Out of interest and this is a genuine enquiry, not meant as a deliberately negative comment but could anybody possibly enlighten me as to why new routes such as, well specifically Frankfurt run as poorly as they do regarding optimization??. I ran Ice T Fulda: Kinzigtalbahn today and I kid not I barely saw 30fps and in detailed sections it dropped down as low as 10-15 fps for consistent time periods. Not to mention frame spikes It's not unplayable however it kind of feels worse than it did 3 years ago on PS4. This really doesn't seem at all reasonable given the hefty £30 price tag. Honestly I have more fun running older routes such as TPE. Ok so it's not as detailed but it's far more realistic as an overall experience. Any feedback/advice/information would be much appreciated? Thanks
I'd imagine it's because you are on an older console and I believe that route have a very intense timetable, taking a lot of memory. Saying that I have found TSW5 performance to be worse than that of TSW4 on the whole.
Ah right, well the latter part of my comment still applies. I play on both a PC and s series and have noticed lower performance on both in TSW5 to 4.
Yes this is the issue I'm having. The optimization is really poor I think. The memory issue I'm no expert but 16 gb ram should be sufficient to secure a steady 30 fps. It's not as though the game is running advanced graphic features such as Ray tracing etc...
It's bizarre. It's not like the game looks really any different 4 to 5. Not in any meaningful way that would justify the loss in quality. It's been 2 months or so now and it's still a significant issue that needs to be addressed.
I mean it looks fantastic but runs terribly in places tbh. I'm sure I'm not the only person to think this I'm just wondering if anybody has any thoughts as to why this might be the case. Seems, sorry to say as though it's just been overlooked. Can it possibly be put down to hardware limitations at this stage??
It is indeed a glitchy affair! At this point it's a real shame that this lack of care and attention to detail is still plaguing the game...
Probably when put on top of any poor optimisation, yes. I would like to say, I have very little expertise in technology so don't take me as a gospel source of information!
Maybe dtg needs some outside expertise to help optimise at least the base game, i still have a fairly good pc (i7 8700, gtx 3070, 24gb ddr4 ram) and newer routes run worse then older ones and some of these aren't that busy, the well made blackpool branches runs well though.
It's not exactly inspiring or getting me excited for future dlc. At this point I can't honestly say If be happy to continue to support the game in its current state.
Wow! That's very interesting to hear. You have a decent set up there to run it to a high standard and to hear you are having similar issues certainly sheds some light on things. Suggests the issue is clearly not hardware. Thanks for the feedback
I agree Blackpool for me is the most complete experience to date and that's not a Dtg release. I agree they're optimization is not up to standard. I had a similar experience with Stranded Alien Dawn on Ps5 the optimization at First was pretty bad but it now run smoothly at 60fps. It's strikes me that they really need to take a step back and tighten up they're game.
Thing is I regularly see updates to the new routes but never what the routes actually need which is optimization. It feels like the elephant in the room. I genuinely love this game and long for it to run as it should.
Maybe dtg need to take an extra month for each route to work on optimising, bug fixing and the work they do when they currently delay every new release.
Good Idea. Other teams of developers seem to take this general approach to great success. Imo I think there's a lack of care given to the finished product. The routes themselves for me at least do look fantastic I genuinely enjoy them but for the sake of 10-20 % more polish they could be so much better. This has been the bug bear of this game for as long as I can remember and I'm sure they are well aware of the issues which begs the question that there is something else that is preventing them from getting it right, maybe using older rendering tools or something like that. More literal limitations. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Why can other development teams get it right albeit post release yet dtg still lacking. As you mentioned Blackpool branch's is more or less spot on. I think also mismanagement of resources or projects/staff allocation and financial pressure to stabilize profit and income probably come into play. Hense bringing out new releases in unfinished state to sure up profit margin.
I don't think its a lack of care on tsw team, the executive team of dtg will be putting pressure on tsw team, and focus will be putting pressure on dtg, i honesty believe the only reason focus bought dtg is it would increase stock price which has appeared to not work. In my opinion getting bought out by focus was a mistake as quality has only gone down hill since it occurred.
I can also confirm. I first played TSW4 on the PS4 Pro. Then later when there were no more delivery problems on PS5 and had no problems. Except for the small reloading stutters that you can also observe on a PC with a 4090. The older routes and the last published routes under TSW4 ran much better than under TSW5. Now to the new routes. What I would be interested in is: What would the performance be like at Frankfurt - Fulda under TSW4, for example. Certainly the new features such as Conductor, Fast Travel, Route Hopping or the Layer Option would not be included. All I care about here is the performance of the track. I'm no expert, but I think these new functions could have been built into TSW4. I'm currently seeing today TSW4 ran well in terms of performance on the PS4 and PS5. Unfortunately, TSW5 is currently only a downgrade on the PS5. But that's just my opinion.
Even after today's patch, two more crashes on the route Frankfurt - Fulda in Fast Travel Mode on the PS5.
I believe lack of care was the wrong choice of words on my part as there is a tremendous amount of craftsmanship and detail gone into the routes. I agree about the point you make regarding Focus. This is where my thought process was edging towards. I think when I refer to care I was referring to as a whole company approach not so much to the developers who are clearly very skilled and competent at their craft. I suppose having the backing of Focus as an intention was probably a good one as the additional financial backing could provide extra resources to improve the game as a whole but so far I agree this doesn't seemed to be working the way it should. The balance isn't there yet.
I'm with you! All I care about is the performance on the track. The elephant in the room. I've barely looked into these additional features tbh with the exception of the new map which I think is in places a game changer. I find the other features personally for the most part quite gimmicky sorry to say. I'm sure they have they're place but I'm just not really that interested. One thing for me I will say is the older tracks on Tsw 5 looked more polished. I'm not sure if I'm just imagining it but certain lighting is it occlusion? Not sure and field of vision features seem to be included on the older routes to nice effect. I maybe just imagining it haha perhaps anyone can confirm if the older routes have had a slight facelift??. I'm thinking specifically Trans Pennine Express in this case
There are a lot of things that eat up performance and memory. First is the signals which all need to be simulated and work well together. Look at munchen for example where performance tanked because of many signals that all have to run at the same time so trains can go in and out. Then there's just the huge station, assets and track. Frankfurt is massive compared to other stations in tsw. Then you have the timetable which is extremely busy. I don't think there is any other game as complex and simulated like tsw is.
Didn't consider signals. Munchen indeed has big stuttering performance issues. I agree it is a huge station in terms of assets etc...Is this not something that could be refined though in terms of detail for the sake of performance. For me perhaps I'm on my own but for the same or slightly less detail in assets I would prefer improved fps. It would be great if the could engineer some kind of graphic options to turn off certain details as a compromise. Not sure how much work that would entail and perhaps they wouldn't want to compromise the product but I for one think this would be a good feature.
I also think that the older routes under TSW5 look better in terms of lighting. But that can only be my imagination.
Of course I agree with you. And yet Munich also ran better in terms of performance on TSW4 than on TSW5.
I have no way of reference now as my memory isn't sufficient to remember if it is better or not! Haha oh well
I agree, the performance on consoles could be better if you consider that two thirds of all TSW players play on PS4/5 or series S/X consoles. Older routes like MSB or WSR run super smoothly, but they are also not as packed as current releases. On the one hand, players want more realism and details, but also more traffic on the routes. All of this can be implemented in the UE, but it comes at the expense of RAM and computing power. Since 9th gen consoles are only limited to 16GB and a PS6 or Xbox Next will not be on the market before the end of 2027 or in 2028, you just have to make do with what is available. But even with well-equipped PCs, you also hear that framerate drops and loading delays can occur. So in the end it's mostly down to optimization, which isn't always possible due to tight release schedules and a lack of testing options in the console area. Since TSW5 there have been individual setting options for consoles too, such as deactivating AI traffic layers or the freeroam mode, where you're on your own, which benefits the frame rate but also limits the realism. I also really enjoy playing on PS5, although I also play on the PC from time to time. In the end I'm glad that the routes are more detailed these days and there's more AI traffic, because TSW is first and foremost a simulator that thrives on realism. Nevertheless, it's good to keep drawing the developers' attention to this so that more focus can be placed on performance in the future. Because if the players are happy, the popularity of TSW will also increase.
This was also my thought process drawing attention and constructive feedback is (hopefully) the compost by which improvements can be made and partly the reason for my post, thanks for your feedback! I have not noticed the AI toggle feature on console but will take a look into it because that sounds like it would improve the fps, thanks for the tip
And another update today and still nothing done to ps5 performance. Thanks dtg. You think this is good enough.
Thank you for your long feedback. But you don't answer the actual question in this thread either. Why do the older routes on TSW5 perform worse than on TSW4?
Please do, I found it makes a huge difference to performance on my TSW5 installation on PS5. It can be a bit fiddly to get to but it appears when you access a route timetable and is available as the "LAYER" option above and to the right of the selection of trains. From the home page follow the following options: HOME > TO THE TRAINS > CHOOSE A ROUTE > TIMETABLES Then use D-pad Up then Right to get to the layers page. From here you can untick any (or all) of available layers to disable them. This turns off the extra traffic on the timetable and the static trains that can be seen along the route. Whilst it does reduce the realism level it can make a run much smoother especially on the newer routes like Cathcart and ECML. Performance problems with stuttering and frame rate drops have been the weak point of this game since I first got TSW2020 back in 2019 and has resulted in me only ever buying TSW products when they are heavily discounted as I feel with the performance issues it is just not worth the asking price. Indeed, If they made this title run as smoothly as everything else I have on my PS4 and PS5 I would happily spend a lot more money on it. Also you will learn to ignore the apologists on here that try and convince everyone that TSW is the most complex software ever for consoles and there is no way to improve performance. That is utter nonsense. Most of us have much more technically demanding games installed along side TSW5 with far superior graphics and they all run much more smoothly than TSW. There is no excuse for the performance issues on TSW beyond lack of effort and resources being allocated to get it right. You are not alone and I agree with that suggestion too. Some sort of scenery complexity slider setting would be very useful.
Thank you for your response and clear instruction on how to add/subtract layers. I hadn't realised just how many layers had been integrated to Frankfurt! For one. The German routes are particularly extensive in this respect. I do have a few...! This is actually very helpful Im going to try it out now. Appreciate the feedback. Hopefully the ideas might be taken into consideration
Sorry old response but I think it's a combination of layering and oddly balanced optimization leading from too much going on that needs to be refined somewhat. As others have mentioned removing layers as above does make a sizable difference but non the less it does feel unsatisfactory given the price point when compared to other titles of a similar nature, Snowrunner being a good example of this. Again the elephant in the room. Oh well...!
