Frame Rates in Open Rails

[1997BNSF]

Open Rails sounds very interesting to me, and it appears that it raises frame rates. For example, if the average performance is about 32 FPS(which is my average), how many FPS will it increase by?

[lindsayts]

Open Rails sounds very interesting to me, and it appears that it raises frame rates. For example, if the average performance is about 32 FPS(which is my average), how many FPS will it increase by?

Have a look at this thread while this is for a version from some time ago, it still gives some idea of what to expect. Note on the highest spec system the frame rate increase was nearly 10 times.

IMPORTANT Note: this should only be taken as some kind of indication, frame rates depend on alot of diffierent things YMMV.

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?f=324&t=109355

With the current version, V0.7 at the time of writing, turning on dynamic shadodws can slow the sim down quite a bit.

Lindsay

[derekmorton]

It complicated, let start with MSTS:-
Written when video cards were less powerfull that CPU's, so the CPU is doing most of the work.

OR on the other hand offloads all it can to the Video card which is now 10 times more powerfull that the CPU.

So if you have an old system with a minimal video card, it won't improve much.
If you have a late machine with multi core CPU and big video card, you will get the 10x increase.

[seagoon]

Just to support what Derek has said, I have a dual-core i7 laptop with a dedicated GeForce 525M video card and have seen frame rates in triple-figures (100+) which, under MSTS on exactly the same route running the same activity, have ranged between 12 and 23 fps.

Once OR has the AI acting out their roles coherently then it's goodbye MSTS for me.

Bruce

[smiljacc18]

my two cents...

INTEL CORE I7 980X 3.33GHZ 6 CORE CPU
ASETEK CPU WATER COOLER
KINGSTON 1600MHZ DDR3 12GB
NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX480 1536MB GDDR5
MICROSOFT WINDOWS 7 ULTIMATE 64BIT
SAMSUNG 26" WIDESCREEN
SCREEN RESOLUTION 1920 X 1200

Same here!Frame rates at least tripled(70fps to 300fps),I can run full screen at my native screen resolution instead of in a small window.I tried all the workarounds like the MSTS memory switch,but Open Rails is the answer to my prayers for running MSTS on my PC the way I want it to run.And I mean with all the graphics sliders maxed,with high detail routes like Horsehoe,surfliner 2 and hi detail trainsets like SLI,etc.OR also installed easily.I was sceptical at first and am only familiar with OR v.7,but It worked out fine for me way beyond what ever imagined.Bears out what Derek said!And to add to what Dereck said,I believe OR uses a different game engine- XNA -and the code is now threaded for multicore processors by OR(which is much more effective than just setting afinity).

[1997BNSF]

Whoa........ Very, VERY impressive. I think I'd better get it ASAP. Thanks.

[OTTODAD]

Whoa........ Very, VERY impressive. I think I'd better get it ASAP. Thanks.

Don't waste your money on expensive hardware which will do nothing to improve the graphics quality of any simulator.

That can only be achieved by the programmers using a capable graphics engine and writing appropriate source code to use it all !

O t t o

[lindsayts]

You do not need ultra high end hardware to run OR, for a decent system a 4 core cpu is a must, it would be reasonably safe to say practicly any recent 4 core system will be OK. Avoid inergrated graphics in the motherboard though. These usual share there memory with the main CPU and are slow. For graphics a Invidia gtx 560 board is entirely OK, particularly the Gigabyte Super Over Clocked (Invidia GTX 560 SOC). This particuar system here has one driving and 2560x1600 monitor and the frame rates are entirely OK even on something like the SOB. The SOB is currently the highest object count route I have.

The mother boards I have run OR well on (all using 4 core procesors) are ......

Gigabyte P35 S03 , Radeon 4870
ASUS P5P55DE deluxe, Invidia GTX 460 followed by an radeon 5870 (this MB currently not in use)
Two of ASUS P6X58D premium, Invidia GTX 560 SOC, the other system has a Radeon 5870

I have two systems with the last board, these being I found quite a fast system with OR, being at least 30% faster than the other two boards. Although these boards are currently being superseded by 4 memory channel boards (the X58 chipset being 3 channels) which all sources report as being tested as slower. I found the newer P5P55DE premium no faster than the older P35, inspite of all the clocks being faster, which is currently why its not in use.

[lindsayts]

A note on the 2560x1600 monitor a Samsung 305T, these require quite a bit of GPU power to drive them due to the large number of pixels in the screen. Inspite of this the frame rates produced by the Invidia GTX 560 are good. This monitor in OR is AWESOME, a monitor this size is now way cheaper but would still be out of reach for most people.

[kox]

Avoid inergrated graphics in the motherboard though. These usual share there memory with the main CPU and are slow.

This is true... for intels, but for AMD APUs it isn't. The gpu-s in APUs are pretty good, they usually give as much computing power as a 3-4 years old middle range gpu, or a current lower end video card. I have a radeon 3850 videocard, and with that i can play with every game on high/and highest settings without AA over 30 fps (except railworks's tsx which is a bit slower since it is *...censored...*. The new APUs have more power than that radeon 3850 gpu, however the memory is problem. Discrete cards have much faster memory chips than system ram, and since the integrated gpus using the system ram, that low bandwidth holds back the gpu (for intel igps it isn't true since they are slow anyway so their problem is not the memory but the gpu itself).
So for a pc with discrete videocard, the memory bandwidth no matters at all (buy the cheapest memory) since the cpu don't needs high memory bandwith. But for strong integrated gpu's it is important, as they use system ram, faster ram= more fps. But sadly the won't catch up for a while with discrete video cards, since the memory bandwidht on those are usually over 100 GB/sec, while the fastest system ram in 3 channels, barely reach 25 GB/sec...

[Paul pal]

Any monitor above 1920 x 1080 is way expensive! I would indicate any 24" monitor with this resolution, but a 120Hz one, preferably with 2ms response time. As per the video card, the NVidia 600 series is being launched (already the 680 and the 670) the 660 is following, but if money is high concern, now a 560Ti is a very good one, as Linday said, some are "factory overclocked". If you like Radeon, a 7870 or 7850 could be fine, as said, all coupled to a 4 core proc.

[1997BNSF]

I thought I read somewhere that you need 20 FPS at least to run it.

[lindsayts]

I thought I read somewhere that you need 20 FPS at least to run it.

Its not clear what you are referring to, any game on a pc realy requires a minimum frame rate of around 25 to 30 FPS to be playable, note this depends on a persons persitance of vision, this varies with indivuduals. As most monitors now refresh at 60 FPS this rate is ideal. Anything above that is counterproductive.

[longiron]

This related to an earlier version where the slipping physics calculation got unstable at less the 20FPS. Fixed in v0.7 and improved solution in current development build.

[1997BNSF]

I saw a video with that, very strange. As if the engineer was fighting a grade the hard way.