 seconds. It has clearly not been mitigated and was visible in the stream, it had nothing to do with the live streaming itself. Even if you play on the fastest SSD, this still happens.
     
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  27. Luke8899

    Luke8899 Well-Known Member

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    DTG: "TSW3 will perform the same as TSW2"

    *TSW3 performs the same as TSW2*

    The usual suspects: "I can't believe TSW3 performs the same as TSW2!"
     
  28. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    Swing and a miss.

    Talk about missing the point entirely.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2022
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  29. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    Problem is...TSW2 performance is know to be terrible.
     
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  30. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    They really should be selling this mess as early access, with a price to fit too.

    Oh, hang on, early access implies the developer continues apace to work and improve the game, not just count the pennies until the sales target is reached and call it a day.

    I can see this game getting totally nuked on Steam once those unfortunate enough to buy it realise what DTG have foisted on them. Buy, review, refund!
     
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  31. antwerpcentral

    antwerpcentral Well-Known Member

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    That's not true. I can't believe they dare to name this TSW3
     
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  32. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    Its TSW2.2 (if rush hour was 2.1) with the same issues like TSW2 but with added dynamic weather and a new ui
     
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  33. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    And no save game which to me makes think more like TSW 1.9.
     
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  34. CK95

    CK95 Well-Known Member

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    I do think it’s important to keep an open mind during streams, DTG aren’t exactly in their comfort zone with them.

    There’s also the obvious performance impacts too.

    Last night I thought the brightness was quite high, but again I think this could be down to user settings, most the videos we’ve seen didn’t have the same contrast or brightness to them.
     
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  35. Suryaaji#2369

    Suryaaji#2369 Well-Known Member

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    What actually surprised me is, there is no new HUD design, it is like what we have on TSW2. Hey, we get new/refreshed HUD from TSW1/TSW2020 -> TSW2? Need a clarification here.
     
  36. davidh0501

    davidh0501 Well-Known Member

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    Don't get us started on Hud design.
    We've worn out keyboards in the past.

    The whole idea of a Hud to present essential information which is easily grasped.
    So we have it displayed in three separate corners of the screen.
    Reckon they are still using 14" monitors at Dovetail.
     
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  37. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    That’s the revised lighting, by design it makes everything many many times brighter. To re-iterate, the stuttering IS NOT the stream…watch the fps counter.

    The jury’s still out on the lighting, but the guilty verdict came back a while ago on the claim they rebuilt it from the ground up. It’s exceptionally sketchy to make that claim IMHO, bordering on misleading.

    The search goes on for a game released in the last 10 years that has a shadow/detail draw distance that is so comparatively poor. Previous versions of TSW don’t count.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2022
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  38. antwerpcentral

    antwerpcentral Well-Known Member

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    Indeed, I don't understand why the HUD almost looks the same as TSW2. I might be mistaken but changing the HUD shouldn't be that difficult. I can understand that if it ain't broken it doesn't need fixing but when you try to sell the same stuff as new by using a different package make sure you got a different looking package.
     
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  39. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    Still think MSTS had the best system, or indeed as translated into Open Rails. The F4 Track Monitor, nice and compact. The F10 next station was also discreet plus the F5 text HUD at the top of the screen. The boxes could be toggled on and off with hot keys so all in all it was a very elegant solution that didn’t plaster Fisher Price graphics everywhere.
     
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  40. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    Agree. Cant remember any other games with such massive graphics issues in lighting, draw distance and performance.
     
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  41. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    Even the indie stuff made in Unity (like DRS or Sailwind) has better lighting than DTG’s implementation of the UE engine.
    Maybe if they survive the TSW3 debacle, it’s time to sit back and take a good hard look at whether they continue with UE for future versions of the franchise or look elsewhere for a graphics system.
     
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  42. Scorpion71

    Scorpion71 Well-Known Member

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    I don't know why they opted for a High Speed route whilst stutters and pauses are still such an issue, it's a bloody showstopper as far as I'm concerned! You notice stutters on all routes but as you are travelling at lower speeds, the stutters do not appear every couple of seconds or so.

    I've not watched the stream for this route yet but from the previous TSW3 video teasers I did notice how awful the stuttering was and as others have said it's not fully down to the streaming.

    Nah, I'm afraid I'm out, I'm not purchasing until these st stut stutt stutte stutters are elimanted, if that means waiting until TSW4 or 5, or 6..... so be it, but my wallet is staying firmly shut for now.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2022
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  43. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    The only caveat to this stuttering business is that on the first run of a route it is clearly compiling or cacheing information. I always found that on TSW2 which, lets face it this is, that subsequent runs are much smoother.

    So you could give them the benefit of doubt on that score, but that then raises questions as to why they weren’t properly prepared for the stream to avoid this happening.

    It’s one or the other and it would be neat if someone would confirm exactly what is going on here. I doubt they will though sadly.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2022
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  44. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    Provided that they still run Unreal 4.26 with the default project settings as they did for TSW2, stuttering will be the same as in TSW2 or even worse if they increased the graphical load on TSW3. There´s a long engine.ini optimization thread in the forum that shows they are not the optimal settings for this game. The best solution to remove stuttering is G-sync but that would still leave the tile loading freezing unsolved.

    Cheers
     
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  45. CK95

    CK95 Well-Known Member

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    There are definitely many, many issues with TSW, and I’ve made it clear that DTG are focusing in the wrong areas in another thread.

    My point here is that the preview streams don’t always give the best look at certain areas, the brightness is concerning, however we just don’t know if that was something to do with Lukas’ settings or if it really is how the game looks, we need more live gameplay from another machine to compare.

    As for performance, the streams have always exasperated stuttering & FPS issues, just go back and look at Rivets preview of Lucerne, the performance difference between the stream and gameplay is huge. This can be similarly compared on pretty much all previews.

    Im not saying that this route will release and we won’t see FPS drops or the stutter, that’s unfortunately something that DTG don’t seem to be able to deal with, but again I’ve discussed this elsewhere.
     
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  46. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    At this stage I think the best bet is to wait > 2nd September and see what the early adopters have to report, before taking the plunge. It might also helped if DTG filmed the actual display for at least part of the demonstration, rather than rely on video capture. And if it is the video capture software causing the issue, which seems unlikely as that would likely persist throughout the gameplay, then surely DTG would make a point of saying so.
     
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  47. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    It's obvious that the stream hardware is not always top of the line. If you're advertising a product and showing a route for the first time, you really need to spend some moola and make it the best presentation you can. My experience shows that when you get the software on a decent console or PC, it can look very different, better in most cases.

    Of course, even a supercomputer cannot place more passengers in an empty rush hour train or populate stations. Nor can it make up for poor or missing sounds and it can't create headlights where there aren't any.

    I'm waiting to see the ES44C4 and Dash 2, hoping against hope that they have better headlights than the TSW2 diesels.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2022
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  48. redrev1917

    redrev1917 Well-Known Member

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    The biggest takeaway I have from the stream was when it took him 3 attempts to get the correct BR185.2 which had LZB. If Devs struggle what chance has the rest of us got.

    Any none LZB equipped loco needs disabling from this route
     
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  49. I'm not watching any game streams, I'm almost put off tsw3 as it is.

    Youtube isn't always smooth playback either.
     
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  50. Scorpion71

    Scorpion71 Well-Known Member

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    I don't know where I read it (possibly on this forum) and how true it is but supposedly UE5 has been done so that it suits open world much better (less/no tile loading) which will more or less gets shut of stuttering, maybe we'll just have to wait until TSW moves over to UE5
     
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