PC Stuttering In Tsw3 (even On High End Pc) Really Needs To Be Addressed

Stuttering ("microstutters" or whatever you like to call them) has been an issue since TSW originally launched, but it's worse than ever in TSW3.

I have a pretty high end PC with a 9900K, 3080 Ti, and 32gb of 3600mhz RAM (with all m.2 SSDs) and no matter what graphical settings I play at, there's always a periodic hard stutter of 200-300ms or so every few seconds, at least while moving about the world (meaning it's probably related to loading new parts of the world into memory.) It hampers enjoyment of the sim immensely, especially if you're actively trying to manipulate train controls or the camera and you get a stutter that requires you to re-adjust. Basically it's just very hard to get immersed in the (otherwise beautiful) sim as these stutters constantly poke holes in the "illusion."

Not sure if it's caused by the loading of scenery "tiles" and the trains and objects within them or what, but perhaps this could be better managed asynchronously on different CPU threads so that the whole thing doesn't grind to a halt every time the loading needs to be done? Maybe an option on PC to "brute force" load things into memory when the route initially loads so the loading is less CPU intensive? Btw, I've tried some of the texture/asset streaming-related engine.ini tweaks like r.TextureStreaming=0 but none of that has any effect.

 

I agree. It's keeps me from playing nearly as often as I would like. I have a PC that would send a rocket to Mars, but i can't drive the GWE without getting motion sickness from all the stutters....

 

+1

 

This is still very much a thing in 2023, sadly.

Been away from the sim for a few months, and it seems worse than ever.
I tried playing the same timetable back to back, just to see if it was a shader cache thing, but it was more or less exactly the same both times. Some freezes were pretty long, over a second, while most were microstutters over just a few frames.

 

Have you tried setting max fps to 30? I play at 30fps (although I can understand if you don't want to) and I don't notice any stuttering. Then again, it might be happening and I might not be noticing...
Is the stuttering shown when you press f3 (i.e: is the measured framerate affected by stuttering?)

 

Yeah the PC is problematic, ive tried all kinds of tweaks. Now my Signal Hud is just a grey circle and has no colour coding. Also on one of my routes the passengers are glitching when they get off the train. AH...theres nothing like next gen gaming..

 

Oh the HUD issue can be solved by turning on "next signal aspect" in settings.

I personally find the PC experience of TSW to be the best when compared to consoles. I mean, we can actually play our content...

But yeah that doesn't mean there aren't issues (even if I'm not experiencing them, because clearly a lot of people are)

 

I feel Xbox Series X is superior between the two in my experience so far. All my content is working, its pretty smooth 60fps on XSX, its only the ambient light shadows in early clear skies that causes massive pop in that also exists on pc.

For the life of me I just cant get a steady 60 FPS on PC and cant settle on any settings.

 

I have exactly same specs as you and like you have tried all sorts of tweaks with no affect at all, it's one of the reasons why I currently don't want to see a High Speed route because as soon as you get over 75+mph the stuttering obviously gets worse every few seconds and it's even worse when the sound cuts out too.

 

Oh wow that is interesting! I wonder why we all have very different experiences of the game?

 

I don't know to be honest. I had some minor stuttering on a London Commuter route last night but it was acceptable as I was enjoying the ride so much.

Today on pc I have passengers not moving out of the carriages properly and my signal hud has gone which is weird. ive also got lots of AA shimmering I don't get on xbox.

 

Perhaps your AA needs to be changed from FXAA o AA or vice versa?
Also the signal HUD, is "next signal aspect" in settings.

 

Same here (Intel i7, nVidia RTX, plenty of RAM and all SSD drives), the game just seems to get stuck for a second. One reason that I don't bother recording the game for playback anymore...

 

Is that why I just have a grey circle and no colour indicator?

 

Yes. Simply set "Next signal aspect" to "on" and it will return to nomal.

 

Thank you!

 

You can believe Matt or not, but he has told us on a number of occasions that the stutters are caused by UE when it unloads unneeded content from memory and there is nothing DTG can do to make it any better. I have a top end machine and get them while playing.
Intel Core i9-9900 @ 3.60 GHz
32.0 GB installed RAM
1 TB SSD HD
4 TB drive
Video
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
8 MB GDDR6 memory

 

I PC Intel Core i9-12900k @ 5.2 GHz
32.0 GB installed RAM
2 TB SSD
Video
NVIDIA GeForce MSI RTX 4090

 

Been like it for years I'm afraid and optimization is currently at the bottom of the road map. And that's for pc. I have a top end pc and what ever I change it still stutters. Brought my self a ps5 and guess what it stutters.

 

The problem with PC is that there are way too many things that can impact how well a game plays.
You're all listing the hardware, but none of you is mentioning software. Are you running an antivirus? many apps running in background and churning CPU and RAM?

I am right now driving a couple of F7s down from the mountain with a load of coal, Clinchfield on TSW3. Smooth as butter, no stutters, micro or otherwise. I've limited the game to 85fps, don't remember why, so the game is doing 85fps right now, playing in 4K. My 3090 is 100% (76C, fan at 70%), the 5950X is 10% busy (75C, fans are at min speed). Settings are all Ultra, or whatever is the highest, FXAA and 200% screen percentage (is this good like this? I don't know).

Maybe this experience is good because my train is only doing 15mph and not flying down to Ashford at 200mph. But the experience will definitely depend on many factors, hardware, software, game settings, and probably also route and train speed.

 

do understand its a unreal 4 issue its well know for shutters i play a other sim that is in stage 2 of beta now called The Bus they were on Unreal 4 at 1st it had the same issues shutters and flickers but when they moved to unreal 5.1 OMG huge change now it get a smooth run not many shutters and flickers its very good frames and detail is mega huge dovetail needs to do the right thing by the players and move to unreal 5.1 here on the 2023 core update simple pull the trigger Dovetail and give us long time players that know what they talking about the new Engine needs to happen so we can enjoy a smooth exp at long last on every route

 

The root cause of the issue is poor configuration of the unreal 4 engine, not the unreal 4 engine itself. Personally, I've found the same issue and my PC really can't be blamed (5800X3D, 64GB 4000MT/s DDR4, RTX3090, X570 Board). For those interested in going a bit out of their way to help with the issue, though, what I can say is that by forcing the game to be translated into Vulkan by plugging DXVK in it (google DXVK, the first link should be the github repo, get the most recent .tar.gz build and use 7zip to extract it) the game becomes much more bearable. DXVK seems to cause the hitches to be smaller and less frequent.

 

Recently I am having "micro-stuttering" on my xbox series x frequently dropping fps down to 10-20. Occuring especially on the new TSW3 routes. The latest Trenton, Rheinstrecke and Niddertal seem to be running max 50fps. Pop in is very much present. All available DLC is installed on the internal drive. Anybody having similar issues? Does removing DLC solve problem? Cheers!

 

That's correct! UE5 is absolutely the way to solve this issues but DTG is a little scared by the earlier change to that. But I believe it's the best way to uncouple the consoles from the pc in terms of updates in general is a good solution. But i think DTG never do that. They scared to loose money.

 

Unreal 5 doesn't solve anything. I still get stutters and performance drops on the bus. But they aren't going to move to unreal 5. It's not simple to do at all and dtg still hasn't mastered unreal 4