PC Hidden Tsw: The Tracks That You Don't See

This. You speak my mind. So many opportunities sacrificed because of an artificial, self-imposed deadline.
Many, many times I've seen requests here for more network-style routes, more connections, more variety instead of plain A to B services.

Incredible
If the route would have looked like that from the start, it would probably have become an absolute classic from the start. I already like it as it is, but this would have brought it into my top 3 routes easily.
Or would it have created even more problems with lag, especially for console players... who knows? We sure don't, because we didn't get it

 

absolutely fascinating stuff

 

Something just came to my mind...

I know, DTG's track record for touching on existing routes isn't very great, but here's one faint hope...
With TSG's 420 coming up, I could see a slight, slight chance of it being released bundled with an extension to Frankfurt-Fulda, to include its S-Bahn routes. The 420 is tailored for the Frankfurt area anyways, and this extension would give it even more playground as well as an additional incentive for players to buy it

 

Having released the underwhelming Cardiff "Network," DTG now has a convenient scapegoat to gaslight their customers with "SeE! nEtWoRkS dOn'T seLL!", nevermind the ridiculous pricing and the Rivet involvement that surely spooked like half of the customers right there. I wouldn't expect anything other than A-B routes with at most, ~100 km of track to come first-party anymore. They canned steam for no good reason, I'm sure they will justify these boring A-B crackerbox journeys with some similarly far-fetched cope, such as the following:

You know that, according to Matt, 30-45 minutes (might be misremembering the exact number, but it was something stupidly short) is an optimal length for a service from a gameplay perspective. There is no reasoning with these people. They actually think this is the correct way to do things.

 

Regarding the Frankfurt-Fulda route: Consider my mind blown.

I couldn't help myself and used a little something to be able to pass beyond route barriers. Spawned at Offenbach Gbf, headed towards Offenbach Ost and took a S-Bahn towards Frankfurt (as passenger).
What can I say? I travelled to Frankfurt Hbf underground without a hitch. It's a fully functional route, with signals and everything. The tunnel walls and stations are missing, but everything works fine. The trains even stop at the invisible stations correctly. I'm now very peeved that we didn't get this in a finished state

Also, it's crazy to see how much of the above-ground area (which isn't even visible from the actual route) has been modelled, and very detailed too. With road traffic and everything.

Gotta go and do a passenger ride along the alternate route to Hanau now, to blow my mind even more. And get even more peeved, I presume.

 

In the Frankfurt - Fulda there is a secret underground section that is hidden
Train Sim World's SECRET Underground Railway which makes NO SENSE..?

 

The Leven branch was drivable before it was officially in game. There was a single line track down to Levenmouth alongside some basic scenery - some roads and a fair few bridges. The landscaping had also been done to a point.

There's videos on YouTube of someone driving down it. I've done it myself and there was no invisible walls or warnings.

Regarding the whole stretch from Edinburgh to Glasgow, totally drivable (assuming you find the one bit of track they forgot to hide on the map just outside of Glasgow) or ride in one of the Glasgow services.

There is one more bit of hidden track on the Fife Circe that I know of. After going over the bridge there is a junction with some track blocked off with a metal fence. You can see the track looks very short on the map. If you get over the fence (spawn a locomotive through it, or a MK1 coach and sit in a seat beyond the fence you can get through it).

This leads to a very decently long stretch of track to drive which leads to, I'm guessing a shipyard? or the equivalent. What's better is that there's a lot of scenery modelled, including houses, trees and the industrial buildings.

 

As I recall you can get a short distance on the mothballed line just south of Dunfermline (which goes across to Alloa).

Never tried it but I wonder if you can get along the old power station line between Cardenden and Glenrothes?

 

Just tried this and what you see on the map is what you get, but that is a good few hundred yards of mildly detailed track.

 

Some memories of the 'old' Leven branch.
#PostcardsFromWonderland

 

So, DTG spent much time to layd track that in fact didn't use, and ran about of time to correct bug founded before the launch of the route....?
If isn't planned use that track, why they created it?
And note that this is a specific thing only for the track....

 

Basically every video game ever has a bunch of unused stuff that didn't get used for various different reasons. It's not unusual.

 

Yes, i know, and I'm sure also the base engine use this strategy but, IMO, build unused track isn't a good usage of time...
Maybe it can also saturate the memory?

 

I don't want to litter the topic, but I think it's just a banal deadline for development of each route, so all the unused parts of the route are left abandoned pieces of rail)

 

Theres a fife circle enhancement and timetable mod that readds the scenery tiles for the route to Glasgow and makes the services driveable.
with them you can drive from say Leven to Edinburgh and change to a train to glasgow, no route hopping involved.

https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/mods/c3-train-sim-world/c111-timetables/i4676-fife-circle-2024

https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/m...19-patches/i4403-fife-circle-enhancement-pack

 

So curiosity got the better of me and I decided to see if I could out of bounds on the freight line, and see how complete it was. The thought of a new, hidden line to drive was enough to get my attention. I drove the Leven branch before Rivet finished it so thought I'd give it a bash.

Before I start though, I'll mention that I play on Xbox, I haven't used any cheats or hacks to get out of bounds. I've got a pretty decent method involving spawning a certain wagon and I'll leave it at that.

Okay so this line was clearly planned to be in the final route and drivable. It looks like it was dropped fairly late into the development process.

The landscaping is done. There's roads (or textures on the terrain showing where they'd place roads), there's a lot of complete bridges, houses and buildings. It's fully signalled - proper signal posts and lineside equipment which they wouldn't have placed unless the had intended it to be used.

There's a even a mobile/4G signal mast which has been placed.

What is most telling though is that driving past the houses there's the ambient sounds playing. Those definitely don't get placed unless they're intended to be heard. Also the freight yard at the north end is complete, including car park, plus the general area has a tonne of buildings placed.

Let's add it all up. Fully signalled with full lineside equipment. Lots of bridges. Houses and buildings placed along the line. Other structures including the 4G mast. Ambient sounds playing.

Yup. This was definitely meant to be played but for whatever reason it was cut very late into the routes development. This is far, far more complete than the Leven branch on Fife circle before Rivet finished it.

It doesn't look like it would take a massive amount of work to finish it though. I do wonder why it was cut though!

 

How

How did you get past the barrier? I tried but couldn't.

 

If you want full details I can DM you. I've got a feeling that if I post how I got out of bounds they'll patch it.


Needless to say there's an easy way to get past the invisible wall, getting past the out of playable area white screen is a bit more tricky. It takes some finess and practice but there's a way.

Once you're past that it's free reign. It's possible to drive a good portion of it as the signals are set to green.

 

One can only imagine how much better most of these linear DLCs could be if they completed and opened up those areas of additional track creating much more variety!

Its quite depressing to see how much better Frankfurt-Fulda could have been if they completed it!

 

Either that, or even more laggy
Believe me, I'd love to have the northern route between Hanau and Frankfurt Süd included proper, as well as the S-Bahn in its full tunnel-y glory. Especially now with the S-Bahn DLC being out. But with so many people already having performance issues, i doubt it would be good if there were even more things wantin to be rendered.

 

For consoles and those with old PCs and ram 16g and lower.... Im only a 3080ti with 32gig and rarely see lag issues on that DLC, yes I dont run maxed out but still high settings...but DTG in general is quite an unoptimized game with the older DLCs and to be honest the whole game needs a complete reset but history shows they dont tend to revisit older releases