West Coast M'line and Frame Rates!

[brummie]

Like everyone else, I am looking forward to this new release and judging by some of the screen shots I have seen it does look very good.
I shall me monitoring the threads concerning this add on however as I fear that maybe frame rates could be hit for people with mid range spec pc's like mine. I can remember my older pc when I bought an add on for MSTS, it was East Coast Express, and I can remember the frame rates around the 6 mark, ugh! However I was buying a new pc at that time and when I ran it on that one it was much better.

The reason I post this is because I bought the 'Fag Packet' ( If you haven't bought it yet then do so, it is great and well worth the couple of quid) over the weekend and noticed the frame rates were a bit lower when compared to running say a default scenario along the same route.

My specs are, W7 home Prem, Radeon X1650 512mb, 3Gb Ram, 2.13GHz, 340 Gb hard disc.

Having said all this, my pc seems to run ok with Railworks at the mo with the above pc. specs but will be interesting to read next week if there are any, at all, issues with frame rates.

[nsupersonic]

I too wonder how this wonderful route due Friday, will affect frame rates; even with machine like mine. I notice that the scenery is extremely detailed and well thought out. Hopefully it will not push the Railworks (as well as my PC) program too much.

Charles

[bigphill2]

Hi
One thing i can guarantee you is you wont see frame rates of 6 in railworks
Phill

[msey0002]

to be honest, I am quite worried about frame rates too. would be good to get a responce from someone from RS

[jp4712]

I can only assume that if it was unplayable, RS' beta testers might flag this up to them - I assume that they don't all have super-duper Cray megacomputers? [Mod hat on] As ever, my advice would be to buy it and THEN make a judgment on the frame rates... [/mod hat]

Paul

[msey0002]

Not really, don't want to buy something that is unplayable on my average laptop

[jp4712]

Okay, I'll do you a deal - I'll get it on Friday night (I was planning to anyway) and I'll tell you on Saturday how it performs on my mid-range PC. I'm sure that if there are issues we will very quickly find out!

Paul

[bigphill2]

Hi guys
Keith has already stated it runs fine on his pc, which is no big wiz bang gaming machine,or words very close to that.He thought similar demand as port road. There you go
Phill

[msey0002]

Similair to the Port Road? Well no complaints there then

[msmith4000]

I think that Railworks PC performance is dictated by the number of consists that are setup in the scenario rather than the size of the Route. So as long as you do not run scenario's with lots of consists I think the route will be fine on your computer.

For instance, in the San Benardino - Barstow route, some scenario's I get frame rates in some of the longer scenario's (1 or 2 hr scenario's) of 40 FPS the whole time. In others I get about 75 FPS. I think the route is tile based that is Railworks pages in the scenery as you go along however all the consists and their associated physics calculations are there from the start ( until they leave through a portal). Clearly the route itslef does not effect the frame rate.

The solution to me is clear, and RailSimulator.com can shut everyone up once and for all and make everyone happy and save themselves the bother of having to make their game engine multicored. Railworks uses PhysX, simply port the PhysX portion of the code over to the Graphics card accelerated versions of the PhysX API, this would free up the main CPU, the GPU processor can process PhysX calculations much more efficiently than the main CPU, problem solved. We can all go out and by a cheap nvidia graphics card and chuck it in our system, no more stuttering, banding and much more busier scenario's with lots of consists can now be created. (pretty please pls look into this RS.com surely it cant be that hard to port the PhysX over to the GPCPU version of the libraries??)

[msey0002]

I think it does depend on how many assets there are on any given tile too, though

[paulz6]

PC vary in many ways, and how software will perform depends on the nature of the software and how much the various factors will affect it. No simple answer.
People have varying processes speeds, varying amounts of RAM. Same for the GPU, different cards have different clocks speeds and different amount of RAM.
A person with a fast GPU is going to have no problem rendering complex poly objects, but if the graphics memory is insufficient large texture will slow the system down. Conversely, a slow GPU is going to have problems rendering complex poly objects, but with a lot of memory it is going to cope with large texture rendering.
The same goes for system processing, there are going to be CPU intensive operations, and memory intensive operations. Some machines are going to cope with some parts of the software better than others.

Everyones experience of what route runs well on their system is going to be down to their individual specifications, and what factors the particular route emphasizes.

[brummie]

Well I for one will wait to see what the general consensus of opinion is once it is released. I always value the opinions of people on here when new routes are released, once I am satisfied everything is ok, which I'm sure in this case it will be then I will get it.
I'm fairly new to RX but so far have had no problems with the 'IOW', '101DMU' and the 'Fag Packet' addons.

[msdejesus]

I think that Railworks PC performance is dictated by the number of consists that are setup in the scenario rather than the size of the Route. So as long as you do not run scenario's with lots of consists I think the route will be fine on your computer.

Absolutely right about that: RW is remarkably CPU-dependent, rather than GPU. Lots of AI consists are what really slow it down.

[paulz6]

I think that Railworks PC performance is dictated by the number of consists that are setup in the scenario rather than the size of the Route. So as long as you do not run scenario's with lots of consists I think the route will be fine on your computer.

Absolutely right about that: RW is remarkably CPU-dependent, rather than GPU. Lots of AI consists are what really slow it down.

I don't know how RW implements AI traffic (especially considering its scripted nature), but if I was to program a system that simulated a rail network in real-time, I would want to load the entire route into memory (even if the scenery is loaded as required around the camera). In such a case, a larger route would have a larger railnetwork memory requirement. The more consist physics being modelled, the more CPU grunt that would be required.
It is quite possibly a combination of both in RW, but maybe one factor may be more dominant than the other.