Legacy Mode

[paulz6]

The fact is, GPU load *is* higher in RW3 without TSX, than it was in RW2. If it isn't the bloom filter, what is it?

Would this be the reason some of us are in fact having trouble in legacy mode where we didn't in RW2. Suddenly are poor old graphics cards are being asked to do more work than they used to?!!

Sorry for the "numpty" question but I am not what you would call an expert on such matters!!

Higher draw distance in RW3 legacy mode than RW2 perhaps?

[partyspiritz]

Higher draw distance in RW3 legacy mode than RW2 perhaps?

Not forgeting that it has an orange tint and the texturs are lighter and its slower



Regards



John

[Jimdriver]

Hello Peter/theorganist,

I've been testing my setup and suggest you try this. Your processor is a little slower than mine, but not massively behind.

When you start the first program for TS2012, go to the settings. Make sure TSX is off of course. Set the Basic settings to Low (slider at bottom will be way over to the left). Select Full Screen and Texture Filtering to Bilinear. Probably the most useful section for you here is the Screen resolution. Mine works ok at 1440 x 900, but you could go lower to make up for the older processor. Maybe start at the lowest and work your way up?

Start Train Simulator proper and go to the Settings in this part of the program.

Set Shadows to Off. Make sure Bloom, Depth of Field and Procedural Flora are not ticked. Turn off particle effects too. Set Scenery to 10, you really need this and is one thing not to sacrifice. I have everything else at High - you could try medium.

With the Autumn Leaves scenario, this gives me frame rates in the low 20's. High 20's out in the countryside. The frame rate drop is there, but not too bad and passes much quicker than with TSX on. How does this work for you?
Best regards,

Jim

[theorganist]

Hi

Thanks a lot for that will give it a try. Just verifying the game files at the moment.

Thanks again,
Peter.

[ChrisBarnes]

Not sure what has been already said, but I reckon this might spark a little interest. This orange tinge I have seen in lots of screenshots, I never see it, admittedly I haven't exactly tested thoroughly but otherwise all my distant hills are as green as the ground below the camera. I have draw distance detail setting on lowest, if people wish to try and get the same results. Also, the rubber banding is pretty bad, to extent that the mouse even shows it, which is a first to me, but I've put that down to the new features such as cab sway as putting more work on the CPU, and when I post my little laptop's specs, I can garantee you it isn't the least bit surprising:

OS: Windows Vista Basic 32-Bit
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual-Core T2080@ 1.73Ghz
2Gb of RAM
An ATI Radeon Xpress (not sure which model, but its old)

So, in short its amazing I can play the game at all.

Kind regards
Chris

[theorganist]

Hi,

Well I have defragged my computer,verified the Cache twice, cleared the Cache and have set everything to the lowest possible settings. I still can't get WCML North to load I just get a blank screen or the vague outlines of tracks and the overhead line. Still having trouble with parts of Paddington - Oxford route if I load a scenario in the London area.

It is a little dissappointing as we were supposed to be able to run Legacy mode in the same way we could run RW2.

I will contact support but I do not really see what they can do about it!!

I do have a backup of RW2 may have install that!

Peter.

[RSBen]

Hi,

Well I have defragged my computer,verified the Cache twice, cleared the Cache and have set everything to the lowest possible settings. I still can't get WCML North to load I just get a blank screen or the vague outlines of tracks and the overhead line. Still having trouble with parts of Paddington - Oxford route if I load a scenario in the London area.

It is a little dissappointing as we were supposed to be able to run Legacy mode in the same way we could run RW2.

I will contact support but I do not really see what they can do about it!!

I do have a backup of RW2 may have install that!

Peter.

What we can do about it depends on what info you can give us. So far, I see you have a X1650 and XP SP3. Any other info will help, e.g

Settings in the launch screen
Settings in game
What route / scenario and under what conditions
Screenshots

The more information you can provide and email to support, the better the chance of it being fixed.

Forums are a difficult place to find bugs people have reported, due to a general lack of info provided ("It doesn't work!" doesn't really help ) so always email support when you have an issue with as much detail as possible. And always send the crash dump if you get a crash!

Thanks,
Ben

[RSBen]

The 8500GT is indeed a rather weak GPU. Until the Adaptive Bloom bug is fixed, why not try turning down the screen resolution to reduce the load on it?

I'm not so sure what you're seeing is bloom. I can say with 100% certainty that the bloom post processing effect is turned off in legacy, looking at the code and testing it. What you're likely seeing is a trick with mip mapping to give the effect of light glow at long distances. Post a screenshot of what you see, so I can verify this.

Well, here goes. These are from my main PC with the settings adjusted accordingly. I reused the diorama from the graphics settings FAQ - while setting that up, I simply could not find any difference between Adaptive Bloom being on or off.

RailWorksProc2 2011-10-10 03-11-13-33.png

This is probably the most revealing one. The headlamp of the 47 is clearly glowing over a much wider area than it's lens. Also, the Adaptive Multisampling bug still seems to be there if you look at the 166's cab wall.

Adaptive anti-aliasing should always be turned off. It's not a bug, it's the graphics card drivers trying to override the way the game engine works.

RailWorksProc2 2011-10-10 03-10-51-58.png

But if I zoom in to the 47, the glow disappears. So whatever it is, it's not dependent only on distance.

RailWorksProc2 2011-10-10 03-11-48-31.png

The same type of glow appears on the 166's main headlamp.

RailWorksProc2 2011-10-10 03-29-59-67.png

And this one is with TSX *on* but Adaptive Bloom *off*. The F7 headlamp's glow is most definitely soft around the edges. With TSX off, this looks totally different with hard edges.

All of the above situations are what I first expected Adaptive Bloom to be used for, so I looked there first to find any difference between having bloom on or off - since I needed screenshots to demonstrate the difference to others. I eventually gave up.

Yes, this isn't adaptive bloom. The 47 and 166 use the mip map trick to give a glow effect - this has been used on a few models since RW1, and signals in particular to make them more visible when the camera is far away / zoomed out.

The are no post processing effects enabled in legacy at all.

The F7 uses a new light glow shader that will only glow under TSX, and doesn't require manual editing of mip maps to fake the glow.

There's a number of reasons you could find RW3 slower in legacy than RW2. Just a simple setting like having MSAA x8 (when it was previously x4 in RW) could have a significant difference - especially on low - mid range cards. Graphically, nothing was added to legacy for it to perform any slower. In fact, quite the opposite. Certain areas of code that overlap with the TSX engine were optimised to perform better under TSX, so if anything, RW3 legacy should perform somewhat higher under the same settings.

I say should, but if you're finding that's really not the case, could you confirm your exact settings of RW2 and RW3 in the startup window and in game. Also, the framerate given by shift + z in game currently does not report true framerate in RW3 due to a recent bug fix for something else. Use something like FRAPS or another tool in the meantime to get the average framerate in both versions.

Thanks,
Ben

[Kromaatikse]

So as an aside, with TSX on, where should I look to see bloom effects that are actually caused by the bloom filter?

Going back to running with TSX off, I'm reasonably confident that I can show a difference in performance between RW2 and RW3 on at least one of my older machines. Your point about the internal frame counter is noted however, so I will have to install FRAPS on my test machine as well as my main PC. This will also make taking screenshots from it that much easier.

[BobLatimer]

I've just sent the following to Support:

I have seen the opinion expressed several times that TS2012 in Legacy mode should run as well as or better than RW2. Based on my own testing, I cannot agree that it does.

I have run tests on two machines, using the start of the default “Swift and Delightful” scenario on the default Bath route as a benchmark. I am using Dxtory to measure the frame rate.

The two machines are:

Machine 1 Core2Duo 2.67 Ghz, 2 Gb RAM, 8600GT 512Mb graphics, Audigy 2 Platinum EX sound, Windows XP Home 32 Bit.

Machine 2 i7 quad core @ 3.05 Ghz, 8 Gb RAM, 2 x ATI HD6870 1Gb in Crossfire mode, Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 sound, Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit.

For the TS1012 tests I am setting the launcher on Low and the in-game settings on Low with no further tweaks.

For the RW2 tests I am running the launcher with 0 anti-aliasing and the in-game settings with everything on High except Water Quality which is on Highest, Scenery Detail is 10 and HD and LD Shadows and PF are ticked.

On both machines and both simulators, the EAX box is ticked in the launcher.

The graphics cards are both set to Application Controlled.

The Core2Duo is running full screen at 1024x768, the i7 is running full screen at 1920x1080.

The results are as follows:
Machine 1
TS2012 Low/Low
TSX Off 65
TSX On 15
RW2 64

Machine 2
TS2012 Low/Low
TSX Off 115
TSX On 86
RW2 125

Machine 2
TS2012 High/High
TSX Off 106
TSX On 58

As you can see, on the Core2Duo the TS2012 Legacy performance and the RW2 performance are about the same. However they are significantly different on the i7 and the TS2012 is slower.

The other big difference is that on the i7 (I have reported this before), the sounds are smooth running RW2 but are choppy and actually cut out completeley when running TS2012 in Legacy mode.

Bob Latimer.

[partyspiritz]

Bob I do agree with you

The Bacup Branch was started in rail simulator and was modified for each of the updates. It has it own unique buildings and locos. In RW2 it runs and looks beautiful. Some of you have seen what it looks like in RW3.

In legacy mode the brightness and contrast have be turned up and it has this orange tint to it and makes it look like its from space.

It could have been possible to have let us keep RW2 until the bugs had been ironed out then we could have updated

As it is now the Bacup Branch is a dead route in legacy mode


Regards


John

[RSderek]

John, can you show me an image/screen shot of this orange tint you talk about please.
It sounds like the base colour once the terrain textures have mipped out or the fog, but I do not know till you show me.

cheers
d

[partyspiritz]

This is one of them I will find the others

Click Me

Regards


John

[partyspiritz]

Hear is a better one

Click Me

Click Me

There are more and it is not just me there are others


Regards


John

[chrisiveson]

Well I have one test PC that won't run RW3 correctly in legacy mode but will run RW2 fine with good F.P.S..
Pentium D 3.2 Ghz. 3 Gb. DDR 2 RAM & ATI X850XT with 512 Mb. RAM.
It won't run TSX because the card doesn't support pixel shading, ( but that's neither here nor there and I can live with that. )
But when I try to run RW3 in legacy mode I get horrible white triangles flashing all over the screen.
This doesn't happen with RW2 and I've tried running with the same settings and also tried all other settings within RW3.
( I might add, the graphics card drivers are bang up to date. )
I've yet to decide if RW3 in legacy mode is better or worse than RW2 on my other PC's.


Chris.