It just doesn't look right anymore!

[jimmyshand]

I too am watching this thread with interest. I run a modest rig (Quad Core 2.something, similar graphics card to the opening poster and 3Gb RAM on Vista 32).

My Railworks experience is a bit of a mystery. Generally I can run most routes with everything on high but flora and shadows turned off. WCML I have to set objects and textures to medium. I run with the AA setting in the initial RW settings menu set to 4.

Recently I've started getting a lot of system crashes where the whole PC freezes with either a blue screen, black screen or the image currently on the screen freezing and I have to manually switch the PC off by holding the power button, Ctrl-alt-del does nothing. This only happens with Railworks and it's pretty much 50/50 whether I get to complete a scenario without it happening. There appears no logical reason, sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn't. As a workaround I have to keep saving every few minutes in a scenario just in case but with a total PC reboot required every time it happens the moment of enjoyment is lost, 9 times out of 10 I just leave the bloomin thing switched off so it's ruining the whole simulator for me really.

I'm pretty certain it's a resource issue but it never used to happen like this and I'm running the same PC? I'm hopeful I'll find a top tip that can save the day because I certainly don't have a spare £1,000 kicking about to buy a new cutting edge PC.

[jimmyshand]

Further to my last and just to clarify, I'm getting confused by this anti-aliasing / anti-skipflipflop business !!

When you load up RW at the first window you get there is an option under settings to change the "anti-something" between 0-16. I have this set at 4 but I've no idea what it means or what it does? Is higher better or worse? or is it the other way around? what will be the impact on performance of moving it either up or down?

I've seen people talking about 2 things, anti-aliasing and anti-something else. Which is the one you can change in Railworks settings and what is the other one all about?

Sorry for all the questions but this is all total gibberish to me!!

[Kariban]

Antialiasing like just about every setting looks better the higher the number is, but at the cost of performance. What it ( and anisotropic filtering ) actually do is best looked up somewhere - wikipedia probably has a reasonable description to save you googling that and trying to find something out of several million hits...

I have a near top-end rig from about 2 years ago, I tend to run 16x AF ( aniso filtering ) and 4xAA in fullscreen, and irritatingly ATi managed to stop AA working in windowed mode at all.

[nobkins]

shaun123 what version of windows do you use?

I am using windows 7 and noticed that sometimes my frame rate drops down to very very low levels (RW reports 14fps but more like 2 or 3). I solved it by disabling the aero class effects. This can be done by stopping the Desktop Window Manager. Means your desktop looks like Windows XP but means I can now run RW at my usual frame rate of 40+.

I have no idea why this happens and I have asked a few other people if they ever get this. It is more than likely my computer but for me I am happy with the solution of disabling Desktop Windows Manager.

I am running a Q6600 (quad core 2.6Ghz) with a ATI 4850 512Mb and 4Gb RAM. Nothing amazing but runs quite happily at 2560x1440 with full detail and AA and AF maxed using Catalyst Control Pannel (ATI's graphics card control program)

Jim

[shaun123]

I'm running Windows 7.

I actually done something like that and it changed my desktop to look more like Windows 98 or ME!

Just been running an Oxford-Paddington scenario and got frame rates up to 25 FPS, it was great!

[nobkins]

I actually done something like that and it changed my desktop to look more like Windows 98 or ME!

Can I just confirm that you have stopped the "Desktop Window Manager" service and it has improved things for you also. If that is the case then maybe this is a bug and not just my computer. Also it looks like it can not be graphics card related as you have nvidia and I have ATI

[AndyM77]

Vista / Windows 7 should automatically stop the DWM service whenever a D3D / OpenGL application is launched. However, I'd assume that because of the way that Railworks launches, it doesn't register properly as a D3D application and as such the DWM isn't disabled.

Now I haven't tested to see if it's doing the same on my system, so am simply speculating here. I do have access to Windows XP on the same computer for older games (i.e ones that have Starforce and other DRM solutions that do not work properly under a 64-bit enviroment), and I can honestly say the performance is 'roughly' the same on that as it is under Win7.

If more people test this theory out, and are seeing the same result as the other posters then submit it as a bug to support@railsimulator.com - it's not a Windows 7 bug.

[nobkins]

Performance is definitely not the same for me with DWM enabled.

It is not all the time but I can be 10mins into a scenario and all of a sudden it grinds to a halt displaying 14fps when enabling CTRL+Z but running at 1 or 2. IT happens at any section of line and not related to busy or heavily detailed areas. Normally I run at 25+ quite easily and average 35 to 40.

When I alt-tab out of the game the only other process using any of the processor time is DWM.exe. It is only using 1 or 2% of the processor but end tasking it fixes the issue. I then searched to find out what DWM.exe was and discovered it was the Desktop Window Manager. Stopping the service makes my desktop look less pretty but means I never get the 1 or 2fps issue.

I am running full screen. This never seems to happen in window mode only in full screen.

If others can confirm they have the same issue the I will indeed report it to RS.com. Shaun has not yet confirmed for certain that he poor performance was improved after he disabled DWM. He said it made his computer look like windows 98 but not that it directly led to the improved performance he reported so I am not sure if he just enabled it again because he did not like the win98 look.

An easy work around is two little batch files. One to stop DWM and one to start it. Then you can stop it just before running RW and when finished start it off to get the aero effect back again.

Thanks Andy.

Jim

[Acorncomputer]

Interesting .. I only have XP on my computers and I do not seem to have the exceptional issues that others do. Plenty of other issues but graphics quality is not one of them.

[Kariban]

Right-click exe->disable visual themes, isn't that the auto-stop-dwm option? I use vista64 still, only maybe 10% of graphics apps will turn off Aero/dwm automatically. Not sure how you'd persuade railworksproc to do that though.

[shaun123]

shaun123 what version of windows do you use?

I am using windows 7 and noticed that sometimes my frame rate drops down to very very low levels (RW reports 14fps but more like 2 or 3). I solved it by disabling the aero class effects. This can be done by stopping the Desktop Window Manager. Means your desktop looks like Windows XP but means I can now run RW at my usual frame rate of 40+.

I have no idea why this happens and I have asked a few other people if they ever get this. It is more than likely my computer but for me I am happy with the solution of disabling Desktop Windows Manager.

I am running a Q6600 (quad core 2.6Ghz) with a ATI 4850 512Mb and 4Gb RAM. Nothing amazing but runs quite happily at 2560x1440 with full detail and AA and AF maxed using Catalyst Control Pannel (ATI's graphics card control program


Jim

Can you guide me as how to disable these, as I'm pretty sure they're not currently disabled.

I'll get back to you, once I know how to do that.

EDIT: Just read above post! Will give it a go

[shaun123]

Still haven't figured out how to do disable it actually, any help?

[nobkins]

Sure no problem.

1. Right click the computer icon on your start menu and select "manager"
2. Expand the "Services and Applications" section by clicking the + sign
3. Select the "Services" option
4. In the list search and find "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager" and double click it
5. Stop the service by clicking the "Stop" button
6. Change the "Startup Type" to "disabled"

To undo the change (if it makes no difference) simply change the startup type back to "Automatic" and click the "start" button

Let me know how you get on

Jim

[shaun123]

Yep, done as you said.

Gave a scenario on the WCML a spin to test it, and pretty much the same to be honest, slight frame rate improvement (up to 25 FPS at times) but once I hit Motherwell, down to 14 FPS as usual and the usual performance drop.

[Acorncomputer]

Perhaps I could state the obvious (which might help )

I have just been experimenting with screen resolutions on my monitor that has a native resolution of 1680 x 1050.

RailWorks will accept full screen resolutions of 1600 x 1024, 1600 x 1200, 1600 x 900, etc. Whilst some resolutions are clearly the wrong aspect ratio the 1600 x 1024 in particular looks OK in this respect but the text is blurred and the general picture quality is very poor.

Setting back the native resolution of 1680 x 1050 immediately provides a clear crisp image even on my computer with a poor graphics card.

I know that obviously using the monitor native resolution is always best, but it may not be so obvious to some people.