4K in TANE but not in TR2019 - question for DEVs

New to Trainz (bought both TANE Platinum and then TRS2019 Platinum) and first post here. Must say that my son and I enjoy this simulator so much! It started as him watching screen captures on YouTube, which I thought looked fun, but I wanted him to play it himself so ended up building a new gaming system for him to play it.

Long story short, I have one comment and question for the DEVs after melting a brand new RX5700 card when trying to run TRS2019 2K max quality on a new X570/Ryzen 3700X system. And still not being able to run TRS2019 2K max quality on this system with a 2070 Super OC edition added. The board is an ASUS Prime X570, which is known for superb thermals and not throttling down. Memory is 16G of Crucial 3200. PS is one of EVGAs best quality 650W.

1) IMO (and LOL) TRS2019 in 2K/max quality is *easily* the best burn in/torture test tool for a video card out there. Especially when zooming out a smokey steam loco from above where the smoke plume fills the screen (e.g. C&O Hinton). It literally destroyed a brand new RX5700 card and easily brought a 2070 Super OC card to its knees. To be sure, it was not the fault of TRS2019 that the RX5700 melted, because that should never happen no matter how hard the card is stressed. But TRS2019 2K max quality seems perhaps the ultimate video card burn in tool...it is just brutal even in 2K as the dead RX5700 and the "not up to the task" 2070 Super OC can attest to.

2) QUESTION: All of that said and as counter-intuitive as this question may seem after my comments, would the DEVs be willing to re-expose 4K options in TRS2019 that are available in TANE? My experience is that for the same content (C&O Hinton in this case) and when viewed on a 65" 4K TV, the older TANE 4K with no post processing and several other lesser quality settings looks noticeably better and runs at least as good as TRS2019 2K with higher settings. From a product support perspective, I totally get it why 4K was removed in TRS2019 with all of its extra processing options. But maybe offer 4K in TRS2019 to the tech savy as a hidden option that can be accessed via key-combo or such?

While I was initially shocked that a "visually low speed" 2K game would be so brutal on video cards when high speed games in 4K run fine, after thinking about what it takes to render the scenes and camera angles it seems to make sense (though Project Cars 2 does some pretty incredible scene rendering at very high speeds). So I'm just asking the DEVs to restore the choice to optimize viewing on a large 4K screen via higher res and lower quality settings, which for me beats lower res higher quality settings.

Hi Skitron
Due to ongoing poor performance, in particular on Mac computers and lower specification Windows computers (and higher spec with inefficient content), and the fact that we do not officially support resolutions higher than 2560 wide (in particular with the UI in Trainz), we have forced a hard limit of 2560 wide in the latest releases of Trainz.

However by running in windowed mode (full screen unticked), you can stretch the window to fit any screen, which will force Trainz to run at these higher resolutions.

In regards to performance itself, this will definitely depend on the settings you use, along with the route/content used. More efficient routes/content will perform better than less efficient routes/content; however even very efficient content can still be quite high detail and as such a lot of high detail content can still make a route less efficient.

Additionally, the performance/video settings in Trainz are intended to allow you to 'tune' these to suit your computer; we don't expect many machines to run everything on max on most routes. Instead you can choose to increase one setting at the cost of either performance, or lowering other settings. The only option for us would be to restriction the options you have, instead of providing this flexibility. Unfortunately when it came to screen resolution, most computers do not have graphics cards suitable to run Trainz at over 2560 wide resolutions *and* have higher graphics settings; this leads to people complaining that Trainz won't run on their machine 'natively' (ie using their screen's resolution) at the same settings. This has been primarily an issue with Mac, where a large portion of Mac computers have very high resolution screens and relatively low spec graphics cards; but is also a fairly major issue with PC/laptops being used with higher resolution screens without the user understanding the performance cost of doing so.

To curtail these complaints at the current time, we limit the resolutions offered for full screen; but still allow windowed mode to be stretched to the desired size so that power users have this option still.

Regards

But stretching is not true 4K! It’s like playing a Blu-ray on a 4K TV the image is stretched and up scaled but still only at HD not UHD resolution. Still, at least N3V are tacitly admitting their revised game engine is not quite up to purpose...

Hi Vern
Trainz will automatically adapt it's resolution to the size of the window (so if your resolution in windows is 3840x2160, and you stretch the window out to this size, then Trainz will display at this resolution - minus taskbar and top bar, depending on configuration of Windows). When I say stretching, I am purely referring to using the mouse to drag/stretch the window to fit the screen; Trainz will then adapt the resolution automatically to match.

But as I said, by doing so you will impact on performance as your GPU will need to process the entire scene at this higher resolution; as would apply to any other game as well (the game engine cannot magically make your graphics card process more pixels without impacting performance...).

Regards

Thanks for the replies. I totally get it why the hard limit was imposed. A 2070 Super OC is a very recent high end video card and TRS2019 won't run at 2K res and max quality even with it, hence my question. I'll try running it in a window instead of full screen and see how that goes. Really enjoy this simulator so hope you guys are successful in getting performance where you want it to be...it will be just that more enjoyable.

skitron said:

Thanks for the replies. I totally get it why the hard limit was imposed. A 2070 Super OC is a very recent high end video card and TRS2019 won't run at 2K res and max quality even with it, hence my question. I'll try running it in a window instead of full screen and see how that goes. Really enjoy this simulator so hope you guys are successful in getting performance where you want it to be...it will be just that more enjoyable.

Click to expand...

Run it windowed, but maximize the screen and it will scale fine.

I do this now even at 1980 x 1080 resolution and it has other advantages too. With this mode, you can access browsers and other applications such as Google Earth for reference at the same time without TRS19 minimizing to the desktop.

yeah im running 1920*1080 instead of 5760*1080 on 2 rtx 2080 supers

ZecMurphy said:

Hi Skitron
Due to ongoing poor performance, in particular on Mac computers and lower specification Windows computers (and higher spec with inefficient content), and the fact that we do not officially support resolutions higher than 2560 wide (in particular with the UI in Trainz), we have forced a hard limit of 2560 wide in the latest releases of Trainz.

However by running in windowed mode (full screen unticked), you can stretch the window to fit any screen, which will force Trainz to run at these higher resolutions.

In regards to performance itself, this will definitely depend on the settings you use, along with the route/content used. More efficient routes/content will perform better than less efficient routes/content; however even very efficient content can still be quite high detail and as such a lot of high detail content can still make a route less efficient.

Additionally, the performance/video settings in Trainz are intended to allow you to 'tune' these to suit your computer; we don't expect many machines to run everything on max on most routes. Instead you can choose to increase one setting at the cost of either performance, or lowering other settings. The only option for us would be to restriction the options you have, instead of providing this flexibility. Unfortunately when it came to screen resolution, most computers do not have graphics cards suitable to run Trainz at over 2560 wide resolutions *and* have higher graphics settings; this leads to people complaining that Trainz won't run on their machine 'natively' (ie using their screen's resolution) at the same settings. This has been primarily an issue with Mac, where a large portion of Mac computers have very high resolution screens and relatively low spec graphics cards; but is also a fairly major issue with PC/laptops being used with higher resolution screens without the user understanding the performance cost of doing so.

To curtail these complaints at the current time, we limit the resolutions offered for full screen; but still allow windowed mode to be stretched to the desired size so that power users have this option still.

Regards

Click to expand...

So,you forcing those player with 4k screen to play at 2560x1440?????????????????or in windowed mode,which i hate?can you imagine how blurry the graphics on a 43 inch screen with res 2560x1440????roll back to the previous version or refund money because you makes not play the game!!!i have a powerful pc,and i was okay with the performance,and you just decided to take away this?????refund my money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

pontenicius said:

So,you forcing those player with 4k screen to play at 2560x1440?????????????????or in windowed mode,which i hate?can you imagine how blurry the graphics on a 43 inch screen with res 2560x1440????roll back to the previous version or refund money because you makes not play the game!!!i have a powerful pc,and i was okay with the performance,and you just decided to take away this?????refund my money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Click to expand...

Running it windowed and maximizing does in fact increase resolution to 4K (minus the window frame of course) and I (somewhat) verified this with a frame rate, cpu, gpu monitor, since usage climbed significantly over 2K full frame. So the only real thing missing is 4K full screen (i.e. having no window frame). I created performance profiles for 2K full screen and 4K windowed (maximized). It would be nice to be able to save/recall profiles in a future version.

Would love to know your machine specs since mine is pretty high end and won't run 2K full screen with max settings across the board. Mine is:

ASUS Prime X570-P motherboard
Ryzen 3700X cpu
EVGA 2070 Super OC edition video
16 GB PC4400 ram
1TB NVMe PCIe4 SSD

I just bought and refunded this game for the resolution limitation.

Settings should always be the choice of the customer - defaults are fine, but imposing hard limits is just disrespectful to your customer base.

As a customer since 2006, this is even more frustrating - I've supported you with multiple purchases through the years, and this is how you treat me?

You don't respect me as a customer to even try other settings out on my own PC?

Why did you guys start a train sim business in the first place? It wasn't to make money - no one is getting rich selling train sims!

Didn't you want to make amazing products that would delight your customers?

Have you lost that vision?

I'll argue that happy customers = more product sales = more profitability.

So if you won't do this because it's better for your customers, please at least do it because it's better for you.

fruhj said:

I just bought and refunded this game for the resolution limitation.

Settings should always be the choice of the customer - defaults are fine, but imposing hard limits is just disrespectful to your customer base.

As a customer since 2006, this is even more frustrating - I've supported you with multiple purchases through the years, and this is how you treat me?

You don't respect me as a customer to even try other settings out on my own PC?

Why did you guys start a train sim business in the first place? It wasn't to make money - no one is getting rich selling train sims!

Didn't you want to make amazing products that would delight your customers?

Have you lost that vision?

I'll argue that happy customers = more product sales = more profitability.

So if you won't do this because it's better for your customers, please at least do it because it's better for you.

Click to expand...

The instructions above will allow you to run 4k in TS19 so what is your problem?

Thanks John

johnwhelan said:

The instructions above will allow you to run 4k in TS19 so what is your problem?

Thanks John

Click to expand...

Hi John, Those instructions show how to take a game that renders internally at a fixed resolution, and by putting it in window mode and stretching, allow the game to cover more pixels on the screen.

The game is not 'running at 4k', even in windowed mode.

fruhj said:

Hi John, Those instructions show how to take a game that renders internally at a fixed resolution, and by putting it in window mode and stretching, allow the game to cover more pixels on the screen.

The game is not 'running at 4k', even in windowed mode.

Click to expand...

and your hardware and slider settings are? I know it sounds daft but I can't think of a set up that allows 4k with the sliders set high which is probably why 4k is no longer supported well maybe if you run Middleton for laptops it might just about work but the scenery on that layout is poor. No speedtrees for example to squeeze every last frame per second out of the hardware.

Basically on a 1920 by 1080 screen running a RTX 2070 which means 16,000 on the 3D benchmark TS19 will perform reasonably well given the sliders are not set too high. Given the right combination of assets I can bring it to its knees. To get the same frames per second on a 4 k monitor you have 8,294,400 pixels to drive rather than 2,073,600 pixels so you need something with a score of 56,000 on the 3D benchmark score. https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

An RTX 2080 TI which is the most powerful GPU I can think of has a score of only 21,000 on the 3D benchmark.

"real soon now" a video card might be released with that sort of score required but at the moment without setting the sliders way back I don't think the hardware is available to support it.

Sorry John

pontenicius said:

So,you forcing those player with 4k screen to play at 2560x1440?????????????????or in windowed mode,which i hate?can you imagine how blurry the graphics on a 43 inch screen with res 2560x1440????roll back to the previous version or refund money because you makes not play the game!!!i have a powerful pc,and i was okay with the performance,and you just decided to take away this?????refund my money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Click to expand...

If you are lucky you will live long enough to not be able to see 1024x768 without glasses..... #priorities

While I sympathise with those complaining about the poor(?) 4K support, as mrscsi points out it is a matter of priorities.

There are many who want immediate fixes to the AI and to a dozen or so other issues that crop up in these forums. I can imagine their reactions if N3V devoted all the time, money and effort so that they can boast "Look at the great 4K graphics but the AI still doesn't work, the ACS couplers are still shot, there is still no decent nightmode, the sound system still sucks, etc ... but hey don't all those issues now look really great on a 4K screen!"

I add that I do not have a 4K monitor and have no immediate plans to get one - a GPU with the oomph needed to run it would have to be higher on my list of priorities before I could even consider the purchase of 4K.

Sorry, my sarcasm got away with me. Eventually I will probably get 4K - who knows. But by then I would hope to see all the other pressing issues solved first. By then it will probably be 8K monitors and the whole argument will start again.

pware said:

While I sympathise with those complaining about the poor(?) 4K support, as mrscsi points out it is a matter of priorities.

There are many who want immediate fixes to the AI and to a dozen or so other issues that crop up in these forums. I can imagine their reactions if N3V devoted all the time, money and effort so that they can boast "Look at the great 4K graphics but the AI still doesn't work, the ACS couplers are still shot, there is still no decent nightmode, the sound system still sucks, etc ... but hey don't all those issues now look really great on a 4K screen!"

I add that I do not have a 4K monitor and have no immediate plans to get one - a GPU with the oomph needed to run it would have to be higher on my list of priorities before I could even consider the purchase of 4K.

Sorry, my sarcasm got away with me. Eventually I will probably get 4K - who knows. But by then I would hope to see all the other pressing issues solved first. By then it will probably be 8K monitors and the whole argument will start again.

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I hope to live long enough to buy a pair of glasses allowing me to see the rings of Saturn, until then...somehow I will try to enjoy what I have.

JimDep said:

I hope to live long enough to buy a pair of glasses allowing me to see the rings of Saturn, until then...somehow I will try to enjoy what I have.

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You would be very disappointed. The beautiful photos you see are all enhanced and doctored to make them spectacular. I wish I could just read my Trains magazine without having to have it 6 inches away.

My new system that I am still hoping to get finished is almost like Skitron's system. Same video card, except the board is a Meg Ace. My current monitor is a 1920x1080 60hz. What type of performance hit would you have if you changed to a 1920x1080 144hz monitor? What type of performance would you have on a 1440p monitor which my new system should be able to handle. 1440p reviews normally test fast action games, but train simulators such as TRS19 are not fast action.

ekeenan said:

My new system that I am still hoping to get finished is almost like Skitron's system. Same video card, except the board is a Meg Ace. My current monitor is a 1920x1080 60hz. What type of performance hit would you have if you changed to a 1920x1080 144hz monitor? What type of performance would you have on a 1440p monitor which my new system should be able to handle. 1440p reviews normally test fast action games, but train simulators such as TRS19 are not fast action.

Click to expand...

One nice thing about high refresh rate monitors is they typically work just fine at lower refresh rates, so you could play games like counterstrike at 144hz, while using trainz at 60.