Stutter Fix? Railworks America

[Acorncomputer]

I'm not going to try and sound bias of egotistical here, but a custom built computer in most cases will work better than a bought off the shelf computer, I wouldn't touch anything which is pre packed from some of the big companies and would only trust computers built from small shops in store or big order companies like Alienware and there likes, if your system isn't any of these then sorry to say, I wouldn't expect much out of it. Mass produced computers are filled with cheap to produce and make hardware which breaks easily and won't last and in most cases they are the fault behind many issues with a computer.

I have to agree entirely with this. If possible get your computer custom built by an expert. He/she will also install, configure and test software of your choice and leave you with a fully functioning system.

I was a bit lax last year in buying an off the shelf (well known make) computer on the basis that it was just what I needed for business use. The fact is that from the poorly designed case inwards, it has no feel of quality and is practically useless for anything really and it re-starts itself at random times whether you in the middle of something or not. On the other hand I have three beautifully constructed bespoke computers that are just a delight to use and give me very little trouble.

When I talk about about bespoke, I am not referring to an off-the shelf-adapted computer, I am referring to a machine built up from quality components by an expert. Although this may cost more in the first place, I think you get more quality life out of computers built this way.

[crumplezone]

I do find it odd that the blame is solely placed upon Railworks and its graphics engine. I also find it somewhat interesting that the first blame to be thrown always lands on the software which the user is using.

I have used computers for gaming purposes for the better part of 17 years now, I can build and have built my own custom computer and also done plenty of tweaks and fixes to the system to make it run at a optimum performance. I would question that when these complaints about stuttering, crashes to desktops and SBHHs are sorely based upon the game engine and rather not the user's actual computer.....

So the $64k question crumplezone, can you build a PC that runs RW stutter free? Or just one that is less prone to stuttering than an out of the box big name model?

Andy L

I can say with certainty yes, my current system is built by myself and tested and done what I mentioned in my prior post and I do not receive stuttering in RWs. I will admit I get SBHHs, but that happens only when I'm dealing with assets and placing rolling stock, not related to running on a route.

[JasonM]

These type of discussions seem to come up all the time, I also agree with some others that the gfx engine is not optimized properly at all.
A lot of people are saying that other high detailed games work fine and smooth on their pc's, like me, so that also proves the point.
Well Derek you are giving us a bit of hope that something might be done to improve things, I really do hope so.
And back to the original post, this might help the big stutters when you are approaching a big area but it will not help with the micro stuttering/rubber banding that is happening when nothing is being loaded in and the HDD is silent.

[bigvern]

My PC was built by myself and runs Crysis, Crysis Warhead, COD WOW2, AvP2 and countless other titles smooth as a whistle on high to highest graphics settings. No loading stutters and no rubber banding evident. The only other programme which does show signs of that is MSTS which is by chance, oh, another Kuju programme.

[AndyUK]

I do find it odd that the blame is solely placed upon Railworks and its graphics engine. I also find it somewhat interesting that the first blame to be thrown always lands on the software which the user is using.

I have used computers for gaming purposes for the better part of 17 years now, I can build and have built my own custom computer and also done plenty of tweaks and fixes to the system to make it run at a optimum performance. I would question that when these complaints about stuttering, crashes to desktops and SBHHs are sorely based upon the game engine and rather not the user's actual computer.....

So the $64k question crumplezone, can you build a PC that runs RW stutter free? Or just one that is less prone to stuttering than an out of the box big name model?

Andy L

I can say with certainty yes, my current system is built by myself and tested and done what I mentioned in my prior post and I do not receive stuttering in RWs. I will admit I get SBHHs, but that happens only when I'm dealing with assets and placing rolling stock, not related to running on a route.

Interesting. Apologies if you've already posted your PC's specs somewhere before but would you please let us know what they are?

Andy L

[djt01]

I can say with certainty yes, my current system is built by myself and tested and done what I mentioned in my prior post and I do not receive stuttering in RWs. I will admit I get SBHHs, but that happens only when I'm dealing with assets and placing rolling stock, not related to running on a route.

I've been running RailWorks on the two listed machines below and by no means is it stutter free. Most the time I'm in the triple digit frame rates even at 1920x1080 resolution, 8xAA but the frame rate performance isn't going to help the scenery loading stutter. Out of 15 or so other games/sims I run, RailWorks is the only game that does produce this stuttering.

The problem is in the way the game engine currently uses system resources and no hardware is going to cure that issue.

I'd love to see you post a video on this stutter free performance that you claim you have found. If you can be sure to show what happens when the game goes through a scenery/object loading transition.

Get a train up to triple digit speeds on the Oxford-Paddington route and show us what you get.





ASUS Rampage III Extreme (1005 BIOS)
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition w/Corsair H70
Corsair DOMINATOR-GT 6GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) CMT6GX3M3A1600C7
EVGA GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked (260.63)
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WD VelociRaptor 150GB Windows 7 Ultimate 64
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ASUS Rampage II Extreme (1802 BIOS)
Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition w/Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT
Mushkin Redline Ascent 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (6-7-6-18-1N)
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Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
WD VelociRaptor 150GB Windows XP/SP2 64-bit Edition
WD VelociRaptor 300GB Games/Programs
SILVERSTONE 1500Watt SST
SILVERSTONE TJ09-B

[ihavenonamenoreallyidont]

My PC was built by myself and runs Crysis, Crysis Warhead, COD WOW2, AvP2 and countless other titles smooth as a whistle on high to highest graphics settings. No loading stutters and no rubber banding evident.

Exactly the same circumstances. I've built my own PCs since, what, 1995 now. It's clear it's a software issue although I appreciate the effort a couple of previous posters went to regarding setting your gaming PC up properly. All sage advice but in this case it's like driving a Ferrari with a Fiesta's engine tucked inside.

[crumplezone]

Sure, haven't posted it anywhere else, I built it last Dec just before the VAT went up in the UK, computer wise its considered old but to me its still pretty new.

Processor is a Intel i5 quad core 750 running at 2.6ghz on normal, I have it overclocked to 2.9ghz but it can run at 3.2ghz with adequate cooling.
4gig of RAM, DDR3, Corstair branded at 1333mhz
2x HD, one is Hitachi 250gig and the other is Maxtor 150gig - I have my OS on one disc and all games and software on another, this leaves windows on its own HD, best option with a gaming rig. External 1000gig HD for storage purposes to.
ATI HD5700 1gig graphics card
Onboard sound - Creative soundcards ain't very good driver wise and stutter and pop alot, they are also known for bottlenecking, onboard sound is just as good these days.
Windows 7 Prem in 64bit - I've not had issues with software or hardware, some really old stuff doesn't work under 64bit, but I'm talking about software from 10+ years ago.
PSU is a 1000w and the casing is a gamer one which has 4 120mm fans on for cooling, processor also has a 120mm fan with a large 6inch copper piping heat dispensor.
Motherboard is by gigabyte, sorry I can't pull up the model number, but its intel based obviously for the quad core.

I run defrag weekly, adware and spyware daily and anti virus, clean it every 3weeks to remove dust, this is a big thing which can hamper performance. I also once a year do a full system wipe after backing up to ensure its running at peak performance and to eliminate any bugs or problems which windows update might have lodged in the system.

I know people have better systems than what I have shown, but it does what I need and games well, can run any title out at the moment and don't suffer from any performance issues. If there is stuttering on games I can eliminate it down to either windows trying to update, steam trying to download something or I have set anti alias settings wrong, which can happen after a driver update since sometimes the A.I. option can cause issues.

I don't call myself a expert at building computers, god forbid I did, and I've made mistakes in the past, but I know from experience it always comes down to either hardware or windows being the main culprit behind program issues and by addressing these I have normally been able to fix the issues I had.

The main thing which has caused stuttering in my experience in the years has been hard drives, sound cards causing a bottleneck and faulty memory. You can have a extremely good graphics card but if the HD is under serious load there isn't much you can do to prevent stuttering. A good high RPM HD can fix a multitude of problems and in my case I run two, one for OS and one for gaming software and programs and this helps alleviate any load on the OS entirely.


Beyond these, if the issues still remain then I would firming question the software which your trying to run, as there might be memory leaks in the engine or glitches introduced via patches or no patches in some cases which may be needed to have to software run.

I also would like to note, that I'm not questioning people on what they witness nore am I saying they are wrong when they bring up the issue, merely trying to raise the question if its entirely down to software of hardware. I think in the long run if we got a idea of what systems people are running on, then we can see weather it is our computers or weather the source code and engine is becoming a issue.

ASUS Rampage III Extreme (1005 BIOS)
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition w/Corsair H70
Corsair DOMINATOR-GT 6GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) CMT6GX3M3A1600C7
EVGA GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked (260.63)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
WD VelociRaptor 150GB Windows 7 Ultimate 64
WD VelociRaptor 300GB Games/Programs
Corsair AX1200 Watt
Corsair 800D w/NoiseBlocker fans


ASUS Rampage II Extreme (1802 BIOS)
Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition w/Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT
Mushkin Redline Ascent 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (6-7-6-18-1N)
Asus/ATI 5870 (Catalyst 10.9)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
WD VelociRaptor 150GB Windows XP/SP2 64-bit Edition
WD VelociRaptor 300GB Games/Programs
SILVERSTONE 1500Watt SST
SILVERSTONE TJ09-B

I find it strange that these systems would be suffering from stuttering, and would say then in this case yes Railworks would seem to be the issue here and isn't utilising all available system performance. It seems to be a mixed bag on what people can experience, though I do note you have creative X-fi soundcards and the Fatal1ty range ones which are known to have issues with there drivers which can potentially cause a bottleneck, I'm not saying this is the case with yoru systems however.

Another question would be is Railworks 64bit compatible, alright it starts up and runs under 64bit but it may not natively support it built into the code, and we only just recently supposed to have gotten the 4gig patch applied to Railworks .exe files to address 4gig and higher which is also encroaching upon the 64bit teroritory.

[jimmyshand]

I am starting to realise that I must have a very dated rig and it's only about 2 years old!! Everyone that posts on here seems to have a mega-pc with NASA specs that must have cost many hundreds of pounds if not thousands. Yet on the same forum countless people are always moaning about the price of addons being 15 quid!! Is there anyone out there with a 'normal' pc who can run WCML without problems??!!

[Kromaatikse]

I can give you two data points.

The PC I usually use for RailWorks is a bit of a monster - a 3.2GHz quad-core Phenom II, with carefully tuned 1600MHz DDR3 and 4GB of it, and a Radeon 5870 which should have no difficulty pushing a few hundred million triangles per second. Steam and all of it's gunge is installed on a RAID-1 of a pair of 1.5TB drives, with Windows itself on an SSD. On that machine, if I make a custom scenario with only one train in it, I am down to 16fps going past Motherwell, Polmadie or entering Glasgow - bearing in mind that 14fps is when the game starts running slower than realtime. That is with all settings at maximum except for Detailed Shadows and Procedural Flora being turned off. There are times when I am left waiting for *seconds* for scenery to load on the WCML.

I also have a MacBook Pro which I installed Boot Camp on for a portable version of Windows. This is a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo with a Geforce 8600M and 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 - at any rate it's well within RailWorks' requirements. On the same settings as above, Glasgow is a literal slideshow unless I point the camera downriver.

On both machines, adjusting the settings of the graphics card - from resolution to antialiasing - makes essentially no difference. I could probably downgrade to my old X1950 or 8800GT without seeing it perform any worse.

I haven't yet experimented with lesser settings, but I am a computer engineer who knows something about how these things work, and what I'm seeing is a classically inefficient game engine. I would need to investigate in more detail to discover precisely what is wrong, but by mentally designing it from scratch, I come up with considerably lower RAM usage - ie. orders of magnitude lower - and polygon counts that should be easily managed.

BTW, FRAPS has a mode dedicated to gathering performance information without the need to capture a video.

[ihavenonamenoreallyidont]

On both machines, adjusting the settings of the graphics card - from resolution to antialiasing - makes essentially no difference. I could probably downgrade to my old X1950 or 8800GT without seeing it perform any worse..

Bingo! I hammered out a response to this thread just after crumplezone posted his config and ended-up self-moderating before I received a narky mod response a la bigvern earlier today. Anyway, my point was the same as yours: no amount of down-tuning the resolution or graphical detail solves the stuttering or rubber-banding on my PC.

I still don't get - Derek's enigmatic post aside - how RSC doesn't acknowledge there's an issue. It's even visible in the videos they post.

[exshunter]

And it ruins the experience IMHO . In MSTS , it was the worst and most annoying fault,or at least i thought so ( OR to the rescue!) and it's the same with Railworks. I am in exactly the same situation. I can run other games maxed out (Battlefield 2 Bad Company, Dirt 2 ,COD MW2) but not Railworks
FWIW:
Asus Striker Extreme
QX6700
GTX295
4gig Corsair xms2
Fatal1ty gamer sound card
2 Samsung 500gb Hard drives Raid 0

[theokus]

As for whether purchasing a 10k RPM drive is a "solution", there are plenty who've posted here owning solid state drives and, if I remember correctly, even that doesn't cure the stuttering.

I can confirm this.
But it's a better investment then a hard disk.

[djt01]

If there is stuttering on games I can eliminate it down to either windows trying to update, steam trying to download something or I have set anti alias settings wrong, which can happen after a driver update since sometimes the A.I. option can cause issues.

From the sound of things you don't seem to have much experience with other games that use up to date game engines that actually use system resources properly.

As I said before the 15 or so other games (some of which use DirectX 11 game engines) I run don't stutter in the least.

One question I have though is why would someone who claims to have all this experience running performance applications (games) allow Windows update to run while playing a game period? In addition changing anti-aliasing settings aren't going magically change the way a game engine was written to use system resources.

but I know from experience it always comes down to either hardware or windows being the main culprit behind program issues and by addressing these I have normally been able to fix the issues I had.

Yes running a clean OS is without a doubt a major part of obtaining good performance with games but again it's not going to help a game engine that was never developed to properly take advantage of the hardware it's running on.

I find it strange that these systems would be suffering from stuttering, and would say then in this case yes Railworks would seem to be the issue here and isn't utilising all available system performance. It seems to be a mixed bag on what people can experience, though I do note you have creative X-fi soundcards and the Fatal1ty range ones which are known to have issues with there drivers which can potentially cause a bottleneck, I'm not saying this is the case with yoru systems however.

It's not strange at all, just use MSTS as an example. You can throw all the hardware in the world at it, will it take care of the scenery tile transition loading issue that plagued the game from it's release, no. Why?, because it's game engine was never written to properly take advantage of system resources.

As far as the X-Fi comment goes that doesn't hold much weight either as I have run both machines using the on-board sound, doesn't help with RailWorks. With the new audio stack in Vista and Windows 7 it makes very little difference anyway.

Another question would be is Railworks 64bit compatible, alright it starts up and runs under 64bit but it may not natively support it built into the code, and we only just recently supposed to have gotten the 4gig patch applied to Railworks .exe files to address 4gig and higher which is also encroaching upon the 64bit teroritory.

No revelations there either, I've got two other machines with 4GB of RAM that I test on both of which I've tested with 32-bit versions of XP, Vista and Windows 7, again the scenery stuttering in RS/RW persists.

With the two machines listed above both of which have 6GB of system RAM and between 1GB-1.5GB of RAM on the video cards it's obvious that a 32-bit OS isn't going to cut it, that's just asking for problems.

By the way I don't use the so-called 4GB+ band-aid fix, it's never done anything to help with RailWorks in my experience.


I'd still love to see a video of running on the Oxford-Paddington route at triple digit speeds (or any other route where the game engine can't even keep up with the speed of the train) without any scenery stutter. May be you could at least show us some screen shots of the performance your getting with your system and RailWorks, of course don't forget to mention the resolution and AA/AF used as well as, of course the fps.

Even the videos that RSDL put up for the “Career System” release displayed the stuttering scenery loading as plain as day.

[pilot37]

My PC was built by myself and runs Crysis, Crysis Warhead, COD WOW2, AvP2 and countless other titles smooth as a whistle on high to highest graphics settings. No loading stutters and no rubber banding evident.

Exactly the same circumstances. I've built my own PCs since, what, 1995 now. It's clear it's a software issue although I appreciate the effort a couple of previous posters went to regarding setting your gaming PC up properly. All sage advice but in this case it's like driving a Ferrari with a Fiesta's engine tucked inside.

Exactly the same for me, but I would like to add that I also run Flight Sim X in high detail with no problems...and that is saying something because FSX is demanding on graphics and CPU

....as I said somewhere before, I can fly a 4 engined B17 Accusim (all engines and systems modelled) with a huge 3 d cockpit full of live gauges and dials, all controls interactive by mouse, Track IR head movement so I can look anywhere including leaning close to check gauges and rolling into turns. I fly over high detail payware Australian scenery with Flight Sim Xtreme payware real time internet weather downloading and displaying complex cloud patterns and real time lighting. Meanwhile the CPU calculates the maths of flight and allows me to interact with control towers. I have live garmin satelite systems, navigation controls....I could go on! So hey, my home built PC isn't bad.

Nevertheless, I have just ordered an Intel X25-M 80Gb Solid State Hard Drive for Railworks and I will report back my findings. It is not a bad investment as Theokus has already said, and I am sure it will give me other benefits.