Atomic Systems

Hi All
I know that a lot of us simmers have been experiencing "corrupt" 2D MAP when using SSAA setting in TSxx (ie using a single NVidia card - strangely its OK using 2 cards with the SLI option) . There is no corruption using any MSAA setting and it only happened post the 350.xx NVidia drivers, ie 353.xx onwards. To me, its a driver setting that NVidia introduced as nothing had changed in TS. I have now published a guide on drop box on how to eliminate the 2D Map corruption and still achieve a good quality picture and stable frame rates.

The guide is for a single NVidia graphics card, uses DSR (Dynamic Screen Resolution), NVidia Control Panel (NVCP) and NVidia Inspector (NVI), and although it shows screens that pertain to G-Sync monitors it will also work in standard single monitors (recommend to use "adaptive vsync). Many of the settings in NVCP, NVI, TS2016 will be down to personal preference, but in NVCP and NVI you must "OVERRIDE" any TSxx AA settings, plus there must be no AA settings in TS2016. Settings in NVI must be made after any setting in NVCP.

If you have comments, suggestions, improvements let's have them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6m3xdi027u...0card.pdf?dl=0

Regards
pH

NVI dl: http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvi ... nload.html

peterfhayes

The first download link does not work for me, it cannot find the page.

johnwatto

johnwatto wrote:peterfhayes

The first download link does not work for me, it cannot find the page.

johnwatto

Same for me Peter.

Warren

Try this
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6m3xdi027uckp ... d.pdf?dl=0
Sorry about the first link - don't know why it didn't work.
pH

Yep, this link works (for me). Thanks Peter,

Warren

OK for me also, I have downloaded the document, thanks Peter.

johnwatto

Hello Peter,

thanks a lot for your effort. However I fear these settings are the best for your rather powerful card and your g-sync monitor. I'll give a few settings a try anyway, but let me make a few comments here if I may:

1. You state that we need a card with 4GB VRAM. Seems I'm out and many others with me.
2. Why exactly are we using NVI when it seems we've already achieved exactly the same thing with NVCP?
3. You advise to choose the "best" refresh rate supported by your monitor. You mean the highest? If so, this is a great advice, but only, only for those with G-Sync. If we go with values like 120 or even 144 as your screenshot shows (if the montior supports it of course) together with adaptive v-sync (that you are suggesting), what do we get? Any time our fps in TS will be lower than 144 frames per second, we'll get tearing. Is there anyone out there who is able to keep steady 144 fps or above? I don't think so.
4. My card does not support MFAA, which is one of the possible reasons to explain why you get great visual results while I don't.


My recommended settings for a lower spec'd card (660, 2GB) are: all sliders maxed out in TS, AA set to 1x2 or 2x2 SSAA, AF 8x, make sure you turn depth of field and adaptive bloom off (they eat a lot of fps and do not give the visual improvement that would be worth it), then in NVCP vsync to on (you may try adaptive half refresh rate if you really rarely get below 30 fps in TS) and most importantly use -FPSLimit=30 as a startup parameter. Theoretically vsync should limit it for you when you get below 60 fps, but this is not happening with TS. Never knew why. Maybe it is just jumping between 30 and 60 and TS does not display it correctly...
With these settings of course you have the 2D map flicker. If it is bugging you, you may downgrade drivers to 350.12 (if it's an option for you).

JS
Good points - I do have GTX 760 with 2GB VRAM running a Dell 1920 x 1200 and using DSR 2.5/3.0x and adaptive vsync with fps limit set to 30 in TS2016, and that does give a good quality video at reasonable frame rates with no 2D map corruption using the NVCP/NVI settings as detailed in my pdf file. I do not see any tearing with adaptive vsync (obviously using full screen mode). No MFAA as its an early 760.

The maximum refresh rate can apply to any monitor so anything from say 60 hz upwards, I'm just instructing the system to get me the best refresh rate it can. It's probably not an important setting wrt TS2016.

I do hope that NVidia come up with a fix in the future so that we can use the latest drivers.

Regards
pH

Thanks for your .pdf Peter, at least I can now see the tracks in the '9' view.

Mike

peterfhayes wrote:Hi All
I know that a lot of us simmers have been experiencing "corrupt" 2D MAP when using SSAA setting in TSxx (ie using a single NVidia card - strangely its OK using 2 cards with the SLI option) .

If you have comments, suggestions, improvements let's have them.

Regards
pH

Hi there Peter,

I'm afraid I will have to differ with you on the two card SLI thing.

I currently use 2 x GTX 980 Ti in SLI and they show the 2D corruption big time when using any SSAA setting.

Cheers.

Hi Peter,

I have just tried the settings suggested in your document.

However, on my system, setting the Anti-Aliasing in the nVidia drivers does not seem to do anything. All I am seeing is the effect of the DSR resolution change. Normally I run a native resolution of 2560x1600 and I tried a DSR resolution of 2.25x, which gives 3840x2400. And although this looks OK, the AA still leaves a lot to be desired. And to me it looks exactly the same with the nVidia controlled AA On or Off. One thing though is that the 2D map screen works correctly, but that is more to do with not using SSAA.

My understanding has always been that Train Simulator 20xx uses a 'Deferred Rendering' shader methodology. One BIG disadvantage with deferred rendering is that it is not possible to apply driver based AA to the scene in any meaningful way. I believe that Microsoft have addressed this to some extent with DX10 and DX11, but Train Simulator remains a DX9 game.

Certainly in my case I see no improvement at all by specifying AA within the nVidia Driver (via nVidia Inspector). All I am seeing is the effect of the significant resolution increase. However, if I forget about the nVidia Driver AA and use the in-game MSAAx8 in conjunction with a DSR resolution, then we are in business, a very obvious improvement.

Do you actually see a difference in the scene if you disable the nVidia Driver specified AA vs having it enabled whilst the in-game AA is set to "None"?

Cheers.

So I've been mucking about with this for a while.

For whatever reason I had not previously been able to get DSR to work, possibly my previous GPU a GTX 690 did not support it. Now, using the GTX 980 Ti 's, and some of the tips from your document Peter, I have been able to get this working well.

I have settled on a DSR factor of 3x, which on my setup gives a rather odd resolution of 4434x2771. Using the in-game AA of MSAAx8 and Anisotropic Filtering of 8x, I get the smoothest display I have ever seen in TS20xx, even better than the SSAA options provided by the program, and better still, the 2D map display works correctly. The system can maintain a solid 30fps and the GPU usage is only about 30% to 40% on both GPU's.

Thanks for heading me in this direction Peter, although I remain skeptical about using the nVidia Driver based AA as I saw no benefit with that at all, no doubt due to the deferred rendering I mentioned above.

Cheers, and thanks.

Having recently upgraded to a 1.5 GB GTX 580 (and run into the '9' map corruption which didn't affect my previous GTX 260, at least at 1x2 SSAA ) I've played with both DSR at 2x (in both directions; 1680x1050 => 3360x2100) and with the in-game 2x2 SSAA (which I believe to be equivalent?).

The DSR seemed significantly heavier on GPU usage; and I found a bug with DSR whereby after Alt+Tabbing to desktop and back a few times, the mouse cursor became offset from its click position, so using the HUD controls (which I do quite a lot with steam loco brakes) became a bit challenging!

Without DSR, I've also found that the NVCP 32x CSAA also has absolutely no visible effect on reducing 'jaggies', and that appears to be the highest AA available to me.

In conclusion, I'm continuing to fight with Windows 10 to let me keep the 350.12 drivers, and using in-game 2x2 SSAA.

JustRight
Excellent points.
I get no benefit using MFAA in TS2016 instead of using AA settings in NVI.
However every PC and every video card is different and it may well be that different settings will work on different rigs.
My prime aim was to get rid of the AA Map corruption by using DSR from the card instead of SSAA in TS2016 and still get a reasonable picture at smooth frame rates. Yes I knew about deferred shading and only recently changed my mind about DSR working in TS2016 - in my case it seems to work as it should.

By using the video card to set AA and eliminating AA in TS2016 I was hoping that the reduced load on the sim would end up with a smoother display, and it did in my case. I do get a reasonable display quality, but possibly not as good as 3 x3 SSAA in TS 2016, 32xs and 8 x SGSS in NVI.

I guess that I was trying to give a base where simmers could then change specs or see if they actually saw any improvement? In this case one size does not fit all!

You can easily see if the settings in NVI affect TS2016 - in my case if I choose an AA-Setting of 32x CSAA in NVI TS will not display anything - it just loads to the blank opening screen. Usually too if you use any SSAA setting in NVI and MFAA in TS2016 you will get multiple images displayed. Other NVI AA settings will stop TS2016 loading.

Thanks again for the useful observations - I'll revisit the settings again and see if I can improve things.
Regards
pH

In Nvidia control panel turn Antialising FXAA to on which overrides the TS ones and that eliminates the 2D map corruption. Don't have to do anything else in the settings if you don't want too. I have adjusted the settings to suit my preferences for playing TS2016 and are quite happy with. Don't ask me which ones that I have adjusted as I cannot remember.