Can anyone 'decode' the meanings of things in the 'settings.conf' file? trying to get better graphics

[Gazz292]

Warning, this is a long post and likely of no interest to 99% of SimRail players....

A few people have mentioned that the sliders in the graphics menu do not go up far enough for people with a powerful system, and they could easily get much larger distances where the low poly stuff changes into the high poly stuff (the LOD thing?) and the distance the shadows stretch to if the sliders went past their current end stops.. they can be set higher but only be editing game files, something most people wouldn't want to do.

I'm trying to get rid of that circle of shadow around the loco which is most noticeable in the morning or evening, and stop the trees 'popping to life' where i think they change from the 2D to 3D trees... but it could be a shadow thing i'm seeing.
Id also love to get rid of that rolling / jumping shadow along the rails, but that seems to affect all railway simulators.

 

Programming / coding is my weak point, i kinda understand how to do some things, but i am wondering which settings in the 'settings.conf' file do what, so i know if i am adjusting the right one or not. 

 

I already have everything set on as high as they will go in the graphics menu with the exception of "clouds quality", i found i can get a 5 to 10 fps increase by changing from high to medium, and i can't see much difference in the clouds on medium.
I've also moved the vegetation density slider down from 100 to 75%, this helps with the grass growing in the tracks and wheat planted in every bare space i find.

 

So, into the 'settings.conf' file i delve...
Below are the ones i've changed or am not sure what they do, so i'm wondering if i should change them or not, also i'm looking for explanations to what the names mean that i don't understand.

 

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G_CarsLimit=25 : i know this limits how many cars are on the roads, i find setting it to 30 i get slightly more realistic car numbers.

R_ClipPlaneDist=2000 : That is 'Render Distance' in the menu (worked out by changing it in the menu and re-loading the settings.conf file) but is this rendering everything or only certain things? and is it 2000 meters from your eyes in the train cab, or a 2000 meter diameter circle around the train? 

R_LOD_DistanceFactor=1 : LOD Bias in the menu, something to do with changing where the "Level Of Detail" maps change, reading online is confusing, people saying that with the latest GPU's it's not needed, some saying a negative value gets best results, others saying it introduces shimmering etc (i'm using a TRX 3070Ti laptop GPU if it matters)

R_TextureResolution=0 : Not sure, it's set to zero, so doing nothing?

R_VisiblityCheckerDistance=1500 : Not sure about this one.

R_TerrainBasemapDistance=1500 : or this one?

VL_BufferSize=350000 : The size of the buffer, for vegetation? 

VL_CullDist=2000 : Vegetation draw distance in the menu, so increasing this should help with tree's that pop into the scene way in the distance (but not where they change from 2D to 3D ones?)

VL_LodDist=90 : The distance the LOD's change from low to higher versions, is it 90 meters? (circle or straight line?)

VL_MarginConstant=100 : No idea.

VL_MarginDivider=20 : No idea either.

VL_ShowPerf=False : Again, no idea.

VL_BillboardMinRange=0 : Something to do with the advertising billboards?

Unload_VegeCells=5 : How many cells of vegetation to unload... erm? 

VD_Inproc=True : Think this is nothing to do with the screen, as the next one 'VD Remote' is for the TCP thing, for future connectivity to the sim to read data from it perhaps?... or is it for the player logs function???

Simulator_Mode=False : Again, nothing to do with visuals, googling says this is a unity thing to simulate viewing on mobile devices? 

VehCamX=-0.45
VehCamY=3.15
VehCamZ=-8.5 : I'm guess this is the main camera position, i.e 'where our eyes are' in the cab?

Side_Cameras_Active=False : maybe for trains that have 'side cameras'? or a view of the mirrors on another monitor? 

Max_TerrainDataDestroyer_Queue=15 : How many frames to keep before unloading them? i'm really guessing here.

SimRacingMode=False : Nothing to do with visuals, but perhaps how the Sim reacts, performs, output for a motion simulator rig, or how much the train bounces on track joints?  

SimRacingTrackConnectionFactor=2 : How well the train sticks to the track? or adhesion? 

 

And that's the end... i've missed out the parts that i think i understand,  this post is long enough as it is. 
And i also totally understand that the dev's would most likely prefer we didn't play with these things, but i'm a tinkerer and always messing about, i know not to report bugs with logfiles when my copy of SimRail has been tampered with by myself, and if i find a bug that's not been reported, i will do a 'steam game files verify' and set everything back to standard, and go and drive again to find the bug before reporting. 

[RWag64]

Hello,

I've just found a very important setting to have farther graphics. It's "VL_Set". If you change it from "False" to "True", you will have an extended view of the 3D trees and vegetation around the train.

Just be careful because this parameter has a very bad effect on the performance (FPS).

Edited March 26, 2023 by RWag64

[Gazz292]

dang, just had a look and my settings.conf is already set on True for that one 😞 

i've been playing around 'calibrating' my monitor lately (just by eye with the built in win11 calibration tools atm, but i'm thinking of getting a hardware auto calibrator camera 'thing' to at least get all the screens in the house looking the same)

 

But i've found that the better i get the colours and HDR settings, the more i notice the shadows popping onto the individual trees as i go along which is the effect i think i was confusing with changing from 2D to 3D trees (could be both) 

[RWag64]

1 hour ago, Gazz292 said:

But i've found that the better i get the colours and HDR settings, the more i notice the shadows popping onto the individual trees as i go along which is the effect i think i was confusing with changing from 2D to 3D trees (could be both) 

Have you change the value of "VL_ReducedShadows" to "True" instead of "False"? I've seen that this setting is used to disable the shadows on 3D trees.

Edited March 26, 2023 by RWag64