Nvidia Graphic Card Setting

[Airdale]

If you have an Nvidia Graphics Card in your system, the settings can inhibit the rendering of certain textures. We all know that the wheel surfaces are shiny and have a mirror/chrome texture due to wear. The rails will have the same appearance. This texture should be seen in the simulation but will be seen as a white frosty texture if your settings are not set correctly.

In the next picture, you will see the 'Frosty' look.

The textures rendered correctly will give you a more immersive experience as shown next.

What are the settings involved? You will find them in the F1 screen Graphics Tab. There are two settings. Vertical Sync and Basic MRAO. Both settings need a restart if changed.

The users guide of Run 8 (located in your 'Run8 Train Simulator V2' folder. In the UserGuide folder, you will find a file labeled 'ConfiguringOptions'. This file will explain all the options available.

With regard to the two settings we are discussing, the guide defines

Vertical Sync

Vertical Sync: Attempts to apply vertical sync (vsync) to the game, to match the frame rate to
the monitor's refresh rate to eliminate tearing.
◦ Note 1: This setting is only applied when the game is first started, so a restart is required.
◦ Note 2: Run 8 runs in a borderless windowed mode, not a true fullscreen mode, and many
video cards cannot do VSync in this mode (for example, NVIDIA cards only do true VSync
in fullscreen mode). Therefore, for NVIDIA cards, VSync on will cap the frame rate but not
truly sync the frame rate to monitor.
5
◦ Note 3: As a borderless window, Run 8 is subjected to the same rendering mechanism as the
windows desktop. In windows 7, applying an aero desktop theme will force desktop wide
VSync to be applied. Applying a classic desktop theme will disable desktop wide VSync.
On windows 10, it is not possible to disable desktop wide VSync, so in effect, VSync is
always on. Generally VSync off (in the game or at the windows desktop level) will give a
smooth experience but introduces screen tearing. VSync on will eliminate tearing but
introduce noticeable stuttering when the frame rate of the game is not exactly the same as
the refresh rate of the monitor. For the best possible experience, a freesync (for ATI video
cards) or GSync (for NVIDIA video cards) monitor is recommended.
◦ Note 4: For windows 10 users: Many testers noticed stuttering in the game with windows
10. There are many resources online for fine tuning windows 10 to perform better with
games.

The guide defines Basic MRAO

V2 rolling-stock makes use of special textures that tell the GPU how to render different types of
materials. If you are on a lower-end computer, setting this to On can reduce the memory and GPU
load on your machine. It will apply a simple MRAO to each unit, instead of using the higher-res
specialty MRAO textures on units that have them. NOTE: Changing this setting requires restarting the
sim for it to take effect.

The two settings are displayed in this picture...

These settings should be turned off if you want to show the true texture of the wheel surfaces.

[David]

I was not aware that V-Sync affected the rendering of the MRAO textures. That's good to know