Sorry Rivet, but this one is really not okay. It's a landmark. The Church is more that wrong. It's not even that hard to model. And what happened to the mountain in the centre?
Aside from the seasonal issue the slopes do look too green and with outsize textures. Needs a more "dun" golden brown terrain blend and better rocks. Looks like one in that final shot in the second group of pictures is actually standing proud of the terrain at one end. Maybe that's nit picking but you know, £30 and all.
The overall scenery does not look bad. My biggest issue is with the way the trackbed looks, way too gray and wide, empty right of way. Also yeah, that lighting inside the sheltered sections... that's just horrible.
Could have used the ballast colour from the latest MML update, a nice tan/orange colour.. Sorry but the fact there is no gravel type clutter near the tracks itself and the overused green paint to act as grass is just shoddy. I trust many will reach for their pockets but ultimately you are feeding the greed within the developers who fail to rectify their mistakes once released.
Why can’t people just let others decide for themselves what is worthwhile or not without passing this moral judgement B.S. If you don’t like the route or the developer, don’t buy it, but don’t throw dispersions toward those that do decide to purchase the product.
You can do whatever you want to do. But in the end it will affect us all, especially if you keep defending bad consumer practices and bad development practices. If people will keep buying, then nothing will ever change and will keep getting worse and worse, not just for the "haters" but also for you.
One thing that bothers me is the colour of the glacial water. It normally looks kinda turquoise in summer, but here it's the normal 'blue'. All in all, comparing these shots with each other, they did a good job at many places, a bad job at some places, some places are mid, some are fine. It has a lot of potential, it's waaaay better than arosa, but the colours are kinda off. Wished they'd change that.
if you go back 11 years ago to the forums for TSC, there were those who posted as above. If you buy this, you ruin the game for us all. However TSC is still going. I have been using TSC since before it was TSC and TSW ever since Sand Patch Grade and literally have had 1000’s of hours of entertainment over the years. And over the years, there have been some great routes, some good routes and some questionable products released. As always, the consumer should decide for themselves what they should buy based on their preferences and desires. Finally, with well over a decade of people putting forth the above sentiment of let’s boycott, vote with your wallet, don’t feed the monster, the franchises still continue and the practices are basically the same. So please spare me the sermon for I have heard it before.
I think rivet had done good. It's certainly swayed my opinion into the tempted to buy. End of the day, other users can post their opinions till the cows come home, but do I listen to them? Nah. Have learnt long ago not to trust peoples reviews and opinions
The entire review industry would beg to differ. Every video game, movie, product review site should either shut down or simply paste <Product Name> "Decide for yourself. Don't like it, don't buy it"
The sun lighting in TSW needs at least a little shift to red in the clear and light clouds conditions. It's too blue, like it would be with no direct sun light. The grass & trees would feel more alive then.
I've been to Switzerland (and the Alps in general) many many times during the summer and, having watched the preview stream, I have to say that I found it truly evocative. Yes, I could nitpick this and that detail (that path is bad!) but it gives a good sense of what the scenery is like to actually be in. Would I buy it? I'm not sure. My reasons are that I would be getting it for that feeling of being there and doing some sightseeing but I suspect I would get bored of the driving fairly quickly (I find that, as a passenger, real-life mountain railways get a bit boring for me once I've done them a few times). This is nothing against the developers or anyone who might choose to buy it, it's purely my opinion based on my particular preferences.
It strikes me that at the Bernina end nearly all the stone, from the ballast to the cuts to the walls and buildings, should be yellowish brown but Rivet have made it all a neutral gray, robbing it of its warmth.
This is a pet peeve of mine across TSW: churches are generally significant and distinctive landmarks, but with very few exceptions we just get one of three generic church assets plunked down instead of a bespoke model. It's really bad on Linke Rheinstrecke, where the churches are as iconic a part of the view as the castles.
But before you judge - bear in mind that real life camera settings, perspectives, weather and post production do make a huge difference. And that the conditions of the preview were not the same as in the videos I used to compare. Some more preview videos on youtube should be considered to watch for those who are still undecided.
Yeah I agree on that. I get it - you can't built everything. You have to reuse generic models. But that church ingame is not even close to the little chaple you can see in reality. I know Rivet can do better. It's not something gamebreaking. It's maybe nitpicking. But still - it's a landmarke. Those should be close to reality.
While that's true, yellow and gray stone are fundamentally different colors, irrespective of lighting
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with that. The saturation in the videos is not particularly realistic (it's like how you'd see things through polarised sunglasses) compared to how I perceive things with my own eyes. If the sun is out in the Alps, stuff does tend to get washed out.
I do agree that the scenery quality for the most part is not bad. I think the worst offenders are simply the textures - wrong colors, too clean, etc. That and the way too wide trackbed area, which is a problem in many TSW routes. The area surrounding the tracks is just wide, empty ballast texture. Which is a shame, because while these could be easy to fix/avoid things, they really ruin all the rest of the scenery. Because sure, the distant mountains look great, but does it really matter when the tracks I am driving on are literal eyesores?
I think where I would 'argue' - and I mean this with complete respect because I understand exactly what you're saying - I wonder how easy it actually is? I'm really not making excuses for Rivet/DTG but I suppose there are limits to what they can realistically achieve with the resources they actually have available - human, computational and, of course, financial. It might seem 'easy' but, in a world where we often have to deal with the art of the possible, how easy is it actually? Ok, someone's now going to say, "just use a different texture", but that's simple to say without actually knowing what's involved in the whole development process. I might be wide of the mark but I'm just putting an alternative perspective, bearing in mind that I, for one, am not expecting a photorealistic simulation for 30 quid.
Well the close and medium scenery is generally speaking good but I find sad that the distant moutains aren't there or badly represented.
I disagree. The mountain rendering is generally pretty good. Yes, there are issues but, again, are people's expectations too high?
At least Rivets attempt at this route is not brilliant it is more recognisable than St Ives and Penzance on WCL. Rivet standards are generally poor and nowhere near as professional as Just Trains. If I gave 100 to Just Trains I would give 10 to Rivet.
Why does in the Voralberg route it look better then ? There is snow, more trees and the moutain are not smooth and "linear". They are sharp and have more details. And the render distance for them is higher (But that is more a personnal point of view)
Some of it could very easily be made better looking just by simply changing the color/tone of the texture. Like as seen on the comparison images, the ballast in real life is more brownish at places and darker gray at other places. It would literally be like 2 mouse clicks to change the color tone of the texture in an image editor software. Other things might take a bit more effort, but it's not anything out of the ordinary. Sadly the texture work on many TSW assets is horrible and objectively worse than in TSC or even in Trainz. I get that they are trying to save GPU resources (less VRAM) and manhour (less texture work) by using tiled textures everywhere, but how can anyone look at this in the 2020s and thing that this is acceptable? Compare it to TSC assets and you can see why people are sometimes saying they think TSC looks better than TSW. While TSW has the upper hand in terrain detail and visual effects, the texture quality is miles better in pretty much all TSC content. I mean just look at Bernina Line for TSC. Just look at how much more natural the track texture looks compared to TSW. Same for the town buildings. Road vehicles also seem to be more fitting for the swiss area. Granted, the road in the middle looks bad, it's all just blank gray. But the smaller road on the right looks much better.
The other "secret" that we got from having the public editor, while beyond my pay grade, is that you can cut complete scenes out of the editor, import them to Blender (also presumably 3D Max), work on it as an integrated 3D model then slot it back in again. So it should be far easier for those with the skills to actually build a world compared to slapping down, aligning, lifting up and down individual objects and splines/lofts to make a scene. That's why there's no excuse for that ghastly footpath at Ospizio which looks like a road section from Trainz 2004.
Ah, that's pretty cool. In this case, I agree. The biggest problem seems to be that they still seem to build routes like they are in the TSC/Trainz days, instead of properly using what Unreal Engine offers.
In terms of snow (and trees), it depends on the mountain - its elevation, its aspect, its topology, its topography, all sorts of things. I 'climbed' a mountain in Austria in the summer with an elevation of over 3,500m and there was no snow to be seen but, below me, there was a glacier. There really aren't many trees much above 2000m but, again, it depends on the environment.
I definitely agree that the buildings look more pleasing but, in a way (to my eye), they are more cartoony. Excuse my ignorance: what rendering engine does TSC use?
I believe it is an in-house developed engine. But not like it matter in this case. They could easily do good looking assets in Unreal Engine as well - and sometimes they do! It is quite a mixed bag in TSW, because some assets are properly UV mapped and textures (giving it a more realistic feel), while other assets use this weird tiled texture technique, which results in lack of detail and weathering. Sadly, the latter seems to be used more often.
With regard to the mountains on Vorarlberg, part of me still wonders if some element of photorealistic background was used. It must have been torment otherwise painting textures all the way out from the line on the actual terrain.
Actually it’s more likely that the opposite is true. If fewer people buy then the devs get less money in revenue and that affects the budget for the next route, making it lower, and the quality is likely to suffer. It’s the people who do buy who will be having a greater impact on making things better for everyone, they are the only customers who possibly can. This route isn’t as bad as many are making out it is.
Customers buying a product doesn't guarantee that the next product a company makes will be better. I can name many companies that had a game sell well but their next product released in a poor state. This is an issue in TSW as well.
That's a dangerous thinking, making the customer responsible for the quality. Quality has to come first, then the product should be bought - not the other way round. That's exactly how the many Early Access scams work. WaggonWerkstatt, a new developer for TSC, have just released their first DLC, and it's of brilliant quality. That's how you make yourself a name and attract customers. Not by "if you buy our DLC we'll improve". That's what you would call a "toxic relationship" - the cause of all negativity on the forums. DTG has tied their customers to them, and we spend hours on the forums instead of just not bothering and playing something else (I'm completely back to TSC, there's so much fine content released recently). It seems more that TSW is still so low on content available, that people want to buy everything - over in TSC if a DLC is bad you won't see these kind of discussions. We'll just move on and ignore it. The devs need to think about why their stuff don't sell, not we as customers. We have to make sure to deliver good work at our jobs to earn our money, we're not responsible for the well-being of a software company. I will play Bernina when it's there, and then decide if I refund it as I have the whole line on TSC, which is actually very nice and well done by Rivet and Thomson, so probably I won't need it for TSW. And TSW scenery hardly ever impressed me. At least we got away from the old ever same brown-olive two tone route scenery. So for myself the motivation to buy a route that I don't already own in TSC is bigger. I hope they'll do some routes that haven't been done already. The Suggestions sub is full of them.
I have to defend Rivet here for a change. Try those side by side comparisons with any other route and you will find the same or worse. As i build stuff myself in TSC, I can say, it´s really hard to get things 100% right.. Or we will jump in the editor and repair it. People in the german community are famous for doing complete revamps of low quality routes. Just check out what they have done with Hagen-Siegen, Hamburg-Hannover, Köln-Koblenz and many others. In TSW this is not possible.
Defending Hagen-Siegen, it was the first ever german route done for the new RailSimulator, by GermanRailroads (later virtualRailroads and TSG) who had previously made MSTS content. Same for Cajon Pass and the US assets which was done by 3DTrainStuff (now with their own Run 8 simulator), who also did MSTS train stuff before. DTG's (at that time firming under RSDL) first route, Island Line, is actually still looking pretty good. And I agree on defending Rivet, I'm mostly pleased with their content even if there's flaws. They offer a lot of features that others don't, and loco models, lighting and textures are of high quality. Plus adjustable seat height (even seat travel on the brilliant 204), you may know me for having that POV OCD thing.
Spikee1975 That's the second time I see that "brilliant 204" remark from your hand and I wonder: What's so brilliant about it? Certainly not the fact that the last three throttle stages are useless, that the sound is nothing like the original and that my car simulates better the real BR204 driving physics than Rivet's ill-conceived attempt of a simulation? The visuals are marvellous, no doubt. As always with Rivet's locos. And that's the real tragedy (apart from the more than sparse available timetables in TSW). I defend Rivet myself here and there, but this one must be one of the major *beep* ups from them in TSW. Db Br 204 (v100) Substitution
That's dangerous territory. I just love driving that thing - I don't know if the physics are 100% accurate or not. But I love the attention to detail. Within TSW's possibilities, I think it's a good loco. Sound, may be off but it's not so bad as it would annoy me. Clearly the low mark for me is Skyhook. Sloppy modelling (Cane Creek bogies, 158 bogies), horrible sound and lights on HSC, bad textures on the EMT stock interiors, issues with lighting and gauges (but the physics are good, but not done by Skyhook). The infamous 187 with almost all sounds missing and a messed up script. MML saved by londonmidland mainly. Last release has terrible brakes on the petroleum tankers, unusable. Compared to that Rivet's stock is far ahead imho. I mean there's people complaining about the "Allegra!" announcements quickly. Ask questions later. amyinorbit confirmed that this is actually true to life. I will really question the 204 physics when I've actually ridden on one. I like the 204. Anyone trying to bash me like that noob recently, bugger off
I now have a significant wish list forming for TSC - Brocken, the U-Bahn, Ringbahn if it ever appears on Steam, Gotthard, Poschiavo to Tirano along with several others. My list for TSW consists of precisely one item, the Class 104 DMU. In fact I’m now looking very closely at TSW and the space it occupies, not a complete uninstall but triaging out some of the poorer quality routes I never play - Cane Creek, Sherman, HRR, WCL even Cajon to name several in order to claw back some HD space.
