As an over-70 in early stages of Parkinsonism, i will watch this issue thru TSW 5 ( i hope ) One setup screen in a loco had its own 4-way arrows ON ITS Screen to set brake to cut in I was doing that on a Playstation controller with its 4 arrow keys unused ... my PC bluetooth kybd has a 4 key cluster right of space bar for arrows. At some times of day, Heavy Haul, TSW 2, TSW 3 are a Physical challenge because there is no TAB to next item or Sh-Tab on PC and no use of the PS controller to hop from cab control to cab control. Parkinsonism is an increasing problem for more than 10% of elders ... that includes long ago retired train drivers ... and surely someone you know in the hobby. It is so in Flight Sim fandom for anyone who started out at age 40 with the first MSFS or x-plane ....
I agree there ought to be a better solution to interact with the pretty commonplace touchscreens and displays on modern locos. Even being more able-bodied I find it challenging to aim the cursor at the right place in the display, especially when in motion with everything bobbing. I liked the feature of the 385 to do passenger announcements but it felt a bit cumbersome to control and using it meant my eyes weren't on the track ahead. One solution is to allow the keyboard controls to be mapped to functions on the display, when applicable. Another solution is to enable an API or feature to allow those screens to be displayed and controlled on another device like a ipad or mobile phone.
As you mention using a Playstation controller. Do you have a PS5? Have you heard of the Access controller? Don't know If it might help you but I guess it's worth having a look at.
On top of the Access controller I know PS5 will allow you to remap any button, but not button combos. In an forthcoming major PS5 update you can use multiple gamepads as player 1 so you can have the regular dualsense and the access controller as backup.
I think DTG are behind where they should be on this. They were talking about how all cab functions will have a keyboard shortcut and the keys will be assignable because it is hard to select a lot of functions in the cab with a mouse or a game controller but the keyboard shortcuts aren’t assignable on consoles because they hadn’t fully thought it through. They still don’t think enough about consoles when developing and their thoughts on accessibility seem to come as and when a beta team member on PC has an issue and brings that particular issue to their attention. One thing that I’ve seen in the locos is the growing number of two position switches that require holding the X button down and the left stick to move the switch when in reality just a click with the button could be used. This is an accessibility issue. Master keys in locos used to just be one click, now they are a click and a stick move. There’s no reason for it to be a two step process. The same can be seen with some windows that require these two actions to open although that’s not as common. Third party developers need to be instructed not to do this too, as the 628 by TSG has all switches in the cab requiring the two handed approach when one click would be enough. Doing these actions with a mouse is a one-handed operation but not with a controller.
True. There are a lot of buttons and switches that have counter intuitive way of controlling them. I'm not the right person to point out how it should work as this is design language and that's a very specific skillset.
Pressing D-pad Up to engage the reverser will automatically insert the master key in some locos, but not all. I think the more recently it came out, the more likely it is to work, but I don't have a lot of the TSW3 DLC as of yet.
Sony's sold special controllers for the disabled, but that's different to locking basic accessibility features like fully rebindable keys behind a £40 game.
Sony only starts to roll out these accessibility features when they have a product to sell like the Access controller. If there was no money to be made Sony wouldn't bother.
They're not doing it for the money. They're doing it to improve accessibility. Also, to keep up with Microsoft, who launched the XBox Adaptive Controller in 2018.
Exactly how they want you to react so it's working Tell that to a shareholder that Sony doesn't want to make money
I have seen that in some locos and it is a welcome addition to cut down on things that need doing in the cab. I think it has become fairly standard now on newer DTG releases.
I suffer from morbus dupuytren which means that I can't move my fingers fast anymore. Since I play on Xbox, I use one of this chat pads which can be plugged into the controler. This is very helpful, because I can use several keyboard shortcuts instead of using the virtual switches in the loco's cab which is hard for me. For example - I can use the R and F buttons to control the German trains AFB instead of using controller's X-button plus RS/RT bwcause rhis is painful for me. I asume that the possibility to reassign the keyboard layout in TSW4 will only be available for PC, is it? Maybe DTG Matt can answer this question? It would be very helpful to have this new feature on consoles, too.
I know DTG Matt is big on accessibility, and wanted us to share players with real-life use-cases, so I'm tagging him in here for visibility. Thank you for sharing.
Keyboard remapping on consoles not being there is a big miss and something I want to fix as soon as possible. The problem of the built in computer screens is a challenging one and there have been debates about this internally, ranging from finding a way to use the screen without compromising the feel of operating it (arrow keys with the screen zoomed in that kinda thing) through to just making "make the lights work" on a vectron - which is a few clicks on the touch screen - should be "H" still for the keyboard, same ofr raising the pantograph. My view (which I will beat down doors with, because sometimes i'm a bull in a china shop on these things) is that keys should just work, if H is the key to make headlights work then make it make the headlights work regardless of how it's done. If someone wants to feel like they're doing it super accurately then they can still use the "real" controls - but there are not infinite keys, and CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-H to do whatever wierd function of headlight a train has today is just not a good thing and not helping accessibility for anyone at all. That said, the goal is to make as many functions mappable as possible, so in theory you could then set up whatever gymnastics you're comfortable with to match your experience. First step though is to get that keyboard mappable on consoles, keep getting the team adding and remaining consistent with mappable keys, and then solve this screens problem. Keep the feedback coming folks, i'm extremely grateful for it and want to try and make the game more comfortable for everyone to enjoy. Matt.
I think I recommend using the classic controller layout as a base for an accessible controller. It's not perfect and misses lots of functions but it is sounding like the button combinations are challenging, and the classic controller doesn't use them nearly as much. There will be absolutely no way to give full functionality to an accessible gamepad because there are not enough buttons, and whether you use the classic controller or immersion you will want/need a keyboard for better accessibility. Classic controls also uses the radial menus which were dropped for immersion controls in TSW2. I think this could be a concept to revisit or improve to give a standardized way to access commonly-accessed train functions. For example a radial menu for other train systems like safety systems could be handy, not everyone knows where to look for them on new trains and Alt+Enter blindly turns them all on and you might only want AWS on. Also consider adding the headlight preset menu to the list of configurable keyboard shortcuts, it currently can only be accessed via classic controls and via no other means. It doesn't even need to have a key set by default, but let me set one if I want. If you wanted to readd radial menus to a redesigned gamepad layout, it would only take one button to access them all as you could nest the menus and it would only require two button presses in the menu as well as moving the thumb stick to access functions regardless of the loco you are operating.
