this is not a rant, just some questions and an opinion. I watched your stream last night and when you talked about capping the layers for consoles. I am an owner of tsw 2 on the xbox one x (which has 12 gb of GDDR5 Ram( with at all times 9 GB available to games) your recommended specs on steam for pc is set on 8GB of RAM. i'm sincerely hoping that it will be possible to turn on ALL layers on console. It would absolutely be a dealbreaker for me if you started limiting the layers on console because of the first iteration of current generation consoles.
As usual they will have XBOX One/PS4 support for some time in the future, as soon as the people start to but the S-X/PS5 it will become the new standard, I'd say mid-2021 start of 2022 (as usual whichever is weaker will determine the minimum spec)
You also have to consider that a PC, unlike consoles, separate memory into RAM and VRAM. So the min. requirements are 8 GB of RAM but also a graphics card with 2 GB of VRAM (4 GB is recommended). Also the resolution of textures is a big determinant of memory usage. If you only have 8 GB of RAM on a PC then you're probably not playing at 4K, and if you are then you will expectedly get crashes. Playing this game at 4K on PC would probably require at least 16 GB of RAM along with an additional 8 GB of VRAM. Although usage can vary on the route/loco you're driving.
So, what do "layers" mean? Fewer services? That would be disappointing, to say the least. I accept there will be graphical downgrades on console, but now it looks like there will be less actual game for a higher price (assuming there will once again be no preorder/discount). Also, slightly annoying that a lot of important info seemingly only gets discussed on the streams. Like there's no mention of any differences between PC/Console in the Dovetail Live article. I'm generally pretty supportive of DTG and I do very much enjoy TSW/2, but this one hurts a bit.
Layers are the different services that have been programmed into a route, so you might have an S3 layer, an S4 layer, and ICE layer etc, but in real life there could be S1, S2, S3, S4, S5 ... Matt said the other day on the Munich stream that consoles (particularly older Xbox) would limit the number of layers possible because they crash, so they haven't implemented additional services on ANY platform as yet, but they're looking into a way of turning layers on and off on the machine itself so that people can "choose what kills their machine" Layers don't. DTGs insistence that everyone has the same experience (barring platform specific bugs) does Wrong way round. Because the Xbox is so weak, EVERYONE ELSE LOSES Because there isn't any... At least that's DTG's plan
The answer must be to enable switching off of an individual layer by the user if problems are experienced and to allow those of us with the more recent better specs to carry on as normal (hopefully!)
Can I just clarify that PC Munich release gets ALL layers (you must own the required DLC etc etc) and is NOT held back by any limitations of other platforms. Consoles at launch will only have the base S3, S4 and ICE layers. Whether the additional layers come to console in the future will be a topic for the Road Map, it's too early to know for sure yet - but the team ARE working on a process of review and optimisation towards that goal.
Why can't they be added for Xbox One X? This is more powerful than a PS4 Pro and someone has just said the layers will be on there? I think no consoles will get all the layers. In the future I hope we aren't going to be in a situation where you only get half the features if you play the game on a last-gen console.
There is a YouTube video floating around. You have to "unlock" them. Kind of like the extra services on GWE
I have an Xbox One X and I hope we get all the complete traffic in the near future. I am a bit jealous of PC (and PS4 users as it seems to a certain extent) as they can enjoy all the traffic. It is great what DTG tried to put up here - all the traffic and different rolling stock packed in one route. This really feels like a "Train World" probably and thats exactly the reason why you buy additional rolling stock, as you want to enrich your route. But if that doesn't work, it feels a bit pointless. Hope DTG can improve this situation - it would be fantastic for the Xbox train fan communtiy I belive. And actually I thought that Xbox One X would be powerful enough, but I am not sure about the tech specs here.
I'm on one X too. But don't have this route yet. Have you tried the "trick" to activate layers to see if it works on xbox? There is a link to the video in the ps4 forum area.
Finger crossed DTG don’t patch as it will be interesting to try in a couple of weeks when the next gen’s arrive. Works on XBOX although I’ve only got the BR185.5 to appear which gives me another 13 services even though I own all the others.
That's odd. I'm sure I read in the PS4 area that someone was missing that. MRCE. Looks like it's turned up on xbox.