General question for everyone what are your thoughts on on-board in cab and platform announcements. When they work as they should. Me personally I dont mind platform and on-board announcements its the in cab ones that really annoy me it feels like they are non stop. But irl would you even get in cab announcements?.
IRL no, you wouldn’t get announcements fed into the cab directly, just feedback from the passenger saloons behind it. There are settings in TSW to adjust the volume of in cab announcements or you can turn them off. As for the announcements themselves, some of them are fine, others are great (ECW being the best & MVL close behind). I find the standard set to be ok, but the male voice sounds really fake IMO and that’s what drag them down. For improvements overall I’d like to see the male voice either reworked or just removed, along with better formats for local & long distance services. Unfortunately it seems third parties will be responsible for any improvements in their individual releases though, if other features are anything to go by. Also it’s predictably disappointing to see them broken in ECW & there being no response on that.
As far as in-cab announcements go, I'd like to see them removed from locomotives and slightly muted in EMU and push-pull stock cabs. Like CK said, you wouldn't hear it from the head-end on loco-hauled power, just the guard's buzzer acknowledging the all-clear. In addition, not all trains utilize an automated-style announcement system. A perfect example would be the Stamford route, where the Metro-North automated announcements are fantastic and pretty true to the real deal on the M8, but never something you'd hear on an Amtrak train, where the Acelas have their own, and they aren't used at all in Amfleets (conductors manually make station announcements). To go even further with this, if we ever get a P32AC-DM DLC with Shoreliners, even they wouldn't have the automated announcements, with them being manually crew-called as well. While I know it would never happen, and this is purely for North American trains, I would love to not only see/hear garbled radio chatter come to the game, but also train crew audio that radios to the front end on Amtrak trains clearing players for movement, similar to the guard buzzer function (IE: Amtrak 281, All Clear Rhinecliff).
I generally don’t mind them, where appropriate. But the biggest frustration (on PS5) is that ‘all train announcements’ setting and volume levels for cab, onboard and platform announcements don’t save so always default to ‘on’ and 100% each session.
I remember Matt P mentioned in a live stream that it was an easy fix and he would let the team know. I guess he forgot.
I wish there was a differentiation between long distance and regional trains in the german announcements. On an train like ICE or IC it feels weird when right after departure I get told what side to get out of the train on the next station when the next station is 30 minutes or more away.
Oh, interesting - really? I think I've never heard something like that but maybe my memory is playing tricks on me. xD
I don’t mind hearing them muffled, as you would in real life. Having them blaring out as if I’m sat with the passengers I really don’t like. Yes you can change the audio level in the settings, but on PS5 at least, every time you load the game it’s reset itself back to 100%, and I always forget, so I suddenly get deafened as I’m leaving the station.
