Matt...it start out at about 150fps

[tomtoon]

I'm still impressed at how well RS runs on my sons machine, a little Acer Aspire T180 bottom of the range Sempron machine, £190 inc vat / delivery etc, and with all settings set to low, it still manages between 20-25fps in just about all cases (and still looks and runs better than MSTS or Trainz on the same hardware).

Matt

omg thats unfair! i mean my pc cost £380 and it gets 14-20FPS!

[Class50M15]

Indeed, but even with my lowly Dell at £386 I can get 60fps out of the box without altering any settings Its runs really smoothly with not a trace of a stutter. Even in really high detail areas it doesnt go below 40fps. So there isnt any need to pay huge amounts of dosh for a state of the art machine.

what are your specs?

[eyore]

Core2Duo 2.6ghz
Geforce 8800 GTX Pro * 2 (SLI)
2gb RAM
2 * 250gb SATA-2 disks in Raid-0 stripe config
Nvidia nforce 6th gen motherboard

It's a purpose built gaming machine from Alienware, the people who build gaming machines that scream

I can even run Flight Sim X with all the sliders to the right and still get 15-20fps

Matt.

Given that my setup is not too different from yours......

Core 2 Duo E6700 (2 X 2.66GHz)
2048 MB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz
P965T-A:motherboard
150GB WD RAPTOR SATA 16MB CACHE (10000rpm)
256MB GEFORCE 8600GTS PCI Express

....I'm guessing the problem is my graphics card?

So do I need to double up with SLI or replace it all together?

[Lad491]

what are your specs?

Core2Duo 2.14ghz processor, 1066mhz Intell motherboard, 2GB Ram, 256GB SATA Hard Disk, ATi Radeon X1300 PRO 256mb Graphics, Soundblaster Audigy sound card. Bought in January from Dell for £386 inc VAT Delivery was free. I didnt bother with monitor or keyboard/mice etc as I already had those. Running Windows XP Pro which they put on instead of Vista at my request

[jamespetts]

I asked this on another thread, but no-one could think of an answer - what is the point of 150fps? - or anything over 30 come to that.

Scientific research has shown that people respond positively to higher framerates up to about 70fps, but do not notice anything higher than that.

Try it yourself: put a train on a track in a totally empty world and run it: you will get a very high framerate, and it will feel far more real than 30fps.

[peteworsley]

I must admit to being a bit lost by the way this thread has developed - I don't really understand how a train being driven at 70fps in an empty world can "feel" more real.

I am more inclined to believe that it might "feel" better when you have sent £2,000 on a computer or a graphics card, because for it not to "feel" better would leave you feeling rather foolish - just as driving a Lamborghini down the High St (I presume) gives you a good feeling - although you still travel at the same speed as the Micra in front!

Best wishes

Pete W

[jamespetts]

I must admit to being a bit lost by the way this thread has developed - I don't really understand how a train being driven at 70fps in an empty world can "feel" more real.

I am more inclined to believe that it might "feel" better when you have sent £2,000 on a computer or a graphics card, because for it not to "feel" better would leave you feeling rather foolish - just as driving a Lamborghini down the High St (I presume) gives you a good feeling - although you still travel at the same speed as the Micra in front!

See explanation here. And when was the last time that you bought a graphics card for £2,000? One can get an enitre high-specification computer for £2,000, probably with some change.

[dan4291]

I'm running RS with everything at it's highest setting and I can get anything between 20-40fps, which I think is pretty good for a game that's just come out, although I'd kill for a 60fps capable PC for RS!

[NeutronIC]

Eyore - what's different is that my graphics cards are 8800 GTX's with 768mb of graphics ram on each, and a lot more universal shaders than the gts. I suspect SLI won't help, but can only imagine that it's the top end graphics card that's making the difference.

Pete - let's not split hairs The commenter refered purely to framerates, albeit with perhaps vague words - though I can't think of any other way to explain the perceived increase in the way it feels. Using an empty world is simply to simulate greater framerates on lower spec machines, not implying you should compare an empty world with a full one and expect the empty one to feel more real solely on that basis!

For me, anything above 20fps is "good enough"; but I can certainly appreciate and enjoy 100fps more than 30fps. I run FSX at around 20fps and it's perfectly fine. The fact that RS runs at 100+fps is a bonus and I certainly wouldn't chase framerates beyond 20fps personally (at least in terms of buying new hardware etc once i've got about 20fps out of it I just leave it be, not made of money to be spending £200+ for the vague possibility another 10fps! ).

That said, I run my monitor at 60hz so more than 60fps is not helping me It'd be nice to framerate limit RS so that you could get it to use extra CPU cycles on physics or scenery loading tbh the way FSX does it.

To the person that asked about hz - LCD monitors are progressive-scan (which you can also see on HDTV's as either 720p or 1080p, the p being the important bit) which means that they are 60 full screen refreshes at 60hz. LCD monitors do much better at 60hz than their CRT equivalents. Having a refresh higher than the framerate tends to make the picture look more solid and stable.

Matt.

[peterdore]

Good Grief Matt that is some rig you got there old buddy
My old PC is nearly 5 years old.............

Hewlett-Packard
Pavilion AMD Athlon XP2800+
2.08 GHz 2.00 GB RAM
120 GB Hard Drive

NVIDIA 7600gs 512

Still I get 17-42 frame rates

Pete Doré

[drwho200]

Good spec, your CPU holds you back though. The GPU is great.

[adam3544]

I should point out that I get 150fps in positive conditions, it can drop down to 50-60fps in pretty heavy conditions on the screen.
Matt.

The question is, when your FPS drops to 50-60 FPS, do you visually detect this drop down or not. My feeling is that this annoying "feature" is a result of inssuficient graphics engine of the game ,which RAID 0 can rectify a littlebit but not eliminate completely.
My second question is about overflying Manhattan in FSX with all sliders at maximum (incliding Autogen) on your machine.
What framerate do you obtan, or is it a smooth gameplay. I wonder.

Cheers,

Adam

[djt01]

The question is, when your FPS drops to 50-60 FPS, do you visually detect this drop down or not. My feeling is that this annoying "feature" is a result of inssuficient graphics engine of the game ,which RAID 0 can rectify a littlebit but not eliminate completely.

When you are running at triple digit frame rates and the scenery loading kicks in and drops to around 40-30 fps or lower you definitely detect it. It is distracting to say the least. The best case scenario right now is two or more 10,000 RPM hard drives in RAID 0, but you will still see the scenery loading issue.

My second question is about overflying Manhattan in FSX with all sliders at maximum (incliding Autogen) on your machine.
What framerate do you obtan, or is it a smooth gameplay. I wonder.

I have FSX/Accleration installed on two different machines using Core 2 CPU’s and 8800’s, in DirectX 10 and DirectX 9. Flying over Manhattan at “maximum” settings is not a completely smooth scenario no matter how high end the system is.


Evga 680i SLI
Core 2 X6800
Corsair XMS2 Dominator 4GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400/C-4)
Evga 8800 Ultra “Superclocked”
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty
Ageia PhysX
2x WD 10,000 RPM Raptors (74GB) (RAID 0) Windows Vista Ultimate
2x WD 10,000 RPM Raptors (150GB) (RAID 0) Windows XP Pro/SP2
SilverStone TJ-09 (Black)

GIGABYTE GA-G33M-DS2R
Core 2 E6850
Corsair XMS2 2GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400/C-4)
Evga 8800 GTX KO
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty
2x WD 10,000 RPM Raptors (74GB) (RAID 0)
SilverStone SG03-S (Silver)
Windows XP Pro/SP2

[adam3544]

When you are running at triple digit frame rates and the scenery loading kicks in and drops to around 40-30 fps or lower you definitely detect it. It is distracting to say the least. The best case scenario right now is two or more 10,000 RPM hard drives in RAID 0, but you will still see the scenery loading issue.

I have FSX/Accleration installed on two different machines using Core 2 CPU’s and 8800’s, in DirectX 10 and DirectX 9. Flying over Manhattan at “maximum” settings is not a completely smooth scenario no matter how high end the system is.

Thank you for your reply and honest clarification. As I suspected, not even a Cray Supercomputer could overcome those loading drops in FPS.
I wonder howcome there are other games with very dense graphics like Need For Speed series which running so smooth.
I have now Pentium Core2Duo E6600 on Asus P5W DH and GeForce 7800 GTX but I plan to upgrade to the coming new GeForce 9800GTX when available.

Adam

[zlindku]

I asked this on another thread, but no-one could think of an answer - what is the point of 150fps? - or anything over 30 come to that.

Scientific research has shown that people respond positively to higher framerates up to about 70fps, but do not notice anything higher than that.

Try it yourself: put a train on a track in a totally empty world and run it: you will get a very high framerate, and it will feel far more real than 30fps.

Also check out Imax instead of standard cinema Imax runs at 50 fps instead of 25 and at 50 fps the brain can not see the flicker and I found the exprience awesome.