What is/where is Legacy Mode?

[philspace]

Not having been able to launch TS2012 until yesterday, because of the "Unable to Initialise PhysX" error, I have been following discussions on this and other forums about the great leaps forward/backward in TS2012.

Knowing that my system was way beyond its sell-by date, I was prepared to accept that if it could run as modestly as RW2, but without the bells and whistles, then that would be sufficient for me.

My main interest is route building and the testing that goes with it - not racing from A to B at 60fps, wiping the rain from the windscreen as I go.

It was clear from the advanced publicity and subsequent discussion, that "Legacy Mode" was included for the likes of me.

What I have actually found is that there is no such thing as Legacy Mode - it is a fallacy - there is no button marked "Legacy Mode" to be found.

So you you read further and find that, well, actually, you just turn everything down to its absolute mimimum and that will run TS2012 to a RW2 standard - Legacy Mode - problem solved.

Except it isn't - the application launches, the scenario takes twice as long to load and then runs at 5-6fps less than the 15-20fps previously, with huge wedges of colour tearing across the screen.

And before the response comes about adjusting this, tweaking that and verifying the cache, to get a useable game all I have to do is rename the RW2 backup in the steamapps folder and it works as well as it did before, first time, without any tweaking.

Despite everything, RSC.com are still advertising System Requirements for RW2 on their own website - requirements which my system exceeds. The line that TS2012 will run on a system capable of running RW2 seems to have disappeared.

So, a genuine mistake or spin - where is the real "Legacy Mode".

Best wishes

Phil

[Darpor]

Not ticking the TSX box is "legacy" mode, so it's not just a case of turning everything down to a minimum as you stated.

Do you have the TSX box turned on, and then are turning everything down? Or do you have it unticked and are still getting nowhere, even turning everything down there?

[philspace]

Oops, sorry, should have said: TSX off, varied screen resolutions, right down to 800x600, and graphical settings down to "Lowest"

Best wishes

Phil

[Darpor]

Oops, sorry, should have said: TSX off, varied screen resolutions, right down to 800x600, and graphical settings down to "Lowest"

Best wishes

Phil

That answers my question anyway.

[Kromaatikse]

It does appear that there are still problems with older graphics cards - I get the distinct impression that these (like the Athlon-XP) were never tested at RSC before release.

The two most prominent problems currently are:

1) If the card is slow, then it is currently slower than in RW2. I've managed to demonstrate this quite convincingly with a Radeon X1650 Pro, which seems to be a relatively popular model among Railworks users. RSC know about this and are investigating.

2) Graphics corruption problems seem to show up on very old graphics cards, probably all the ones with Shader Model 2.0 rather than 3.0 - that means GeForce FX 5xxx and possibly a few later models, Radeon 9xxx and Xxxx, but not X1xxx. I suspect that it is associated with specific objects since, on Hatchet Hill, I can see them only when looking in a small range of directions from one end of the route towards the middle.

[theorganist]

This looks to be the case, certainly with my X1650!

I can start a free roam scenario at Carlisle on WCML North with everything turned down or off with the graphics detail on 8 and actually drive with what appear to be higher frame rates than I got on RW2.

When I start a freeroam at Motherwell and drive towards Glasgow after around three minutes the sim freezes and I have to use CTRL+ALT+DEL as pressing escape does not bring up the exit menu.

If I start one at Glasgow even with the the graphic detail on 1 then all I get is some vague outlines of tracks and overhead wires and a kind of orange and black landscape, no trains and no sound. Again the only way to exit is CTRL+ALT+DEL.

It worked fine on RW2!

Peter.

[philspace]

Good afternoon all, thanks for the replies...

I tried a few more experiments this afternoon - when I ran a default scenario in a true RW2 installation , it took 22 minutes of real time to drive for 20 minutes of game time at 15-20fps (time of day displayed in the HUD).

When I tried the same scenario in the TS2012 installation , it took 36 minutes real time to drive 20 minutes of game time at 10-15fps.

I don't really understand what is going on - I assumed that if the graphics card couldn't keep up the execution of the program carried on regardless and it was the graphics which suffered with poor frame rates, lurches etc, but apart from a reduced framerate, the graphics didn't seem that bad (apart from the coloured streaks!).

My brain hurts!

Best wishes

Phil

[Kromaatikse]

Railworks has always had a hard internal limit at 14fps. If the framerate is slower than this, it treats it as 14fps for internal timing and so game time is slower than real time.

This also means that if you compare the frame counters in-game and in FRAPS, the in-game counter will never show less than 14fps but FRAPS will show the true framerate.

[philspace]

Hello Kromaatikse

Once again, many thanks for the explanation - if I understand what you are saying, the game is waiting for an acknowledgement from the graphics card because the GPU is slower than the CPU.

If that is the case, I don't understand why the situation is better in RW2.

Presumably then, there is an optimum combination of CPU and GPU, beyond which there will be no further improvement?

And there was me thinking the 14fps limit in Railworks was a PR exercise!

Best wishes

Phil

[Kromaatikse]

The situation in RW2 is better because, for some reason, extra work is done by the GPU in RW3 even with TSX off. Extra work means it can't complete each frame so quickly, so the CPU spends more time waiting.

RSC say that this really shouldn't be happening, so they do want to fix it.