Low FPS

[TrainsTH]

Trying to figure out if I'm having an issue with the game or something with my hardware.
Just recently upgraded my GPU to a RTX 4070 and at best I'm getting 20 FPS with an average of around 10 FPS.
Intel i7-8750H
32 GB RAM
2 TB SSD
Windows 11 Pro
Any insight it appreciated!

[TheOofertaffy]

I have a 4060TI 8GB model, and I usually get 40-60 FPS when i'm not in an area with a bunch of rail cars, however, when i'm at an interchange, and there is more than 10 cars including locomotives, it can and will drop down under 30 FPS and the worst i've seen it being around 11 FPS, but only for a second, when all cars are in view. The game needs a lot of work on optimization, however with my current performance, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me at least, because for me it's playable and still very fun. However, as for you, it seems a low for sure, you sure you are getting those FPS's consistenly? or are those just the lows? How many rail cars are present in a scene when you are getting those FPS's? Any more information may provide some insight on why you are getting low FPS.

[westbrook16]

Try running a benchmark program like 3dmark or Superposition and compare your results. Check your temps as you're doing it. Do some CPU benches as well. That will at least rule out a hardware issue (or prove that something is wrong). I've not tried to run the game with everything maxed, there's no point with my hardware, but I'm getting 30fps on low with some settings turned down on a 1050 with 8Gb RAM, so your results seem off.

[CMDR Sweeper]

The results would seem about right for what I see my 2080 Ti output as well in terms of performance.
What I have noticed is that the game doesn't seem to have lower poly / detail cars and objects for when they are far away as you can see some weird clear artifacts that usually shows up when you have one quality level of the models.

Basically the GPU penalizes you, it does the full calculation required, which is a big dataset, but discards 70% of the work for it to fit in the zoomed out viewport.
It is a bit complicated, but overall this video covers it a bit more in detail for those interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf27qsQPRLQ

[🚂🚃Taschi🚃🚃]

I can pretty clearly see details like the gladhands vanish when zoomed out so I don't think that's true.

[CMDR Sweeper]

They won't always be visible, but what you see looks very sharp image wise when you see them and the model proportions looks off.
It discards what doesn't fit, but what does fit in the triangle is rendered way too sharply.

There was a combine mod for Farming Simulator 2013 where the author didn't understand LODs and copied his high poly model to all the levels.
Up close it all looked nice, but as you moved away, parts of it stood out and didn't blend correctly into the distance.
It was very obvious what the problem was when you viewed it, guess I may have to go back and snap a few screenshots to show the effect.

[🚂🚃Taschi🚃🚃]

Like I said - some details are clearly removed even while inside the view frustrum, which indicatea that the game does, in fact, have LODs to at least some extent.

[Karlack26]

The next game update will have some fixes, a modder discovered some issues caue crashes and low fps, reported what they found to the dev team so they are on it. you can use the mod until the games next update.
https://www.nexusmods.com/railroader/mods/33?tab=description
see if this helps.

My game was not performing as bad as yours but i was getting low fps and the game just did not feel smooth at all. the fix helped a lot.
Also running the at high or medium settings. detail density is the biggest hit to frames on my end i have it at like 0.7 or 0.,6 tress are at 1.2 draw distance at 1.3

[CMDR Sweeper]

Originally posted by 🚂🚃Taschi🚃🚃:

Like I said - some details are clearly removed even while inside the view frustrum, which indicatea that the game does, in fact, have LODs to at least some extent.

The details vanishing may as well be caused by the GPU discarding work, but the effect you can see if you take a high res image and squeeze it down in size are still there.
GP9 in the game viewed from the rear you can see the shimmering / pop out effect on details such as the handrails and number plates that shouldn't be there as you move away, meaning the LOD models are either not employed or not cut down enough.
Seeing as Unity doesn't offer any automated way of handling the LOD, I expect them to not have employed extra artist time on this field though.

They do however employ LOD's on trees, with two types of trees, but no "imposter" tech for further away viewing for an example.

EDIT: You are partially correct, they do not have other LOD models, that much is correct, but they do hide details on zoom level as a workaround.
It helps in a small amount, however the high amount of triangles in small quadrants are still a massive problem, and the only fix is to spend more artist time and or money.