After spending hours and hours in TSW2 Sand Patch Grade has been my favourite/most played route. I had some time off and ended up heading down to the area to see what it was like in real life. I took a few days in the area to explore the key points for the SPG (Cumberland to Rockland) and HSC route (Altoona to Johnstown). It’s actually crazy how accurate the details are in these routes, right down to roads and buildings. I felt pretty familiar in a lot of the areas even having never been there before in my life. I took a few photos and went to the same areas in TSW to compare. Here is the result (I did some colour editing to the screenshots to fix the darkness of the game but other than that these are pure TSW2). Cumberland Yard: Cumberland Turntable:
Wow that is amazing! And the fact that you had to brighten up TSW2 just goes to show it probably wasn't the most realistic lighting environment, and how much better the TSW3 lighting is. Although the lights on the locos don't seem nearly as bright as I thought they would be - but that may just be the sunlight.
Cool thread! All thumps up. All in all, the TSW fidelity, at least for this route, doesn´t look too shabby, right?
That’s exactly the conclusion I drew. TSW2 is a little too dark, even at high noon in summer it looks more like early morning in game. I set the time for all those screenshots to the same time and month as the pics I took and all of them were too dark.
Almost all the buildings in TSW2 are a match for stuff that’s there in real life. Obviously TSW buildings are more generic but they do a close job. For example when you come out of Cumberland yard and are entering the town, you pass under the I-68 highway. Right before the overpass on the left there are 2 generic fast food looking buildings. Well I got off at that exit in real life and sure enough in those exact spots there’s a Taco Bell and a Roy Rogers. I’m not sure what research they did to make everything look so accurate. I feel like they must have had a ton of photos or gone in real life. Google maps/street view would be helpful too I guess. But like was pointed out they even got the hills and horizon line bang on for pretty much any random place you stand. That Ramada isn’t the nicest hotel I ever stayed at but only $77 and you can ask them for a room facing the tracks. And a tip for anyone that goes there: you get almost 0 cell service between Ellerslie and Rockwood so make sure you download navigation ahead of time.
Another interesting spot along the line is the Fairhope grade crossing. In TSW2 there is a platform/bench adjacent to the track… and as it turns out, in real life that exact same platform/bench is there. In real life the placement is a bit different. The hill/rock face is higher than it is in game and the platform is actually on top of it, not at grade level like in the game. A minor difference though. Also in game the crossing has gates where in real life it’s just the crossbucks and lights. This time I didn’t edit the screenshot at all so you can see the difference in lighting level between real life and the game on a similar day/time. On side note with lighting, when HSC came out I thought “eww this is all washed out” and figured they messed up the gamma or something compared to SPG which has deeper colours. But now having been there IRL I’d say without hesitation that HSC is closer lighting wise, at least on a sunny summer day. It’s interesting because TSW2 doesn’t have options for changing specific graphics values but colours seem to vary by route. I’ve now “fixed” TSW2/SPG to make it more lifelike but adjusting gamma on my TV though. So screenshots are dark but the actual picture I get on TV is bang on. The view west is great and after about an hour I got a cool video of a Cumberland bound tank train. It turned out pretty decently considering my video setup consisted of an iPhone 12 leaned against my Sheetz coffee cup.
Impressive post and were there any CSX ET44C4s/ES44C4 if so DTG can reskin the BNSF ET44C4/ES44C4 to make a CSX version for Sand Patch grade. Amtrak P42DC 189 does fit on Cajon Pass because Southwest chief uses the same equipment as the capital limited Chicago to Washington DC via Sand Patch grade. However P42DC 189 needs to be compatible with Amfleet I & IIs Boston Providence route for Horseshoe Curve Pennsylvanian.
Great posting. All goes to prove what I've said many times on the forum, SPG is a paradigm that has only occasionally been matched in the last 5 years. Of course, DTG spent about 2 years modeling it, which they regrettably wouldn't be able to do these days.
I'm pretty sure CSX do not have ES44C4 or ET44C4 on their roster. On the other side tho, CSX started to rebuild their #200-399 series AC4400CW which i believe currently presented on SPG into CM44AC.
