NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super GDDR6 Graphics Card - 8GB

[ZecMurphy]

There are other games that are likely rendering way more polys and detail then even the most heavily unoptimized scenery populated trainz route, and yet are running faster and smoother with better visuals then trainz because UE4/5 is way more efficient then Trainz E2. Its not a poly problem (though that's part of it), its more a game engine problem. Why should trainz be running a high end 3060ti at 100% all the time? I feel the E2 engine still has a whole bunch of potential for optimization.

Although they may allow for rendering more polys in some situations, there will be other technologies at play here. UE4 for example can automatically generate LOD on objects, which can make a massive difference. Additionally, any game that is being sold will absolutely have LOD on those objects to, as I mentioned, allow you to actually control how much detail is in the scene. It also has to be remembered that Trainz in many cases is allowing a larger maximum draw distance than most other games (which use distant mountain techniques to 'fake' a longer draw distance), allowing up to 15KM draw distance, although it's likely that most objects shouldn't be visible behind 4-5KM.

I have absolutely no idea how you expect Trainz to be able to lower detail on objects that have no LOD (and hence no way to lower the detail on them).

As to running the GPU at 100%, there are multiple functions in Trainz that are run through the GPU, so as to take a lot of advantage of the processing these offer. However running at 100% also sounds like you have the performance settings high enough to be making Trainz push the graphics card harder.

There is also another large factor at play on most routes, and that's rotated textures. Each level of rotation adds to the resource usage, and hence if you are 'rotation spamming' textures (ie holding [ or ] when painting), and have a lot of different textures visible that are all 'rotation spammed', then this will be adding a lot more impact than you might have expected, with it being closer to loading 8x the number of textures than if you didn't rotate the texture at all.

That's not to say there's not still room for us to make improvements to the engine, but at this point there is a lot more of an issue with inefficient content.

Regards

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

There are other games that are likely rendering way more polys and detail then even the most heavily unoptimized scenery populated trainz route, and yet are running faster and smoother with better visuals then trainz because UE4/5 is way more efficient then Trainz E2. Its not a poly problem (though that's part of it), its more a game engine problem. Why should trainz be running a high end 3060ti at 100% all the time? I feel the E2 engine still has a whole bunch of potential for optimization.

I think TS12 uses a game engine called Jet that was invented by Auran originally for airplane sim games. It might be just sophisticated enough to render the degree of detail as found in 1970's Atari Pong or even Asteroids. TANE runs my 3D-rich routes still smoother with my humble GTX 1650 OC 4GB card still. It seems as the software itself might be bottle-necking performance. One could have a ten-thousand dollar gaming computer but still...

All else the same, there is less of a slide show effect on TANE than a Jet-based edition of the game. The name JET is deceiving. That older software is not the least bit high speed/low drag.

What I don't like about TANE is lack of trainzoptions and lack of a global gamma and fog settings for video.

 

[clam1952]

There are other games that are likely rendering way more polys and detail then even the most heavily unoptimized scenery populated trainz route, and yet are running faster and smoother with better visuals then trainz because UE4/5 is way more efficient then Trainz E2. Its not a poly problem (though that's part of it), its more a game engine problem. Why should trainz be running a high end 3060ti at 100% all the time? I feel the E2 engine still has a whole bunch of potential for optimization.

Both Nvidia and AMD state that 100% GPU is to be expected if you are using it properly, they are designed to be run at 100%.
Ideal situation is low CPU and high GPU, if you have high CPU and low GPU then you are bottlenecking the GPU with a CPU that can't keep up with the GPUs demands, won't hurt the GPU but may melt the CPU!

In E2 the GPU does the majority of the work, can't compare it with a game that uses the CPU to do the work and hardly uses the GPU to its full capability which was the case with the old Jet Engine

You can not compare Trainz which has a vast amount of user created content with that other Sim's newest version that has an off the shelf game engine and has no user created content other than repaints and scenarios and a very poor draw distance according to complaints.
Their other version which does have their own 32bit Game engine has basically stood still for a few years now.

UE 4 /5 are primarily still IMO really FPS game engines for level based gaming with images used to create the impression of large areas, which it is exceedingly good at.

I have far more respect for a company that creates it's own Game Engine than one who uses an off the shelf game engine. :Y:

So an RTX 3060TI running at 100% is working properly, my RTX 3070TI, GTX 1080TI and GTX 1060 all run Trainz at 100%, obviously the 1060 has lower frame rates and needs more conservative settings. Both the 1080TI and 3070TI will happily run on max settings, the 3070TI having higher FPS but at much lower temperature than the 1080TI.

 

[Christopher824]

Alienware Laptop M15 RTX 2070 with Max-Q, maxed..

Trainz runs quite well.

It will be another year before a RTX 3 laptop, but it will allways be a laptop for Trainz, Im not going to the moon or doing crypto.

 

[dundun92]

I have far more respect for a company that creates it's own Game Engine than one who uses an off the shelf game engine. :Y:

I will agree, how N3V, unlike any other train sim competitor, has managed to make their own completely custom game engine from scratch is impressive. I'm not asking N3V to attempt to switch to a off the shelf game engine. Rather I think the E2 engine and the idea of GPU-based engines are still relatively new for N3V, and there is plenty of room for it to grow and become even better, such as the upcoming addition of DX12, which will hopefully improve performance and visuals even more. UE4's auto-lod generation was something I didn't think about, and I agree that content creators really need to make sure when making content that they are adding LOD's and reducing poly count as much as possible. But I still think a large chunk of the problem lies in the underlying code in the E2 engine.

 

[Paulsw2]

....

There is also another large factor at play on most routes, and that's rotated textures. Each level of rotation adds to the resource usage, and hence if you are 'rotation spamming' textures (ie holding [ or ] when painting), and have a lot of different textures visible that are all 'rotation spammed', then this will be adding a lot more impact than you might have expected, with it being closer to loading 8x the number of textures than if you didn't rotate the texture at all.

Yikes! Did we know this? I've always used rotated textures to get a more 'realistic' look (and avoid the 'tiling' appearance that was quite common with the older textures). I'll need to review my usage! (If you've used rotated textures on your layout can they be replaced with non-rotated versions of the same texture?)

Paul

 

[clam1952]

Yikes! Did we know this? I've always used rotated textures to get a more 'realistic' look (and avoid the 'tiling' appearance that was quite common with the older textures). I'll need to review my usage! (If you've used rotated textures on your layout can they be replaced with non-rotated versions of the same texture?)

Paul

Yes there is an option to replace the angle and such in bulk replace, can't remember the exact term but that will overwrite the existing without the swirling, least I'm pretty sure it will never actually tried it!
Tiling as you day many of the older ones end up as a patchwork quilt, that's why I made my own textures which for the grass, gravel dirt and such are properly seamless so you can use them without swirling them, ok so then you might have to do a bit of patching with different shades of say grass to give a more realistic effect. PBR however is a whole different game as you get simulated blades of grass and such and can use more complex texture as it's not obviously tiled although it can appear so at a distance.

 

[JCitron]

The option is Replace ground texture rotation and scale.

To use it, put the same texture in both the Assets to update slot as well as the Asset to update with.

In the texture pallet, adjust the size and rotation as you want.

In the Bulk asset update/replace utility, check the option to replace the ground texture rotation and scale.

 

[sister]

The option is Replace ground texture rotation and scale.

To use it, put the same texture in both the Assets to update slot as well as the Asset to update with.

In the texture pallet, adjust the size and rotation as you want.

In the Bulk asset update/replace utility, check the option to replace the ground texture rotation and scale.

This is another useful feature I didn't know. Thanks for the info

 

[boleyd]

A departure to the thread - I must replace my current PC. It is quite old with an I5 old CPU running at 4.2ghz. The video is t-1060 stock. Just kept rebuilding it for at least 10 years. Now I am too old to take on that task again. I have not kept-up with the latest stuff, so model numbers hierarchy do not give me the performance numbers from memory like they used to.

So, regrettably, I must look to the Prebuilt market and risk fabricated ratings. My present PC works quite well even with max settings. Some stutters on a few scenes. So I reduce the range of display slightly.

PreFabs - vendor, best video card, best CPU for N3V 2022 program. Budget $1,500. Because some of the claims in this market border on criminality I need expert advice.

Thanks
Dick

 

[johnwhelan]

I'd take a look at Dell.

First decide on the video card here: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

My thoughts are the RTX 3060 TI has a 3D score of 20,000 so that's reasonable. After that nudge up or down according to your budget. Then feed in the video card to Dell and see what they come up with.

Cheerio John