Revision as of 13:57, 17 March 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.

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. In addition, many of the assets available can include thousands of extra polygons, multiple textures and poor level of detail, adding unnecessarily to the scene overhead. We will be providing additional tools to help content creators identify these types of issues in order to assist in optimizing routes built in T:ANE.

In Version 1 of T:ANE we have provided a series of performance options that enable end-users to tune the routes they are driving to match their hardware. These pages are designed to give end-users an overview of which options are available and how they affect performance.

We will also be adding information to this page based upon performance testing from our beta testers to indicate expected performance with different hardware configurations. It is likely they certain configurations under-perform what we expect to see in certain circumstances and we will be updating our engine to further optimize performance over time. With a route like Kickstarter County, we expect users with a GTX980 to run with all sliders on max settings. However with higher density routes, we expect users to turn down certain settings to ensure a smooth frame rate.

Frame rates can be measured by using the Developer > Show Profiler option.

In-Game 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.

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 the shadow effects at Ultra setting (this shadow setting not yet implemented). The actual tree draw distance is governed by the terrain draw distance and scenery detail sliders.

Texture Detail

This setting requires a game restart to take effect.

Post-Processing

The effect of Post-processing upon performance depends more upon your graphics card than anything else. The impact 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 light map.

Launcher > Trainz Settings > Performance

Shadow Quality

There are three options available. Off, Low and High. A game restart is currently required to update the shaders. 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.

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.

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.

Antialiasing

This setting improves the accuracy of "jagged edges", thereby smoothing out the pixelation. 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 but can result in a slight delay while higher resolution textures are streamed in to the scene.

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.

Process objects behind camera

This option removes objects from behind your current camera facing. This can improve your frame rate depending on what is in the scene in front of you and behind you and what limits your CPU and GPU are currently hitting. If you rotate your camera quickly to look behind you, then objects may pop into view. Ticking the box will draw the objects behind you. Close the Setting window to apply the change.

What settings should I use for my video card?

To be updated...

Based upon feedback from our beta testers, this section will detail the expected performance using various different settings with various hardware configurations.