Tsw: Diesel Duty

Quick Q - Are there any plans to TEST the loco on PS4, before it is sold on PS4....? Also, will this loco be released with critical sound bugs, like the latest Class 89 on TS2020, which still has no sound for the traction motors...?

Is sound going to be modelled with this loco....? Or is it another "silent film" loco....? Will it work in tunnels...?

Will it work near trees, and signals....?

Will it work in shunting yards...., as advertised, or has there been some "minor mistake" with the marketing.....?

Will it be possible to actually drive the loco sensibly, or will it have a critical controller and power fault like the Class 47?

If the loco comes with scenarios and/or services..... have these been tested....? Has anyone bothered to even run the top few Journey mode scenarios to check to see if they actually work, even for just a few seconds....?

 

It wasn’t locked off. You could walk or spawn there.

 

It doesn’t load anything. It just moves back and forth.

 

True true...what I meant was locked off to the locos

 

Wow. This is precisely what MSB has been in need of. Looking forward to seeing it in action.

 

This is made by River Games, not DTG. We can expect better quality from these dlc

 

I wonder if any frieght cars might come with it.It is a switcher after all.

 

Interesting. Or maybe existing rolling stock is used, but if there is a new freight car coming with this new loco, then I can’t wait to find out what it is!

 

Let's wait and see, but im very confident to drive the BR 204 sooner or later on other routes too. First of all, I'm happy that a German diesel locomotive is finally coming out, because we've been all waiting for it for a long time.

 

Although the interior is very good looking, there is one thing that catches my eyes:

On the brown box, there is handwritten Vmax = 120 km/h. However, on the lower right on the instrument panel, a white panel writes Vmax = 100 km/h

I guess the Vmax is still 100 km/h, since V100's where only built in either 65, 80 or 100 km/h variants. But that doesn't explains why there are two different Vmax in the cab.

 

This DLC looks very promising! Finally respectable shunting/switching DLC. I ll buy this.

And the fact that it is made by 3rd party devs is promising too. I hope there will be more 3rd parties creating DLCs for DTG because we could have larger selection of quality DLCs soon and routes+locos from another countries than US/UK/GER.

I would like to know future plans of DTG about 3rd party dev cooperation. I know some people whose will be very interested in creating content for TSW.

 

BTW what about release date? I want it today

 

unfortunately, there is none at the moment.

 

Rivet Games who previously have made loads of content for TS2020 - on the PC. Please let them have an actual PS4 dev kit to do some testing and QA of their own!

 

I see the development of loco content by a third party in this way, for Train Sim World, as a major problem. This means that DTG effectively becomes a post-box... a franchise issuer... , for TSW, as well as TS20xx.

There is nobody to hold to account, so standards will fall through the floor with TSW.

The standards were already on the floor (Class 47, DB BR 155), screaming for a doctor.... but now DTG has smashed up the floor, and thrust a barbed fork into TSW's barely beating heart... and so the descent into the three circles of Train Simulator hell can now begin, for TSW.

It's a major decision. DTG has decided to not become a professional software company, and has decided to not control its content in-house with TSW.

This will make it harder to upgrade the UE core. It will make it almost impossible to recursively QA any new code - not that they were doing that anyway, as you can see from the UI and the quite remarkable breaking of the Class 33 re-fuelling function on WSR...... following the launch of a completely unrelated DLC....

It's a sad day for TSW. There was a chance that TSW could one day become a great bit of software. But now it will be just another "scrape-along for a few more years" partner title for Train Simulator 20xx.

PLEASE........ PLEASE......... PLEASE........ can Microsoft PLEASE enter the train simulation market.....!!!!!!

 

the hell are you talking about?

TSW at this point needs 3rd party devs - its what will save the project. they should have thought about that when they made console versions but I dont think 3rd guys will be obligated to build content for consoles if they dont want too.

 

Eventually I imagine there will be some sort of a PC-console divide. Especially as more third party developers potentially come into the TSW scene. They aren’t obliged to make content for all platforms.

*insert PC master race mode*
Personally I’m looking forward to this, as consoles and low-spec systems, which is what DTG aim to build their content for, reduce potential, features and certainly the quality of the product. Such as texture sizes, shaders used and quality of materials.

Now I know everyone doesn’t have the luxury of having a high spec system, but we’ll never get the full potential of what’s possible if the threshold is continually aimed at low to medium specs.

 

Generally this is a busines task. If Rivet Games makes DLC for public as final product, or it make it for DTG as part of contract. Than DTG dev's make console version inhouse to cover all platforms and take care about release.

 

I don't have a crystal ball - but I think the opposite will happen - I think that this will finally become the death of DTG. I am usually an optimist, but I can often be more of a contrarian. My views won't be popular. I actually hope that I am very very wrong.

I think that if TSW folds back into itself, and becomes the new TS20xx for PC alone, killing off the burst of life-blood from the PS4 and XBox market, then TSW is going to die. And the old TS20xx will almost go down with it. Thankfully, I think that this process will be fairly slow (three or four years). And after the death of TSW, you might have a skeleton crew maintaining TS2023, as the hub for those people that are interested in developing/sharing community content for it. Or it might just go abandonware, when the tythe from 3rd party content sales can't cover the bills for the HQ, or pay down the debts.

TS20xx is, by far, the more developed simulator, and is more likely to hold the interest of the volunteer crowd. So it will probably hang around for a very long time - and it can nicely lock itself to Windows 10.

In the short-term, you will get some more variety with rolling stock for TSW 2021 and perhaps TSW 2022, and some of it might work on the PC for a while. But over time this will degrade... and bug management will become impossible.

I don't think that any console player will be given a second thought. However, if DTG have a miracle strategy for the next gen XBox and PS5.... then the death of TSW might be slowed down marginally. I still don't think you'll see a TSW 2023.

I'd much prefer to be positive. But when you see the state of the DB BR 155 on PlayStation one year after release, and the state of the Class 47 on both consoles, then there isn't much room for much hope. When you couple this with DTG itself failing to be able to complete its own routes, like Oakville, then I get the feeling that the future isn't Orange. The future isn't bright. The future is Brown. And it will hit the fan.

 

I think 120 may mean that it only has PZB M mode?
There is also a label on the brown box that reads Ausrüstung mit PZB90 - Version 2.0

 

This is a complete myth. PS4 Pro is easily powerful enough to run anything that TSW can throw at it. And PS5 will have vastly more power. And the next XBox will have even more..... But TSW won't be able to use it.

TSW doesn't even make use of a PC CPU's third core. A very low end PC CPU's third core.... TSW doesn't make use of advanced UE features - but a lot of PS4 titles can right now. The "low-end" performance of TSW is absolutely nothing to do with the power available to the PS4 or XBox - it's everything to do with the cack-handed optimisation employed by DTG and amateur third-party devs (as talented as they may be artisitically).

The power of PS4 and XBox do not throttle the content in TSW... at all. Also.... no end of power in a PC will give you better performance for TSW...., unless your datum PC is very very old. It's a complete myth. The bottleneck in performance is wholly due to the design of TS2020 and TSW 2020, and the content developed for both titles.

There might have been a nugget of truth in the idea that power gave performance with TS20xx - because lower powered PCs perhaps struggled with TS2015... in 2014...... But not now.

 

You'd think so... but they haven't done very well so far... with everything in-house and under direct or 2nd party partnership control. Just look at the DB BR 155, the Class 47, and Oakville.

Management is not an area where DTG are very strong. Like counting. They are no doubt absolutely lovely and wonderful people that really love trains, but counting and managing stuff is not playing to their strengths. I think what they have accomplished, despite their shortcomings, is, frankly.... miraculous - and I am immensely thankful for the sheer amount of hard work they have all put in over 15 years.

But I am also thankful that the DTG staff are only involved with virtual trains - and are presumably not allowed anywhere near the real operational railway... or... at least... not any more....

 

if DTG are left alone with TSW its dead already. 3rd parties will either save it or let it die to DTG hands.

Im more hyped for 3rd party stuff than I am anything DTG make - and Im glad they wont be forced into developing for the consoles. DTG choose to mix development, others should be dragged down with them.

 

Amendment - the bottleneck in performance is the way that DTG manipulate the engine on both sims and also how they try to do too much in the content developed, but then we had this discussion loads before, but you don't change your words.

As for 3rd party content. It's OK if it's released through the mainstream channels (ie available to all through the same stores as everything is now rather than what TSx does, which is a minefield free for all) and to give Rivet their dues they have been VERY reactive to support calls on TSx routes and releases so I don't see them being less so for TSW. Only time will tell on that specific point. Of course they could be constrained in updates by DTG "owning" the core update path but again, time will tell

Personally, I think it's a case of "more the merrier" when it comes to DLC SO LONG AS there is a QA process in place. DTG's QA is lacking big time, but Rivet's has always seemed good to me. I'm waiting for AP to produce a Wherry Lines for TSW along with a beast of a class 37...

 

If DTG attempted to make TSW work properly, and kept it properly cross-platform, with in-house development... then TSW would continue to save TS2020...... It already has, until now. I still genuinely think it could become a great success. But not with the direction they've opted for. If console sales dry-up, then DTG will be in deep trouble very quickly. And if they then split the PC market in two.....

I do have a lingering doubt about my views, by the way. I wonder if maybe it is not actually possible to make a train simulator profitably over the long-term - and that you ultimately need very many underpaid or voluntary hours to make anything at all... continuously. And maybe those underpaid and voluntary hours will always be there, either centrally, or with 3rd parties effectively donating their time, allowing a simulator (TS2020) to scrape along.... and just about continue to survive.

Maybe that is the future. If that is the case (and always has been...?) then the crew at DTG really do deserve a lot of credit for sticking with it all for so long. It must have been blood, oil, sweat and tears... for years and years.... I am personally very glad to have made a substantial monetary donation to the effort (now on both titles). I probably won't be buying much more for TSW (certainly no more routes), either on PC or PS4.... but I will probably scoop up a lot of the TS2020 content, as and when it becomes available at normal prices.

Back on topic - this shunter does look quite nice. I am finding the wheel on the control desk to be a bit triggering though.... it's bringing back my DB BR 155 tunnel PTSD.... ;-O

Anyway - if DTG could finally get around to fixing the DB BR 155, then I will probably buy this loco for MSB, and I might get the Caltrain switcher as well - and that will close out my collection for TSW, methinks. And then I will focus on TS2020, which is an actual train simulator. I am (sadly) expecting TSW to die off anyway.

 

I think the fact that the fans start spinning on my PS4 Pro at the menu screen for TSW, whereas any other title would have to be pushing serious graphics at 4K to get the same result, suggests something fundamentally wrong with the way TSW has been coded. Literally sitting in the "choose a route" menu at 1080p should not be taxing any hardware if coded correctly.

From a development perspective, if you go to the trouble of building a DLC for TSW and don't then make the final extra step to release it on two extra platforms for the additional revenue that brings, then frankly, you don't deserve to have a business. Very few console gamers are going to buy a PC just to get your DLC when they have the game already on a platform that is easily up to the task of running it - if you code it properly. I'd suggest failing to release a piece of DLC on consoles is simply an indicator that it's not good enough – you're not good enough. If you've only done a half-arsed job, it's only going to be good enough for PC users who are used to a lifetime of tinkering and bodging to get crap software to work effectively.

TSW is a cross-platform title and if I were DTG, I'd make cross-platform DLC release an absolute requirement of access to the editor. If third parties can't be bothered to do proper development and just want to cobble things together with no minimum quality standards, they've already got TS2020 as an outlet for their semi-creative urges. Let the hobbyist operations turn out their DLC for that, and save TSW for professional developers with access to proper development tools (like a PS4 devkit).

 

yes - I think we are in violent agreement.

 

Not violent... Though I think it may well take a hammer to crack your nut on this one...

 

I'll stop you right there. TSW absolutely can use more than two cores. As you can see, the CPU usage is all nice and level across 4 cores at 79% usage with TSW doing 71% of it. This is of course running in a borderless window which on it's own degrades performance. Can someone please make a similar screenshot with more cores to show how well it scales? The program on the left is the Windows resource monitor.

 

Try the menu screen on PS4, but with internet off. Seriously. See what happens with your fan. ;-D

Once you've made the content for UE, it doesn't take much to cook it for PS4. So they will probably do this initially, and flog it on console, as DTG has done so far for everything bar CSX:HH (which runs beautifully on PC.... unlike the much later NTP route....). But what takes time is understanding the full compatibility across platforms. And this is where DTG trip up with console, and where 3rd party devs will trip up, because they have no intention to test anything for consoles. As we know, some German 3rd party devs actively hate PS4.

So the console stuff will be more broken than the PC stuff. And to make matters worse, the design method will have even more variation than it does now...., potentially including the method of mapping the joypad, controller, keyboard and mouse..... and the content will be even more difficult to control or standardise... even if PC were to be the only platform you wanted to develop for.......

Again - this is nothing to do with processing power. It's all about having a suite of development standards for QC, and a process for QA and testing. It's also utterly absurd that TSW doesn't support the RailDriver controller... (specifically designed for train simulators.....!), and that nobody can be Facebooking Amazoned to map the apostrophe (brake release) for keyboard on PS4.....

DTG can do whatever they like - it's their business.... But I would point out that DTG itself...... "can't be bothered to do proper development and just want to cobble things together with no minimum quality standards" - that's exactly what DTG do themselves - right now... so they are not going to hold external parties to a higher standard.... surely...?

Oh dear - I did laugh when I saw that you wrote that.... that's yet another keyboard ruined with spilled tea.

 

that is all well and good, but I can bet bottom dollar some devs simply dont care enough to develop for consoles. they wont want to spend the time and money on adjusting their products to fit when they could just focus on the core of TS, the PC.

Infact id be more likely to buy aDLC that was released PC only. means its probably pushing beyond what a console can handle and would be 10x the quality of anything DTG could produce. id see a cross-market DLC the same way I see TSW routes now. dumbed down.

 

3rd party hardware isn't DTG's main concern. Since when does one company have to care about what others may add on to their products?

 

LOL - it might take six months for my light bulb to light up.... persevere....! ;-)

More seriously... I am fairly sure we are talking about exactly the same sort of thing - texture management, use of dynamic shadows, LoD settings, tile streaming, draw distance, max prims, sensible use of physics, prim choices/ghosting, etc.... So....optimisation of both the content and the applied UE settings in-game...? Anyway - see you in six months... LOL... ;-)

 

Erm, no... I am talking about more basic functionality rather than graphic technical nonsense that most people don't give a stuff about anyway. Like flashing yellows where they should be, sounds which work in tunnels or next to trees etc, scenarios which you can complete without getting stuck at a locked red, that sort of thing

 

No, it means it's been made by lazy developers who can't be bothered to properly optimise their hobby project to potentially benefit from three times the revenue. If it's that split that's going to keep the polished stuff on consoles while the PC market becomes a free-for-all shitshow where any old tat is good enough for release, well then, maybe I agree with you - I'm all for that. As long as I can stay firmly on the high expectation console side of the fence.

 

Im firmly in the camp of the console release being a bad thing. I was the day they announced it to the annoyance of most.

If you want Train Sims to be the best they can be - you dont release on a console.

sure you can enjoy your hobby on it, but it will always be a shadow of what it could be when you have to balance 3 vastly different markets.

 

I think that you've made my point. Your CPU is from a 2014 laptop, with integrated graphics. Nice machine for the time - and it can easily handle TSW 2020... with capacity to spare. If you switched off two of your cores, then you would probably see no performance difference - if you switched off one, then you absolutely would not see any performance difference.

I am running a Q4 2019 Ryzen 7 with eight cores and a clock that runs three times faster than yours, backed up with a hefty 8Gb GPU - and trust me... cores 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are all entirely untroubled with TSW 2020..., and cores 1 and 2 barely flicker... and the CPU fan is wondering why it's even bothering to spin. I would consider my PC tower to be currently mid-range (about €1000).

TSW 2020 is not a demanding bit of software.

If you are riding along on NTP and see you the screen juddering, that's nothing to do with power. In fact - NTP will run more smoothly on my PS4 Pro than on the Ryzen 7 - but I suspect this is due to better use of buffering on the PS4, as cooked from UE. I must admit, I found it quite shocking that the PS4 Pro was better than my new tower PC, when it comes to tile streaming.

Anyway - that reminds me - I must get TSW2020 and TS2020 onto my 2019 laptop as well....looks like they will both behave perfectly well... and that is on a recent laptop that cost under €300....

 

I am the complete opposite. Having TSW on console is amazing and that is coming from someone that bought all the DLC on pc and console minus OSD for known reasons. Probably the best thing that could happen for us that want good simulation on PC and console. There will always be third parties that will do better on one system or the other. I really see nothing bad in third parties finally starting to make content from scratch. The quality of DTG products has taken a nose dive recently as seen with OSD. They are just too streched in all directions and only we customers suffer from it. Cheers

 

Since 1982.

 

I don't think so as we already have quite a big rolling stock of freight cars on the german routes.

 

I know no industry where anyone bothers about a 3rd party modding company's issues. In fact in most industries modding invalidates any support or warranty extant

 

I have to disagree.

First of all, what are we talking about when using the term "DLC". Do we mean any downloadable content or just rolling stock and routes?
Case 1: Any downloadable content

What about the more or less casual PC users who want to enhance their experience by making their own scenario. So let's assume, they were really creative, there's lots of traffic and so on. And now they want to make it available to the public and upload it on a forum so you can download it and play it... exept they can't, because editor acess requires cross-platform release. How would normal users get Microsoft or Sony to publish their scenario pack? I don't think they can. So in conclusion, the editor would only be acessable for "real" developers.​

Case 2: DLC = Rolling stock and Routes

Now, everyone on PC could make scenarios and publish them online. But still rolling stock and routes require cross-platform release. So what about amateurs who want to try to implement let's say a waggon? And then they want to release... Wait no, that's illegal.​

You see, I have a problem with these forced cross-platform releases, simply because the editor is for everyone, not only "studios".
But maybe I missunderstood you. At least you know my thoughts about this topic.

 

I think the article says that it uses existing stock.

Have to agree with synthetic.angel on that one. I don't have a Raildriver, and probably never will, but it's a controller specifically designed for train sims - isn't that like Polyphony not supporting some force-feedback wheels on a Gran Turismo release, just because they're made by a third party and oh, they just haven't got round to it yet?

No, you're absolutely right - we are on opposite sides of that fence. I don't think everyone should have the editor and making it public will definitely make the management of quality standards impossible. Then we end up with another TS2020 - I see the posts on here all the time where people have downloaded one thing, but then they're missing a texture pack from here and a bit of a route from there, and something's not displaying correctly and there's a long process of things that need to be installed in a specific order. I absolutely do not want that. TSW is, for the moment, a controlled environment (save for DTG's poor QA processes and reliance on a few external developers who don't have PS4 dev kits) and if they're going to maintain or ever improve the product, throwing the doors open to let anyone have a crack at "doing a wagon" isn't the way forward. I bought a professional game, by a professional dev team. If I wanted a have-a-go workshop, where I spend as much time fixing stuff as I do driving trains, I'd buy a PC and TS2020.

 

What on earth has all that got to do with manipulation of the engine and/or content, with respect to performance....?

What you are describing now is stuff that is subject to scripting.... which does take up some processing load, but nothing compared to drawing a texture sixty times per second in six locations, when it could be drawn just the once.... (like the horrifically badly textured station buildings on WSR).

Obviously, I agree with you - the functionality itself has to work as well....... and it would be nice if someone could test it all, before it goes on sale.

 

You do realise that if DTG did not go cross-platform with Euro Fishing Sim World (or whatever it is called - the fish thing....) and with Train Sim World, that DTG would no longer exist, right now......?

So - in your "camp", both of the Train Simulators would be the best that they could be, if the publisher didn't exist anymore.....

You could be right. But even I give DTG more credit than that. I'd like them to hang around for a bit, make some more money on consoles, and make all of their products better for everyone - even the fish stuff.

 

Somewhere MattP himself has said that there are a lot of resource hogs in the routes and consists themselves (specifically remember him referring to GWE) and that IS relevant rather than the tweaks you listed above.
Obviously TSW is about as optimised as my nan in almost every respect but I would prefer they get the basic stuff right first, which to my mind is things you interact with in game, rather than "dynamic shadows", "max prims" and "ghosting". For pete's sake they said they had issues getting the mirrors to work on certain locos which is why they're all folded in!

 

I don't know. Isn't force feedback part of the PS4 interface so basically all you're doing is talking back to that rather than having to redesign from the driver up? From what I know of raildriver (the one sat to my left right now) it uses PS/2 interface keystrokes to do a lot of it's work, but I would imagine it's the sliders which would give the most trouble. If the engine has been written for repeated "up and down" instructions this would't tie in easily to a "66% slider" action. Just spitballing here as obviously I am in no way a TSW interface coding person

 

Aaah - okay - well... if you can nail down a specific, with respect to consists on GWE.....

Well anyway.... I can.... you can seriously hog the CPU if you have badly implemented physics - say, with physical buffer to buffer interaction, and physical interaction at the rail/wheel interface. So yeah - if you have x100 wheels actually physically interacting... then it gets messy really quickly for the CPU. This was one of the first things that really impressed me with TSW - the handling of the wheel/rail interface on LIRR - I'd still love to know exactly how they do it.... I think that they ghost all of the interfacing prims... but then you need to model the physics in a different way, based on trajectories... so a a sim within a sim..... (but maybe lighter for the processor, when using the UE engine). They certainly ghost the buffers.

Anyway, my point is that if you get the environmental settings right.... then you get more freedom to triangle the optimisation - so that you then get the features that you want to be prioritised, such as more traffic, and correctly working signals across tile boundaries... and a load of other stuff that needs breathing space on the CPU to work...... I could go on... but I need to get a cup of tea.

On mirrors - I still find it puzzling that the Class 66 mirror couldn't have just been given a slightly reflective surface... like almost every other surface in the game...., including some walls....

 

Well... Mr P mapped a toy guitar to TS2020 for one of the "March Madness" DevStreams.... Maybe one day he'll think about doing the same for your RailDriver controller, for TSW.

Maybe. If you ask nicely.

NB: There was a RailDriver-esque controller set-up at the Conservative Party conference in 2019, on a Network Rail stand, that had GWE on TSW running.... according to my good friend, Kaye Burley (who is really into her trains)..... But that might have just been a lever rigged to an XBox controller, under the desk. If anyone knows.... let us know...... ;-)

 

I thought I saw a thread about a new German diesel shunter being released somewhere. It looked interesting for a while. Can someone tell me where it went?

Make it a mug. A big one.