PC The Future Of Train Sim World

I don't know. It seems like we've been banging our heads against the same brick wall for so long. And time after time new routes and trains are dropped into the market unfinished and unpolished accompanied by bald- faced PR that glosses over or even completely ignores bugs and other deficits they certainly know about.

Either their QA department is permanently on hiatus or it's findings are ignored. It can't be both.

Meanwhile long-standing issues like the incomplete save game feature and console performance are rarely if ever addressed. Those phrases " We hear you " and " your patience is appreciated " are getting very old.

 

Ed who did the sound and setup of a lot of them is still around, mainly working with third party devs. I guess he’s not been needed by DTG to do more BR stuff because they aren’t making any due to them making more profitable modern content, rather than it being the other way round. I’m sure he’d work with DTG again on BR stuff if they needed him to. He was never a DTG employee as far as I am aware, always freelance, and DTG have always used many contractors to make their content. It’s not a new thing. They’ve never had the capacity to make all the content themselves.

 

Maybe that would explain why they have so much difficulty fixing bugs and other issues. Their teams are just not very familiar with most of the outsourced content.

It's hard to fix code that you haven't written.

 

I do not understand this obsession with UE5 as this wonderful game changer, when in reality it's the Internet Explorer of game engines. Basically a kludge, but everybody uses it because everybody uses it, and it comes with a big toolbox so that undertrained devs can just point and click.

Many of TSW's problems can be traced to it being based in UE4 - because it was easy - and UE5 would only make them worse. You think stuttering and low framerates are bad now?

 

yes, subwaysim 2 is made in UE5 and is a thousand times worse in stuttering and frame rate drops compared to any TSW route (even worse than frankfurt s-bahn)
people think UE5 will magically solve TSW problems, as if they believe that if the major version number is higher, then it's better

 

It's not that I'm obsessed with UE 5.
It's just that they (DTG) are doing this.
I wouldn't want to keep spending hundreds of dollars on a program that's no longer in the spotlight.

 

As I said already before, you can still play your owned routes, even when DTG releases a new game. It's obvious that companies planning ahead, making a new game can takes years, so I don't expect a new train sim in the next couple of years.

 

Assuming there wont be any ports across from TSW UE4 to UE5 then the biggest challenge has to be which routes would you release whatever it is called with?

As most of the iconic routes (in the UK anyway) have already been covered and I cant see many people investing in a new game and writing off their existing back catalogue purely for upgraded graphics if the game play is just a mirror of TSW? You'd imagine they'd want to have it based in a big iconic internationally known city but what route do you make out of London, Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool that isnt already covered or at least very similar to anything we have in TSW?

Same really in USA as anything New York, San Fran or LA based is covered in TSW and we're told that there are no licenses for Chicago or New York subway, so you're scraping the barrel from the get go.

 

UK it could be ECML out of Kings Cross but with the caveat modern would not be that appealing (to many of us) as opposed to BR Classic with a Deltic, HST's and 31's plus Cravens DMU's on the locals. A backup would be the GEML out of Liverpool Street but not sure that's iconic enough to launch an all new game. The misty eyed optimistic in me hopes it might be something steam with the Somerset and Dorset. Full circle back to Rail Simulator.

USA - well they haven't tapped Florida yet and there are some scenic western routes still to do - Marias Pass, Denver to Granby, Tehachapi maybe even Stevens Pass.

Germany - now that is hard to see what they could really do without the same old rinse and repeat 60km double track electrified inter urban with DB red.

 

I’m quite sick of how homogeneous the game has become in terms of the constant modern era, but I suspect any release these days of major routes being anything but 2019-25 would result in an apocalyptic outcry. Even looking at Crewe-Birmingham many of the non bug related complaints are that it didn’t have a 196 or 730.

Add to that I suspect by this point, many BR fans have probably given up on TSW & moved back to TSC for it. As great as JT is with their 80’s stuff, they’re really stuck into the same sort of thing each release & seem reluctant to provide more traction options.

On the US front it’s sort of the same issue JT has, we’re really just getting the same thing over & over, which granted is because there’s not loads of variety in terms of passenger action there, but there are some easy wins that keep being missed for one reason or another.

Germany at this point is what it is, same thing over & over & over. It’s more nauseating than the modern UK issue, as I’ve said a few times I think the German release slots would do well to be shared with other EU offerings. That being said though I don’t think the German fans would be too happy with that & also TSW has been pretty UK content heavy lately.

 

The thing about the US is that it's principally a freight railroad and this repeated launching of commuter lines is not really representative of the American railroad.

And there are so many areas that have not been touched in TSW. One area would be the South East and Norfolk Southern's old B&O coal and freight routes. Another would be the Chicago area where fully one third of US freight traffic originates, transits or terminates. I'm not talking about Metra commuter here, I'm referring to the Class 1 freight railroads.

If DTG can invest substantial amounts of money in questionable ventures like Metro Rivals, they can afford a few shekels for some US freight.

 

At this point I think TSG wins out over JT as the better catalog for that reason, they're much better at picking interesting new additions. Pretty much everything they've done up to now feels unique from each other. Even something like the E94 pack despite being a variant frankly feels more distinct than many actual "distinct" locos in the game do because of all the cab changes. They have good taste at picking new and interesting additions, which I don't think anyone else has quite nailed up to this point.

The only real downside to that is the fact their routes definitely don't have all that great of layering compared to many other routes, probably because they go a bit more out-there.

 

Yeah I agree.

However I do think that US freight has a similar issue to UK BR (though much worse). Overall it’s been pretty neglected & what has been made, hasn’t always been great, much of it still doesn’t really contend with SPG. DTG like with BR, clearly aren’t bothered with supplying US freight content with any real effort, so it’s going to take a third party to come at it. Problem with that though is why would a third party look at TSW, see that again most people wanting US freight are likely playing another game & then want to take the risk.

It was a gamble that’s paid off for JT so far, but US freight certainly seems to be the less popular option of an already less popular US content selection, in terms of active players.

DTG have really transformed into a company chasing a pot of gold instead of providing labours of love. The passion for railways from DTG seems to have all but completely dissipated & it’s not only reflected in recent quality issues, but also content diversity.

 

Couldn't have put it better myself. The notion that this was a bunch of railway enthusiasts out to cover a substantial part of the world with past and present, steam, diesel and electric, urban and rural has long since disappeared.

No-one would begrudge a developer making a decent return on investment, but the concept of a software company with a passion for all things trains might have been a myth all along. And that's the disconnect between DTG and this community which is all about trains and railways and is happy to plough its hard earned cash into the hobby, apparently oblivious to whether the product is good or not so good.

 

The nature of TSW simply is not well suited to US freight routes. It is not that US rolling stock is not interesting - I for one am fascinated by US freight locos, when built and operated to accurate prototypical standards - where oh where is fencing, for instance. But research apparently indicates that most users stay within the 1 to 2 hour journey time and at US freight speeds, that is nowhere. It is notable that flight-simmers, faced with the same long-haul issue, resort to built-in time stretching (speedup), or simply leave the aircraft on autopilot/fms. Not feasible with trains. TSC is much better suited to US freight, so long as you have the time. There are a number of very accurate loco models in that simulator and a larger selection of routes - personally I prefer well-modelled rolling stock to hyper-realistic graphics.
For the steam enthusiasts, need I say more than - BIg Boy.

 

Y6b, or Alleghany. Since those were compounds, operation would be more complicated than the simple-expansion BB. Besides, they were more powerful.

(Drawback- no running examples)

 

I haven't bought anything since September 2024.
I like TSW, I love the trains, the roads are very good, but...
I'm fed up with the bugs and especially the stuttering in this game.
Smoothness should be the number one priority for this game. It's 2025 with NASA-worthy specs, and we're getting crazy lag and stuttering every 3 seconds!!!

And what about the blurry and disgusting graphics, the trees popping in 20 meters away, the awful shadows, the terrible lighting...? I just bought Assetto Corsa Rally, which runs on UE5, and when I see the quality of the graphics and the smoothness of this game compared to TSW...

With my RTX 3060, I get 120 fps on medium settings with DLSS and everything else enabled on Assetto Rally, whereas on TSW I'm stuck at 30 fps on high settings, and it's ugly and choppy.

In short, as far as I'm concerned, the future is pretty much set as long as TSW doesn't change its engine (UE5 or something else), but above all, I just hope it's smooth and stutter-free!

It's not complicated, I just reinstalled TSC because TSW is so bad

 

Out of curiosity, what’s your CPU? I only have an I7 4770 with a GTX1650 GPU which I doubt will run the game.