The fight against low FPS, route builders, assets per tile

[imnew]

Hi guys,

............................................................. Warning ( I might be too early on reporting this, havent done extensive testing but.... ) Warning

.................................................................................... !! These findings are not confirmed !!

Im building the Conrail / Indiana Harbor Belt lines out of Chicago, see viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4160 for information on the route. The route is at the top so to speak when it comes to assets per tile, 800 -1000 assets on some tiles. Having been busy building the route, not runnning it, i decided to try out some scenarios this weekend to check fps. Trying hard to keep it as proto as i can, running long trains will really push the graphics engine to its knees.

I was running a 110 car coal train, fps where locked at 29, when i entered an area where the assets where 900, the graphics engine kinda " ran home to its mama " displaying 14fps I went into the editor and removed some assets so that the count where 860 assets, fired up the scenario and by a miracle frames stayed at 29 fps, phew

The point im trying to make is this my fellow routebuilders: If you wish to run long trains, pass through a small yard and have a meet with a long AI train on a very populated tile, keep that in mind when you are designing your route. TS2012 counts your train as assets per tile, in other words, it counts every car as an asset... So in my scenario, 110 cars on a tile with 900 assets TS2012 counts as 1010 assets on that current tile, going over the maximum by 10 cars/assets.

Example: Your tile has 780 assets, on that tile you can run two long trains, one train with for example 110 cars and the other train 109 cars. That will give the total of 999 assets on that tile.

Final note:

When building your route, try to keep you assets to a maximum of 750-800 assets per tile. This will make it possible for you to run long trains, and have room to meet an AI train without dropping your fps too much.

If this is old news, then please let me know and the thread will dissapear. I would like for someone to confirm if my findings are correct though.

Imnew



PC: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3,2ghz Overclocked at 3,7 Ghz
4 Gb Ram
2 x Kingston Hyperx SSD 120 gb
Evga GTX 570 Superclocked edition

[artimrj]

Thats not quite accurate. While you are placing rolling stock in the scenario, the object count is in the lower left corner. Rolling stock is usually 3 objects and an engine is 4 or 5 objects in one. So you 109 car train is well over 300 objects.

[imnew]

Thats not quite accurate. While you are placing rolling stock in the scenario, the object count is in the lower left corner. Rolling stock is usually 3 objects and an engine is 4 or 5 objects in one. So you 109 car train is well over 300 objects.

Wow, did not know it was that "asset intensive". Thanks for clearing that up . By the way, do we know what the object tile limit is before " 14fps safe mode" kicks in? Has this ever been revealed by Railworks HQ ?

[micaelcorleone]

Wow, did not know it was that "asset intensive". Thanks for clearing that up . By the way, do we know what the object tile limit is before " 14fps safe mode" kicks in? Has this ever been revealed by Railworks HQ ?

Didn't they say long, long ago in the times of RW2 that they suggest an asset limit of 2000 per tile?

[artimrj]

Limit is 2000 but 1000 per tile is recommended according to old wiki. However some of the P&LE and All aboard routes have well over 2000 and some tiles are 3000. They take their toll too.

[imnew]

Ok, thanks for the help guys. Will try to keep my assets to 800 and no more. Seems on my setup that any more than that will have the TS2012 graphics engine reduce itself to 14fps safe mode.

[Hawk]

I'm guessing that it might have to do a little with the assets themselves and how poly heavy they might be.

[SMMDigital]

Some areas on the NSAND have 1300-1400 objects per tile. There is no compromise in these areas. Any fewer assets and the tiles look like a small town instead of a large city. 800 assets seems quite low to me, being that the recommended high asset (object) count for MSTS was 500.

Keep in mind that the asset quality counts as well. Say for instance you are in an industrial area that has a lot of high-poly count assets, such as tanks, pipes, and lots of details. Just a couple hundred of these can have the same effect as a thousand poly tile.

[SMMDigital]

Additional thought...

There was only a passing reference to this before RW3 was released, but i'm wondering how trees used in block asset affect frame rates. The block may contain a thousand trees, but its only counted as one asset. So if you have 800 assets, and 1 - 1000 tree asset block, is this counted by the game as 801 assets, or is the frame rate aftected by 1,801 objects?

[artimrj]

I have not noticed any difference with asset block trees. The only thing is they pop in and out of view. Sometimes they take a long time to come in to view also. But the frame rates do not seem to be effected.

[imnew]

Some areas on the NSAND have 1300-1400 objects per tile. There is no compromise in these areas. Any fewer assets and the tiles look like a small town instead of a large city. 800 assets seems quite low to me, being that the recommended high asset (object) count for MSTS was 500.

Keep in mind that the asset quality counts as well. Say for instance you are in an industrial area that has a lot of high-poly count assets, such as tanks, pipes, and lots of details. Just a couple hundred of these can have the same effect as a thousand poly tile.

Hm, i take you are not experiencing the "14fps safe mode" ? Whenever i run a train through a tile with 1000 assets, it drops to 14fps.. Then when i move out of the tile to a less populated one, the fps shoot upwards towards the 29fps mark... I have to run more tests. So many strange things going on in Railworks

[imnew]

I'm guessing that it might have to do a little with the assets themselves and how poly heavy they might be.

Yup, seems like that is the case. Strange things ... oh well, back to route building

[SMMDigital]

As far as I can tell, 14fps is not a "safe mode" - it is simply the lower limit of what Railworks frame counter will display. If you run FRAPs, you will see the fps go lower than 14. And yes, I have experienced 14fps many times, especially in the Debutts section of the AND route. But, I will say that a better graphics card (or two) improves frame rates in dense asset areas.

Also, you have to lay a little fault in this with poor game optimization. I've run tests in dense asset areas where the frame rate was hitting 14, but the processors and gpus weren't even close to being maxed out. If the beta propaganda is to be believed, we may have improvments in this area next year. Probably just a couple of days before December 21st.

[artimrj]

So you mean the Mayans and Hopies predicted Railworks would be flawless 12/21/12?

[imnew]

So you mean the Mayans and Hopies predicted Railworks would be flawless 12/21/12?

good one