Just what do we have to get an acknowledgement.

[ozinoz]

Just what do we have to do as a user group to even get an acknowledgement from RSC that there is an issue??

I am almost at the point of meltdown. I had a quad core 2.6ghz 4G RAM and an older 8600GT card - not great I know, but I only use the PC for photoshop work scanning slides and touching up pics etc and RW2, which I could run in the low 20fps and I was happy. Then came along RW3. With the much heralded TSX turned on, it was chugging along at about 3fps, so time for an upgrade.

Couldn't justify a full pc upgrade, so opted for the GPU - went for a well above spec GTX560TI. Then needed up upgrade the power supply to 500w - so nearly $500 later and the things runs less well than a shagged moose! Best I can get with the TSX turned on, even on medium to low settings is 14fps, (which looks more like 8-10 but apparently 14fps is as low as it will report) and in the TSX off RW2 mode - the same. The sim in either version is now unplayable. It is more like a fast Powerpoint presentation than an animation. (Would dearly love to know the spec of the machine that provided the eye candy for the movie used to promote the new version - it would have to be Deep Blue) You read the board posts and there are plenty in a similar position with good spec machines well in excess of the stated minimum specs and it wont run and all we get from RSC is touchy feely stuff about how marvellous the new DLC will be for yet more $$, with no acknowledgement of the ongoing issues or indication if there is even a fix in the pipeline.

There really needs to be some recourse - it is unreasonable to expect users to have to spend $2000 every time they update the software on new hardware and even then that is no guarantee of useability. Just am glad I didn't throw any more good money after bad on HSC when I updated to RW3. Was going to, but I missed the sale and thought I would get it up and running and then buy this week.

Rant over... :)

[dick8299]

Thanks for the heads up, I was going to spend $400 for a 560 card and a new power supply. I guess now I won't spend the money and will wait until some resolution from RSC. At least my system is performing well in the legacy mode.

[Kali]

Apparently what you have to do is email support. Everyone with an issue needs to send an individual mail, because more spam = bigger issue.

Oddly I had a hard time at first, discovered some TSX sweetspot with medium shadows... switched high ql shadows on and didn't notice the difference. I think all that's happened was me updating drivers. Must be quite awkward to fix something like that when even the end-user doesn't know what changed...

[eyein12]

Thanks for the heads up, I was going to spend $400 for a 560 card and a new power supply. I guess now I won't spend the money and will wait until some resolution from RSC. At least my system is performing well in the legacy mode.

$400 for a 560? ouch dude. i would recommend searching around for a better price. I got a 550ti for 120.00 and a 500W power supply for 30.00 and It has made a tremendous difference. now all i need is a quad n mobo and i'm set! for 400 bucks you can get a qc, power, mobo, 8gb ddr3 ram and a 550 card.

just saying! Shop around!

Ian

[Bothersome]

You think a 560 is just slightly better than a 550? Is a 570 just slightly better than a 560?

Answer is no. They are a LOT better.

A 470 is better than a 550. It's just the way Nvidia does their numbering. the 470 is a forth generation card. But the 70 means it has the fastest chips. An 80 is better by having slightly more memory and more video output process circuits.

Still, a 560TI should be quite smooth in the display.

I use GTX-470 and I have about 60fps (limited) at 1920x1080 with 4x AA on most places. There is also some slow scripting going on in RW3 that slows the whole FPS rate down too. This can be easily seen in playing the scenarios that come with Horseshoe Curve. Some areas, even with other trains coming are smooth as glass while other areas slow to 10 FPS or so. Seemingly for no reason that I can tell.

Now, I'm using an Asus CrossFire V Formula motherboard with an FX-6100 (6 core) clocked at 3.6 GHz per core and 16 Gig is RAM clocked at 1.8 GHz to help get me to that smooth frame rate. So it's not all in the video card. The game must first calculate out all that is happening in the game frame by frame then send that to the video card to have it rendered. So you need a least dual core and high speed graphics to get there. And fast memory to hold the textures and be delivered to the video card very fast when it is needed.

Of course there are many more finer details in how best to get all this done. But that's gist of it.

You can reduce some things down somewhat to get faster frame rates. Like turning shadows off. Since they aren't really accurate and have very short draw distances, You turn down details a bit and turn down draw distance will help a lot. But everything you do to make it faster eventually takes away the reason you play it in first place.

Sometimes the fix is to just get off that wallet and put some real money on the project.

[ozinoz]

Sometimes the fix is to just get off that wallet and put some real money on the project.

To be honest, I think the $500+ I have already sunk into this enough. I understand what you are saying, but just where does it end? Every 12-18 months when a new update comes out its another $2000+ to play the thing, not counting DLC along the way. While I have enjoyed my RW time, its a matter of just drawing the line. What RW have done in this update is neither revolutionary or unique; just poorly executed and the annoying thing is the deafening silence on their part, apart from self promoting upcoming DLC for yet more $. Paul Jackson seemed quite proud of the fact that they have teams of route builders both in the UK and India working on Donner Pass, but seemingly oblivious to the fact that there are those out there, myself included, that have no ability to even poke about in the RW2 legacy version due to what ever has happened within this update. Good luck to those that can play, those that are getting good results on average spec machines, but there is something in there crippling it for lots of others.

[Bothersome]

I totally feel for ya and understand where you are coming from.

At some point we all have to draw that line. It does seem they spend way more time making more DLC than fixing what they already made.

Like when are they ever going to fix the SD-70ACe side walk board from disappearing from looking out of the cab windows?

Things like that make me reluctant to buy more DLC. If they won't take the time to fix the bugs in our current DLC what makes me think they will get the new DLC fixed anytime soon if they find bugs there?

The problem for us is that they get to pass the collection hat around again with new content instead of spending time fixing the old content.

But as far as computer hardware is concerned. That responsibility rests with us. Personally I feel that too many game companies just want to put something in the box to get some revenue booked. They don't take the time to build the game right. They just want it soon. So they buy a graphics engine and development package that allows them to throw something together quickly without taking the time to see what package would best serve that particular type game.

I don't know how far down RW3 goes into using .NET for their coding platform. But I suspect it is one of the main reasons why we need a Cray Supercomputer to even play this game smoothly. If they'd have wrote it in C it would be way more optimized but would take a lot more experts to get it done in time (say within the next decade (think Duke Nukem Forever)).

Maybe one day .NET will be fast enough while still allowing real speed when it's needed. But .NET is made for business apps and games come a distance 10th.

I guess in the end we have to decide how much money we want to put into this computer entertainment system. Myself, I don't care to watch much TV anymore. So instead of staring at the walls, I put my money in other things like RC helicopters and Golf Clubs and computer equipment. The computer is actually getting most of my attention on my time off from work. Because it is the cheapest entertainment, by far, for hours per dollar. With thousands of hours played each year on the computer, my entertainment bill can still be lower than 1 dollar per hour. TV is still cheaper if you don't have satellite or cable but even with or without those, the entertainment gained or experienced on TV is very poor in my opinion. So poor in fact. I'd rather just go back to work and at least make some more money. Then I can buy more computer equipment/games/DLC and have more quality entertainment.

The only real reason why we buy games like RW2/3 is because there wasn't anything better for train simulators at the time. Yea, I have those other simulators too. Each have a few features I like, but all are WAY behind the curve on performance.

[Kali]

Do you know the game engine is written in .NET, as opposed to the launcher ( which is a perfectly acceptable use of .NET, as far as there is one )? and how did you come across this info?

Until your reputation is bad enough that fixing DLC will get you more sales, there's no economic sense in spending any more time on an existing product. I suspect the only time you're going to get little fixes done is when someone does it in their own time because it's annoyed them enough, and then persuades someone to test it in their own time, and then slips it into a steam update. This doesn't make you or me feel any better, but all you can do is stop buying DLC in that case.

It's different for what you might call professional hobbyists who can spend as long as they like on something and then sell it, they're not paying for their offices with the proceeds. Whether a company like RSC ought to be held to the same standards as someone who's spent a year on a crazily detailed model of a town is an interesting debate. They wouldn't have had the platform to build the town without RSC... would you rather RW was a subscription service with free occasional DLC instead?

[Bothersome]

As I said above, I don't know how far RW3 goes down into .NET.

But I know that if I had the ability to code a train simulator in a decent language like C or C++, then writing the launcher would be child's play. Why clutter up my program with .NET if I knew how to write it in C?

Another reason I suspect that most of the game is in .NET is because of the performance we see from it. If you were to see the performance and beauty of games like Test Drive Unlimited 2 and Need for Speed Shift, you'd see this game is running some very slow code. Test Drive Unlimited 2 is so beautiful in graphics, you almost think your looking out the window. And, it's smooth as glass in motion too. Like 60 frames per second on my machine with highest detail. It is like night and day. And the graphics has everything this game ever dreamed of. If you've never seen it, you have no frame of reference to compare for what's possible in video games.

[PapaXpress]

But I know that if I had the ability to code a train simulator in a decent language like C or C++, then writing the launcher would be child's play. Why clutter up my program with .NET if I knew how to write it in C?.

<warning rant start>

Dear Sir,

I am a Software Engineer and have experience coding in C/C++/C# among many other languages (have you tried Perl?). Writing a launcher in C# is much easier than writing it in C++ (even if you use MFC like I do _daily_). If you do not know how to write in a programming language which is compiled (like C/C++) please refrain from commenting on the pros and cons between languages.

As a matter of fact the launch is in .Net and the game engine is in VC 7.1 (that's C++)

If you are curious how I came about that I invite you to read:
http://thegradecrossing.blogspot.com/20 ... asure.html

If you like I can share my feelings and opinion on both C++ and C# based on my experience working with both. I will say this, you can make a C# application that is efficient and elegant just as easily that you can make a bloated and resource leaking application in C++ (in fact its easier to do this in C++ since you have access directly to the memory (ie: heap)).

Thank you

</warning rant start>

[SMMDigital]

C++, C#, .net, Cobal, Fortran, Swahilli... It doesn't matter what language it's written in, TS2012 game performance is a turd compared to other mainstream game titles available today. I'm glad to see that other users are taking notice and having the courage to speak out about it.

Are you listening RailSimulator? All the DLC in the world isn't going to make a whit of difference to us if they run at 3FPS.

[PapaXpress]

C++, C#, .net, Cobal, Fortran, Swahilli... It doesn't matter what language it's written in, TS2012 game performance is a turd compared to other mainstream game titles available today. I'm glad to see that other users are taking notice and having the courage to speak out about it.

Are you listening RailSimulator? All the DLC in the world isn't going to make a whit of difference to us if they run at 3FPS.

This I can agree with.

[g_nash]

Do you know the game engine is written in .NET, as opposed to the launcher ( which is a perfectly acceptable use of .NET, as far as there is one )? and how did you come across this info?

Until your reputation is bad enough that fixing DLC will get you more sales, there's no economic sense in spending any more time on an existing product. I suspect the only time you're going to get little fixes done is when someone does it in their own time because it's annoyed them enough, and then persuades someone to test it in their own time, and then slips it into a steam update. This doesn't make you or me feel any better, but all you can do is stop buying DLC in that case.

** It's different for what you might call professional hobbyists who can spend as long as they like on something and then sell it, they're not paying for their offices with the proceeds.Whether a company like RSC ought to be held to the same standards as someone who's spent a year on a crazily detailed model of a town is an interesting debate. They wouldn't have had the platform to build the town without RSC... would you rather RW was a subscription service with free occasional DLC instead?

** > That would be Freelance Artist

[Kali]

have you tried Perl?

I used to do that daily too, it's a fun thing to write in especially when the other half of the day is writing C. I wish RW's scripting was in perl! given that it's not hard to write extensions in C-related languages to perl ( even if writing the interfacing bit is a really horrible experience ) you could even write a high performance game in it. There's quite a few games that do this with Python - EVE Online is one I can think of.

As for writing a launcher in C++ vs a RAD environment like .NET, given the choice there's no chance it's going to be C++.

If you've got horrible RW3 performance, mail RSC support. You can rant all you want on here but they've already said "we're not listening as a company unless you mail support".

[SMMDigital]

E-mail them or not, they're not listening as a company. Five years of flawed RailSimulator- Railworks programs without any hint of a final solution in sight prove that.