Graphic stuttering

[pjt1974]

I have no idea if my pc specs are judged as mid range or sub terrainian or even Apollo 11.
(if a person more expert than me(no hard) could let me know it's be appreciated so I know how far behind the times I am)
My system details

(results as shown in Steam - system information)
XP(32 bit) sp2
Authentic AMD 1900Mhz
1023 Mb RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
VRAM 256 Mb
Monitor Refresh 60 Hz
Realtek HD Audio Output

I have loading stuttering between tiles but I don't see the symptoms explain here that would indicate 'rubber banding'.

WCML is a nightmare, unplayable
Oxford - Paddington just about playable apart from going into London
Bristol - Exeter smooth but a bit of stutter approaching Bristol

[StormVR6]

@ pjt1974 Your system is above that of the minimum requirements needed to play RW2, but to get the best performance out of what you have don't expect to be able to run many settings higher than low.

Comments made regarding the SSD being "better" for this kind of game are valid, although any knowledgeable PC builder/gamer knows that apart from quicker boot times and initial loading times, an SSD doesn't offer a significant boost during gaming. It may lessen stutter whilst loading new areas in RW2 but a decent, well maintained HDD is more than capable of doing the job. More importantly, we all need to understand that RW2 shouldn't need a super-rig to run it. It's very basic compared to more popular modern PC games: something like a C2D E6600, 8800GTX, 3GB RAM, PC should be enough to play RW2, stutter free, at medium settings. RW2 is simply not optimised, whether that means a substandard engine or bad coding, I don't know, that's for the devs to work out.

I know some of you don't mind - or at least have trained yourself not to see - the stutter/lag. But seriously guys, I spend a lot money on my PC's so I don't have to endure stuttering and lagging. I can't ignore continuous stutter/lag in any game, especially in one that needs smooth framerates to allow the player to really enjoy the sense of movement. Let's hope the devs can improve things soon. I don't expect a stutter-free game ever but I do expect a big improvement.

Mark

[Kromaatikse]

I think the stuttering comes from two distinct things:

1) Waiting for the hard disk when loading the next scenery tile, and all the assets that go with it. This part can be reduced in several ways, including putting the whole game on an SSD. Right now I am experimenting with MyDefrag to organise all the RailWorks files together and separate from all the other Steam stuff I have, since an SSD big enough to hold the whole Steam directory (including any more stuff I buy in future) is a bit on the expensive side. A basic defrag is better than nothing.

2) Duplicating all the newly-loaded assets to their positions on the map, and applying lighting and shadow mesh calculations to them. This requires a great deal of CPU power and memory bandwidth in a short period. In the short term you can improve this by upgrading your computer (a 1.9GHz AMD whatever is definitely not the fastest thing around these days), but the final solution has to be a rearchitecting of the graphics engine so that it doesn't have to do this at scenery-load time, which is what RSC are now allegedly working on.

I should point out that today's Railworks does not use very much graphics power. Your 8600 is probably keeping up quite nicely, even though it is also now quite old. We will have to see whether that changes when RSC start fixing stuff.

To put this in perspective, I currently run a multicore AMD Phenom II at 3.2 GHz, and a Radeon HD 5870. I still get stutters, pauses and major slowdowns in certain places. Meanwhile, if I boot my MBP (2.4 GHz C2D and 8600M) into Windows, it can't really cope with some of the nastier areas of the heavier routes, even when it's not in the middle of loading scenery tiles.

[LeeEAS]

Even if I have an empty landscape (only gras) with only one locomotive (about 400 fps on this case) the stuttering still exist. Something is really, really wrong. That's with me.

With my setup (see sig), empty landscape and one locomotive I get 175fps (Although FRAPS gives me 245fps), no stuttering. However some stuttering exists on WCML North mainly in the Glasgow Area.

[pjt1974]

Thanks Kromaatikse
Not a techy myself, most of this thread has flown over my head, the way I understand it is no matter what I have planned for a pc upgrade on my budget, until the core RW program is sorted, I may aswell hold on for a little while to see if RSC tackle the situation.

Regards
Phil

[gnash]

I currently run a multicore .

Many of us do , and there's a rumour afoot that we may be able to make use of some those cores in the future ( near or far not specified )

Interesting times we live in ... OR team looks at DX11 .... RS.com look at threading

Interesting times

[dan0h]

Hi folks, new to Train Sims in general, but not new to computing or other simulations (automotive and aviation). I too have the stutter issues on my PC, running on a twin-loop (CPU/GPU) watercooled Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, overclocked to 3880Mhz (42c on load), even with that processor and water cooled Nvidia GTX 480 graphics (40c on load!) I get frame rate stutters whenever the hard disk light flickers between scenery areas. Its almost as if its a sin in this day and age for programmers to write .exe's that can utilise multi-core machines, hopefully RS are on the case with it, as the multi-core processor isn't exactly something thats only just come along this last month.