The screenshots for the 3rd Rush Hour route that were released today gave us a first look at the Class 387 in Gatwick Express livery among other things. While a number of the external details have been changed as per reality like the extra track light and the window glazing there is one thing in particular that was not changed which is inacurate to any Classs 387 unit. The destination display box on the front of the train has been copied from the Class 377 which in which is both too wide and not tall enough for the Class 387 as they have different dimensions in real life. This can be seen in the images down below. TSW: Real Life: As you can see, the first image which is from TSW has a different sized destination display than the one below which shows the correct size. The font is close to what it should be as the displays can show two lines of text in real life which can be represented in the game by the looks of it. The text is too small however, as the displays can't show London Victoria in real life without having to scroll the destination, there should also be more space underneath the first line of text.
Copy and pasting electostars is DTG’s specialty, they already had the wrong body shape and now on the 3rd and 4th implementation of the electrostar it still hasn’t been corrected, so I think it’s fair to say DTG aren’t willing to put any more effort into these models. Hopefully the sounds make up for the looks, but then those are hardly DTG’s specialty. Overall DTG’s interpretation of the electrostars is really making me dislike these trains.
The destination displays are the wrong size? LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE. But in all seriousness, when Matt has said on streams in the past that when they reuse a train on a new route, they just about rebuild it from the ground up, it doesn’t make sense that the 387 in game would look so far off from the real one.
Matt says "It's never just a reskin." Well that aged quickly. You would think they would make a new model but I guess they weren't bothered
Except that 387 isn't "just a reskin". They've made changes to other parts of the model and will have had to have changed the physics. What they don't appear to have done is completely build it from scratch, or if they have they've used the same reference/resources/blueprints they had for the 377.
Already from an economic perspective it makes absolutely no sense to rebuild everything from scratch. And things like the BR112 (where there is still the vmax 120 sticker from the BR143) and Class 375 clearly show that they do not redo everything from scratch. There might be parts that are redone, like some remixing of sounds or tweaks to the physics like on Dresden Riesa, but especially the artwork and 3D model are hardly touched. Considering DTGs lack of train artists, it would be even stranger if they went down that route, so the same model is re-used as much as possible - and since there are some flaws with the original version, that gets ported forward and forward unfortunately.
The problem is that the 387 doesn't only have problems that the 377 had, it also has a new one now because they didn't resize the destination display box.
I wouldn't expect them to make a new model as that would be loads of work. What I do expect is for them to make the appropriate changes to make it look like a 387, which they haven't done yet. This is especially ridiculous if the route doesn't include any new stock, but rather just badly modified stock.
It seems to me that what is happening, is that whoever the team lead or supervisor for the Rolling Stock 3d Visual Modeling Team is, is not being detail-oriented enough; not going over their accumulated research material with a fine-toothed comb and noticing things like the different-sized PIS screen. It would be uneconomical and foolish to start all over again, but it's careless not to note all the relevant differences (BR 112 headlight, anyone?). One could add the incorrect railing on the Clinchfield SD40, copied over from the CSX SD40-2 - although in that case eagle-eyed customers caused the WIP model to be fixed before release.
If you're a skilled 3D developer like ones in their bedroom are compared to DTG, I can't understand why people stick up for this lack of attention to detail, we can compare Masterswitch making the Wrightbus bodied buses for OMSI 2 that look exactly like the real life counterpart, and it's one dude with help. DTG is a team of people and can't manage this, baffles me, likewise most modellers for OMSI 2.
I find it hard to believe that they just missed the different PIS screen size, as whoever was in charge of the research managed to notice that the font is different and yet miss that the screen which displays the font is a different size? This seems like they noticed it and passed it on and then some genius in the company decided that it "looks practically identical" and told the devs to not bother changing it. Wouldn't be the first time this has happened.
