Inquiring About Performance.

[TheOofertaffy]

This is mainly an inquiry post aimed at the devs, however i'm sure other people might know things or two about the topic.

So in-game performance. Whilst it isn't terrible. It still is kind of iffy. I'm running a R7 3700X, 32gb of DDR4 3600 MHz RAM with a 4060ti 8GB model, and even on medium settings, at the harbor which is where it is the worst, I only get around 20-40 FPS. Potentially less if i've assembled a fairly large train, and when i wreck a HAZMAT train, I get around the 10-20 FPS range when looking at the hotspot of the derailment. It's playable, but only just so. Pre-simulator update I managed 90+ FPS on the highest settings possible which is bounds and leaps better than i get now, and while i do get 45+ FPS in simulator anywhere other than the harbor and larger stations (Ie: MF, SM, GF) It's still a 50% reduction in FPS, which in gaming terms is really not good. The performance isn't as bad as say cities skylines 2, but it's like 40% the way there. If anyone has the "Optimal settings" for a rig like mine, feel free to post it in the comments.

Now for the main part of the thread which is a question aimed at the devs. Do you developers know of and/or plan on further optimizing the game? The texture streaming seemed to only help minimally with FPS gains in derail valley, and I also wonder if there is anything other you guys can do to further optimize the game? If so, is it possible you could explain what needs optimizing, and when we may see some better improvements? Or will the game just be left as is, and let technology catch up to offset the 50/50 performance.

Thanks for reading this thread, and if altfuture replies thank you as well!

[PlutoProductions]

That kind of performance does seem a little low for the hardware, might be best to try simple things like a clean install (especially if you ran mods in the past), and chase down the spare files steam might not uninstall. Also making sure GPU drivers, CPU Chipset drivers, and potentially Motherboard Bios are up to date. (The Mobo is a little risky to update so only do that with proper equipment nearby)

[TheOofertaffy]

So i went and updated my chipset and GPU drivers, gpu was only like 2 behind. Idk when the last version the chipset was on (Probably from a couple years ago). But it didn't really change performance at all. And i doubt that it's to do with the game and needing a clean install, seeing as I did a clean install for the simulator update. And since simulator i've never installed mods, so nothing there would be causing and issue. I just think it's to do with poor optimization or the devs just added to much visual aspects that the game/engine can't handle well. Or maybe it's to do with physics. Maybe physics and powertrain simulations cause the game to slow down potentially and need further optimizations. Guess we will have to await a response from the devs or future updates.

[Shoddyfrog]

My system specs and performance:

CPU i5 - 7400
GPU GTX 1070
16 gb RAM

1080 resolution. Frames capped to 60.
All game graphics settings on 'High'

FPS is between 50-60 everywhere in all weathers. Don't see any difference in frame rate when I am at the harbour compared to anywhere else on the map myself.

[PlutoProductions]

I've ran Pre and Post Simulator on a 5800x - 3070 and a 7700x - 7900xt, both average 75fps and sometimes get a max of 100fps. There was not really any performance hit across the update.

Edit: both on max settings at 1440p.

[Talkingpeanut]

R5 2600
GTX1070
16GB RAM

I get a smooth 30-50fps at 1080p Ultra, with rare, short dips toward 20. It didn't noticeably change with Simulator and, imo, 30fps on my rig is entirely reasonable for a slow-paced, intense-simulation train game. Unless you're doing this in VR or 4K I'd expect a PC with your components to do better, it's hard to identify the problem with just that information

As for what the devs are doing, they're apparently approaching an 'optimisation plateau' in Unity 2019 - the features that make DV unique are themselves uniquely taxing on performance. However they've said a few times that performance is something they're working on constantly in parallel with other features: Build 94 had RAM improvements in the title of its news post, B95 VRAM, B96 introduced texture streaming, and next update will apparently have more small improvements. Eventually they'll switch to a newer Unity also, allowing the potential for more improvements and alternative technologies such as upscaling

[Xenoblast]

ryzen 7 6800h
AMD rx6650m
32 GB of ram

game is utterly unplayable at night, like i get 2 fps at most
during the day, it is better but still makes me feel sick, around 20-40 fps depending on the location. this is at the low graphics settings, a couple settings are turned up that dont make much of a difference.

this is in VR running at somewhere around 4000x2000 on quest 2.

I have mentioned the night performance several times on the discord and have been ignored everytime. Very disappointed with the direction the game is going, adding useless things like farm animals while shutting out half of its players because they dont care to optimize the game. And also they are making the game worse for VR players and better for desktop players, but this game should be a VR game first and foremost.

this is all after the simulator update btw, it ran much better before.

[Primus]

i510600K
RTX3070
32 GB RAM
On a 1920x1080 monitor.

My frames are locked at 60 FPS at all times. Very rarely, I drop down to low 50s for very short durations but overall, performance is great.

[JuggernautOfWar]

Has your performance improved at all with the release of the new update yesterday? The patch log says some systems can experience up to 30% better performance depending on hardware configuration.

[TheOofertaffy]

Originally posted by JuggernautOfWar:

Has your performance improved at all with the release of the new update yesterday? The patch log says some systems can experience up to 30% better performance depending on hardware configuration.

It did seem to improve in certain situations. Especially in the harbor.

[Altfuture]

Hi everyone, here's some info that I hope will be helpful.

Let's get the differences between Overhauled and Simulator out of the way first. When we were closing in to the Simulator launch date, careful performance measurements were made between the two updates, both internally and among the beta testers. The results were mostly that there's insignificant difference between the two.

This is because of two reasons - firstly, Overhauled prematurely featured some graphics elements that would only ever start getting used in Simulator, but were already impacting performance in their full capacity before the update. Secondly, the new features added in Simulator have been made with meticulous focus on making them performant, and together with optimization of what Overhauled already had, the net result was the almost unchanged performance.

Now, what did change in the meantime, is that screens (both VR and PC) got higher resolution, so a lot of people render significantly more pixels than in the past. For example, 4k resolution has 8 times more pixels to render than HD, which has a notable impact on performance.

Simulator did have graphics-related issues, but not exactly performance related. Video RAM usage was too high, which didn't really affect FPS, but rather contributed to stuttering and crashes on some systems. This was resolved with texture streaming in the meantime. On top of that, with each small update we've further optimized all the low hanging fruit when it comes to GPU and CPU usage.

With the just recently launched B98 we've made the most significant GPU and CPU optimizations since Simulator launch, however, as Talkingpeanut said, we are also reaching the plateau when it comes to optimization with the current tech.

This is why, going forward and behind the scenes, we're starting to lift the project to a newer version of the game engine (which isn't trivial, because a lot of custom solutions, both ours and off-the-shelf, need to be adapted and rewritten too). with the aim of overcoming certain bottlenecks and further improving performance. This could take many months, and even years.

All that said, there's one more significant improvement that will be made soon. Recently, we've discovered a particular issue with lit lanterns, fireboxes and cab lights being super taxing on performance if several of them are on screen while Ultra graphics preset is chosen. The issue manifests by significantly hindering performance, dropping as much as 50 FPS, if several such lights exist in your camera frustum at once. This can happen even if the lights are far away or hidden - a common example being having 3-4 lit lanterns in a Lost & Found shed somewhere, without being directly visible.

That particular issue turned out to be rather complex to fix for B98, but it will be fixed in the next build. Until then if you turn off the lanterns in L&F and the cab lights of locomotives you don't use, you could potentially experience a significant performance improvement at certain locations.

Finally, someone mentioned powertrain simulations. Those have negligible performance impact, nothing to worry about.

This turned out a bit lengthy, but hopefully somewhat informative. Here's hoping that the B99 fix will have a worthwhile impact until the eventual engine upgrade.