Of course TSC has been around much longer hence a huge library of dlc available and very reasonably priced in sales compared to TSW3. The other factor that is an improvement is the lack of 1 train recycled routes or 1 route with a recycled train in TSC, that DTG are selling us in TSW3, at around the same price as a 100 mile route with multiple rolling stock in TSC! You get better bang for your buck as our American friends would say. No underwhelming routes like the New York to Trenton ghost line in TSW3, but always plenty of ai traffic in TSC. Another good example of TSC's greater immersion would be the CN Oakville Sub Division in TSW3 where the passenger side of the yards are completely empty because only freight operations are included. That just wouldn't happen in TSC. I still enjoy playing TSW3 but for me it has become the lighter "meal" whilst TSC is something I can completely immerse myself in and enjoy the endless content, further enhanced by the generally excellent free scenarios in the Workshop. By comparison I can't even connect to the DTG portal for scenarios, skins etc. since owning the game! Even if I could they are very limited because the routes are so shallow.
If you go to Train Sim (dot) c0m and suggest there is anything worth playing than MSTS or well at least Open Rails*, you'll be getting a visit from the lynching mob! * Apart from the Run 8 corner...
The licensing for train companies, if that is seriously what DTG is trying to suggest, is a load of something that rhymes with Wool's Kit. It has never been an issue in Train Simulator, or Trainz, or MSTS. However route length doesn't fix the core issues with TSW that prevent it from being the main train simulator on PC. If DTG released a full West Coast Main Line for TSW it doesn't being with it an editor, a proper scenario planner, the ability to use fully custom reskins made outside of the game, third party trains and assets, etcetera - the issues have been made clear before. It's also worth noting the better value for money for these long routes in TS. WCML South comes with five trains (one of them is a separate DLC that has its own scenarios to play) and is 100 miles long. It costs £25, £5 less than the Birmingham Cross City Line for TSW which is a fraction of the length with only one train. North Wales Coastal is a similar situation, as is the new Chatham Main Line. Many expect to pay more than £30 for long TSW routes, meaning that the equivalent to WCMLS in TSW could cost £35 or even £40. I'll admit I'm a cheapskate but even for people who aren't, that price is firmly in the 'not a chance range'. I'd never spend £40 on a full game, let alone one route.
When Rail Simulator came out, everyone in the MSTS community basically laughed at this young upstart and why would anyone want to use that when it has so little content etc. Took a few years of the content pipeline building up before the majority of players had either moved on to other products or moved to what was then Railworks. But, there were tons of new people that came in to the hobby as well, and overall it grew. Any of that sound familiar? Some people still play MSTS (or OpenRails) because no routes on any sims are as big as the behemoths that came with that whether you're on a North West Coast route or the incredible Dorset Coast route or many many others with just hundreds upon hundreds of miles. Of course, routes were a lot faster to build back then and nobody would even consider those routes as remotely acceptable in a modern sim, but, they set a high standard for the time, people had massive collections of locomotives because they were quite easy to build (I built some myself, wouldn't dream of it in TSW). In terms of which to go for, I can only say both, they both offer different experiences, have different catalogues and will interest you in different ways. Both are good products that will entertain and fulfil that interest, and yes, I realise i'm thoroughly biased when I say that, but, I guess that should be quite obvious and not need stating Matt.
Many of the routes were built without the tools and resources we take for granted now. When I built my Scottish routes, the markers were transcribed off actual OS maps and converted with Gridinquest to the required format. Terrain was done by plotting spot heights, again off the maps and using sections of road to build the hills. The SMJ used the newly available low res DEM but still had to be enhanced by hand forming much of the terrain. Likewise the Cambrian Coast for 3DTS. For my Swedish Inlandsbanen route, in 2005 even at that point there was no decent hi res DEM. So I had to order all the required paper maps from a bookshop in Sweden, scanned the relevant portions then spent a month contour tracing (can't remember what the programme was called now) to create the terrain. That was before laying a single metre of track!
I don't feel like TSW will fully break into the fan base on US freight though no matter what, alot of this side of the community usually state that how US freight is handled in both mainline runs and local runs in TSW, both TSC and Run8 does it better in just about every way (Aside from timetable mode). Clinchfield was the only rare exception where the TSW version of the route outsided the TSC route. And with Searchlight Simulations working with Simrail to add a Minnesota based route for their sim, it's gonna be hard for TSW to stand out among the competition.
Run 8 is good but needs the ability to do proper passenger ops and schedule trains to spawn at specific times. So long as SimRail remains as primarily multiplayer, it doesn't really hit the spot with the single player experience however good the route might be.
I just noticed on Steam that TSC is marked "Playable" on the Steam Deck...might have to brush up my Linux skills XD I'm impressed by the discussion so far...and thank you all for your time to input your feedback on the simulators...at the end of the day it's not "Who has the better sim?" but rather, it's all about having fun with trains. And that's what both Sims do in their own unique way.
You definitely under estimate the price people will pay in a niche hobby for something they want. I routinely buy £25 single airports in MSFS. I buy planes for it that are individually like £50-£60. I would definitely spend £50 or higher for a well made and length route that I wanted. Say North Wales Coastal from TSC, if they remade that in TSW 3, and it was high quality with the Class 175? I'd buy that for £50 without a moments hesitation. You also have to factor in that, inflation is actually a thing. Everything costs more to produce these days than it did 5-10 years ago. TSW content is also harder and more time consuming to make than TSC content, compare the detail of a single train in TSW to a single train in TSC. It's night and day quality wise in TSW favour. The longer it takes to make, the more it costs.
The value we place on something is subjective, but value for money is objective. You may (for example) absolutely adore the Cross City Line for TSW, but it will always give you less for the money than WCML-S for TS, whether or not you like that route. £24 for five trains and a 100-mile route is always better value for money than £30 for a 30-mile route with one train. As for how much people spend on stuff, it's up to you, but I'd never spend £50 on a route. I wouldn't pay £30 either, that's why I almost exclusively buy stuff at a discount. £7 is roughly what a high quality route is worth to me, £3 for a train.
It was already very much playable when it was marked "unsupported". You just needed to install it in another, non-default install location (e.g. on SD card).
But WCML S, and CCL can't be directly compared like that. Because CCL in TSW is higher quality. It has much higher visual fidelity. You can't compare the quantity of items directly when the quality of two products is so massively out of whack. I'm sure CCL took longer to develop than WCML-S.
One train but a full days timetable and layers with more services if you own other content. Plus the handful of scenarios. With the TSC route yes it is many more miles with more trains but only a few scenarios and quickdrive and if you aren't au fait with the scenario editor, to get more use out of it then you need to go looking for scenarios on the workshop or other sites.
We don't know the amount of time either route took to develop. Both had problematic launches although from my experience with WCML-S, it is also a very pretty route. Generally Train Simulator does better with distant scenery compared to TSW, which is better for close scenery most of the time from what I've seen. Then there are some routes like Marseille to Avignon which just looks better in Train Simulator for all types of scenery, and the original version of SEHS was less visually accurate than the TS version - I'm not certain about the updated version but it does have problems of its own. Ashford is highly inaccurate, for example. Overall it's a tit-for-tat situation. It is worth pointing out that Train Simulator has a far greater range in the quality of content compared to TSW. In the latter, most DLC falls into the 'alright' category. The new 700, for example, sounds fine, and has some nice features and textures but has incorrect modelling in places. The TS version on its own is pathetic, but the AP pack and the patch available for it make it slightly better than the TSW version overall. TSW doesn't have many truly great routes and trains, but it doesn't have many truly terrible DLC either. TS has some truly abysmal stuff available for it, particularly the further back you go, but the highest highs of Train Simulator are better than the highs of TSW as well. German and American content by third parties in TS falls into this category, and a large proportion of AP content for the UK does too - there is no competition between the AP Class 37 for TS and the TSW one, which is badly modelled, poorly textured and with fuzzy sounds. Obviously one could make the opposite argument in certain circumstances, but looking at my collection of TSW DLC in retrospect there aren't many. The Class 465, perhaps. Even AP's one isn't that good, but does have a lot more variation in it. The ICE 3 definitely fits into that category, although the BR407 for TS is very good too.
Ah gotcha, So basically I install it to an SD card...does that apply to the add on as well? Eg: Caledonia Works Steam Locos?
I have TSC on Steam Deck, and it refused to play ball when installed to the default location, and the reason was that it refused to play ball being installed in a directory starting with a full stop (typically these are hidden directories in Linux). Worked fine when I made a new directory in the home directory and installed there. All DLC is installed under the same path. No SD card required (though that depends on the size of your internal storage)
Yes. However with 3rd party add-ons either having their own installers (or also provided as rwp files) you'll need to use Steam Tinker Launch compatibility tool to install them by setting to execute their installers in the same Proton prefix. TS Utilities can be launched from Steam Tinker Launch, too. You can also install/extract in a separate location, but then you'll either need to move the installed files or create symbolic links within the Railworks directory.
TSC has my heart, it was a really special game, I remember playing RW on my old little potato laptop and having a blast, I remember TS12 -TS18, that was the prime of TSC, the game is still good, but nothing can top the sheer nostalgia trip of those times, I remember the original railworks GWML, the original IET in ts14, the ICE 3 Eurostars in ts15, I also remember moleman978, a very good YouTuber who’s content I absolutely enjoyed… TSW just doesn’t have that nostalgia factor that TSC has, I really enjoyed the game, without even having a decent PC for its early years.
FWIW I’ve got both. TSW3 is fantastic for immersion - you can get up and walk around the loco… the first time I wandered around NH with a 40 whistling away in the background instantly transported me back to 1981… priceless… then I got to thrash it down to Leeds… talk about goosebumps! But then again, TSW3 has a lot less choice for routes, locos, scenarios etc. When I saw that you could drive a 76 out of RS I had to get TSC… more goosebumps as I could see the old hulks of 76043 & co sitting on sleepers next to the sidings in the depot as I fired up a 506 to run in to Piccadilly… On a decent ish PC [2060 GPU, i7-10, SSD etc) I find TSC not much inferior to TSW3. The colour palette in TSC is generally less rich, more “washed out”, and obviously the age of the models used shows in terms of less polygons and less realistic physical behaviour (watch the brake pipes sway around on a TSW loco at speed vs utter lifelessness in TSC, for example), but TSW3 isn’t without its faults - overly dark / frankly terrible (IMHO unplayable) night time lighting, questionable “light adaptive” effects entering/leaving tunnels, bizarre weather effects etc. TL;DR - get a decent PC, buy both, if you can afford it.
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my questions...they've been quite helpful. And it's quite fascinating to think how much has changed over the years as the simulators evolved.
Some of us still remember pre 2001 when there were virtually no graphics and sound capable sims, it was all text based. For the UK it was primarily Simudrive with a couple of driver sims from the SIAM people. If you could get it running under the emulator, you had the Amiga Train Driver Driver 3 which had rudimentary graphics and sound. The Americans had the side scrolling Trainmaster 3. Germany had Jens Schubert Railsim very basic cab view and sound that played through the PC speaker!
Excuse me for not reading through the whole thread. I have a feeling you're mostly just interested in UK content. I think you would benefit from having both games, playing the strengths of each. TSC has a lot of variety as you noted, unless your quality standards disqualify most of them. TSW feels like natrium glutamate to me, but it may be appealing. Notably, the editions I own are discontinued.
Oh definitely not forgotten! Good fun trying to get the earlier versions working on Western Windows systems. At one point I also owned most of the Densha de Go games, very expensive imports from Japan and had to rip apart the front of the Playstation to insert the little gadget to overcome the regional protection Sony insisted on - even though both the console and games were all legitimately purchased.
> Tsw3 Or Tsc? Train Simulator Classic because smaller 14" laptop come with good Intel7 CPU but not with good GPU. So there is no choice because Train Sim World has a very limited hardware support.
I enjoy both, and here are my subjective reasons. Neither are cheap hobbies, but both give many more hours of entertainment and, crucially, relaxation than pretty much any other game I've ever played. TSC's open nature has allowed third party payware and freeware devs to build an enormous amount of content that expands and adds to DTG's already vast library, and over time people have learned to push TSC to its limits. This means an incredibly varied experience, and often a very authentic feeling one. It comes with a full set of creation tools, and whilst I'm hardly a master craftsman, I can build scenarios that are good enough for others to enjoy. The editor and a bit of minimal lua scripting are quite powerful. DTG's core updates, starting with the old TSX lighting, and tools like RW Enhancer and AP Weather mean that the game can shine graphically despite its age. TSC's flexibility is also its downfall though. As a user experience, it's honestly bad, with a very dated interface, and requires a fairly detailed knowledge of folder and file structure, especially to install freeware addons. Addons can be hard to find, scattered across myriad, obscure web sites and are often withdrawn by the creators with little or no notice. It's not unusual to spend far longer hunting down requirements for a scenario, or swapping out stock you don't have or is unobtainable than you spend actually playing. The game engine shows its age, with older routes and stock looking crude and dated, and it doesn't take advantage of modern PC hardware meaning that performance is not always great. Of course the 64 bit update removed some of these limitations. When it all comes together it can be sublime, but sometimes getting it together is too much effort. In comes TSW, which is easier to navigate, works out of the box and is my choice when I'm tired, pressed for time or just want to have a drive. It doesn't have the range TSC can offer, and it's a far more closed off platform, but this means a more cohesive experience. Generally, I find it runs well (ymmv of course), is very stable and at times looks absolutely stunning. It's not perfect. It rarely looks bad, but sometimes it can look sterile. Lacking the range of content and open dev tools that TSC has, it can't achieve the same level of authenticity yet, except on a few selected routes such as SEHS. I'd love to see the Birmingham, Glasgow or Manchester areas built out in the way that St Pancras, HS1 and the nearby local lines on SEHS have been, or layered up like German routes. Where TSW beats TSC hands down is the timetable mode, and its connected open world. The ability to walk around the stations and up to the trains gives a sense of scale whereas TSC often feels more like a model railway in comparison. It's also broadened the player base by adding consoles into the mix, and being generally more accessible. I'm not a railway professional in any capacity so this is opinion rather than fact, but I also think there is a bit of snobbery from the TSC community that leads to the simulation aspects of TSW being under-rated. The trains have a lot of functionality in the cabs, and my sense is the simulation is improving with newer units feeling more distinctive and characterful to drive. And I do appreciate DTG's forum engagement and the wider community of players, some of whom are fountains of genuinely interesting historical and current knowledge. TL, DR? They're both good for different reasons and both worth having in their own right. I haven't tried Run8 or Simrail, both for lack of time and because (again just my personal view right now) neither currently appeals greatly.
