PC Definitive Stutter Fix Via Engine.ini Settings

*****Update: Also works with TSW5*****

Since TSW3 came out i am using custom unreal engine settings that stop stuttering on any route once an initial run has been done with these tweaks.

This settings come from a legendary but forgotten thread about Unreal engine ini tweaking that got quite close to getting rid of the stutter problem

The problem on short, tile loading (same issue on TSC on very detailed routes) and more pronounced shader compilation that is affecting a lot of Unreal engine games (Callisto protocol, Star Wars Fallen Order etc). The latter one causes shaders to be compiled constantly, causing delays in the graphic pipeline and resulting in massive stutters that occur on any pc regardless of how awesome the config is

So how to fix this?
Steps:
1.Go to Documents\My Games\TrainSimWorld3\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor
2. Make a backup of your Engine.ini, then open the original one
3. Copy the following settings and paste it in your Engine.ini

[SystemSettings]
r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1
r.Streaming.LimitPoolSizeToVRAM=0
r.Streaming.PoolSize=7000
r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=3000
r.RenderTargetPoolMin=1200
r.Streaming.FramesForFullUpdate=2
r.Streaming.Boost=2
r.GTSyncType=1
r.OneFrameThreadLag=1
s.ForceGCAfterLevelStreamedOut=0
s.ContinuouslyIncrementalGCWhileLevelsPendingPurge=0
s.LevelStreamingComponentsUnregistrationGranularity=10
s.LevelStreamingComponentsRegistrationGranularity=30
r.Streaming.NumStaticComponentsProcessedPerFrame=200
gc.TimeBetweenPurgingPendingKillObjects=200

****** if you have a video card with 6GB of ram you need to change
r.Streaming.PoolSize=7000 to 3500
r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=3000 to 1500

4. Save the changes
5. Set -dx12 to TSW3 launch options (might work on DX11 fine but i never run it that way)
6. Launch the game, select a route and run a scenario/timetable once
**** You will stil see stutters and that is normal since the shaders are compiled as they would normally. Stutter intensity will decrease as you go on with your run and the shader cache is being build. Finish the scenario/timetable route and exist to main menu (required only once)

7. The magic step, play any scenario/timetable run on the the same route again (it doesn't matter if you restart your pc, close TSW etc)
Enjoy almost 0 stutters any route , as now the shaders are loaded at the start instead of constant compilation

On short, running a route initially will still result in some stutters as the shaders are still compiled but also they are saved. When running the route a second time you will see a massive difference in stuttering as the game now loads the shaders instead of creating them each time.

Notes:
When reinstalling the video card drivers, you will need to go trough the routes again with step 6 as the shaders cache will be deleted.
If you get crashed on long routes like KSW or SEHS it means that the settings are to tight for your pc, post here and i will try and find some looser settings

If you got this far with reading thanks, sorry for the long post but i do hope this helps people enjoy the game as it should be played.

 

I will give a try.
What settings need to be changed for a 12 gb Vral card ?

 

You can leave it as it is for now. Giving to much VRAM to streaming pool without being used fully might be a waste . I think 7000 MB is kinda overkill as it is but since i didn't see side effects i am using it like this. I am using these settings on an AMD RX 6700XT with 9 GB of VRAM on my side as reference. You could in theory go as far as 8000-9000 on the r.Streaming.PoolSize but i wouldn't do that.

 

Yes, I think you refering to the awesome work from geloxo - after his research and explanation I've never had any stuttering since

 

Meh, all this does it make it stutter and pause more for me. I've tried all sorts of streaming commands in the past with both DX11 and DX12 and it's either made diddly squat difference or worse, never seen any improvements.

It's something that will never be resolved until the Unreal engine can cope with this sort of game, hopefully UE5 can in future.

I9-9900K OC'd
32GB Memory
M2 SSD Drive
3080TI Nvidia
27" Nvidia Gsync monitor

 

Yes that is correct. Although fantastic in TSW2 in TSW3 the old settings resulted in crashes in newer routes like KSW and SEHS. Since there was no way i could go back to stuttering mess without the ini settings i took it on myself to re tweak and add some new lines to get a new ini list stable for TSW3 (also posted my progress in there)

Sorry to hear that it doesn't do anything in your case. Did you try only the ini tweaks posted above? I know that these exact settings work fine on my PC and another friends with close to 0 stutter. Whats even funnier is that i am running TSW3 on a gold old 7200 RPM HDD instead of SDD, and once an initial run has been completed, all the others are smooth as butter. I think that one of the major differences between older tweaks is the r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1 .

 

Where are the tiles stored? Do they just keep building up in some folder and are never removed? Those of us who have limited SSD space don't want our drives filled up with tiles.

 

It actually works... wow. Thank you!

 

I would not worry about it. Since the process of storing cached shader for faster execution is common for most game and it should not contain large volumes of data. Also only shaders are cached and not tile data, since storing tile data would mean making a copy of the entire route in C drive

I don't know the exact location where the cache is stored by the video driver but again, its nothing i would worry to much. Also the cache is deleted when a new driver is installed, so it will clean itself.

With pleasure! I'm glad you are also seeing improvements. Enjoy you new TSW experience

 

Yes this is how I understand TSW and even TSC. It loads tiles which cause a freeze and sometime it can last 2 seconds or more on the new Linke Rheinstreke route.

Going to test out your tweaks and thanks for sharing!

 

NVIDIA is %LocalAppData%\NVIDIA\DXCache. Default size is 4GB which can be changed with NVIDIA Control Panel. I upped mine to 10GB, mostly because I play several recent AAA titles that use a lot of cache.

 

That is correct. Also in Unreal Engine games like TSW there is something even worse called shader compilation, that result in the shader being compiled each few seconds resulting in constant stuttering. So basically TSW has a combo of reasons to cause issues.

Give them a try, remember that running once a route will "warm" the shaders and you might not see spectacular results. On the second or consecutive runs on same run you will see a massive difference in the smoothness of the run.

Let me know what you think after testing the tweaks

Definitely if you play a lot of modern games especially the kind that take several minutes to compile the shaders at start of game (Last of us, Dead Space remastered) the shader cache usage might be larger. Also Steam and DirectX also have they own folders for the cache, but for TSW since reinstalling the driver brings back the stuttering i am betting that only the driver cache location is used.

 

I think Steam shader (pre) cache is only for Vulkan/OpenGL.

 

This method worked for me! I did it on one of the most stuttery of Routes, Dresden-Reisa, and the 2nd run was virtually without stutter. The only exception was when meeting a passing train, which I suppose has to create shaders since they are random. Also it worked on DX11. Thanks, dbrunner#4864

 

Hey I'm quite glad other people are also finding my settings usefully, thanks for reporting the results ! . I have also noticed that with these tweaks there are perfect results with some of the worst offenders, Kassel, Munich-Ausburg, Dresden Chemnitz, London-Brighton, DRA.

And yes you might have some small stutter if a train passes or randomly during longer runs, but in no way or shape it compares to the mess it was before. As example in Munich-Ausburg with tweaks i have maybe 4-5 micro stutter during an entire run. Without tweaks i have 4-5 stutters before i even clear the switches after departing Munich . KSW SEHS and DRA with tweaks you might see an occasional micro stutter once 10 or more minutes, without tweaks its stuttering once each 20-30 seconds.

 

Yesterday I tried Intelligent Standy List Cleaner but it only cleaned the memory cache like 3 times in a session ROFL and while I noted it was smoother (or it was a placebo!) it didn't clear the stutters.



Clearing stutters by pre loading-saving shader cache:

I did notice before that after I ran a route too it would clear them.

But lately it hasn't been doing it.
With your tweaks it runs smoothly where Linke Rhenistrecke was giving stutters like the one you play Munich.

Now TSW3 is almost perfect!!!!


Do the .ini settings override the UI settings you can choose in TSW3 program? If I mess with those will it affect the shader cache?

Thank you for your help.

 

I'm really glad you also found my settings helpful ! I also have Mainz-Koblenz and just like you said its just a smooth ride with the settings. To bad there are no Ini tweaks to fix the bad sound and US freight brake physics on the BR103

You can change any graphic settings in the game menu to your heart content since the Ini tweaks are not affected (they affect only streaming-caching side of the engine and and not video/graphics options).

The standby list cleaner , i guess it fixes one of the old window issues where useless junk data is keep in the memory instead of releasing it for more demanding app. For TSW i dont think it would do much, since i upgraded from 16 to 32 GB of Ram and there was no change whatsoever in stutter intensity without the custom Ini.

 

Thanks!

A few years ago I was really irritated that Windows updated Windows 10 and superfetch would run hogging the hard disk and resources.... And other "background programs".....

It seems Windows reigned these issues in.

Microsoft seemed to go overboard trying to dictate to everyone when everything would be done requiring us to go in and change these messed up settings.

The tweaks to the ini file works and that is why I replied!

I will check the brake physics out on the BR103 (what is the issue exactly???) but the US brake physics are pretty much spot on apart from I think the brake pipe recharges too fast in my opinion. But overall I think they have it right.

 

So you did not notice that the brakes on BR103 have the same release time as a heavy US train (not kidding it takes at least 10 or more seconds to release brake from notch 2, not to mention that applying two notches of brake will result in the train braking with such force it surpasses the ICE3 emergency brake But this is another topic

 

The BR110 also seems to have it? Air brakes are the same so for me it is not strange as I have real life railroad experience.

I'll try the BR103. You think it takes too long?

 

Yup same with BR110 and that's already a red flag since these are two different beasts. from all the trains i played in TSC and TSW including VR version of BR103 the brakes on the one in TSW sure seems really off for a high speed locomotive.Since This is another issue, lets revert back to the good old stuttering topic

 

The silence of DTG scares me.
Never been communication about some improvement :/

 

I'm sure I've read posts from at least one person posting with a DTG "staff" badge in the past, acknowledging that "loading" the next "tile" is an accepted cause of "hitching". Stutter/hitching caused by compiling shaders on-the-fly is dealt with in many games, typically by pre-compiling shaders the first time the game is run. I'm sure it would be possible for DTG to either offer an option to automatically pre-compile shaders for a DLC when it is installed, for those who would prefer to wait for a better experience before playing it, or maybe just an option in a settings menu to "build/rebuild" shaders. But the reality is, that I think DTG have shown over the last year that they have little interest in doing anything other than pumping-out buggy DLC, driven by marketing deadlines. Core game improvements, and bug fixing of long standing issues that are not deemed to be "game breaking", do not seem to be a very high priority.

 

I just re-read the OP's post and chuckled to myself. He mentioned the Callisto Protocol. I remember the "furore" when that launched last December. It was a complete mess with the stutters. A horror game where every jump scare was ruined by a hitch! LOL I remember the posts on reddit.... The reddit user self-help "fixes", mostly revolving around hand editing engini.ini (r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1) and then announcement of the first patch, but too late for all the negative publicity the PC launch generated. Everyone I knew who bought that game, (at least 15 people), refunded it in the 2 hour window after purchase.

 

What values do you enter here if you have 16GB Vram?
Do you have 8GB Vram or how do the values 7000 and 3000 come about?

r.Streaming.PoolSize=7000
r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=3000

 

dbrunner#4864 Just want to thank you for this topic. I've added the settings to my ini and have just been running a London to Brighton service. Things were definitely getting much smoother all the way through. I had to end early but will be giving this further time tonight, and things are looking very hopeful.

Looking forward to finally having great performance on what should be a "good" PC (5800X3D + 6800XT).

 

16 GB of Video Ram? That would be one crazy video card
I previously had 8 GB of VRAM ram and now i have 12 GB of Vram (I think mentioned 9 by mistake in one of my post earlier)

When we set the r.Streaming.PoolSize and basically telling the engine how much memory to allow just for the Texture streaming. We need to consider how much Vram a video card has and leave a hefty amount of memory for other operations of the video card (at least 2000/2500 MB for storing other stuff, like other textures maybe, particles, data etc. ). But you cannot give a ton of VRAM memory to the streaming service because its not guaranteed it will use all of it right?

So you still need some trial and error, and during my tests i didn't see any noticeable gains over 6000 and used 7000 just to make sure

r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed this tells the engine how much temp memory to use out of that poolsize for updating textures.
As a rule it should be around half out of the r.Streaming.PoolSize value, but cant also be lower.

For example for 8 GB of Vram, you can use r.Streaming.PoolSize=6000/5500 and r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed 3000/2700

Again while having some basics rules you still a lot of tests in order to see what settings work or not best.

I hope you have a smooth experience now, do a full run and let me know if you see any difference now

 

I think that they could add a shader compilation screen while loading a route the first time. The issue is i only seen this kind of "shader optimization" in games that are either on DX12 or Vulkan and none are official supported by DTG. Also it might take a long time and you also need to optimize the Tile loading process since that will also result in stuttering.

 

It’s weird, I’ve dealt with stuttering for about two years. I recently found a way to make my laptop (Alienware 17 R5) cooling fans run at maximum speed. The game runs great afterwards, no stutters. Might dip in busy areas (not often), but that’s way better than dips + stutters.

 

Yes, DTG should get the stuttering under control and maybe put more energy into troubleshooting. There is nothing worse than a very good game that stutters, so when you don't feel like playing it anymore you look for something else, which is a shame because that's exactly what you want to play but it runs so badly.

 

My card (6800XT) has 16GB VRAM

Yup I've done a couple of runs now and things are very smooth. It's not perfect, but I'd say it's been "transformational".

 

Does that mean shader stutter comes back after a GPU driver is updated?

 

Graphics driver update usually clears the cache, so yes, until it is repopulated by playing the route again, like you are playing it for the first time.

 

Makes sense, thanks

 

Majority of your tweaks were already included in the original Geloxo's config, including the r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1.
So storing shaders in the cache must have been already done using the config from the original thread, it is nothing new, but you seem to present it that way.

 

Its interesting that you that you felt the need to post the same discontent regarding my posts in the original thread and here also. Its kinda late to since i had my initial working settings posted IN 2022 right when TSW3 came out, being helped and helping others while exchanging info to make the tweaks stable again. Since other people also created threads about how to reduce stuttering, I have also done a new thread to give other users a chance to see and try the only thing that could actually kill the stutter.

You could use Geloxo original configs created for TSW2 and play something like KSW or SEHS or probably any new route in TSW3. You will have a nice crash somewhere after around 40 minutes or 80-100 km.
Than you would find out that the original Ini tweaks that worked for TSW2 became extremely unstable in TSW3 routes for me and a lot of other people using the settings, resulting routes like SEHS or KSW crashing after a while. Not wanting to remove the Ini tweaks since the game is unplayable without them, i started a long process of about 6-7 hours of combine runs and tests on KSW and SEHS while painfully tweaking and removing - re adding lines to find out the reason of instability. The result of found stable settings where also post in the DX12 Engine Optimization thread when TSW3 was barely out with an intend to help others since it was a joint effort to find good settings.

You are right the r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1 where in the initial settings, i have removed them during my tests and then re added them as i was getting stable results and found info on other forums. Since i went trough multiple tweaks i completely forget about they're existence in previous tweaks.
I'm not taking all the credit and i am extremely grateful to geloxo for starting the https://forums.dovetailgames.com/th...e-ini-optimizations-for-ue-v4-26.50311/page-6 thread. I just made changes after some hard work and test on my side and presented these tweaks to other people who want a better gaming experience.

Peace!
.

 

dbrunner#4864

I have the following question:

Is it important where in the "Engine.ini" I insert the [SystemSettings]?

At the moment I have copied your posted [SystemSettings] to the very end of the "Engine.ini". Did I do that correctly, or do the [SystemSettings] belong at the beginning of the ini file?

Thank you very much for your answer!

Paskoc

 

Usually the [SystemSettings] and the additional tweak lines are placed in the engine.ini right at the end of whatever other lines you already have in the ini file (game will already have generated some required lines in there)
In my case Audio was the last line, i added a space and then pasted the settings like below.



Hope this helps !

 

Thank you very much! The picture you have posted, looks like my Engine.ini file.
So i have pasted your system settings at the same position as you have.
Thanks again for your great work!

One last question: Do you know link, where i can download system settings, like yours for TSW 3, for the ini-file for train Sim world 2?

Greetings

Paskoc

 

I posted it also here because this thread seems to have a lot more "traction" at the moment, the other one seems to be kinda dead.

I am not sure you understood what I wanted to say, I did not want to criticize what you posted and worked on, but I wanted to understand what is different in your config and why it should be finally a definitive stutter fix, because for me it behaves practically the same, no wonder, since the parameters used are almost exactly the same, if I am not missing anything. The nuances of what works better or worse are mostly in the values that can be tweaked, explained in the original thread. It works, stutter is largely eliminated, but it is still there.

So I am puzzled by reactions of people that this completely changed their experience, is it possible that these reactions come from users that did not use the original tweaks at all and only now found about it?

And you are right, I also had crashes in TSW3 with the original TSW2 config, but as it was already written in this post: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/th...zations-for-ue-v4-26.50311/page-6#post-598242 , I removed that one line and this fixed any crashing for me, and did not reintroduce stutters.

 

You can use the same config also in TSW2 engine.ini, it works the same.

 

Thank you very much!

And I can already say that the adjustment of the Engine.ini works for me. I am currently testing this on London Commuter.

Best regards from Vienna!

Paskoc

 

You have also noticed that the original thread is kinda dead, now you can understand why i wanted to make a new post with these settings available to more people who might not know about them.
I think that people are quite happy regarding the results due to the fact that some might have not used the ini tweaks that actually reduced stutter and only used the ones for graphic improvements.
Also i took me a while to understand how this work and when exactly to expect the results,and i have mentioned that here. You see my guess is that some users just modified the engine.ini did a few runs on different routes, did not see a difference and stooped using them.
I made it quite clear that you need 1 run that might still produce stutters in order to do the shader compilation, and afterwards all the runs will be stutter free(or at least 98% stutter free) And so everyone that tried the ini tweaks followed the exact steps and all got the exact same results resulting in quite a lot of happy people. And again they should be the difference between running with Ini tweaks vs without its quite huge

 

... and I am one of those people. I can't tell you how happy I am about the positive result for TSW 3 regarding the elimination of jerkiness.

Once again, I thank you very much for this!

Paskoc

 

I am also one of those people - it makes a marked difference on the 2nd run on a Route. The only bummer is that when I update my RTX driver, it will probably dump the shader cache and will have to start over on each Route.

 

No problem, i am glad you found these useful and you are having a much more enjoyable experience . DX12 + Stutter free tweaks = WIn Win situation. This is "The way its meant to be played" .

Well sadly the shader cache reset upon driver installation is a bit of a nuisance we have to live with. But considering how often someone might change the video driver, its not such a big deal.

 

How can I see, when I start a Game, which direct x version it use
? In the taskmanager i can see this, for example.

Greetings

Paskoc

 

The easiest way to know for sure is to check TSW launch options in steam

Right click on the TSW3 name in Steam and add the -dx12 line in Launch options if you don't have it

 

I am not a developer so this might be a stupid question but what does this do on your computer that there needs to be a third party solution to this? I don't mean like break stuff but if these settings apply to all PC's why is this not standard in the game? Clearly developers should be able to look at these settings and say "Eureka, we know why this game stutters so much! Let's fix this in the next update and roll it out to all platforms. We did it! We finally did it!"

Or is this only how it works in movies?

 

Thank you. But I mean, how can I see, if an other game is started, not TSW, use it aktualy DirectX 12 or not. Is there an App in Windows 10, how povided this information?

Have a nice sunday!

Paskoc