TS2014 perfomance v other titles

[growler37]

Hi, i am wondering why, TS2014 performs so poorly, compared with other titles? reading on the various Steam forums for other games i rarely come across questions like, "what upgrades do i need to run this game" or ,"this game stutters to a standstill" so why is this game any different?
I decided to try an experiment with a clean copy of TS2014 (no addons or third party content) the tile loading stutter, and rubber banding, was awfull, reducing settings did little to improve the problem,i am not going to bore everyone with my pc specs,suffice to say, it is high spec and runs anything i throw at it,for example,i can run Cuebase (music creation editing software) in the background,and Codemasters F1 2013, without a stutter.
So what is the problem? is it the creaking game engine? or a case of too many bolt ons to an already overloaded program? i would be very intrested in peoples views.
Can i also add, that looking on youtube at videos of TS,it seems 99% of them seem to have problems with stutter in some way or other.
Regards
Kev

[Merlin75]

I have quite a new high spec PC and I have to say Railworks is the worst game for stuttering and crashes I have. I can play every other game with settings set to max but not this one. I think the problem with this game is it has suffered the same problem as FSX on order to keep older add-ons working they just kept bolting on to a old game and the game kind of said stuff this. But what can RSC really do if they start over they would make one group happy as they could programme it to run a lot better. But then you would have the other group who are going to moan that the older add-ons may not work.

[Stone75]

Not saying this is your problem, but gfx drivers can be an issue for some. I remember back when I was well into FSX and if I remember right the 2.13 NVidia driver was rock solid at the time with newer versions adding much stuttering. I did recently update my driver but quickly restored my older as I found fps dropped some. The problem is when the sim is not your only interest and newer drivers work well for other titles you use. Newer systems will no doubt not have older drivers installed. Like I say, might not be your problem, just something I've found over the years. My main reason for stopping using FSX was updating to Win 7 of all things, was stuttering hell for me at the time and lost interest so feel for you fella.

steve

[AndiS]

I cannot compare other games but the following things have been said often in the past (and they sound plausible to me).

1) Almost all games have a quite limited stage compared to the miles of route you have in a train sim. Flight simulations also show vast areas of terrain, but at a low detail level. So you could only compare car diving sims where you cruise many miles through arbitrary cities (not just a couple of blocks), and maybe flying extremely low over the rooftops of a city. All this rubberbanding and stuttering occurs on loading of further tiles and closed-stage games don't need it as the whole level fits into memory and is loaded while the music plays between levels.

2) Optimising assets is an art/craft/wizardry mastered by few because it combines artistic skills with cold discipline and there is no central quality control. Games for which a small set of people supply all the assets according to strict design guidelines will perform better. For RW (and similar games) it is common to use assets in places where lower-poly versions would be more suitable (if there were one).

3) Offering different daylight settings requires more in-game shading than running a certain scene at a fixed time of day, with prebaked shadows everywhere except for the vehicles.

[growler37]

Hi, thanks for the replies, i wondered if it was my graphics card?,it is a, AMD Radeon HD7700, Although it performs well with other titles
Regards
Kev

[deltic009]

Hi, thanks for the replies, i wondered if it was my graphics card?,it is a, AMD Radeon HD7700, Although it performs well with other titles
Regards
Kev

HD7xxx cards do not run Direct X 9 titles very well I believe, so it will perhaps be part of the issue.

[gptech]

The 7700 series is more a power saving GPU than a powerful one---very mixed reviews about it. A bandwidth of just over 70 Gb/s should be enough to run TS201x with the 'bells and whistles' turned on, but it will eventually feel the strain. Add to that the fact that the game itself isn't optimised to make the most of the more modern hardware and you're getting squeezed from both sides.

[malatzoc]

TS2014 have quite bad performance, because the engine have poor multicore support, the render preparations are done in a single thread, which limits the whole game, no matter how many other threads are there, the other problem is directx 9, which is very old, and have serious limitations, and performance bottlenecks, the engine is old, at least 7 years old.

[ttjph]

Earlier this year my wife bought the new Tomb Raider to play on my rig, and I have to say I was very impressed by the graphics - although I'm sure most or all of AndiS's points above do apply.

Does TR use a newer version of DirectX?

Also interesting (to me!) was that we didn't do any fiddling with graphics settings, just jumped in and played it, and it seemed to be making fairly balanced use of CPU and GPU as well as getting good framerates (around 45-50 fps) and looking amazing. Do modern games have some degree of automatic graphics option setting, or were we just lucky that it balanced well on my system?

[malatzoc]

Earlier this year my wife bought the new Tomb Raider to play on my rig, and I have to say I was very impressed by the graphics - although I'm sure most or all of AndiS's points above do apply.

Does TR use a newer version of DirectX?

Of course, it uses directx 11 (if the system and gpu capable), also multicore. But see for example mafia2, awesome graphics, low requirements. Unfortunatel smaller game studios doesn't care optimization much, they usually say "if you don't like it, buy better PC..." that's why smaller game studios disappear

[Acorncomputer]

that's why smaller game studios disappear

Not always .... every large games studio started small.

You know what they say ... from little Acorns great Oak Trees grow

-

[Merlin75]

Some small companies are a lot better than big companies because they listen to the customer. Those small companies that don't listen are the ones that tend to fail.

[Fodda]

I've been playing a lot of Euro Truck Sim 2 since it was only a few quid on Steam last weekend. It's a huge game (especially with the add on TSM v4 map which adds so many more countries and cities to the map).

I have every graphical goody set to maximum except DoF which I hate in games.

I've added Hi Res scenery, vehicle and weather mods. I've added better sound packs and extra traffic mods.

And STILL I can run it with great frame rates and everything maxed. And I can drive for a lot longer than any route in Train Game.

All with no stutters.

Because it's been programmed properly, using modern software and resources, unlike Train Game 2014 which is so out of date that it creaks on everyone's' systems.

Oh yes, and it has TrackIR support built in straight off the bat. ETS2 is a bloody good simulator compared to Train Game.

[chezafield]

Hi, thanks for the replies, i wondered if it was my graphics card?,it is a, AMD Radeon HD7700, Although it performs well with other titles
Regards
Kev

Don't notice stuttering as much ever since I switched to a GTX 660 from a HD 7790. Granted, the former is a more powerful GPU, but underlying horsepower wasn't really the problem, as even at 800x600 with no AA/AF, there'd still be a significant lack of fluidity on the AMD. Tests I ran with FRAPS' frametime logging indicated frame delivery was extremely inconsistent on the AMD unless FPSLimit was enabled. Couldn't be bothered repeating the testing on the Nvidia, but subjectively at least, it's not as bad.

SSD can also help, as some of the stuttering is related to hard disk speed - at least that's what testing with TS2012 showed. But fundamentally, it seems the game engine is the problem and even with the best hardware thrown at it, it's still going to be below the smoothness threshold of some people.

[Trev123]

I have MS Flight Simulator X on this computer and I say TS2014 runs a lot smoother than that. Can't even run FSX on full settings, but TS2014 I can.