What graphical settings should I use in Train Sim World?

Recommended Settings

To get the best experience, we'd recommend that players choose a suitable Resolution and Graphical Preset that matches the capabilities of their PC. The table below covers our recommendations for various levels of PC hardware. 

Screen

In this section we will cover how to customize your graphical settings, starting with the Screen menu. To get a better view of comparison images, alt-click and open them in a new tab.

Screen Resolution

This setting allows you to set the rendering resolution of the game (how many pixels make up the image on screen). We'd recommend that you set this option to the native resolution of your monitor, unless you are running on very low-end hardware. 

Common monitor resolutions include 1280x720 (720P), 1920x1080 (HD/1080P), 2560x1440 (QHD/2K/1440P), and 3840x2160 (4K).

Important: Train Sim World does not support multiple monitors. If you manually stretch the image across multiple monitors, it may cause issues with the UI.

Windows Mode

This setting allows you to customize how the game is presented on your monitor. 

Windowed

The game is presented in a window with borders. You can select any resolution, and the window can be re-positioned to allow you to interact with other windows. However, the game doesn't typically fill the screen in this mode. 

Windowed Fullscreen

This will be the best option for most players, as it allows for seamless switching between windows. The game fills the screen without borders, using the same resolution as your desktop.

Fullscreen

This mode is often called exclusive fullscreen. You can choose any resolution your monitor can support and it will fill the screen. However, switching windows takes longer and will cause the screen to flicker momentarily. 

Graphics Preset

Your first priority should be to choose a Graphics Preset that suits the capabilities of your PC. Ideally, this would represent a balance between visuals and performance. To view your frame rate, press the F3 key while in-game. 

For some, the visual difference between High and Ultra may be negligible, but the performance gains you get from lowering your settings to High will be far more noticeable. Later on we will go our our own optimized settings which create a middle ground between High and Ultra with minimal impact to visual quality.

Low

Medium

High 

Ultra

Advanced Settings

The Advanced Settings menu allow you to fine tune your graphical settings to strike a balance between visuals and performance. However, changing the Graphical Preset again will override these settings. 

For each setting we have listed the relative performance cost, and our optimized recommendation based on the setting that provides the best balance between image quality and performance.

Foliage Quality

Performance Cost: Medium

Optimized Setting: High

This setting defines the quality and quantity of trees and foliage. Between Medium and Ultra, the main difference is in the far distance. Depending on route this can be more or less noticeable.

Shadow Quality

Performance Cost: Medium

Optimized Setting: Medium

This settings defines the detail and sharpness of shadows. The Medium and High setting can look quite similar up close. The true difference is how far shadows appear sharp for.

Effects Quality

Performance Cost: High

Optimized Setting: High

This setting defines the quality of reflections. Medium looks almost as good as High, but the performance difference is too small to worry about lowering this setting. Going below Medium can look significantly worse.

Sky Quality

Performance Cost: High

Optimized Setting: High

This setting defines the quality, depth, and complexity of clouds. This setting can be significantly more expensive on Ultra, so going down to High can save you performance for minimal difference in visual quality.

Fog Quality

Performance Cost: Low

Optimized Setting: Ultra

This setting defines the quality of the volumetric fog. At lower settings light rays in the fog can appear less defined.

Post Process Quality

Performance Cost: Medium

Optimized Setting: High

This setting defines the quality of motion blur and ambient occlusion.

Motion Blur - Motion Blur can appear more grainy at lower settings and is off completely on Low.

Ambient Occlusion - A subtle effect that draws additional shadows where light would be occluded, giving objects a more grounded look and adding depth to the image.

View Distance Quality

Performance Cost: Low

Optimized Setting: High

This setting defines the distance at which some objects "pop-in". There are small performance improvements to be had at the high setting, and in many places is High indistinguishable from Ultra.

Texture Quality

Performance Cost: Low

Optimized Setting: Ultra

Lower settings will more aggressively cull unused textures, have less detail in distance textures and reduce texture filtering quality. This can be difficult to perceive in a still image, but in motion you are more likely to notice texture streaming (pop-in) at lower settings. Lowering texture quality will have little to no impact on your frame rate, but it can help you get a smoother experience on low-end hardware.

Max FPS

Performance Cost: None

Optimized Setting: 60

Before you make any changes consider the refresh rate of your monitor. This setting allows you to limit you FPS to an arbitrary number, but we'd recommend using numbers divisible by your monitor's refresh rate to minimize judder. For a 120hz monitor we'd recommend using 30, 60, 90, or 120 FPS.

The second factor you should consider is your average performance. Your FPS will vary depending on how demanding a scene is. To create a smooth experience we want the distance between your average highs and lows to be as small as possible. Consider what your average FPS is then, set the Max FPS limit slightly below this. If you get between 65-80 fps on average, then set the limit to 60. Doing this can also increase the lifespan of your graphics card by reducing heat and noise.

Anti Aliasing

Performance Cost: Low

Optimized Setting: TAA

When you see jagged edges on 3D objects you are looking at aliasing. It happens because the image rendered on your display is made out out pixels which limits how much detail it can represent. Anti Aliasing uses various techniques to smooth out the appearance of edges on 3D objects. 

Off - No anti aliasing is applied to the image. Edges will appear jagged which is especially noticeable on thin straight lines like catenary. 

FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti Aliasing) is an anti-aliasing algorithm created by NVIDIA and works by selectively reducing the contrast of an image, smoothing out visually obvious jagged edges and isolated pixels. 

TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing) creates a smoother, clearer image than any other anti aliasing solution by combining high-quality MSAA (MultiSample Anti-Aliasing), post processes, and temporal filters (comparing previous frame with current frame). Overall the image quality is very good albeit a little soft at lower resolutions, but it can also produce ghosting on high contrast edges. 

V-Sync

Performance Cost: None

Optimized Setting: On

V-Sync (Vertical Sync) synchronizes the output of each frame with the refresh rate of your display to eliminate screen tearing. Screen tearing can occur when a new frame is delivered while the display is refreshing. A typical 60hz display will refresh 60 times a second. It has negligible impact of performance and minor increase in input latency that most will not notice in slower paced games like this.

Example of screen tearing:

Screen Percentage

Performance Cost: Very High

Optimized Setting: 100%

Screen Percentage can render the game at a lower or higher internal resolution and then scale it to fit your display. Lowering this setting below 100% can increase your performance in GPU bound scenes, but at great sacrifice to your image quality. Raising the setting above 100% is a very effective method of anti aliasing, but it comes at a significant cost to your performance. This can help reduce aliasing in sub pixel detail like distance catenary. However, we recommend keeping the setting at 100% for a balance between sharpness and performance.

Optimized Settings

The following settings are suitable for players whose PC meets or exceeds the recommended requirements of the game. Using optimized settings we've seen a performance increase of around 11% compared to Ultra settings in GPU bound scenes. However, it's important to remember that graphical settings will have little impact on your performance if you are in a CPU bound scene, such as a busy HUB with a high density of track and trains.

• Foliage Quality: High
• Shadow Quality: Medium
• Effects Quality: High
• Sky Quality: High
• Fog Quality: Ultra
• Post Process Quality: High
• View Distance Quality: High
• Texture Quality: Ultra
• Max FPS: 60
• Anti Aliasing: TAA
• V-Sync: On
• Screen Percentage: 100%

Example: (Optimized Settings): 

Example (Ultra Settings): 

DirectX 12 Mode

Enabling DirectX 12 has the potential to get more performance out of your graphics card, but your experience may vary depending on the age of your hardware.

It's possible to enable DirectX 12 mode by adding a launch option to Steam. However, this is currently an experimental option and not officially supported. Should you experience any issues in DirectX 12 mode, please remove the command and the game will launch in DirectX 11 mode by default.

How to enable DirectX 12 on Steam:

1. Open the Steam client and find Train Sim World 6 in your library.
2. Right-click on the game and go to Properties > General
3. In the Launch Options text box enter "-dx12" without quotations.
4. Close the window and launch the game.

The following examples show what's possible in different situations using an AMD RX 9070 graphics card at Optimized settings (1440P). You will generally see better results in scenes where your graphics card is the limiting factor (e.g. away from busy hubs with a lot of track, trains and AI).

Further Reading

• How Do I Optimize My PC for the Best Performance?
• Train Sim World Settings Explained
• How do I troubleshoot technical issues on PC?