this is just rubbish, the difference in a new route made from scratch with UE5 and in comparison with UE4 is day and night, really. look at the bus in Berlin it has unbelievable graphics with UE5 and costs less then one route add on in tsw.
So you are also okay with performance being much worse. Ue4 already struggles performance wise. Ue5 with lumen and nanite require even more graphical power which means more memory usage and therefore worse performance.
here the thing i was trying to find tutorials on making projects on you tube but it getting harder to fine now since alot of it on unreal 5. and yes i try making project using unreal 5 tutorials video for tsw unreal 4 but it won't work.
I’m sorry but the graphics in The Bus are at best a minor improvement on TSW and that only really at night. I have the game and to say it has “unbelievable” graphics is wildly overstating there quality. At the end of the day graphics aren’t the problem in TSW, the stuttering is and UE5 won’t solve that. The Bus has tiny maps and if anything its performance is worse than TSW. SubwaySim also uses UE5, no graphic improvements over TSW, if anything they are worse. It also has stuttering and again, on a small map. Using UE5 will not improve graphics automatically and could make performance worse, so no upside but a potential downside, a very bad one. I mean you can bang on about UE5 all you like but it’s not happening any day soon, if ever.
If you think you have issues with TSW on consoles, wait until TSW on Ue5 - good luck. The most consistent complaint at the moment is that of stuttering (not on issue for me as it happens) and you are invited to research comments on UE5 and stuttering and judge for yourself if TSW will show an improvement on the Ue5 platform.
I’m Talking about new routes why should anyone Throw away their add ons because UE5 arrives you really believe this bs? I’m sorry for you fella
A game like Train Simulator or TSW needs a custom engine because the requirements of a train simulator are very different to normal games. At the time Unreal may have been the closest to what DTG needed, but I have no doubt that if DTG had actually invested in a custom engine than TSW would have been so much better. Part of TS' longevity is its engine, which was pretty good on day one and has aged shockingly well. Then again, Kuju had EA's funding to build the engine.
The Bus is the worst example you can use of a UE5 ‘success’. It’s got the same issue UE4 has where everything is poorly textured & looks far too clean. The road markings have awful rendering, traffic is minimal, pedestrians are sparse & they still can’t get AI busses in. On top of all that, the performance is abysmal. Can UE5 look better? Absolutely. Can TML & DTG make UE5 versions of their games look better? Very unlikely. It absolutely requires intense optimisation & that’s something sim devs just don’t want to do - instead they look for shortcuts in the form of sacrifices listed above & it ultimately makes the peak capability of a game engine mute.
A thousand words, a thousand hypotheses. Naturally, development of a Rail Simulator based on UE 5 is already underway. Start coming to terms with it. Let's hope it arrives soon. Soon we will already be in 2026, and the first DTG project with UE 5 is coming soon...
I mean, I'd rather it not arrive until I have a 64GB RTX 7090 that might be able to get a stable 60fps in it.
The game "The Bus," which has excellent graphics despite some claims to the contrary, requires a 3070 (recommended). It always depends on optimization. The bus interiors (with real-time lighting) are significantly better than those in TSW. Even rainy weather is much better than those in TSW, whose graphics magically become indigestible under cloudy skies or in the absence of sunlight. There's no denying it.
I’ve got a 4080 & whilst I’d agree there are specific parts that look good, it’s at the detriment to almost every other part of the fidelity. That game has a serious draw distance problem, especially for those finer details. It also still doesn’t have AI traffic, so where it does things better than TSW, ask yourself if TSW could do the same better if it had no trains in the routes other than your own. The issues with that title in terms of UE5 specifics are shared by many including those on top of the line hardware.
The title isn't perfect, that's for sure. It's also been in early development for a long time. Perhaps too long (4 years) to believe in anything more. UE5, meanwhile, has received numerous fixes. It's now more stable.
It is & the recently released Arc Raiders is a shining example of what you can do with UE5 with some work. Obviously it’s not a good comparison to titles such as the bus, but it really shows how good the engine can look & the performance that can be achieved.
But of course by those same criteria, Bright Memory: Infinite is a stunning showcase of UE4 being able to pull off a smooth 120fps raytraced experience. Obviously it's not comparable to what TSW is trying to achieve within the engine, in how it's structured, and we need to account for where the stress points would be in a hypothetical UE5 Train Sim built to the same kinds of expectations as TSW.
I think a lot of TSW’s issues come from the early days, there is probably a huge amount of inefficiencies that can’t be undone or removed. At least I’d certainly hope DTG has made advancements in their understanding & proficiency with UE4. Also something to be considered is that TSW isn’t using any old build of UE4, they’ve said multiple times they’ve modified it extensively & I’d assume the same would be done with UE5, so we’d likely just go through the same ordeal as we have with 4. If anything starting fresh on the current engine would probably net a better version of TSW. At the end of the day though, DTGs biggest issues are spending enough time inside a finished product & ironing out issues & optimising areas. You’ve also got a real problem in terms of how many things are decentralised. Having multiple versions of all the same rolling stock & varying PIS builds etc; has to be clogging up the game. Switching to UE5 is not going to help & if anything it will make the game much worse, in fact the lead gameplay designer of a game called ‘Squad’ has just been let go over their handling of the UE4 > 5 transition, They did not handle it well at all, netting all sorts of performance issues & gameplay degradation which has resulted in a steady decline of the playerbase. Again not a comparable title, but one that highlights how much it matters to take the time with UE.
Bare in mind TSC had its own game engine, and hypothetically as shown with various companies varying from Rockstar to Nintendo in-house engines can produce amazingly good looking and optimized games with the right people, and enough time and budget. TSC never got any of those however, it was a mess with all sorts of weird issues. To the point that mind you when TSW was in the cards people hoped that starting from scratch on UE4 would allow them to finally make a game without those issues. Simple truth we have to admit is the game engines have never been a issue, good devs with time and money can work with even iffy tools. Missing even just one of those, or god help you lacking two or all three of those, then even the best tools in the industry won't save you. I don't think switching to any engine's gonna help the game until DTG can actually spend more than the bare minimum time and budget on content like they do now.
That's the tricky question: Does a train sim have enough of a potential audience to fund a (relatively) fault-free train sim?
If DTG were to consider making an engine change, I don't see why they would have to restrict themselves to Unreal, which really id not all that well-suited to what they are doing (1-to-1 scale open world with AI traffic etc.) Unreal is designed for shooters and action games. The wrong engine can be fatal. Bioware was nearly destroyed when EA forced them to migrate to Frostbite, an FPS engine wholly unsuited to RPGs.
They'll be using UE5. They're honing their skills with this engine on another project: Metro Rivals New York. It couldn't be clearer... Third-party developers also won't have to start from scratch.
...And? What about any of this conversation relies on "Accepting they're using UE5" exactly? You can accept that while discussing whether or not that's a good idea or if it will actually fix anything. Simple fact is UE4 can get results just fine, and probably will for years to come under many different teams. Meanwhile UE5's gonna have the same optimization and performance issues we have now if DTG don't actually do something about how much time and budget they give the game. Might even be worse considering developers who frankly do have more time and budget are struggling with it at points.
The fact is, it's DTG that decides what to use or not. And they've made that decision. Not forum members like you or me.
Despite all this, many developers are switching to UE 5 (even games that previously had a "proprietary" engine). More developers (large and small) use UE 5, easier it will be to outsource work, that's the key point.
If I were sitting in front of Matt or a DTG or Focus executive, I wouldn't dare ask to remaster TSW for UE 5 (a program whose development actually began 10 years ago). What's the solution? Simple. DTG will copy and paste the statement it made at the launch of TSW. Here it is: "We understand that TS users have accumulated a large collection of add-ons over time. However, TS (now TSW) will continue to be supported, as long as it makes sense."
The thing i don't understand is why so many folks are so enamoured with UE5, yeah it can make some truly beautiful games, but it's not this magic invention that's going to change gaming LOL, try doing a little reading deeper into UE5 and you'll discover it has a ton of flaws and causes a ton of issues, and as a choice for a simulation based game i still thinks its bad choice, using a flight sim 3d engine makes more sense due to the distances involved, not an engine that's more geared towards games with smaller scope, engines like Outerra sound like a better fit.
In fact, the UE graphics engine (in general) wasn't designed for "open world" games, but over time, it has been "adapted" to this. The result is there for all to see.
I think this is less to do with UE5 itself, rather that the industry has changed (not for the better) with developers not being kept around like they used to be. Microsoft is a prime example of this - Forza Motorsport 2023 was a wreck because of Microsoft policy going through developers quicker than they could really learn how to use the ForzaTech engine. It’s why the game runs so badly and looks uglier than Gran Turismo 7 (a game that has no ray tracing by default), and even older Forza games. Halo Infinite didn’t end up so bad, but working with the engine (which was effectively a heavily modified version of the original Halo’s engine) was nightmareish. And now the grim Campaign Evolved remake is jumping to a blend of the Halo Reach engine and Unreal, for some reason. Because UE5 is unfortunately the industry standard, contractor developers will usually learn it as it opens up the most job opportunities, and that starts a vicious cycle. A train simulator does deserve/need its own engine, because it is an entirely unique kind of game. Unreal isn’t suited for it, CryEngine isn’t, Unity isn’t (despite SimRail being pretty good looking past its issues), and I doubt Source 2 is either. TS’ engine does have a few problems but I actually think it has held up remarkably well, and manages to look good with better lighting than TSW, and significantly better antialiasing than both TSW and SimRail. Reworking the TS engine probably wouldn’t have been a good idea, but had DTG actually invested in devleoping a brand new engine they could have had something a lot better than what we have now.
I've watched video talking about it, and yeah, that's the real issue at play, Microsoft rely far too much on contractors. What basically happens is new guy comes in, doesn't know what they're doing, learn, start really getting the hang of- OH, time's up, thanks for working with us for 18 months, goodbye. Them they hire a new guy, and the cycle repeats itself, It's a horrible process that wastes so much development time, UE5's only going to do so much to fix that. Worst part is that effects everything, Windows even does the same thing, and that's likely a huge the reason so many Window's updates end up so messy.
If i remember rightly i think TS Classic is basically MS train sim, which was built on a custom engine developed by Kujo, if they could get the original base code for that engine and would hire some dedicated coders, there's no reason why the engine couldn't be brought up to date, but at the end of the day it will come down to how important it is to Dovetail, as i would imagine it would be a metric s__t ton of work, and a huge investment, but if they could make it more modular like say source, the implications for the future would be amazing.
better wait for ue6 and then even a year or 2 later why switch to ue5 when ue6 will release in probably 3 years or so
UE 6 will not have such a big gap from UE 5, compared to the difference that there was between UE 4 and UE 5.
The Kuju teams for MSTS and Rail Simulator are related but they are completely different projects and the engines are barely related, if at all. There probably are hard caps to what the TS engine can do, but better multithreaded support surely shouldn’t be that implausible. But don’t expect clever reflections beyond the basic system we have now, as an example.
