Question re. sudden (pop-up) rendering of bushes and tracks

[MartindeGroot]

I'm a beginner. I drive the session West from Denver to Winterpark. I have a Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card. I can set all sliders and tickboxes to maximum performance (e.g. Ultra ) and generally run with 90 FPS or higher.
Rendering is generally nice. But when I drive in CAB view, camera 1 and zoomed fully in to get a wide view of the terrain ahead of the train I notice that shrubs and bushes suddenly appear on the screen. The distance from the cab when this popping up appearance happens is maybe 100 or 200 meters. Also the rendering of the rails ahead of the cab fhas a bright rendering up to some 100 meters away, and farther than that the texture is a lot darker. As the train moves forward the bright rendering also moves forward.
Is this feature especially the sudden rendering of shrubs and bushes unavoidable? In other words, is it always present, even with a higher performance graphics card? Or will it disappear with a better graphics card? The 90 FPS to me seems good enoubh, so I doubt whether a better grade graphics card will cause this sudden appearance of shrubs/bushes to go away.
The rendering distance in the graphics/video setting is set to 22000 m.
I would appreciate any help or answers to this question.
Kind regards, Martin de Groo.

 

[martinvk]

While much is dependent on your graphic settings, draw distance, etc. part of the issue is in how the objects were made. The creator sets the LOD distances. When done correctly, you should not notice the transitions, when not, they become glaringly obvious.

 

[MartindeGroot]

While much is dependent on your graphic settings, draw distance, etc. part of the issue is in how the objects were made. The creator sets the LOD distances. When done correctly, you should not notice the transitions, when not, they become glaringly obvious.

Thanks Martin, your answer helps me to understand what might be going on I gues LOD means "limits of display". So when the creator sets this value to close by, the object only comes onto the screen when it is already too close. It should have appeared from a larger distance, when its size is still small.

 

[johnwhelan]

Thanks Martin, your answer helps me to understand what might be going on I gues LOD means "limits of display". So when the creator sets this value to close by, the object only comes onto the screen when it is already too close. It should have appeared from a larger distance, when its size is still small.

LOD is Level of detail. It depends on which version of trainz you're using and what LOD method the content creator used when creating it. Also in settings there is something called draw distance which can affect things. Trainz content is made by the community, the good thing is there is a very wide range but some of it is more computer performance friendly than others. There is a file called config.txt and if you open it in notepad or notepad++ sometimes you can adjust the LOD settings.

Track is a particular problem low end track gets rendered not too badly, higher end with PBR textures looks better but as you noted the further out you are the worse it looks. Part of the problem is trainz has to decide what to render per second. At half sync or 30 fps it has enough time to render more. At 90 fps corners get cut to render fast enough and the distance rendering of scenery objects ie bushes will often be sacrificed. Speedtrees can be a problem as well, the system can get overloaded with too large a variety.

Look at Middleton for lap tops for a layout that runs on a low end machine.

Much depends on your computer, basically a conventional laptop will run it but the viewing distance and shadows will be limited. Ideally you want a desktop with an RTX 3060 8 GB or better, https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php so 15,000 3D score and if I choose the right content I can bring an RTX 4090 to it's knees. Realistically 10,000 3D score is reasonable and many are happy with it. Your video card has a3D score of 20,000 so hardware shouldn't be a problem.

Cheerio John

 

[JCitron]

You need to experiment with your settings. I never go by what Trainz "recommends" when we choose the performance settings. They have proven to me to be a bit overzealous and in the end the performance is less than stellar.

I found that running at 30 fps is a sweet spot even for my RTX 3080. Running at 60 fps or higher causes stutters and lugging in built-up areas. I also lower tree detail down a bit and set my draw distance to about 10000m works for my routes since they tend to be urban or have a lot of tree tunnels, and I use the standard (basic in TRS22 and Plus) because I don't like PBR textures also helps. Running at these settings has the added advantage of lowering the heat the program causes for my video card.