Railworks America

I was wondering what this is "Draws" when in the route editor.
I am perplexed by removing certain assets in my Donner East Redo, that result in the draws going up not down. Rock Face lofts seem to help keep the draws lower.
I am presuming lower is better?

One of the puzzling things, is that the draws go up, but I swear the areas I've been working on are actually smoother than the original route when driving through them.

Draws are calls to load an object, usually referred to as "draw calls". When an object loads, say a building with one material with two textures assigned (diffuse and occlusion or bump map), the sim will use three draws to load that object - one for the mesh, and one for each texture assigned to that object (materials may or may not be important). If that same building has two materials, but the second material uses the same textures, but with different parameters applied (for example: transparency), then only one additional draw call is used (the second material).

One object - one material with one texture = 2~3 draw calls
One object - one material with two textures = 3~4 draw calls
One object- two materials with two of the same textures each = 4~5 draw calls
One object with two materials and two different textures for each = 5~7 draw calls

Performance is subject to the type of objects in the scene rather than the number of actual draw calls. Lofts are the most expensive (scenery and track), as they use an additional database to house and load them. These are followed by scenery objects containing alphas, complex materials (those with .fx shaders), and finally regular objects with simple materials applied. The numbers in the editor are really unnecessary (overall), however.

Confused?

Confused.... somewhat.
I think the answer is that, I may actually be getting better performance despite some areas having more draws.
I'm limiting the 3D trees and shrubs to areas close to the track and using 2D "The Hills Have Eyes" type at least a couple of hundred feet from track.
I'm also avoiding asset blocks most of the time, to get a larger of variety of trees and shrubs in an area.
Thanks for the answer Marc.