Methods Of Improving FPS?

[AlextheAC4400]

Ever since I had first purchased Trainz 2019 it has never been an easy ride. The first ever time I downloaded it, it worked fine for a week or so and then I believe I tried improving the graphics settings which the game really didn't like because the next time I booted it up everything was pink, my guess is that my graphics card is too crappy for those settings. This was a few years back and I have since redownloaded TRS 2019 and it works almost as it should, minus one problem which brings me to my question. Is there a way I can improve my framerate without having to buy new hardware? For the entire time I have had TRS 2019 the frame rate has always been choppy to an extent, with the issue worsening the bigger the map I play on is. The only real time I can play the game with a soothing framerate is when I am playing on routes I made myself (Which as of right now are just a bunch of baseboards with track and minimal decoration), or small routes designed for lower end devices such as American Trainz Group's NS Ferry Sub route (God bless them, I wish there were more routes like that out there). I understand that my computer is no gaming rig (No matter how much I wish it was) and has already punched way past its weight, as my family has used it for roughly 10 years. Unfortunately my family is not in the greatest positon financially so I likely wont be getting a proper gaming computer anytime soon. This also means that we cant afford to buy any new parts for this computer, or simply a new computer altogether, as this computer has already done way more then needed, and at this point I am just using it as a hand me down until it eventually passes on. If any of you have any ways to possibly fix my choppy framerates on maps that aren't tiny without having to tangle with the hardware, then please let me know! I have always felt jealous seeing people on YouTube with normal FPS and figured I'd ask the community if there is anything that can be done to help me. Sorry if I rambled on a bit too much, so thank you for bearing with me and I look forward to hearing your solutions!

 

[meatloaf747]

Just a few suggestions you could try; Turning off shadows, reducing draw distance to minium or just above, turning down other options from ultra/high to medium or low. Turn off; show behind camera. Reducing sceen resolution. Experiment with your settings, until you find a happy medium...

I reduced most settings right down, then started to slowly raise them until the spluttering re-started, then turned them back one knock. Now getting reasonably good frames rates, apart from the odd very large demanding layout/route... (Card I have; Old Nvidia 1080).

Hope this is of some help!!!

Option B; Updating your graphic's card.

Cheers, Mac...

 

[G.M.]

hi Alex,


a few tips for playing on an old PC:
-turn off the setting Phys-X simulation
-turn off "Use texture streaming"
-Launcher [Trainz Settings] /Dev\ have all options off and on Maximise compatibility
-lower some of the performance settings in Launcher
-lower the draw distance in the in-game settings
-if the computer has an SSD drive, have your local directory on there
-Avoid anything with PBR in the name
-Avoid too much spline grass
-most smaller routes perform better
-most older routes perform better
-repair broken content (red in Content Manager) or delete it from the route


it's a lot of experimenting but worth it

 

[johnwhelan]

Select your content carefully. Content manager preview and ignore any content that does not have LOD. Give yourself a budget for polys displayed in the frame. Avoid content that has more than say 3 draw calls, 1 is better.

Some track has a higher impact than others. Grab Middleton for laptops and do a global search and replace using the same track. It should run smoothly on your system by the way.

If you machine is really low end think about deleting all speedtrees.

Set the distance slider to minimum.

There are performance stats that optionally can be seen in in surveyor and driver. Read up on them.

Have a look at https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php and see what your video card scores.

Check the scenery objects. Some are sketchup poly intensive assets. A 500,000 poly object will kill your system no matter what it is.

Assets that repeat have a lower impact so delete a few buildings and clone a different one.

Each asset has an overhead. aus house multi if you can use it drops four houses on your layout for about the same impact as one.

Run in a smaller window than full screen.

Delete missing assets from layout. That one can have a surprising impact on performance.

Cheerio John

 

[jeffmorris]

I don't see "Use texture streaming" option in Trainz Plus build 119450. Is Trainz CPU bound?

 

[johnwhelan]

I don't see "Use texture streaming" option in Trainz Plus build 119450. Is Trainz CPU bound?

In general for TANE and above, no but it does depend on the content and you need a certain amount of CPU power and bandwidth to feed one of the higher end GPUs. TS12 did most of the work on the CPU, TRS2009 and below only made use of one core and did very little work on the GPU.

Perfmon can give you a better idea of what is happening.

Cheerio John

 

[dxired]

My Trainz runs pretty solid, but it really depends on how powerful your system is. You dont need a NASA computer, but you do need a computer that has a small kick, to run TRS19 you just need to adjust the settings to what your hardware can run. For example I have a AMD FX8350 and a NVIDIA GTX 1060 and I run it on Medium settings because I know I wont have any FPS issues.

- Dxired

 

[wreeder]

I don't see "Use texture streaming" option in Trainz Plus build 119450. Is Trainz CPU bound?

It was only an option to turn it off while it was being developed as a new feature. In the newest versions, texture streaming is always on.

 

[MichelLmbrt]

Hello,


A little tip, to reset the graphical configuration, just stop TrainZ and delete the cache\performance.conf file in the local data directory.

The next time you start up, the graphics quality selection screen will appear. Then you can choose the lowest setting and gradually increase the quality of one or the other setting depending on the power of your PC.


This works for TrainZ 2019 and TrainZplus, I guess it is the same for Trainz 2022.

Best regards.

Michel

 

[AlextheAC4400]

Hey guys! Thanks to all of your for your support and suggestions, I know I can always count on fellow Trainzers to help me with my woes. As for the effectiveness of the suggestions, while they were all good suggestions, my frame rate is still a little choppy. I believe this boils down to the fact that free space on my computer is slowly becoming scarce and the general age of my computer is holding me back as after doing some research I found out that my computer would have been good for running Trainz 12. Oh well, I have survived this far, I guess until I get a computer that can actually run this I'm just gonna have to deal with it. Once again thank you all for you help!

Happy Rails,

Alex

 

[johnwhelan]

Hey guys! Thanks to all of your for your support and suggestions, I know I can always count on fellow Trainzers to help me with my woes. As for the effectiveness of the suggestions, while they were all good suggestions, my frame rate is still a little choppy. I believe this boils down to the fact that free space on my computer is slowly becoming scarce and the general age of my computer is holding me back as after doing some research I found out that my computer would have been good for running Trainz 12. Oh well, I have survived this far, I guess until I get a computer that can actually run this I'm just gonna have to deal with it. Once again thank you all for you help!

Happy Rails,

Alex

If you're running a physical hard drive be aware that once it gets to 80% full performance drops off drastically. It's to do with files and related groups of files getting split up over the drive.

Cheerio John

 

[johnwhelan]

Which operating system are you running? Win 10 has some better drivers which can make the difference and you should still be able to get a free upgrade.

How much memory do you have? Going from 4 gigs to 16 can make a difference sometimes. Use crucial.com to find out how much you can add and the type of memory.

Cheerio John

 

[ColPrice2002]

Probably a bit late, does your virus checker scan the Trainz directories? Make sure that these directories are excluded from the virus checker…
adding a SSD and using that for Trainz will really make a difference.