I've noticed for quite a while now, that whenever I play TS, my computer fans rev up to what sounds like maximum power, and the air coming out of the top of the computer get a lot hotter than normal (as a side-effect, it also seems to cause the sound on the left side of my headphones to fade out). (Note, I have my in-game graphics level currently set to "highest," or something close.) Tonight, I pulled up the task manager to see what's going on, and found that the GPU goes up to 99% maximum load when I play TS. The top picture is a screenshot of the task manager GPU page, and what FPS I'm getting while driving a train on a complete route. The bottom picture is a screenshot of the task manager GPU page, in the route editor, with absolutely nothing added to the route. Does anyone have any thoughts about what to do?
When gaming the gpu should be close to 100% 70c is about normal for a 3070 in a case with a air cooled cpu, I'm guessing you have a air cooled cpu?
That's because by default TSC does not limit the FPS - in the editor it goes way up. Try adding the launch parameter "-FPSLimit=60" or the value of your choice, this will cap FPS.
Flashes of TSW2 doing the same thing and the XBox Series X fan trying to launch the console into the stratosphere on that game's menus. Could be worse, could have had one of that batch of RTX 3090s that caught fire when left idling on a menu with uncapped FPS like in New World.
Interestingly you have a low CPU usage (I normally see around 30/40% on an i5 K 7 series) plus a relatively high RAM usage. Windows 10 accesses 2.5-3.0Gb RAM and that means if only TSC is running it is accessing around 11/12 GB RAM which is a little on the high side. If you run TSC in 32-bit mode what are the corresponding figures? You could try to load Windows in 'CLEAN BOOT' mode run TSC with the same route/scenario and see if you have the same issue. Is this a desktop PC? What is the resolution and refresh rate of your monitor?
Browser in the background (potentially with GPU acceleration). High settings with occlusion, shadows, supersampling, might cause a different utilisation ratio. Just a thought.
This may actually be because of TS' aggressive left/right sound mixing. I've never heard of game eating up so much resources the computer fails to send half of its audio output. Is that the monitor refresh rate or the framerate set in the game? If it's the former it doesn't matter, the game will render as many frames as it wants until you tell it not to.
As for the sound, it only seems to happen when the GPU really heats up (like in the first picture). If it doesn't run as hot, the sound is normal. As for the refresh rate, that's what the monitor is set to.
Alright, so here is the thing. Games by default don't care about monitor refresh rate. Which is a silly thing, but it's what it is. If you check the bottom of your second screenshot with just the empty route, you can see FPS 173. Being per-second it's 173 Hz. V-Sync forces to render frames at an integer fraction of your monitor refresh rate, so it feels smoother. It also limits itself to your monitor refresh rate as rendering more is pointless. Not entirely sure how and why it works without the game built to support it, but it works with TSC. (There is no in-game option, I use nVidia Control Panel.) It is called vertical sync because images are transmitted pixel by pixel, many ideas exist but the most simply is row by row - vertically. So your application is responsible for changing the final image (being transmitted) in such a way that it doesn't change during transmission (called screen tearing). One solution is buffering but that's extra effort. Another is to have two images and request a switch when ready - so once image 2 is done, you wait for image 1 to fully transmit, then while image 2 is transmitted, you can render image 1 again. FPS Limit tells the engine to stop after a certain number of frames per second. For me in TSC it would alternate between nice smooth sections and really shaky, jumpy, off-sync sections - changing on pretty much every tile load. I guess the tile load duration shifts the in-game sync and it becomes awkward - rendering 2, 0, 1, 1, 2, 0, 1, 0, 2, ... frames per monitor clock - still 60 Hz, but not in sync. Still, it might work for you and should definitely lower the graphics utilisation.
I was under the impression that if the frame rate (fps) is below your monitor’s refresh rate, there’s little reason to have Vsync turned on. I doubt many TSC simmers with 60Hz monitors see a constant 60 fps with some of the rigs used. There’s no tearing or over-processing to fix, so the only effect VSync will have is potentially worsening your frame rate and causing input lag. In this case, it may be best to keep it off. For instance, if you set Vsync on a 60Hz monitor and you do not achieve a constant 60 fps then your frame rate will immediately halve.
It does help me actually. I have around 50 fps on London-Peterborough and without it, it's brutal stuttery. And fewer fps even, which is funny. On my machine, the game renders consecutive frames at a very uneven rate. It's super easy to see from how trees move. Without, "50 fps" is more like 15, with my train visible jumping-halting 2-3 times a second. Absolutely horrible. With V-Sync on, it's surprisingly smooth. I guess being unable to render the next pic somehow enables the game to prepare for the next frames, cleanup, preloading, anything, which would otherwise take a significant time (0.1s) after every 10-20 frames. And thus, alternating between 5-10fps and 80fps 2-3 times a second. It does not limit my fps to 30, although in games it does, steady 30fps is still very acceptable. What it does, it blocks the game from rendering above 60. The in-game counter rapidly changes between 59, 60 and 61.
Not yet, the problem isn't constant. It only seems to show up on certain routes or trains, or in the editor.
Alright, here's a (hopefully) important update. A few days ago, I decided to turn down the scenery render distance in the game settings to it's lowest point, just to see if that might help. It seems like it has. So far, I haven't heard the fans speed up past normal speed, the discharge air isn't any hotter than normal, and the sound isn't cutting out on my headphones anymore. Albeit, I haven't tried the route editor yet with the new graphics settings,, but everything else seems to be working fine so far.
Good luck seeing all station assets, biggest report of issues regarding missing scenery (important stuff like station buildings) is nearly always because people had their scenery density not set on max
Brickrail said distance, not density. Distance is most useful when driving in valleys so the hills and mountains aren't empty, and when creating aerial shots.
1. Limit in-game FPS to 60 using Steam or GPU NVidia Control center. Not only fans become crazy, you can ever hear supersonic coil nozzle from the GPU board. This will eliminate it. 2. Turn the V-sync on to "full" same place. 60 fps is more than enough for TSC if your monitor can't play higher rates. 3. You also can enable DLSS despite of any other smooth settings, but it seems to have no use in actual TSC engine. 4. Use "fast" rendering mode with limited number of frames prepared. TSC doesn't need this feature. I play with NVidia 2070 Super, my GPU is a bit slower than yours, but TSC is the only one game where it works without any noise. I also have all parameters turned to max. I can post some shots of my settings, if You've interested. I played with RWE before, but now play vanilla graphics.
Meanwhile I'm sitting here having had vsync turned off for the last few years because I have a VRR monitor, and it does the job of preventing tearing much nicer. I'd only turn it on now if I got something like a 4090 that was able to regularly exceed the 170hz of my monitor.
"...ever hear supersonic coil nozzle from the GPU board." Is that what the weird screeching noise I hear whenever I run TS is?
Proper solution is probably lowering the graphics settings so that the game is able to run at higher framerate (let's say 80 fps) all the time and then cap the framerate at 60 to reduce GPU usage, which in the end reduces the heat and noise amount. Another option (but this one would be for everything) is to go into the Nvidia Control Panel and actually lower the maximum allowed core clock by a few percent. That way the card won't be allowed to access the top few percent of it's performance and as a result run at lower temps and lower fan speed. Just be careful not to change it while under load as that will likely cause a system crash. Also coil whine happens when something is running at very high framerate (let's say 200+ fps). It's not harmful or anything but just an annoyance. edit:Third option is replacing the card's thermal paste, which could lower the noise but won't get rid of the heat.
Sincerelly, I can't understand, how Mr. Brickrail782 has got trouble with RTX3070 without VSync while I play on 2070 super (6Gb) with Vsync on at 60 fps, with Ultra settings - and have no one.
Can't you enable vsync for ts in nvidia control panel? Or limit the fps. Yes I did the same because for some strange reason I was getting screen tearing on a 170hz display. Go to nvidia control panel, select manage 3d settings then select program settings. In the drop down menu select railworks x64 then in the settings you can set max frame rate or change power management mode from maximum performance to normal, and turn on vsync etc...