Atomic Systems

Hello all,

Just a few Railworks issues.

I've had Railworks (2) since it was released back in October, and my computer has ran it pretty well, it looked really good, was able to run maximum settings (except WCML North) and the quality and performance was fairly good.

In the last week however, I've noticed performance and quality has dropped to an unacceptable level, it really is bad, when you get stuttering on Oxford-Paddington!

I reckon my graphics card Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT is on the way out, I've uploaded some photos to show how bad things look: I can see jagged lines, everything is starting to look very pixelated and blurred.





What do people think? New Graphics Card, computer upgrade?

Computer specs currently are:
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 Ghz
1.25 GB Ram
Nvidia GeForce 8500GT
Creative X-fI Soundcard

Locked whilst I fix the image display problems. Normal service resumes in a few minutes.

And now unlocked after fixing the problem.

Thanks Easilyconfused! Been ages since I uploaded a pic on here, so have forgot the proper method! Nice One

If jagged lines have turned up that points generally towards Anti Alias being toggled off or it not working properly, if you updated or windows updated the geforce card recently it could have reset settings back to factory or default settings on the actual card so some settings might have gone off, normally you have to retest the graphic settings on the railworks launcher to make sure its agreeable with Railworks after something like that aswell.

Could also be the card but I'd eliminate the above first prior to replacing the card or anything to that extreme.

Anti-Aliasing at 16.

Funnily enough, I updated my GeForce drivers last night, but the problem was already occurring before that

shaun123 wrote:Anti-Aliasing at 16.

Funnily enough, I updated my GeForce drivers last night, but the problem was already occurring before that

Check the AA settings in the GeForce driver itself. If they are set to override the application settings the AA will be whatever's set in the driver, not RW.

Andy L

Aye, that would be the ticket, to note I only noticed AA working toggled on via the launcher on 8x, I've toggled that off since and I force it through the geforce drivers, though I do have a GTS 460 so that could factor into a certain degree of graphics looks for myself, the 8500s are quite old now, so I'm not sure how good the drivers are.

Well, just changed settings in Nvidia Control Panel so that it enhances the application setting and have set both to 16x still looks knackered in my opinion, jagged lines, stuttering, poor quality.

Thanks for help so far

Hi

If it is of any help, after a period of time I notice a drop in performance of my graphics card, get stuttering and other problems what I do to rectify the problem is reinstall all of nVidia, graphics drivers, Physx etc.
Before I reinstall I run Driver Sweeper. This alway rectifies the problem.
I always install the same drivers. I have tried various ones but always stick with those that work best because I like to use nHancer.

Windows 7
nVidia GTX 260

Regards

Clive

Looks more like anisotropic filtering has set itself low than antialiasing. Have you rechecked your RW settings, btw? if the draw distance got lowered somehow then your mip levels will be reducing themselves nearer, which makes things wonderfully blurry.

Well, just changed anisotropic filtering to 16x and anti-aliasing to 16x in the Nvidia Control Panel and in RW. It cleared up all the jagged lines and blurriness, it looks fantastic now actually!

Only problem is woeful frame rates/performance, as a result, any recommendations for settings to get performance/quality balance right?

I'll post my experience here, although i feel a bit sheepish about attempting to give advice to a poster with a count of 2,000 +.

On my specs of an core duo E7300 @ 2.66GHz, 9800GT, 3GB ram and vista 32 bit, i was not able to make to the end of any scenario on the WCML route, it would crash at some stage during the scenario. My computer being a dell, upgrade options were limited, but one thing i could upgrade was the ram, so i upgraded to 8GB of ram and windows 7 64 bit. I can now run the WCML on medium settings, and the rest of the routes have improved as well, mind i still have the stuttering problem, but its noticeably not as bad as it was. If i can make a suggestion, i would have a look at upgrading your ram, i think it would improve RW2 all round.

Also, i'm no expert on computers, i have my AA setting on 2 on the nvidia control panel, but i'm under the impression that the higher the AA setting the worse the performance, am i right in thinking that.

Absolutely no need to feel shy or sheepish cilldroichid - I have over 8,000 posts to my name and I'm utterly clueless about fine tuning graphics cards Ansiotropic filtering, etc!

That's why i'm watching this thread, in the hope that i'll learn something

Ash

AA at 4 or even 2 is usually enough to reduce jaggies to the point where you're not totally bothered by them. Leave the aniso up at 16 though.

shaun123 wrote:Well, just changed anisotropic filtering to 16x and anti-aliasing to 16x in the Nvidia Control Panel and in RW. It cleared up all the jagged lines and blurriness, it looks fantastic now actually!

Only problem is woeful frame rates/performance, as a result, any recommendations for settings to get performance/quality balance right?

Try 8x on the settings, 16x is kinda pushing it on a 8xxx series, I used to have one and it became really unstable trying to push 16x anti alias but adding AF ontop will cause it to chug like crazy as its trying to process all the usual stuff in railworks + graphics, have to remember railworks at the moment is still putting most of the graphics calcuations on the processor rather than the graphics card so have to adjust according. Reason being is physis X isn't being processed on the graphics card like it should be, in a ideal situation the physis X side of things either gets processed on a dedicated card or the graphics card, but Railworks currently cannot do this so it gets dumped onto the processor, also Railworks doesn't utilise multi cores either so thats another issue, got a quad core intel myself and only the first core getting used.

This isn't a knock at Railworks, just pointing out what its not ultilising, so you have to change settings to appeal to Railworks so lets not break into the arguement of "well railworks should do this and use this and that its 2011 already".

But anyway, when I had a older graphics card, 8x seemed to be more acceptable since anything higher put to much strain on the system, so try that, if it still is low FPS probably have to switch off AF and just leave anti alias on. Make sure to always do a test on the settings via the railworks launcher or it'll glitch up.


In regards to AA settings effecting performance, yes the higher levels put a impact upon performance since its straightening every edge ingame, plus with the things I mentioned above older cards will find it difficult and you will see the knock, the other thing to take into consideration is the AA mode, there is supersample, multi-sample and adaptive sample. Adaptive can cause issues with rolling stock making them lose portions of there model rendering them invisible, MS and SS to a certain extent put alot more strain on the system SS being the larger factor to this, I've found MS to be a acceptable medium.

You really have to just experiment when it comes down to the settings, some settings work great, while others don't, its just trying to find that happy medium which runs ok but doesn't look like a 5 year old just coloured it in with a wax crayon.