Direct comparison - head to head

[sniper297]

Well, that's why I attached this ; https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/attach...2&d=1285374686

So anyone else can try Whitefish yard full of cars on their systems.

As for my system, with the 8500GT and latest drivers I doubt it's the video card, most likely culprit is that cheap SigmaTel sound chip poking along while the CPUs and 8500GT wait for it to finish processing sound files. Gonna be a while before I have enough spare buckazoids for an actual sound card, so for now I gotta live with the bottleneck.

[OTTODAD]

Anyone else can try this Whitefish yard full of cars on their systems.

Had to recreate your activity, it's path being broken in my default USA2 Shelby.

As mentioned before, shadow edges are jagged and shadows are flickering:
www.otto-wipfel.co.uk/video/orts-shadows.wmv

ORTS frame rates being better, it having far less to do scenery wise !

O t t o

[conrail1]

most likely culprit is that cheap SigmaTel sound chip poking along while the CPUs and 8500GT wait for it to finish processing sound files.

What's the condition of the OS? It is a lot more than just inadequate hardware that causes performance issues with games.

I've got “SigmaTel” and “Realtek” on-board sound in addition to high end PCI-e X-Fi sound cards in all of the systems I've tested OpenRails with. With today's hardware sound card's have very little impact on performance.

ORTS frame rates being better, it having far less to do scenery wise !

It isn't just the fact that OpenRails doesn't have “distant mountains” to contend with that is responsible for the better performance. OpenRails even in it's development stage is still taking advantage of system resources (GPU and CPU) better than MSTS could ever dream of.

I'll be happy to prove this with a very in-depth comparison if you'd like.

[OTTODAD]

Here is another comparison, save me having to look at that default MSTS USA2 Marias-Pass route again.

ORTS has far less to do. No distant mountains, terrain textures missing, no working signalling, no steam from the Big-Boys, etc.

O t t o

[mnjrr]

I do like the coloring of OR in that last shot if I do say so myself.

[OTTODAD]

I do like the coloring of OR in that last shot if I do say so myself.

Yes, so do I, Walter.

Something else I noticed just now looking at these 2 screenshots.

The shadows in the ORTS scene are longer, the time being high noon in Summer ?

O t t o

[Bananarama]

ORTS has far less to do. No distant mountains, terrain textures missing, no working signalling, no steam from the Big-Boys, etc.

Minor issues aside, those items, every one of them, are nothing in the big scheme of things comparred to what's going on right before your eyes. I would expect that one of the biggest hits to either version is dynamic shadows - ORTS is doing double duty to render more objects over that of default MSTS, and doing so with superior fidelity.

[sniper297]

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

Are you sure you have summer and not spring? MSTS explore route defaults to summer, ORTS explore defaults to spring. If that IS spring the shadows are probably about right, I note your latitude says 48.4, which is almost 4 degrees north of where I am - the shadows here point north and don't get very short except in July.

[OTTODAD]

Are you sure you have summer and not spring?

You and I have known each other since the early days of MSTS and have graduated working with it a long time ago, teaching others !

How can you have loose consists in Explore Route mode unless you use Trainstore, which I don't ?

The scenes I have shown are in Summer, Clear at 12:00 noon and like I have mentioned the shadows are animated although not a leaf moves on the trees:

https://www.otto-wipfel.co.uk/video/...s-gsx-noon.wmv

O t t o

[longiron]

I have mentioned the shadows are animated although not a leaf moves on the trees:
O t t o

Otto,
The slight changes (some have described it as movement/flickering) to the shadow has to do with how video cards compute the Variance Shadow Mask in real time. Your video card averages certain values every frame and those averages change due to minute variations in the algorithm, especially for the edges of shadows. Its not related to tree shape file.

The scenes I have shown are in Summer, Clear at 12:00 noon
Otto

Open Rails calculates the sun position in the sky for the long and lat of the route and the season. That determines the length of the shadow. The OR team will not be spending a lot of time trying to figure out how MSTS calculates the sun position and try to duplicate it, since Open Rails does it the most realistic way we know how.
chrisvw

[OTTODAD]

Your video card averages certain values every frame and those averages change due to minute variations in the algorithm, especially for the edges of shadows.

Is there a way to turn that off with my ATI HD4870 Catalyst ?

With long trains like the one I have used in my tests all it's shadows do that and the shadow edges look like this below. Can that be improved by the card's driver settings ?

O t t o

[longiron]

Is there a way to turn that off with my ATI HD4870 Catalyst ?

With long trains like the one I have used in my tests all it's shadows do that and the shadow edges look like this below. Can that be improved by the card's driver settings ?

O t t o

Short answer - No. No change to your video card setting will change anything, it's just how video cards work with Variance Shadow Masks. At some point in the future, we will look at improvements, but nothing in the near future as there's a lot of other work to do.

[OTTODAD]

At some point in the future, we will look at improvements, but nothing in the near future as there's a lot of other work to do.

Yes, cosmetics are less important !

O t t o

[sniper297]

The angle of the cosine of the hypotenuse of the tangent times pi squared...

Well, I don't have a dog in this fight since I generally turn off shadows in any game that has that setting, for better framerates. Math makes my head hurt so I'm not gonna even try to calculate what the exact angle should be, but even at 48 degrees north if it's the summer solstice (June 20 to 22 in the northern hemisphere, varies because of leap year) them shadows should be shorter.

Tropic of Cancer is about 23 degrees north of the equator, one degree of latitude is about 69 miles, so the sun tracks directly over a point 1,587 miles north of the equator at the summer solstice. 48 degrees is 3,312 miles, 1,725 miles difference. Best I recall the sun varies in distance (we're in an elliptical orbit) around 92,000,000 miles away, if I could remember the formula for triangles I could calculate what the actual shadow angle should be, but I'll leave that to somebody else while I go pop some aspirin for this headache.

[OTTODAD]

Thanks for reminding me, Jim !

I have shadows turned off in MSTS to get better frame rates and in any case forests, my routes have many of, not casting them anyway.

The ORTS Explore Route Summer at 12:00 noon shows shadows correctly, but activities using the same season and time do not.

Also noticed just now that my GSX Kosmos Environments do not show in ORTS.

O t t o