Important Disclaimer For Over Shap For Gen 8 Players

In case you didn't watch all of the preview stream last week of Preston to Carlisle, it was announced that Gen 8 consoles (PS4 and Xbox One) will only be getting The Class 87 with MK3 coaches and nothing else in it's timetable mode. This is due to the fact that the route is incredibly long and the lack of memory on those older consoles prevent those trains from appearing which is fair enough.

Now i'm on Gen 9 so this problem does not affect me however in my opinion DTG and by extension Just Trains could do a better job advertising this fact as otherwise there is going to be a lot of dissapointed and possibly angry people on launch day wondering where all their other trains are. For £32.99 this route is simply not good value for those players stuck on Gen 8.

I appreciate that many players are still on Gen 8 and I just wanted to create this post to spread awareness and say "Hey DTG maybe you should mention this pretty major caveat on an official article somewhere and avoid a ton of potential backlash?"

If you can afford to purchase a Gen 9 machine or a PC, now is the time.

 

Good post.

I’ve been noticing that PS5 prices have been hitting their lowest ever with the Black Friday deals starting now. Also Sony is selling refurbished ones (in the US anyway) for $349 USD which apparently are in great condition.

 

Yep Black Friday starts on the 22nd November. Just don't get a PS5 Pro unless you like wasting money

 

I'm on xbox just why the ps5 pro is waste of money

 

It's overpriced considering the specs aren't great, plus it doesn't come with a disc drive which costs an extra £100

 

Thanks for the info

 

£33, is that confirmed?

 

Yes

 

I can't speak for Xbox, but PS5 is now affordable and many online retailers (and in store) offer discounts or pay in installments. I got mine a couple of years ago and paid £50 a month for about a year. It's definitely worth an upgrade.

 

As ive still played on Gen8 not so long ago, i think those Routes shouldn't be offered at all on those platforms.

Dont get me wrong, this absolutely isn't against JT, but this problems actually goes back to Routes like DRA where you simply couldn't reach Dresden Main Station without the game crashing to desktop. (That's what i call unplayable)

I feel at least this is a more realistic approach from JT, without all the AI services it is sparse but probably not crashing at every occasion.

Speaking for other routes, take Frankfurt-Fulda as an example, no way you will get any good experience there. And given the feedback, the route is crashing more then it runs on Gen8, i wouldn't feel comfortable offering this for the exact same price as for those who get the full package. I know you could upgrade, but for the ones sticking with gen8s for whatever reason, its not really fair imo.

 

I think now really is the time for Gen 8 players to upgrade to a more powerful system. This is, undoubtedly, only going to become a more common occurrence for future TSW 5 routes and you’ll get a superior gameplay experience by upgrading.

Put bad frame rates, crashes, horrible graphics, inferior timetables and other things impacting gameplay experience behind you and experience something much, much better. The upgrade is well worth it imo.

 

i started TSW on 8th gen x box 1x but as time went on in TSW 3 to 4 when they added the more full timetable s layers etc for gen 9 consoles i could see the writing on the wall that its time to step up to gen 9 in order to get the fullest TSW experience. i upgraded to the Series X first since i have a lot of stuff bought for X box..Recently I bought a used PS5 the non slim disc drive one so can play physical disc games and digital ..i just installed the free starter TSW5 into it and bought SPG to kick off TSW on my PS5..im also comparing PS5 vs my series X as far as visuals etc id say early on the PS5 does have some advantages over the series X but im fine playing on both for what they are for now..

 

I know what I've said before, but with what JT are having to do with their route, it's probably about time DTG started looking at marketing TSW for gen9 only. The evidence is slowly piling up that it is becoming unable to support gen8 anymore.

Not like their expensive either. I got a Series X earlier this year for a decent price after TSW kept crashing on my Xbox One (I was unable to do any ECML services to/from Doncaster nor any Javelin services to/from St Pancras).

If people are worried about spending a bit of money on a new games console they probably have bigger fish to fry anyway.

 

I think that DTG are starting to look at leaving Gen 8 behind, the upcoming gameplay pack releasing in December will not be releasing on Gen 8 and I think that's a sign of things to come

 

TSW6 for Gen9 only maybe ? I wonder what’s the proportion of players on Gen 8 from the total of console players, like how it’ll affect DTG’ sells (and incomes).

PS4 games will probably be phased out starting from 2025 as the Gen 9 will reach soon half of their lifetime. Alright the two first years were difficult to get a hand on a Gen 9 console normally (thanks to the scummy scalpers) but it’s quite the time to upgrade now and Black Friday starts tomorrow.

I said 2025 that games won’t be produced for the PS4 but not entirely, some will still be released for Gen 8, I mean, the last PS3 game was released in 2020 !

 

The only thing gen 8 is holding back is the people playing them!

 

I play on gen 8, and frankly I'm all for DTG just not making more content for it now. I think TSW4 shouldn't have been released on this gen for that matter. They cannot accommodate it anymore with further memory strains in the new and ever expanding content, see what bugs me is how they keep it going knowing full well the performance is garbage! That being said playing guard mode on WCML is fun but I've gone back to TSW3 as the performance, Livery Designer & menu UI is overall better imo.

 

I thought TSW4 was fine on PS4, just about and I still enjoyed playing it. I upgraded to PS5 last weekend and I am enjoying the game more but I haven't got any TSW5 content other than the free upgrade. I had mad stuttering issues on GWE on PS4 TSW5 which I had never had before.

I made the decision not to buy "Shap" when I saw the stream (prior to PS5) regardless but I was surprised that there was only the one train. £33 is a lot for that content.

 

l am on xbox one s and the price of £32.99 is still justified because it’s a Just trains route and a 100 times better than a Rivet route which is only £3 cheeper. Happy to pay the price for WCML.

 

If the content isn't there on PS4, perhaps they shouldn't be charging full price to PS4 users?

I can only run WCML in free roam in PS4 - anything else and I get terrible frame rates and crashes

Blackpool is also very bad on PS4, especially just east of Blackpool North where it is unplayable.

I don't really understand why a game with fairly basic physics and such poor scenery has such a memory issue on PS4. More complex racing games run fine.

 

I have always been in favour of supporting the game on PS4 and Xbox 1, but this is a little bit sparse. Those consoles only get one train, so I imagine that most stations on the route will have no service whatsoever. Perhaps, we will see TSW6 drop support for those consoles entirely.
Then again, I don't see what is stopping DTG from continuing on this path. If PS4/Xbox 1 players are ok to have such a reduction in content, then DTG can continue to support those console. I guess we'll have to wait for player numbers.

 

The official announcment does say:

...which granted isn't quite as specific.

 

No morecambe branch services, no freight, no shunting, it's time to pull the plug on Gen 8

 

Now that I think about it...

Weren't we always told that route length was limited by development time rather than Gen 8 memory? That this was because Unreal Engine loads chunks of the route rather than the entire thing? Yet here we are with only one train on a route due to the length of the route (according to the OP).

Either route length is affected by memory, or something else is causing the need to reduce the timetables on Gen 8.

 

From what they were saying I think it's more the amount of detail in the route, I assume, therefore, there's a lot of unique assets.

 

Oh I see. But how detailed can scenery really be? I haven't seen the route, but is it worth having so much scenery that Gen 8 get very little gameplay?

I may have misunderstood, but I'm getting the impression that they made the distant scenery a little too detailed or something.

 

Plus, if like me, you mostly stick to buying Unreal Engine games on console, (unless it's something as heavily in need of user modding as TSW), because of how atrocious the engine's performance on PC tends to be with hideous traversal stutter and frametime spikes - PS5 Pro is a bad choice for more recent Unreal Engine 5 titles, since PSSR seems to interact HORRIBLY with Lumen, causing a complete breakdown in temporal stability and a hideous flickering aura on everything that will have you saying "come back, FSR2 disocclusion artifacts, all is forgiven!"

 

https://downloads.justtrains.net/products/JTF003001/WCML_Preston_Carlisle_TSW5_manual.pdf
Have a look at the manual and see how much detail they’ve put in (including but not limited to many more explorable signal boxes). This is isn’t like KWG, despite being longer it’s 90% tunnels and hills or even ECML which is mostly flat land, and you have to take into account those routes only have 3 - 2 types of train

 

...

That's a lot. I hadn't realised how much variety there is between Preston and Carlisle. It doesn't looks like they've overdone it either. I can't really find much I would cull.

 

No game is like tsw. You can't really compare a racing game to tsw. Tsw has a fully simulated timetable using multiple trains. There are simugraph elements like signals that eat up memory because they all have to work together. The world is also a 1:1 scale and has to be quite large and a lot modeled. It's not as simple as a racing game where there's a lot less going on the screen

 

Can't speak for TSW because I haven't done much in the editor, but for TSC, the main eaters of memory I believe are unique assets, highly detailled assets and textures, amount of assets (hence things like the Asset Block) and variety of trains.
Basically, 5 of the same tree in an asset block will use less memory than 5 of the same trees placed individually, which will use less than 5 different trees.

 

Probably a daft question, but why not make the entire route an asset?

 

On certain "racing games" there is a ton of calculations in the Backround. Each and every car on track has to be physically correct and correctly placed. Tracks evolving and changing its way how its reacting with the tires. Tires in itselfs needs to be calculated all of the time. Then there is the graphical aspect, all of the dynamic shadows, rain, sunlight, lights from surroundings... I dont see where some of those racing titles have less to deal with. Simply saying TSW is more intense just because its a train simulator isn't necessarily correct. In both worlds there has to be a lot of optimisation to be done to get those game on a playable state. And thats what happened with some titles i drive, pretty bad at the beginning but developers keen to get stuff sorted. EA WRC, while not perfect aswell is a completely different story now compared to its release state.

 

Ah, so you can only load and unload assets, not the things inside assets!

Makes sense, thank you!

 

Yup, this is the clear evidence that gen8 is becoming too weak for TSW. I was really hyped for this route but whit only 87 and no traffic, hope i wait to have one PS5 for this route

 

It’s the right move to restrict certain things to ensure that a good experience is still possible, but also a bit irresponsible to not make it clear that those restrictions would be in place. i’ve seen numerous people asking why their ps4/xbox one doesn’t have the 47, 101 etc so it’s not that people just aren’t reading the information properly, dtg and jt haven’t been transparent enough about certain steps they’re taking. hopefully a learning step for all

 

It gets worse, on the Xbox store, they don't actually tell you what Xbox One receives. It only directs you to an FAQ that also doesn't tell you what content is omitted from Gen 8.



Same deal with Playstation - there's no gameplay guide in the support centre:



It may be the case that the store within the console has more details. I got these from the websites.

 

There's been a few mentions of gen8 only receiving Class 87 services.

 

I’m not a console player yet know about the Gen8 issue. DTG and JT have put the information out there via numerous channels, if people choose not to read it that’s on them. Too many people expect to be personally spoon fed everything which is not how the world works. It is neither DTG nor JT’s fault that this inevitable point has been reached and no matter how hard you try, it’s a physical impossibility to force 10lb of soil into a 5lb bag. Far from being derided, they should be commended for dragging Gen 8’s worn out carcass this far down the road.

Gen 8 is a completely inappropriate platform for a complex simulator to run on 13 years after it’s release as a platform. My PC (which I bought in 2020) has had extra ram, an extra SSD, an upgraded GPU, a new PSU and 2 upgraded CPU’s in the last 4 years just to keep pace, and that is still nowhere near the latest and greatest. Is anyone still using the same mobile phone or tablet they were using in 2011? On the off-chance they were, would they be expecting it to run all modern software? Of course not.

PS5’s can be bought second hand now from reputable sellers in the UK for around £250. At this point it is unreasonable for Gen 8 players to expect everyone else to have their game limited (and that is very obviously happening with TSW) so they can continue to use hardware that, by any measure, is long past it’s best-before date.

 

Gen 8 needs to be dropped.

 

At a time when there were hardly any PS5s available, perhaps from greedy scalpers, I could understand the decision to hold on to the PS4 for the time being. But now there are enough ways to get a cheap PS5, whether new or used.

Apart from that, I think that TSW is generally very poorly optimized. A smooth gaming experience simply doesn't seem possible, even with good, best hardware or the latest console generation. There always seems to be something that hinders a good experience. Whether it's strange FPS drops because vegetation has been set to consume resources or the fact that after each new TSW version you have to drive every single track several times so that the shaders are "charged" and you can drive relatively smoothly. This is all immature.

 

What’s crazy is that Gen 8 has ALWAYS had its problems with TSW. Like WCML Over Shap is an extreme recent showcase of the Xbox One and PS4’s shortcomings, but it’s far from the first.

Great Western Express, you know, the route that released in 2017? When the time came for the route’s release on Xbox One in 2018, they had to reduce the timetable for it. The second TSW route ever and the Gen 8 version has half of the HST services, and the 166 only has the London-Reading services.

Yet that was still a much better outcome for console players compared to CSX Heavy Haul. An entire route that simply was too demanding for the Gen 8 consoles. Had to wait until TSW2 released in 2020 to finally get that route playable on PS and Xbox.

So yeah. Even before the Gen 9 consoles were ever announced to the public, Gen 8 had to get the short end of the stick.

 

The funny thing here is that the upcoming improvements for modern era WCML is coming also for gen8 to improve timetable and fixes crashes. Preston Carlisie route on gen8 have only class 87 services

 

Not everyone have all channels to follow the articles for every route, so they have to post in these forums first. Second not everyone have enough time to read all day what happens here, so this means people don't choose to not read article, and i'm not expect to be personally spoon feed as you said

 

Actually they have said they don't know what cuts will be made for Gen8 yet.

So don't hold your breath until it releases.

They did already cut back on the timetable from what they had originally announced to improve performance.

 

I think gen8 users should face reality and be happy their platform is still getting content.

Tsw releases only focused on the 3 core nations past years. So TSWs weakness in the beginning of the lack of rolling stock, changed fundamentally since there is now a very impressive collection of locos and trains for each country. Tons of a.i services + new features.

Its really the right thing from dtg, to use the full scale potential of tsw on ps5 / modern hardware.

The alternative for gen8 is "no experience at all" due stop of support, which is not happening anytime soon.

 

You know, last year I bought TSW4.

ECMl kept crashing on me just outside Doncaster, even with the reduced timetable. SEHS also did around Stratford, despite not doing so in TSW3.

To me, it was obvious I was going to be unable to play these routes, and most likely others. So I decided to upgrade to a Series X earlier this year.

Ever since, no crashes whatsoever. Best investment I ever made.

 

If DTG (or JT in this case) stopped focusing on Gen 8 they would have more people that could work on longer routes.

 

Gen 8 isn't the only factor when deciding route length.