correct settings for maximum smoothness no matter what lag

[svmn]

hi there

i found this site by seeking for best settings for transport fever. i dont care about any input or any lag in this game. i want maximum smoothness and minimum stutter / tearing. i read this nice forum all day long but im still very confused about how to choose my settings and i cant even make educated guess.

problem is:
they say dont turn Vsync off with freesync, but in same thread it says freesync dont work with Vsync on. look for tearing line place (wtf its all around the monitor), or where is pre-rendered frames setting in amd settings? its a mess... and what is more confusing, everyone here cares a lot about lag, saying things related to that, but its just more confusing for me as i dont know what information is relevent and what should be ignored...

i just want to see my trains running smooth occasional lags while months/years switches and cpu needs to calculate money for next year, i can live with that.. so please help me how to do correct setup. i can ran game at up to 100fps, but its not smooth at all. it can go down to 30fps in most populated cities at the ind of a game, but if i can lock around 40fps im cool with that..

i have ryzen 1700@3,7ghz / 16gb ram / rx480
i have 75-40hz monitor with freesync ON (extended by CRU to 75-35hz)

in AMD settings:
freesync: ON or AMD optimized ? /whats the difference?
Vsync - ?

in RTSS:
what about frame limiter here?
or should i go straight for scanline sync x/2 ?
i like the idea of halving refresh rate of 75 to 37-38fps with maximum smoothness. and its still in my freesync range. if that even matters..
what needs to be turned on/off not to destroy scanline positive effect?

right now when i turn scanline sync x/2 on, i have framerates around 18fps. and thats waayyy too low and its not smooth anyway and i dont know what im doing wrong....

thank you

[mello]

Not sure about AMD GPU, but if you can set Pre-Rendered Frames to 4 somewhere in the settings, it will give you maximum smoothness.

[Chief Blur Buster]

To max out smoothness if you don't care about lag:
- Disable power management for both CPU and GPU.
- Add more prerendered frames (2, 3 or 4)
- VRR technologies usually work most reliably with VSYNC OFF for game (in-game), with FreeSync+VSYNC ON for Control Panel (AMD Catalyst or NVIDIA CP).
- Ultrahigh mouse DPI with lowered in-game sensitivity. That will make your slowturns much smoother and step-free.

Scanline Sync is only for users who want lower lag. But if you don't care about lag, skip Scanline Sync because it's hard (airplane cockpit), use the metaphorical equivalent of a simpler car dashboard to get your smoothness.

Unfortunately many games won't always work reliably with VRR so also test fixed-Hz VSYNC ON. May need to lower refresh rate (e.g. 75Hz) to the bottom end of your framerate range so that an 80fps-150fps fluctuation is captured by the bottom-end refresh rate. Some games just don't framepace well enough, and there are lot of weak links that prevent VRR from smoothing stutters. In such a situation, sometimes fixed-Hz + VSYNC ON + prerendered frames is much smoother for those particular specific games.

[svmn]

Not sure about AMD GPU, but if you can set Pre-Rendered Frames to 4 somewhere in the settings, it will give you maximum smoothness.

thx for input

it doesnt seems amd has such an option to tweak "somewhere in settings." but i find you can edit registry or change it with RadeonMod software. i edited it in RadeonMod and checked if the registry has chaged in regedit. it seems you can set anything and it creates entry and its value and stays like that in registry, but in game it stutters just like before.. no noticeable input lag even i tried to set value to 9 frames..

right now i got most success with scanline x/2 value 1. everything turned off incl any limiters, freesync, vsync everysync. no tearing, no stutter, but i have only 30fps. best i could do so far for maximum smoothness and my eyes like it so much, they can tolerate those 30fps much more than 60fps teared and stuttered.. i just dont get (e: dont understand) occasional dips to 29fps which produces stutter. like missed vsync. but that game can run around 80fps in tested area... why is this happening?

any tips how i could achieve this at 60hz? seems impossible. with same settings but normal scanline (not x/2) of same value 1, i get stuttery mess, as game cant produce stable 60fps. it goes 50-59 which is wierd, as with riva tuner turned off, i have avg around 70-80fps.. much above 60..

how this can be scientific? it seems so random to me...

[svmn]

To max out smoothness if you don't care about lag:
- Disable power management for both CPU and GPU.
- Add more prerendered frames (2, 3 or 4)
...

yeah maybe its the game, but i tried various settings with various outcome:

- power management disabled
- pre rendered frames added, but not sure it works (4 frames)

- freesync + Vsync ON = stuttering no matter if stable 75fps, or 40fps. it feels bad, like its the same fps..
- Vsync OFF looks terrible and tearing.. no matter what, but smooth as hell and tearfree with scanline x/2 settings
- fixed 60hz + Vsync ON = stuttering. measured with fraps its stable in 59-61 fps range, but its not stable 60..
- fixed 60hz + Vsync ON + frtc = stuttering. fps in 59-61 fps range just like before but feels better
- fixed 60hz + Vsync ON + rtss limiter set to 55 / 59 / 62 / 65 = stutters as fps are always floating somewhere below value i set, i tried various limiter values..
- fixed 60hz + Vsync ON + rtss limiter set to 60 = stutters, but this would be winner settings, if fps are around 60 just like with previous settings. but they get down to 52-57 fps range, so it stutters a lot, but occasionally it looks very smooth when it gets near 60. why it cant get to 60 fps with these settings? i repeat, if i dont use any frame control, im reading 80+ fps without any dips. im testing it on small map early game, so fps are constantly high no matter what..



thank you, we are getting closer!!

[Chief Blur Buster]

- fixed 60hz + Vsync ON + rtss limiter set to 60 = stutters, but this would be winner settings, if fps are around 60 just like with previous settings. but they get down to 52-57 fps range, so it stutters a lot, but occasionally it looks very smooth when it gets near 60. why it cant get to 60 fps with these settings? i repeat, if i dont use any frame control, im reading 80+ fps without any dips. im testing it on small map early game, so fps are constantly high no matter what..

One problem is frametime spikes -- your frametime volatility. Turn on Rivatuner Statistics Server to record all your frametimes.

Even 80fps can contain frames that takes longer than 1/60sec.

To eliminate 100% of stutter, every single frametime must be guaranteed to be well under 1/60sec = 16.7ms.

Unfortunately many games have unavoidable frametime spikes that will always inject stutter straight into framerates higher than Hz.

It's not enough to have 80fps as average framerate.

Every single frame needs to avoid a single frametime spike that exceeds refreshtime (1/60).

Also, even if your frametimes are perfect, the gametime must be in sync with the frametime -- sometimes the gametime (the video game's built-in clock) are not perfectly spaced 1/60sec apart, despite having perfectly spaced 1/60sec frames. Meaning at 60fps, one frame has a gametime ticktock forward 10ms, the next frame has gametime ticktock forward 20ms, and so on. Ideally the gametime should ticktock forward perfectly 1/60sec for perfect 60fps but does not always. That volatility can inject apparent stutter into perfectly framepaced frames. This can be caused by game bugs/issues.

Or it could be any other of large number of issues.

Summary
- Frametime spikes (frames that briefly take longer than 1/60sec)
- or Gametime issues/bugs (objects rendered in wrong position for their corresponding relative refreshtime)

For VRR without stutter, gametime vs refreshtime (game-to-photons) must stay in relative sync. Meaning the game clock used to render the frame should stay in relative sync to when the frame is refreshed & emitting photons to your eyes. Even 1-2 millisecond divergences can create noticeable stutter issues.

[svmn]

oh i see.
thats why locking to 30fps with syncline x/2 (even with vsync on) works so well.. (value of 1). but the difference is night and day better than any fps limiter set to 30fps. im curious what is the trick here?

now one second seems like a very long time

allright, so we should talk about frametimes then.. not fps. its like how often do you fill gas in your car per year. might be 60, but sometimes you fill twice a week, sometimes you dont need to fill for three weeks... but in avg its still 60 per year.. so we need car with much higher consumption then

ok good. is there any recommendation from your experience about how much fps above 60 i need to be to be sure that frametimes are tight enough for 60hz smooth gameplay? or it varies so much its not possible to say? every game is different i suppose.. but i ll try to test it here on transport fever when i have time..


E: after quick testing
its impossible to achieve same smoothness with refresh rate of 75 (my maximum) but even with 74hz or 72hz. i wanted to gain few fps with syncline x/2 settings but its just not as smooth as on 60hz. i can see some very regular stutter. not random stutter.

[Chief Blur Buster]

At 75Hz, you probably would need a framerate cap of 37.5 for scanline sync x/2.

Scanline sync is better with framerate=Hz, so you may want to also test the regular driver settings (double VSYNC too) and see how that goes too, as well.

[svmn]

At 75Hz, you probably would need a framerate cap of 37.5 for scanline sync x/2.

Scanline sync is better with framerate=Hz, so you may want to also test the regular driver settings (double VSYNC too) and see how that goes too, as well.

in my case its not better. only x/2 setting @60hz works as expected. no matter what value i set. i can have full details and i can set anything else as i like, it just works.. every other setting, even 64hz and same x/2 setting fails to deliver same smoothness, even i see 32fps, which should be correct and smooth. but no matter how low i set game graphics settings, no matter what other Vsync options i tried... its like some frames are skipped, or halted, or something like that. its very regular stutter.

next best setting is fixed 60hz with some random setting typically vsync on capped to 60fps. less stutters if your pc is capable to deliver more fps, as we already find out..

pure scanline (without x/2) doesnt work for me here too, or i just dont understand it. but it certainly doesnt help achieving Vsync effect and tearline its all over the place, certainly its not in manageable fixed position. doesnt matter what value its set to. 1/300/600/1000? doesnt change anything to my eyes, it seems just very wrong..

if i go lower (fixed hz) with CRU, (fighting stutter with more fps to spare) it doesnt work well. amd control panel or windows settings both shows 50hz, but if i cap fps to 50hz to match it, its just not nice. stutters. is my monitor broken?

you know what is the biggest problem im facing right now? once you experience stutter-free smoothness (even with 30fps), you dont want to go back.... its fortune transport fever feels quite good even @30fps.. already happy to find this trick here..

[RealNC]

I'd just try freesync + vsync ON + AMD frame limiter ("FRTC" I think it's called) to 1FPS above the freesync range. So 76FPS in your case. This should help with frame pacing while not interfering with vsync and freesync. You can also try an RTSS 76FPS cap. Or perhaps 75.3FPS cap or so. Just enough to prevent the game from getting ahead of the vsync limit internally which can result in frame drops (this is a somewhat common cause of frame pacing issues that occur even if the game is always reaching maximum vsync FPS.)