I'm thinking of picking up RRO before the sale ends as it is one of the few German routes I don't own, but I'm a bit worried about the non-smoothed gradients on the route. This was one of my biggest immersion-killers on certain routes from some "infamous" third-party (won't name any names) addon developers in TS20XX (that and lack of superelevation as late as 2019). How often does it occur?
Unfortunately every single gradient change is a sharp angle with no graduation. The track on this route is really interesting with lots of steep gradients but this means the lack of graduation is all the more obvious. I’d still recommend the route most certainly as its great fun, you get some good stock and if you like the Köln-Aachen route then it adds the all important S-Bahn trains along with some container trains. However the gradient changes are a complete immersion breaker if that’s what you are looking for. One is constantly aware of them for the entirety of the S-bahn and Mainline routes due to the numerous gradient changes.
I recommend it. a.paice perfectly summed up the reasons for the purchase. A very picturesque route. This is a layer for SKA & HMA (PC). PS link
It’s a head scratcher of an issue because everything else about the route is really good. The biggest gradient changes really are brutal and some are taken at speed which makes it worse, and it’s those ones that make me shudder as I drive over them. I’d still recommend you get the route for the same reasons as above but only if you are prepared to accept that it will annoy you at times. It’s a great looking route, fun to drive, with good trains and services, and adds layers to other routes. It’s probably worth putting up with its biggest issue for the plusses.
I have all German routes (except HHL), and would rate this one the worst. The gradient changes are really bad and the main reason for this, the RE services are weird to drive, signal errors, and so on. I was really disappointed when I got it, and I think there are better options if you are missing other routes in your collection.
Personally I quite like the route, may even be one of my favourite German routes, although a tad short (but that's because the line splits, and you basically have two routes...). The gradient jumps are pretty bad, but it's just something visual that doesn't affect gameplay, and the rest of the route is pretty good. I guess you best look up some video footage of the route to see how bad/good stuff is.
Haven't had it on for months It's too exaggerated imo. Your head/brain seems to have some form of gyroscopic ability and/or stabilizing function anyway. That's why even driving in rough terrain or running doesn't make your vision bounce up and down even though your body is. Also, the bumpiness seems to have been calibrated for trains running on bad tracks (American trains? ) because if you compare the cab sway in TSW2 with any cab ride of a German train the cab ride will look much smoother even though the camera is fixed to the locomotive frame/window without any shock-damping.
I wouldn't say the route has a whole lot of problems apart from the gradients. But the gradients are a serious killer, it's my least played German route solely because of this (ok, I don't own HHL, so that one takes the cake). When Preservation Crew gets to RRO, fixing gradients has to be Nr 1 priority, everything else (even PIS) is secondary.
RRO is a nice route and I like it more than many others but it is true that each time I reach a gradient change I can't avoid thinking that it shouldn't have been released like this and it is not easy to stop myself from swearing.
In circular motion the acceleration required to keep going around the circle at the same radius is called the centripetal acceleration (a_c = v^2/R). If the train drives over a gradient change that will cause a descent (i.e. higher positive gradient to lower or neutral to negative etc) the centripetal acceleration will be the gravitational acceleration. We can write the following equation v^2/R = g, where R is the vertical radius and g is the gravitational acceleration. We can express this as the radius required to *just* stay on the ground for a certain speed as R(v) = v^2/g. If the train is traveling at 160 km/h this means that the minimum radius to stay on the ground is 200m. The radii in RRO are like 0 so any speed will cause a slight lift off the ground lol.
If you like thinking your train might leave the tracks, taking the gradients at speed in RRO will certainly fulfil this. It is a good route overall though.
