While sales are on I have in mind to pickup some from AP. I notice the Sky and weather 2.0 comes unsupported now as it does not work all the time, what are peoples experience of this. Also does the signal enhancement pack make a noticeable difference. Anyone any other recommendations?
I see people using the new skies. Their article says that the lightning doesn't always work. Which is not their problem, even DTG Pacific Surfliner lightning doesn't work. People generally enjoy the new skies, if the price is exchange I'd recommend getting them. For whatever reason virtually every route uses the oldest weather ever, not even newer ones from 2013-2018. It can get boring. Like it's literally expected to buy it. (And, while at it, shaders.)
There's nothing about the Weather EP being unsupported - you'll need to set up any routes that the pack doesn't support by default, which is just a case of very quick file editing. If you don't have the Weather EP, you should get it as soon as you can. It is probably the best individual purchase you can make for TS. The signal pack is good too, but you will only get the most out of it if you're a route builder or scenario developer. If not, it isn't that important.
According to the AP web site rain and showers sometimes work and sometimes don’t, therefore this aspect of the pack is unsupported, does this cause an issue?
I believe this only affects the randomised showers which you can set up in scenarios only. I have not noticed any issues with it myself, but your mileage may vary. Other dynamic weather options are unaffected.
Of course if you downgrade to v75.8a Stable then everything works, AP weather, headlights, signals, the lot.
This is such a small part of the overall pack, I really wouldn't worry about it. I hate to sound silly but is looking at the screenshots/YouTube trailers not sufficient to see whether a pack takes your interest or not? For example, with the signals, you're either interested in signals that work and look more realistic or not. If you don't care about approach control, having finer control over aspects shown in scenarios or fancy signal bulb fade effects, then it's probably not for you To the person who said they were disappointed by the signal pack, I'm curious as to what their expectations were when buying it that varied so wildly when actually using it? What wasn't advertised on the product page/YouTube trailer that resulted in the disappointment?
To some extent, a lot of recent ground is being re-covered here, as I instigated a fairly lengthy discussion asking similar questions about the weather at Armstrong Powerhouse Vegetation And Weather before getting my wallet out. Generally speaking I am very pleased with the weather pack, and I have just a few days ago added the extra clouds pack for more variety. Much depends on how you want to use it but my preference is for random weather in each scenario - this requires a bit of work editing every scenario but if you repeatedly use the same scenarios (as I do) it creates much more interest as you never know what weather might present itself. My observations are that it doesn't seem to rain a huge amount - whether that is through the reported issues or just because most of my scenarios are set in summer I couldn't say. I haven't seen any lightning but I'm not expecting to given the way I use the product. But I do not feel as others do. If Dovetail update the master product it is up to sub-developers to make their add-ons work with it rather than just blaming things on Dovetail and doing nothing. This is not just the case with Armstrong Powerhouse, and is poor form in my opinion but most of them prefer to spend their time developing something new to relieve us of more of our hard-earned pennies than fix issues with old products. As I am firmly stuck in the 1960s I have little use for the colour-light signal product so cannot comment on that. Hope this helps. John
I can understand AP's reluctance to give time to such an update when DTG could come along and fix it tomorrow, putting all that time to waste. Perhaps after a year of it being broken, it'll be pretty safe to say DTG are never going to fix it and AP should see if there is a way to rectify the issue. Either way, there is quite a bit of focus here about an issue which doesn't always occur, affecting a small part of the pack, which otherwise works fine. To start being cynical and saying developers are just out "to relieve some more pennies" feels unreasonable. Especially towards AP who continually update their packs with new/improved features for free, something I don't see any other developer doing on a continual basis.
ChrisTrains do updates to their stock - I got an email today for a patch to correct the numbering on an emu. Other items they make have also been updated to add new features and like AP the update is Free Just Trains also update if required - the big problem is getting DTG to implement the patch on DLC bought thru Steam
I am that person. I bought the signal enhancement pack hoping to see the much improved visibility of signals at a distance, but I'm not seeing much, if any improvement. I'm getting the momentary flash of intermediate aspects when going red to green and the light projection from the bulbs, so I'm reasonably confident that the pack is installed.
Agreed I sound a bit harsh against Armstrong Powerhouse, but the point was intended to be made against a range of developers - I can think of three that are so busy developing new products to sell that they don't even answer support emails. But it is unlike Armstrong Powerhouse to leave things in the air like that - I think most of us agree the bits that don't work aren't significant so perhaps they should remove that part of the product or just delete reference to it in the manual and on the site. Its the one thing on their entire web site that doesn't appear to fit with their high standards of professionalism. Dovetail could "come along and fix it", but has a single developer discussed it with them? Is it a feature or an error? Nobody knows John
Richard (AP) raised it with DTG as soon as it was noticed. It seems however that the chances of DTG doing anything about it are slim at best.
I noted above that they broke their own product, too. Isn't the problem - I think they wanted to fix it, no idea how it is in the beta. Thing is, the beta introduced so many problems that they appear to be stalled
FYI if it is of help - I catalog a lot of available TSC product here: https://sites.google.com/view/trainsimulatorcontent/home Hopefully you can find info here that may help
I think DTG should go back to v75.8a as the main install of TSC and leave it at that. Everything seems to load and run correctly and hardly any crashes.
Well I went for the sky and weather 2.0, only driven one scenario so far, on just trains Midland mainline, anyone recommend a good scenario to show the pack off? Talking of enhancement packs, what I personally have found to make the most difference is the foliage enhancement pack, any one any idea how to apply it to additional routes?
Do you have any of the AP routes? Wherry Lines? Foliage needs you to search and replace items in the model. I believe Spikee has a thread in here for (a) weather pack and how to use globally (b) how to implement foliage on other routes.
