Revision as of 17:43, 4 May 2015

Overview

Trainz is an open toolset that allows users to create large seamless worlds and populate that world with many thousands of scenery objects, trees, track splines, lakes and much more. The new "E2" game engine that powers Trainz: A New Era is designed to take advantage of modern hardware, utilizing multiple core architecture, and DirectX 11 GPUs. However, if you are operating in a dense environment, DO NOT attempt to run with all sliders at maximum unless you are prepared to see performance drop.

The performance options are provided to help end-users wuickly tune the routes they are driving to match their hardware. As a general rule, we have set the sliders so that people with a high-end graphics card can turn one or more of the options to the highest setting. We DO NOT expect anyone to be able to run with all settings maxed out, and we do expect many people to reduce the sliders below the "default" settings.

Please remember that within any open-ended world building environment, the ability to add "more and more" always exists and at some point, even the highest spec machine CAN be brought to it's knees (just keep adding more content till the route slows down). In addition, many of the commonly used assets are not optimized and can include thousands of extra polygons, multiple textures and poor level of detail. This all adds unnecessarily to the scene overhead. In the future we will be providing additional in-game tools to help content creators identify these types of issues in order to assist in optimizing routes built in T:ANE.

Introducing "Quickdraw" (Shift + and Shift -)

T:ANE introduces two new hotkeys nicknamed "Quickdraw" to quickly change your draw distance at any time in Driver or Surveyor.

Shift and "_/-" will reduce your terrain draw distance, thereby increasing performance Shift and "+/=" will increase terrain draw distance thereby providing increased scenery, tree and track draw distance as well.

Hold Shift and tap "_/-" to reduce the draw distance by 500m. Default is 3,500 so four taps reduces you to the minimum 1,500m range.

Please note that while the distance changes immediately, the scenery takes time to load in or out of the scene, so performance may take up to 30 seconds to change noticeably.

Quick Start Guide to Performance Tuning

There are two areas where users can change their settings. We suggest to follow this approach:

• If your frame rate is too low (moving around the world feels sluggish) click on Main Menu > Settings > Video Settings
• Reduce all the sliders to the left hand side then close the window for the changes to take effect.
• Note: If you have changed a slider that requires a game restart, a message will appear. This means you need to close all T:ANE windows and restart the game.
• Remember to allow the system time to apply the changes before determining if further adjustments are required
• If you are happy with the performance, begin increasing the various sliders one at a time to see which ones affect your hardware the most (and close the window each time to make the change)
• You can also change some settings using Launcher > Trainz Settings > Performance
• Begin by turning the Water Quality to Low, then by turning Shadows to OFF
• You need to close the Setting Window, the game window and the Launcher, then restart T:ANE for these out of game settings to take effect.

Note some of these options require a "shader recompile" and so the "Starting T:ANE" dialog may appear for a minute or so during this operation.

In-Game Settings

Access the in-game Video Settings by clicking on Main Menu > Settings > Video Settings

Draw Distance

This slider provides tuning to adjust the terrain draw distance from 1,500m to 15,000m. This slider works in conjunction with the Scenery Detail Slider with each asset type drawn out to a specific percentage of the total draw distance. As the draw distance extends, so does the range of the scenery objects, trees, track splines, other splines and particle effects.

This setting will have the greatest impact on your frame rate and can be controlled by the "Quickdraw" hotkeys (Shift "-" and Shift "+").

Shadow Quality

There are four options available. Off, Low, High and Ultra. A game restart is currently required before a shadow settings change will take effect. Most users will see a reasonable difference in performance at each level of shadows. Some people will prefer a higher shadow setting and shorter draw distances, while others will choose the opposite approach. Higher quality shadows increase the visual resolution and draw distance of the shadow effects, introduce shadows from additional object types, and reduce precision errors in the shadow rendering.

Shadow Resolution

A higher resolution shadow map will increase the resolution of the shadows. This does not affect performance greatly, but every little bit can help.

Scenery Detail

This slider works in conjunction with the Draw Distance slider. This slider determines how far each asset type will draw, so for example, Low setting will reduce the maximum scenery draw distance to 40% of the maximum terrain draw distance. By adjusting both Draw Distance and Scenery Detail you can find a balance between frame rates and scene detail.

Tree Detail

This slider adjusts the Level of Detail distance setting for the speedtrees and also turns on the shadow effect for billboards at Ultra setting (this setting is not yet implemented). To increase the far limit that trees appear, adjust either the terrain draw distance and/or scenery detail slider.

Texture Detail

This setting adjusts the size of the textures that are loaded. Lower values use less VRAM and may reduce loading times. Changing the setting requires a game restart to take effect.

Water Quality

Low turns off reflection completely High turn on reflections for most asset types Ultra improves the quality of reflections and also adds reflections of particle effects and coronas.

Post-Processing

The impact of Post-processing upon performance depends your screen resolution and your graphics card. Performance does not relate directly to scene size or density therefore with lower spec hardware you may see a large drop in performance even on a lightly populated route.

Process objects behind camera

Leaving this option unticked, ensures objects behind your current camera facing are removed from the scene (and therefore affecting the sound and shadows from these objects as well). Unticked, this option can improve your frame rate depending on what is in the scene in front and behind you, and also what limits your CPU and GPU are currently hitting. If you rotate your camera quickly to look behind you, objects may pop into view. Ticking the box will draw all objects in the scene. Close the Setting window to apply the change.

NOTE: A message appears if a game restart is required after changing any of these options.

Launcher Settings

Access the performance and graphics settings by clicking Launcher > Trainz Settings > Performance. Note that you will need to close the Settings dialog for most options to take effect, and close the Launcher to restart tane.exe for other options. If in doubt, restart the game.

In addition to some of the options described above, the Launcher Settings also provide the following additional options:

Antialiasing

This setting improves the accuracy of "jagged edges" (by supersampling to smooth out the pixelation) and can also reduce the stipple/dither effect that is sometimes visible on transparencies. Depending on your graphics card, this setting generally has minimal impact with reasonably good results at 4x.

Use Texture Streaming

This option helps improve performance by reducing initial loading times and reducing VRAM usage. It can result in a slight delay while higher resolution textures are streamed in when moving about the scene or changing camera views.

Use PhysX simulation

This option is required for certain functions such as particle effect collisions (and at a later date, other physics related features). It generally has a small impact on performance, but can have a massive effect on performance in some scenarios (where there are lots of particle effects in a scene).

What settings should I use for my video card?

Here are some suggested settings based upon our experience:

Lower end card (e.g. GT 560): Either all sliders at minimum and shadows on low then use Ctrl "+" to increase draw distance when you have good frame rates, or Scenery and tree detail at normal and shadows off then use Ctrl "+" as required.

Medium Card (e.g. GTX 760) Either default settings (Draw 3,500m, Scenery normal and tree detail at normal and shadows on), or Turn shadows off and increase your draw distance, and turn post-processing to high.

Higher end card (e.g. GTX 980) Select one or two sliders at maximum and shadows on high or ultra then use Ctrl "+" to increase draw distance when you have good frame rates, or

The default settings are set for our recommended hardware specification (Quad core processor, 2GB DX11 graphics and 8GB RAM). If you have a low end graphics card and/or 4GB RAM we suggest you adjust the performance settings down.

We do not expect anyone to set all sliders to the highest level and see smooth framerates - there options are made available so that you can set things to your preferred style (perhaps a longer draw distance with shadows off vs a shorter draw distance with shadows on Ultra).

How do I find my system specifications?

In the Start Menu > Search Programs and Files > type in "dxdiag". The report provides your CPU and GPU (on the Display tab). We suggest that you type this information into a search engine and add the word "benchmark" in your search. One of the many links will show you how your card compares to other hardware.