Slow OR, not sure why, exactly...

[ebnertra000]

I have been checking out OR 1.2 last night, and while I like what I see, it is still very slow on my system (as was my old version, 1.1.1). For a reference, I did a test run with a KiHa 31 on the Hisatsu Route (something most likely everyone has). The highest frame rate I got was 11. If I tried this in MSTS I'd probably get 30-40. Now it would seem that I have plenty of computing power, both in processing and graphics, but I still have this issue. Attached is the log for that run, so maybe someone can crack the code?

Regard,
Travis
OpenRailsLog.txt

[qballbandit]

Hi Travis,
I can't "crack" the code for you, but I can say your video card is older than mine, a 5770, and I still have intermittent issues on my Quad Core 3.4GHz system.
I get that my limitations are mostly on the ATI 5770 with 2gig memory. That said, on my system, which also gets lower Frame rates than MSTS, I can run an activity one day and get mid to upper 20's - which is fine for me with this system. The next day, I can run the same activity, and I can't get past 18, which becomes noticeably choppy. What the variable is, is beyond me. I go through the same pre-session routine religiously. I have everything "shutdown" except for essential Windows and Graphic services/programs. Memory cleared and defragged before running OR. (approx. 3.5 gig available prior to firing up OR)
So, I don't know what causes the inconsistent performance, with any unchanged activity, on any given day.
I must say, I only ran 1.2 once, last night, and had a "good" night at 28 fps.

One of the things I have done in the options/video menu's was back off "viewing distance" to 2000.
Another, and I'll go back and forth on this, is turning off/on "dynamic shadows".
Then in the options/experimental tab, I lowered the "level of detail bias" to 85 from 100. I can't tell what the difference visually is, but thought maybe it would help my performance.

[ossie]

Hi Travis.... I can't help with the log file either but those framerates must be incredibly frustrating for you to have to deal with. I've run ORTS on two machines now, the first time head to head with MSTS and on both occasions ORTS has comfortably outshone MSTS in terms of "grunt". As a class one fan, the majority of what I run is big trains and where MSTS generally got the staggers, ORTS handles the job very comfortably.

Picking up on Neil's comment about dynamic shadows, that is probably the first thing I'd look at if you don't already have it turned off. If I'm just running a player train, I'll use dynamic shadows and even with a consist around the 150 mark, the framerate never gets problematic. For an activity with a lot of big trains though, I turn it off as performance starts to lag. I'm no expert... generally I've just fiddled around seeing what various settings do, but other things you could have a look at would be unchecking the "extend object maximum viewing distance to horizon" box in the experimental tab and also in that menu drop the level of detail bias, although like Neil, I'm not entirely sure what that does in terms of effect.

Other things I've messed around with that might help would be reducing the viewing distance, distant mountains, world object density and possibly even your window size and daylight brightness (all under the video tab). Again, I'm no expert on whether any/all of that will help you, but if you dial it all right down and still have unplayable framerates, it probably then comes down to your hardware.

Perhaps we can have a week about system with our computers? For as well as this one runs ORTS for me, MSTS is rubbish. It does get frustrating when you have one going nicely and the other not. Good luck!

[geepster775]

I have a relatively fresh system, and the biggest frame eater I have discovered is the experimental option of Extend Object Maximum Viewing Distance to the Horizon, especially on highly grassed routes that are sorta the new norm. Shadows alone are nowhere near as bad at eating frames as that one, when its combined with shadows.

[ossie]

I was nodding my head in agreement when I read your comment about the "extend object" option geepster as I've had mine disabled for quite a while. Just for the hell of it, I did a very quick test with my train (3 locos, 112 double stacked wells, 1 loco, eot) stationary in the yard at Winslow and got some surprising results.

Dynamic shadows off, extend object not selected, 60 FPS with camera not moving, down to 57 FPS with camera moving.
Dynamic shadows on, extend object not selected, 60 FPS with camera not moving, down to 44 FPS with camera moving.
Dynamic shadows on, extend object selected, 57 FPS with camera not moving, down to 52 FPS with camera moving!!

Using that last setting on a modified route with more buildings, trees, grass etc than Seligman has, my FPS dropped to 33 but then bounced back into the low 40's. I assumed that having the train moving with that setting would drop the framerate even more, but bouncing between cameras 2 & 3, it actually jumped back into the 50's, and was sitting at 57/58 in camera 4 mode. Notwithstanding that experience suggests I could do the same thing tomorrow and get a different result, I'm not sure what to make of that as those numbers are consistent with what I'd get for that train running with no dynamic shadows and the extend object option off. I would absolutely have expected things to be worse with them both in play as there's one particular route I have that is virtually unplayable with those 2 both enabled and maybe that's been an influence in turning the extend object option off for all routes. It will be worth some more experimentation on other routes.

[qballbandit]

Yep, that's an option I never thought to turn off, since I already had my max view at 2000. Trying this one today.

[ebnertra000]

I don't think I have that option checked, but I could take a look. The viewing distance was limited just as in MSTS, so I doubt it (I'm away from home right now). I could try turning off shadows to see if it helps. Otherwise, yeah, the hardware would probably be the culprit. Which is too bad, because OR looks so great. On the bright side, MSTS has been running like a top on this system...knock on wood

[wwhall]

Hard drive speed may also be an issue. A couple of months ago I changed from a relatively small (read: inadequate size) solid state drive to a much larger hybrid hard drive. My frame rates dropped considerably in OR. My frame rates are still acceptable most of time, though running a 125 car stack train in a snow storm, using Andrey Tucker Wells' high poly stack cars, run with lots of AI, made things a little choppy at times. I'm sure that MSTS would have simply crashed trying to run the same activity.

By the way, weather will slow things down--rain and snow, especially. You might also try checking the "Load night textures only when needed" box, then run an activity during the day or night, checking the frame rates. Then run it at dusk or dawn (when the sim is forced to load both day and night textures) and see if the frame rates are lower.

If I had it to do over again, I would have spent the extra money to buy a 2TB SSD instead of the hybrid drive. With that, I think that OR would have blazed.

[geepster775]

What I think that Extend option does, is keeps all the objects in the scene at their max LOD, so all the scenery items never shift into LOD saving mode. Grasses that have LODs designed to make them pop up at 500m or so are at their max LOD all the time and visible all the way to the horizon. Railcars like SLI's higher poly ones that often "lose their wheels" to a LOD shift when the camera zooms way in on them also suddenly "keep their wheels" to the horizon. You end up eating resources for higher details far away that often times your eyes cannot distinguish. I think the option was added as a quick and dirty way around having to alter LOD values for lots of individual shapes (avoiding more of that dreaded individual file 'tinkering'). Personally, I keep it off and alter the LODs on the select items to my preference. If I like grass to the horizon, I alter just the grass LODs in the shape, and avoid full LOD overhead (and their added shadows) on all the other building structures in the scene.

[mikeebb]

I'm going to side with the hardware camp based on personal experience. Tweaking the settings can help on the margins, but with frame rates like you're describing major improvements will require hardware upgrades. MSTS works well in much lower-spec machines than OR.

Assuming you have a reasonable CPU (at least dual-core with hyperthread, such as i5, but preferably full quad-core), and enough RAM (4GB is adequate, but 6-8 is better to handle the background stuff that's always around without a lot of virtual memory disk-swapping), the things to look at are, in order: video and disk.

Video: that old ATI card won't cut it. I had a similar issue with a HD4340 (I think, working from hazy memory). In an otherwise adequate machine, it limited frame rate in OR to low 20s. Replacing it with a bottom-end modern nVidia (750ti; 1050/1050ti is the current equivalent) with 2GB immediately increased frame rates to near and sometimes over 100. Yes, I know, that's invisible, and I currently have the frame rate limited to the monitor refresh rate (75 for an old CRT).

Disk: I still got some pauses and hiccups after doing the video. Eventually, I got a 480GB SSD (cheap Patriot model) to use as the system disk for Windows 10, and installed the working train sims there too. That has practically eliminated the pauses. Yes, you can run OK from a hard disk (7200 rpm preferred), but even a cheap SSD is faster. I just keep all my real data on the hard disk (with external backups), and pull an image of the SSD to the hard disk every couple of months so if the SSD dies (I don't completely trust them) it's easy to restore to a new one.

Interestingly, I also have OR on an old Asus laptop (i5, 4G RAM, typical laptop hard disk, Intel graphics). My frame rates never exceed 20. But the game is still very playable and smooth, unlike MSTS on the same machine or ORTS with the old ATI card. So frame rate isn't everything, though switching is a little iffy with the laptop due to reaction time to commands - better for just mainline running.

EDIT: I haven't tried the extend option; afraid that it'll crash my frame rates by trying to render all that detail to the horizon. OTOH, if you're doing screenshots for display, it's helpful to have that option to make the scene more realistic-looking.

[ebnertra000]

I've been thinking about trying to update the video card. As for RAM, I'm limited to 2 (or maybe 3)GB since I'm on Win 7-32 bit, though that could be changed to 64-bit to allow for more. I don't think the hard drive gives me much trouble, but I'm used to some studdering since I basically grew up with MSTS. And the CPU is a dual-core 2.7GHz, not sure if that's for one or both, most likely one. I'm also not sure about the hyperthread, either

[mikeebb]

As for the CPU: is it i3, i5, or AMD? i3 and most AMD don't have hyperthreading (which makes one core look to Windows like 2). Most i5 chips do have it. Also, don't worry about clock speed per core; it's always specified as per chip, not per core, even if some very modern chips can fiddle with that internally (you'd never notice it). If you check System Information in Windows, it'll tell you what your processor is and how many physical and logical cores. And yes, 2.7 GHz is adequate (though not great) for ORTS.

EDIT: if your CPU is older than i3/i5 (i.e. Core2 or Pentium something), then unless it was really high-end at the time (and your specs tell me it wouldn't be) it's not worth trying to do more with it. Replace the computer if that's the case.

As for memory: 2GB of RAM is pretty minimal. Even with 32-bit Windows, it requires a lot of virtual memory "swapping" to disk, which slows everything down. You *could* run 64-bit windows with 2GB, but it would be swapping all the time and run like a pig. With 64-bit, you can use the "LAA-enabled" version of Open Rails which allows access to the full 4GB of virtual address space available for 32-bit programs - helpful for routes or equipment with a lot of detail. So if you can, even with 32-bit Windows, I'd bump the RAM up to at least 4GB (the last 1/2 GB or so won't be usable). If you can go to 6 or 8GB, get 64-bit Windows; you'll be happier with everything you do if you have that, not just OR.

Note: you've probably heard about a 2GB limit for 32-bit Windows. That's not a physical limit on the operating system (which can use up to 3 1/2 or so). That's a Microsoft limit on the VIRTUAL address space normally allocated to programs in a 32-bit operating system. You can have multiple programs using "2 GB" running at the same time; they're just swapped out to disk when you're not using them in the foreground. If your computer is physically limited to 2 GB, it must be very old or something like my little tablet, and instead of upgrading things you should replace the whole computer.

As for video: if you don't want to simply replace your computer with something newer, do the video upgrade first; it gives the biggest improvement. If you want to keep to a low budget, consider the bottom end nVidias (1050 or 1050 ti; around $100-150) or AMD (R460 or, if you have the power supply and budget for it, R470; around $125-200). Tom's rates the R470 as best bang for the buck, but it is near the high end of the cost range and requires a power supply with a 6-pin video power connector.

As for disk: a good, standard hard disk with plenty of space, 7200 rpm, will work fine if you get the RAM up to where there's not a lot of virtual memory swapping going on - IOW 4GB or more. A good SATA3 (backward compatible to SATA2) 1TB hard disk, 7200 RPM, is well under $100 almost everywhere; I've gotten 2TB for under $100, and seen 3 or even 4 for not much over. No need to get a fancy solid state disk (SSD) right away, though as an eventual upgrade (they're still expensive, though much more affordable than even just a year or 2 ago) it's worth doing.