Feedback: Tsw 4 - Nahverkehr Dresden Upgrade + Vectron Preview

Yes, I will wait until the routes are on my machine to make a judgement, but I'm not at all hopeful. Except for a few exceptions, DTG have not been able to figure out how to light urban, suburban and rural areas at night. This problem has persisted for several years and reached its nadir with the Birmingham and Manchester routes.

I'm sure it's not a problem that comes with UE and I can't believe there's no-one at Chatham with the necessary skill- set because, as I say, it's been done well enough in SPG, GWE and BML, for instance. Go figure.

Meanwhile, I generally avoid night driving in TSW, which is a shame because it cuts out a big chunk of enjoyment.

 

With the upcoming editor, I would love to see a community-route proof of concept with awesome night lighting. Two stations, portals on either end and massive train traffic (simple but effective to generate possible performance hog) at night to see how it works under stress. UE lighting itself provides for amazing lighting techniques. But here are two important things to note: TSW uses real-time light but not raytracing. This means that all reflected light (non-direct) is simply not existing. The volumetric fog attempts to make it slightly look better but that's why most buildings look flat in the night.

Usually in big cities you have light pollution and all this artificial light with its reflections causes a brighter baseline than in the pure countryside.

Furthermore, I'd like to see realistic headlights attempted by the community. And since child blueprints of existing locos CAN be made, the light of locos might be one area to see faster improvements.

 

I know Matt said he needs this on whilst streaming, and I completely get it. What I don’t get is why the new mini hud doesn’t have an option to have a distance counter on it.

Now I completely get the point of the new hud, and why Matt was having to use it the way he did, but honestly why is this new HUD format not the basic template. It is a million times better than the current HUD, and could quite easily fit in your speed & distance to objective.

You could just have various options of the new HUD. The biggest things that get in the way of the cab, are the massive on screen markers & huge speedometer, even the small version isn’t small.

Personally I’ll be using the new simple HUD, but on German & US routes particularly I’ll have to switch that stop marker on, which IMO is daft considering there’s more than enough space to add a distance counter within the new HUD.

 

The 2 stations would also need to be massive with lots of assets, platforms, track and signals and utilize as many different trains as possible (not just 1).

 

Still seems strange to have the coloured track on, but hey ho.

I will definitely be using the new HUD. I hate how the current one really forces you to squint at the lower RH screen when you should be looking out the front or at the gauges. The only time I might have to use the old versions is on the steam locos as the speedo is not generally visible from the normal driving position. I think there is certainly a case to put a discrete display of the current speed in the new HUD.

 

I have every intention of using the new HUD, but I also use a Rail Driver which has its own digital speed readout.

 

Would love to have a station stop marker on the new HUD with the distance remaining. I really really like the new simple HUD layout, but without station distance markers I either need to use the old HUD again or switch on the in-game markers which I really don't like.
Or we could just be provided with an EbuLa system that provides us all the necessary information :P

 

So the reworked the ohle and made it actual worse with "missing sections" were present on tsw2 ??

 

This is not QA testing ... this is User Acceptance.

But i have a suspicion ... who is the DTG QA manager ? Who at DTG was a QA hire with QA background outside gaming industry and its Bros ways ? Hmmm.

 

The question is how is it possible when they say they have to manually replace the old OHLE to have again sections with missing overhead wires? That the wires seem to be just thicker LOD models is another story.

 

Unfortunately, in-cab gauges often are not very legible at 1080

 

That is my hope that once I have it in game at 4K the gauges will be easy to read.

 

I mean you can also just zoom in to read them but whatever

 

I run at 4K on a 24” monitor and the gauges and some can be quite hard to see, plus as I already mentioned steam locos do not have the speedo visible in the usual driving positions. So I really think it’s fairly essential to incorporate a readout of the speed somewhere in the mini HUD.

 

You have the general problem that everything is the same optical distance from your eye in the game when in reality it isn't. Your eye is exceptionally good in focusing on various distances quickly (faster than the fastest autofocus in cameras). The gauges appear much bigger in real life, because you can focus on them.

In the game, however, your focus is fixed and you have to zoom in to get the same effect but that is cumbersome and excludes vital parts of the scene from you.

 

Maybe they should look at doing what some planes in FS allowed - clicking on an individual gauge or section of the panel enlarges it.

 

Wow what a flop. The reaction to so called "upgrades" seem to be more that they are "downgrades". I guess when a company is stuffed full of internal "yes men" you often end up with a result that the end user doesn't want. Nice job.

 

I don't know about flop as the Vectron is looking good, in fact I'd like a routine to immediately swap it for the Traxx locos on every route/scenario/Journey, the latter never to be seen again.

But I have a doubt regarding the DRA Line, nerf comes to mind particularly as regards the night lighting.

 

OldVern I don't think he was saying anything about the Vectron...the DRA Update itself seems more like a downgrade then a real update of the route.