Railworks America

I would appreciate help getting better running of Railworks.
I have an ATI 6800 video card with 1gb memory GDDR5 and cannot get decent performance using application settings. Actually I have two in the system, but keep one disabled for Railworks which does not seem to like both running.
I have frame rate around 30-35 but get stuttering, poor distance, heaps of moir and shimmering of detail items like step ladders, fences track etc..
Is it the card itself, the card settings or something else. I let railworks decide the settings and it mostly set up to fairly high levels as follows:
TSX enabled
Anti-Aliasing FXAA + 8 X MSAA
Anisotropic X8
Scenery quality highest
Scenery Density 10
View distance Highest
Shadow High
Water Quality High
Procedural Flora ON
Adaptive Bloom ON
Depth of Field ON
Any Suggestions to improve?
Thanks for any assistance offered
Colin R

Turn off Adaptive Bloom and Depth of Field.

Thanks, I will try that.

I tried those settings sadly, I cannot see any difference.
My card settings extracted from Catalyst are:
Anti-Aliasing
Anti-Aliasing Mode - Use application settings
Anti-Aliasing Samples - Use application settings
Filter - Standard
Anti-Aliasing Method - Multisampling
Morphological Filtering - Off
Texture Filtering
Anisotropic Filtering Mode - Use application settings
Anisotropic Filtering Level - Use application settings
Texture Filtering Quality - Standard
Surface Format Optimisation - On
Frame Rate Control
Wait for Vertical Refresh - Off, unless application specifies
OpenGL Triple Buffering - Off
Tessellation
Tessellation Mode - AMD Optimised
Maximum Tessellation Level - AMD Optimised

Note there are no Application Settings in Catalyst Control Display
Hoping for further suggestions.

Well I don't have that level of video card in my laptop, but it is an AMD (ATI). Just look at my signature below for my specs.

I have my settings the same as yours except I have my water turned to the lowest setting because it eats a bit at my framerate and for another reason I'll get to in a minute.

I also have Procedural Flora OFF because it also eats a little at your framerate just to have some track side brush appear and then disappear later. Certainly haven't seen what huge scenery improvement this is supposed to be providing. Totally not worth it IMO.

I have Adaptive Bloom OFF because although it brightens things up a bit, it tends to wash out colors and make them look a bit unnatural.

I have Depth of Field OFF because it doesn't seem to work at all on my setup. I've seen what it's supposed to look like when I tried it on a friend's computer who has an i7 with an Nvidia card. Not sure if this is due to me having an AMD(ATI) graphics card or not...... but it changes nothing on my screen.

I too get the stuttering and shimmering. I''m not sure if the minor stuttering is due to my CPU or GPU.

The shimmering I get I suspect is due to the GPU. It's very annoying, but I've somewhat gotten used to it. Vertical line objects like telephone poles in the distance will have parts of it kinda shimmer in an out of existence as you move.....and stays solid on the screen when it becomes close enough to your train. But a lot of things shimmer in general......in the mid-distance to far distance especially. And water set to the highest settings shimmers really bad, so I keep it low. I'm not sure if it's because I wasn't paying attention before or what.... but the shimmering seems worse in 2013 then it was in 2012. Maybe it was always there and I just now started noticing it. Who knows. Don't have 2012 anymore to test that out. But for some reason it at least SEEMS worse then in the past.

Any people here with ATI cards have NO shimmering problems? And Nvidia owners..... have any of YOU encountered shimmering in the sim?

Some Moire effect on the tracks (especially switches) is pretty much unavoidable. It can be made worse or better based on filtering, but it's always there. I even get it in the sim Run 8 as well. I've seen it reduced for some people when they switch it to TSX-OFF.

At the very least turn the Depth of Field, the Adaptive Bloom and Procedural Flora OFF. They are the most worthless on the list IMO. You USED TO BE able to turn down particle effects and pedestrian counts with sliders to improve frame rates in 2012...... but they took those sliders away in 2013 for some dumb reason and both settings are permanently stuck at their highest settings.

You can mess with overriding the application settings, but I've not had much luck with that on my AMD(ATI) GPU. It's gotten me black skies or psychedelic, kaleidoscope skies as a result on some settings.... but never has seemed to improve anything. So I leave it on application settings.

Not much more to say.

Hello GSkid,
I certainly appreciate the effort you put into ensuring I am informed of your situation, which it seems like mine is less than ideal.
I will certainly try the setting changes you recommend.
It would seem in summary you imply it may be better to get an NVIDIA card, but as I have these two ATI cards for other software which they support perfectly, I might wait until the September update and see if things improve.
Although I know you said you tried overriding the application settings I might research on the ATI support site to see what the settings do as they currently mean nothing to me. If I find anything I will let you know.
Once again, thanks for all your efforts.

The message from GSkid reminds me I have not put in my PC specs so here they are:
Inter i7 920 4 core CPU, 12Gb Memory, Win 7 (64bit) System Disk Seagate Barracuda 1Gb HDD, ASUS Motherboard with AMI Bios V2.5 dated 11/11/09.
Hope that helps those who need to know.

From monitoring a bunch of these conversations over the past year or more it appears as if NVidia cards are way better for Railsim anyway.

Since GSkid asked about Nvidia card owners:
No, never any "shimmering" effects. This is with an Nvidia EVGA GTX670 2Gb card. (I ate noodles for two months to buy this awesome card)
I'm not one to fool with settings. I have all the Nvidia Controls settings at default or application controlled. V Sync is off, which can at times cause screen tearing, but not much after the TS2013 update. Yes, I do get jagged lines at times, no moire patterns tho.

I use the default RW in game graphics settings with detail level at 10, adaptive bloom off, depth of field off, procedural flora off. Water, tho, is on high.

Many discussions about stuttering that don't always point to the GPU being at fault, altho the more VRAM (the RAM on the video card) you have, the less it seems to stutter. I do believe (IMHO of course) stutter has more to do with the sim reading the next tile and loading it from the hard drive. Faster systems with more system RAM, less stutter. Lots of members swear by the new SSD drives for less stutter, in my experience with a 120Gb REVO drive, it just made the game load faster. (*sigh* getting off topic)

I haven't had an ATI card for so many years, I really can't say wht the optimum settings should be. But I would recommend, go back to default, change settings one at a time. And change settings in game then in the ATI CCC. I do remember that ATI cards have Adaptive Anti Aliasing, turn that off.

Thanks for all the input, from research I have done I am getting that deep down feeling of doom . . . and having to fork out for an NVIDIA card. That might take some time. I have tried in game settings with littel positive effect, and most ATI card settings individually with ditto. I guess apart from trying combinations of settings there is nothing else for it but to start saving.
Thanks Guys.

Oh! . . . and arizonachris, the card when installed defaulted to Multisampling but the adaptive setting is there if I wanted it.
Thanks

Well I was at my friend's house last night that has the i7 with an Nvidia card. The processor is an older (released in Nov. 2008) 2.66GHz i7-920 with an Nvidia GT220 (released in late 2009). I did notice some shimmering, but it was much less then I have on my computer. I doubt the 2014 upgrade is gonna fix this. But I still have fun.

I'm gonna see if I can make a video and show what the shimmering looks like on my setup to give you an idea. That's my little chore for tonight.

Well after mush venting, asking myself if I could put up with the current dismal performance and finally borrowing an NVIDIA GTX550ti with 512mg from my work computer I tried it in my RW computer.
The difference was immediately apparent . . . even with that somewhat underpowered card compared to the Radeon . . . so goodbye Radeon 6870 x 2
I have purchased a Gainward Phantom GTX760 with 2gb memory, will be installing it tonight. About US$250
Let you know what frame rate I get and if it fixes most problems (Which the 550Ti did - except moire which was reduced a little but still could be better) But I did not play around with settings just used the defaults.
Thanks again for all the suggestions and help. This community is just so far ahead of the other two forums IMHO.

Well then....scrap the video. Enjoy your new card. Tells us how it works out once you get it.

Render, before installing the new Nvidia drivers, I recommend using Driver sweeper to get rid of all the ATI video stuff. Then clean install the Nvidia's. That 760 is a nice card, that's a good price, too. Can't believe my GTX670 still goes for $400.

Oops, you already installed Nvidia drivers. well if you run into any video problems, do a clean sweep and reinstall.