Open Rails is so great

[Davi77]

I've had it for 1 month, and during that time i never touched MSTS (Excluding the editor). Thankyou so much to the OR team for making such a great well-oiled, well designed program

[longiron]

Thank you very much. The Open Rail team appreciates your compliment. We are working hard to impress you with the next release - timing TBD

[seagoon]

I concur with the original poster: OR is a vast improvement - even in its current beta state - over MSTS.

I say this simply because I can run "Horseshoe" and "Feather River" and "Surfliner v2" (to name just three highly-detailed routes) at frame-rates far greater - in some cases more than twice the rate - than I have experienced on my laptop with MSTS.

All credit to you chaps for what you are doing; I look forward to further releases.

BK

[mikephfl]

I agree, the OR team has done an outstanding job. Only reason I don't use it exclusively is the playing of the horn. Isn't very realistic if you can't play a short when coming to a crossing. Hoping this gets updated soon.

[haverfordwest]

Fully concur with all the earned praise that OR is receiving and deserves.

I managed to download the Horseshoe Curve route overnight and had a first run earlier.

Not only is it a superb creation and all credit to Austin.

But running it under OR, it looks as good as anything in RW.

Plus with the commercial trainsims, RW, Trainz & MSTS. I never manage much more than 40fps on any routes ( Geforce 9800GT 512mb ).

I was getting 179fps in places in OR and never lower than 38fps on Horseshoe Curve.

Many thanks to all involved, absolutely superb.

[OTTODAD]

What's with all this obsession with frame rates ?

To me they are the least important aspects in a simulator.

Quality of appearance and realistic functionality is !

ORTS has a while to go before it can better all of what MSTS has already, like distant mountains, better signalling, animations and a lot more, some of that already being in the works.

High Definition US TV frame rates are 30 and that is good enough for train simulators !

Any more and you would not notice any difference.

O t t o

[seagoon]

What's with all this obsession with frame rates ?

To me they are the least important aspects in a simulator.....

To each, his own, Otto. A maxim that has been brought up here many times over the years.
We each seek something for ourselves in any simulation and, whilst I agree with you about realistic functionality, frame-rates play a big part in enabling that realism.

How?
Simply because the better the performance, the more AI can be incorporated into an Activity and the more 'stock can be dispersed in yards and the sim can still run smoothly.
In addition, those who are not equipped with the most recent computer technology can still obtain enjoyment when running the sim on lesser - yet still within minimum spec - equipment.

So that is why the "obsession", as you put it, with frame-rates.
Get it now?

BK

[haverfordwest]

I have made two posts, in the last one i mentioned fps twice, but suddenly i am "obsessed by framerates"
I merely posted the fps for OR as i was suprised at how good they were compared to the commercial train games.
Particularly as my twin Geforce 8800GTX 768mb SLI set up, died on me a month ago.
Which has left me using a second hand Geforce 9800GT 512mb, which i bought for £20.
As seagon so rightly pointed out decent fps is crucial for smooth gameplay, particularly in densly populated routes and where many consists either mobile or static are included in a scenario.

[longiron]

High Definition US TV frame rates are 30 and that is good enough for train simulators ! Any more and you would not notice any difference.

O t t o

Not true, because for train sims there's more to frame rates than just display rates. Most simulators update the physics/camera movement/etc for each calculated frame. The visual effect of only updating the physics 30 times a second is jerky motion in the game because the game is only moving the train every other frame on a 60Hz monitor. One frame the train moves almost 3 feet (1 meter in metric), the next frame everything stands still. Your mind blurs it all together. The ideal minimum frame rate for a game would be to match the refresh rate of the monitor. For that reason, OR can implement VSync if needed.

BK makes another important point. Physics, distant mountains, AI, better signaling and other realism calculations take computer milliseconds to calculate and display. The more headroom (i.e. FPS) OpenRails has today, the more realism we can build into the software tomorrow.

[OTTODAD]

The way I understand it Frame Rates and Refresh Rates refer to how the graphics card displays what on the monitor, being fed graphics pixels by the CPU or GPU.

Watching the BERNINA in ORTS and MSTS on my WIN-7 Professional i5-2500K, nVidia GTX 560Ti computer I can not see any difference, running silky smooth in both, despite a great difference in frame rates.

Like has been said, each to his own and whatever makes them happy !

O t t o

[seagoon]

....
Watching the BERNINA in ORTS and MSTS on my WIN-7 Professional i5-2500K, nVidia GTX 560Ti computer I can not see any difference, running silky smooth in both, despite a great difference in frame rates.

What you you don't seem to grasp, Otto, is that whilst the frame rates in each are providing you with silky-smoothness, you would, as Chris has mentioned (above/below....depending on how you have your thread arranged) be able to have more happening in the Activity under Open Rails than under MSTS before its rate reduced to that of a tortoise.

The best example that I can give is that I cannot run default Activities on Austin Yoder's "Horsehoe Curve" on my laptop under MSTS. It just chugs and reminds me of the frame-rates I used to experience when running the first version of Flight Simulator on a 386 back in the early 1990s.

However, under Open Rails, I am running the default Activities on this route with "silky-smooth" frame-rates. The experience is enormously enjoyable.
Long live the ability to have high frame-rates.

End of debate.

BK

[OTTODAD]

And this is my final comment on the subject of FRAME RATES.

MSTS is using the CPU for processing graphics and unless you have a fast one like my WIN-7 i5-2500K QUAD and a SSD which can supply graphics data faster than a conventional HD then you get stuttering, which has got nothing to do with Frame Rates.

If a laptop has no graphics card and uses an on the MOBO graphics chip then it can not compete with a graphics card like my nVidia GTX 560Ti.

Below are scenes of the Horseshoe Curve running, having modified it to use 3D DB-Tracks and showing distant mountains ORTS can not yet display, which improves it's frame rates.

If you are happy with what you got, GREAT !

O t t o

[seagoon]

And this is my final comment on the subject of FRAME RATES.

......unless you have a fast one like my WIN-7 i5-2500K QUAD and a SSD which can supply graphics data faster than a conventional HD then you get stuttering, which has got nothing to do with Frame Rates.

If a laptop has no graphics card and uses an on the MOBO graphics chip then it can not compete with a graphics card like my nVidia GTX 560Ti.

Look, mate, we aren't having a pissing contest and, fyi, the laptop I use has a separate graphics card/cpu and runs MSTS satisfactorily in most cases.
And we all know that MSTS places the workload onto the main CPU etcetera, etcetera and that frame-rates have nothing to do with stutters, yada-yada-yada.
Those facts have been plastered across the internet for the past decade, at least.

Just for once accept someone else's opinion other than your own, in this case the simple fact that frame-rates DO matter.

BK

[haverfordwest]

Blimey FPS starts WW3, this is even scarier than the Cuban Missile Crisis which i remember very well.

[longiron]

Let's close out this disagreement on the value of FPS. Each has their opinion and it's been made. Please keep the thread on topic.
thanks