As our routes become more and more detailed as well as routes from many foreign countries, I want to give a little guide for users on older systems to show them how to improve performance. I took a look at some statistics while running openBVE and BVE on a older system of mine.
In all games, the resolution of your game is going to most likely have the biggest impact on performance. For users running on any sort of integrated graphics card, 800 x 600 will most likely give you any playable FPS except on the less detailed routes. In my opinion, playable FPS means its steadily over 30 FPS, because in higher graphical areas FPS might take a dip. Also, keep the draw distance down, that way your system resources don't need to be also concentrating on working to render everything far, far ahead, even stuff that you might not be able to see. Keep that down to around 300-400, which will definitely improve performance from 500 or 600.
Lastly, in both BVE 4 and openBVE, a dual core system is needed, and at least 2 GB of RAM is needed to stay away from any issues involving running out of RAM. openBVE keeps my Pentium E2200 at around 60 % load, and along wtih the OS uses around 1.65-1.7 GB of RAM. For fasting loading, you can go get a better processor, or a SSD or another hard drive for RAID. During loading, sometimes your CPU can easily load the route quickly but it has to wait for your hard drive. Sometimes your hard drive waits for your CPU. A RAID 0 will increase speeds by about 100 MB/s which will be a huge difference in application load time and Windows boot up times. A Solid State Drive on my system loads the F in about 30 seconds, but I have a strong processor to go with it as well.
A tip for people who have stronger systems is to turn Vertical Synchronization on, or VSync in openBVE. All monitors have a refresh rate, normallya at 60 Hz. Some monitors have a higher refresh rate, some have a lower refresh rate. When you turn VSync on, you are limiting your FPS to your monitor's refresh rate. For example, with VSync on with my monitor, which has a refresh rate of 60 Hz, the most FPS I can have is 60 FPS. Why do I want to do that? When VSync isn't on, your graphics card can run as fast as it can, but the bad thing is the graphics card produces more FPS then the monitor can normally happen, thus sometimes creating a visual called Tearing, which is a little like this.
For those with a good setup, then enabling VSync will improve visuals in the game.
Have any more tips? Leave them here.
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