I recently had some issues with frame rate in TSC and worked through various suggestions from various people until I hit upon a working set. My really bad frame rates started a few months ago likely triggered by a driver update. I thought I would share my settings both for the game and for Nvidia 3d settings which helped me. Firstly the in game settings - note some of these are overridden by the later Nvidia settings These got me from around 15 to 20 fps up to 30 - 50 fps depending on the route and location. Then I applied Nvidia settings that now get me anywhere from 45fps up to 165 (the max for my monitor) On top of these I use RWE2 to get the better antialiasing shaders it has. I don't turn on the other functions from RWE2. I thought I would share in case someone else is going through issues. My machine is i9-10850K with a 3080TI. TSC is mostly CPU bound because it is a single threaded game but GPU still comes into. Paul
Bit baffled as to why you were getting framerate issues in the first place, with a i9 and a 3080. I have an old Sandybridge CPU and a GTX980, and run with higher settings at the same resolution, and I'm usually around 30fps. Something's not right there. Here's how I roll. Dynamic clouds is off because I use the AP Sky and Weather Pack. Occlusion if off because I use RWE. Water quality looks no different if I take it up that last notch, but does shave some FPS off, so there's no need to take it all the way up. Here's my gameplay. That's with ReShade and RWE as well... all running on a 12 year old CPU and a 9 year old GPU usually around 25 to 30fps. Your machine should be killing it with every single slider on max. I've not changed my Nvidia control panel settings from default, and never set any custom settings for Railworks. Maybe I should have a play to see if I can squeeze more out of it.
Since picking up TS again a couple of months back, I’ve also noticed an occasional decline in frame rate, especially towards London termini. I hadn’t installed anything more, there’s more space on the drive, so wondering what the issue was. At times I’d dips to 6/7 fps in these routes at the stations, whereas before it wouldn’t ever tend to get lower that maybe 18. Could be these are routes I haven’t used much before, and there was always an issue….
If you are referring to WCML South, that's kind of normal to get a massive frame rate dip approaching Euston.
Thanks for sharing, could be interesting to try some of those. I find that overhead line equipment is taxing. I just ran a scenario with the 158 Peterborough-London-Peterborough and albeit steady 60 all the way, once entering the area with the maintenance facilities and such, it dropped seriously (20-40, varying). King's Cross itself wasn't bad. Trains come on top of that, some of them have really high quality models or headlights, the old Class 801 tends to take a full second to load, but I also have a magnificent 5-10 fps with any of the E18 consists (from 2010-11) in close up sight (arguably the interiors, too). When experimenting with SSAA I ran from Philly to Trenton just fine, but two trains (AEM-7 + 6 coaches each) at Trenton would drop my fps to 20-40, and those aren't new models anyway (although AA jaggies show they are complex).
Definitely something bad happened Pookeyhead for sure. I do not know what it was though and yes you're right it should fly with my hardware and now I've tweaked it it does again. Whatever the cause was it wasn't hardware, that all flies happily no other games getting issues and no hotter than it usually gets. It is possible that Nvidia did it themselves, their game experience thing occasionally tries to optimise games and has been known to get it really really wrong.
Things that need a lot of anti aliasing like overhead lines, fences, vertical or horizontal stripes etc can impact your rate quite a bit. It is the main reason I use RWE its got much better anti aliasing than the default game.
So long as you got it sorted that's the main thing I suppose. I tend to keep the drivers updated here, but being such an old GPU, whatever they changed in the unified driver package probably didn't affect me.
I'm always sticking to the drivers delivered by the card's manufacturer. Never had any troubles (with DX9 to DX11 games anyway).
Sure. You can't attach text files to a post, so they are in a zip file. DefaultPreset.ini is the reshade config... just dump it wherever your current file is. RWE-Jan23 is the RWE file obviously. In order for the reshade file to work, you will need to have all the same shaders installed that I do, so it may be worth re-installing reshade, and ticking every box when it asks you what shaders to install. They are all tiny files, and it will only load up the ones the config files tells it to. BTW... that's a config file for RWE, not RWE2. I stopped using RWE2 as the rebake thing was annoying me, and I don't use any of the features of RWE2 except the simple shader mods that are identical to the ones in RWE2. I'm fairly certain the config files are compatible though.
Same here. I always get drivers from NVidia. If Windows forces an update, I'll manually reinstall it with one downloaded from the NVidia site.
I don't want to tell him he's already using them just via me though. (I did tell him that at the time but meh, kids never listen)
Pookeyhead, does the improved (and TSW-like) HUD that comes with RWE2 also come with RWE? I have the former and dropped for the same reason you mention: the baking was a pain.
My fps are normally ok but as soon as I switch on ambient occlusion it literally kills it even down to single figures. I have a 4k screen so anything below 3840 x looks quite blurry to me. I'm using a 1080ti and 6700k so a little older but still a decent system. I find v sync can make a difference to stutters as well on mine
Not that this is going to help much but My FPS varies from 14 - 30! Seems some routes are better on the FPS than others.
You can rule that out for future since it's possible to deactivate that behaviour (scanning for and auto-optimizing of found games) entirely.
GeForce Experience does not have any way of detecting and auto-optimizing neither TS Classic nor TSW3. unless it's been added during the last couple of hours (it definitely did _not_ have it this morning)
It does not specifically but it does have generic optimisations that come with driver updates that are not for specific games.
I just lock my frames to 30fps - actually what is a decent refresh rate for a 144hz monitor? Also have reshade but can't seem to get screenshots to show what my reshade looks like (Is that because I'm in borderless?) - it's basically pookeyhead's settings but with a few extra things added
Reshade shouldn't have any affect on taking screenshots, so no idea what's going on there. Try full screen and see if that makes a difference. Or... do you mean that your screenshots ignore your reshade settings? If you use F12, it should screenshot with your Reshade effects. The other way is to set Steam to take screenshots as well, which will give you an uncompressed .png file, but they can be quite large. I have Steam also set to F12, so I get a compressed jpeg, and a uncompressed png.
If it helps I'm currently running in borderless - but it looks like my screenshots are ignoring my reshade settings. Maybe it only works in full screen? I usually sometimes use F12, or CTRL-S for screenshots.
It's all I can think of then. I run full screen and have no such issue. I can test in borderless to see if I have the same issue though. Will report back.
Ok. In full screen, as I always run, If I use F12, I get two screenshots - a JPEG in the usual railworks screenshot folder, and a uncompressed .png file on a separate drive as I have Steam set up to take screenshots on F12 as well. Both of these are capturing Reshade. However, if I use ctrl+s, I get a jpeg in the default screenshot folder that does NOT capture Reshade.... that looks awful. This is using full screen. With borderless, I get the same thing, but the whole game runs darker while playing, and when I screenshot, I get.... With F12 - still captures Reshade, but is too dark. With ctrl+s - exactly the same as with full screen - no Reshade, and too dark. So not sure what is going on with yours as I can still capture Reshade in borderless, but it's too dark. If I were to run in Borderless, I would need to alter my in game settings to compensate I think. It looks like the issue is ctrl+s that's not capturing Reshade, so I would use F12, and run the game in fullscreen mode.
Ok so something has changed for me, for as long as I can remember F12 wouldn't work for me and also saving an uncompressed version to a custom location using a custom Hotkey via the Steam settings also wouldn't work for me, I remember discussing it here a good while ago.. Anyway, what's happening now.. Ctrl+S - Always my preferred method of taking screenshots simply because a) It's always worked for me, and b) It removes the HUD automatically, It does however only save in .jpg format (as Pookeyhead has said above) and I did not notice till now that it doesn't show your re-shade settings (quite how I've not noticed this before I really don't know). These are saved to D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\45156086\760\remote\24010\screenshots (My default Steam location) Ctrl+S F12 - Ok I have three things going on when I press F12 (interesting as only one of these happened prior to me moving my RailWorks location earlier this year) 1) I have F12 set as my screenshot key within re-shade and this saves them to a custom folder I created in E:\RailWorks\Screenshots, I rarely used this as a) It shows the HUD and b) I kept forgetting about it tbh. As you can see from the image below it is showing re-shade settings it is also uncompressed .png (had to upload it to Imgur as the forum said it was too big to upload directly so it might be compressed showing it in forum, best to click on it to see the actual image) 2) Now for some reason F12 is working again regarding the game taking a screenshot using F12 this is a .jpg but you can see it's using the re-shade settings and obviously still shows the HUD. This is saved to D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\45156086\760\remote\24010\screenshots alongside my Ctrl+S screenshots 3) Now also working again from previously never working is the Steam screenshot hotkey this takes two images a .jpg which saves to the usual D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\45156086\760\remote\24010\screenshots and an uncompressed .png version into yet another location F:\Screenshots (Yeah I know, I need to tidy all this up and sort out just two locations, the standard Steam one and probably the F drive one and bin off the one I have in my RailWorks folder). Anyway here's the two Images saved by this method. .jpg in D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\45156086\760\remote\24010\screenshots .png in F:\Screenshots (uploaded to Imgur so click on image for uncompressed version) I think the last image is the best the Steam uncompressed one, be interesting to have Pookeyheads analysis as a) he uses colour and light balanced monitors and b) knows a heck of a lot more about prettifying this game than I do. RIP all you guys on crappy or mobile data, sorry, fibre ftw I guess.
Ahh... I forgot you can set a screenshot hot key in Reshade itself. Mine is set to PrtSc, and it dumps it in my Railworks folder. So far as I can tell, the best method for me is F12. Ctrl+S does indeed take a shot with no HUD, but it totally ignores Reshade, so I'm discounting that, as if you want a shot with Reshade, Ctrl+S just doesn't work. There are still differences though for me. As I also have Steam set to F12, I get both a .jpg and a .png. The .jpg from the sim itself goes into the default screenshot folder, and I have set Steam to dump it in a separate location. Both files (apart from compression) are identical in terms of colour, brightness etc, and both capture RWE and Reshade settings. I have Reshade set to use PrtSc, and this dumps a .png into my default Railworks folder. It captures Reshade, obviously, but it is darker. I think it is just capturing from Reshade, and ignoring something else. So far, F12 for me is the only method that faithfully captures my in game play, complete with all addons.
so in theory, you could set Reshade to screenshot of ctrl+s, and in theory it should remove the HUD and Capture Reshade.
Besides that folder buried in the Steam files, I also find a copy is placed in the Windows ‘Pictures’ folder, but with file name incorporating route and coordinates (and date, iirc).
No, because it's still using the same method of capture it normally does - you are just changing the key binding. All that will happen is you will get two screenshots when you press ctrl+s - one from reshade (with HUD) and one from the game (without HUD). The one from the game will still be ignoring reshade. This is why I get two screenshots when I press F12, as I have both Steam and the game itself using F12.
IMO, the first F12 image looks best, and as an added bonus, it's uncompressed. The rest look a little too dark. It seems like everyone's behaves a little differently. All I know is that F12 works like a champ for me, and captures the screen exactly as I see it in game in both .jpg, and .png. I'm backed up, and I'm changing nothing ever again LOL.
But the TS ctrl+s briefly hides the HUD and takes a screenshot, not ignore it. So if you have both take a photo at the same time theoretically there would be no HUD for reshade to capture.
No, you miss my point. ctrl+s does indeed capture without the HUD, but it will ignore Reshade. If you set reshade to also use ctrl+s, you will just get both: The normal in game one with no HUD, but without reshade, and the reshade one that does capture reshade, but will have the HUD. You'll just get both versions. It will won't make using the Reshade screengrab ignore your HUD.
No i think you have missed the point here. When you press CTRL+S in TS, you can see the HUD briefly disappear whilst it takes the pic, SO if you have both use the same key, in theory Reshade would get a shot whilst the HUD is off. THis all assumes that the timings from input to screenshot are similar. I would be keen to give it a shot when i get back onto TS tomorrow.
So, Turns out that that you were right Pookeyhead. Took 2 screenshots and sure enough, F12 added the reshade (had the HUD turned off), while Ctrl-s ignored it. F12: Ctrl-S Note: Not prototypical at all - ran a voyager on the Marias pass and did my own speed limit to what I though would be best to simulate a high speed tilting train service between Shelby and Whitefish. If you want the reshade settings I'm using, let me know and if there are any tips you can give me to improve on it - I don't use RWE either.
Decided to tweak the saturation levels for the sky and the yellows on the loco a little: And here's the preset
re Screenshots, why not Windows Key + Print Screen. Perfect capture of what is on your screen, re-shade and all, and it sticks it in your Windows Photos app. It’s all I ever use.
Because it captures everything, including your second monitor, so you then have to crop it etc... and it's still darker than the actual in game play for some reason. compared to F12 Plus... it's just one key to tap, which in game, is faster and easier, and you have total control of where the file is saved. I think win+alt+prtsc only saves the active window, but that's just too much of a pain in the ass when you are playing.
My theory works. Setting reshade to CTRL+S allows it to take a pic in the brief moment that the HUD is hidden. Reshade: TS:
It might just be me but these ReShade screenshots all look awful. Too dark, too bright, too washed out and too warm, somehow at the exact same time. Too each their own I guess. I'm not particularly sure how you managed to do that, unless it's intentional. If you want to fix it you really need to turn everything down. Contrast, brightness, saturation... You're not too far away from making a coloured version of The Unfinished Swan with those settings. ReShade is best used to just enhance games a little bit.
I think it's the unreal engine 4 setting I have enabled that's washing everything out. I'll tweak contrast levels later and see what happens
I tend to have my TS a bit darker because a) I have an awesomely mood lit man cave and too bright a monitor would burn my retinas, I work permanent nights and hate too much light pollution. and b) I drive mostly UK routes, and I live in Wales, it's mostly dull and gloomy apart from a few weeks in late July early August lol. c) It's not the bleedin' Mediterranean like some people seem to want to set their UK route brightness too.
One thing that definitely has helped me is insuring that your GPU/CPU do not bottleneck each other. Also, if you have a monitor that has a high refresh rate with low latency, TSC will appear to run much smoother
My GPU throttles and bottlenecks if I go unlimited. I'm using a 144hz monitor at 1080p. What's the sweet spot for refresh rate in terms of fps. I feel anything higher than 60 is waste on a Sim. (Currently limiting to 30fps)
