Seeing that it's very likely to release this year, I am already thinking about all the things that can be done with the numerous variants in the pack. While it'll be most fun on Frankfurt-Wiesbaden due to the service variety and the route itself being a really enjoyable one, I personally am most looking forward to the Munich variant being the most modern one with the plug doors instead of pocket doors, having gone through modernizations and being equipped with modern white LED destination displays on both the front and the sides, aswell as LZB. I am not sure if it's too much to ask for, but I hope that DB red Cologne and Stuttgart variants will also be added to the pack for the community to utilize them right away and future-proofing it for potential S-Bahn routes from the respective cities. Since the old orange liveries are also going to be a part of it, maybe it's not too wrong hoping for 420 001, one of the prototype units before serial productions, which is now standing around in Nuremberg covered in graffiti. Would be great for railtours, just like how it was running special services a last time in Munich back in 2015 (from what I know atleast). What are your thoughts about it? Are you excited?
Honestly the fact that we aren't getting it for the München – Augsburg route, the fact said route needs reworking anyways even if it come to it. Plus the whole S-Bahn saga putting a bad taste in my mouth, even as a PC player, really killed much of the excitement for me. The 420 on its own will probably be very solid no doubt, but like the 218 before hand when no route it's on I particularly want that kind of hurts it. I didn't get that until TSG's loco/timetable pack for Linke Rheinstrecke, and I imagine it's gonna take that or a new route to similarly get my attention for the 420 unfortunately.
Citing from the October Roadmap this year: "Currently, their team are working on additional gameplay, including a timetable for Munich-Augsburg replacing some of the DB BR 423s with the new 420s" And even if that wasn't the case, the Munich 420 is still included nonetheless, so it can be used in Free Roam or community-made timetable mods.
There is no information about TSW and UE5 at all. There is a new upgamig metro race game made in UE5, that's all and something totally different.
While I am usually advocating for freeroaming even passenger trains as I don't care at all if passengers have boarding animation or not, freeroaming S-Bahn is a hot mess, with 30 stops and complicated knot stations to navigate with signalling often not prepared for any path through that is not used by timetable trains...
That maybe a sign telling us sooner or later UE5 will be coming to TSW near the future sooner or later. But the proximity is very close.
Metro Rivals obviously the test bed. There’s probably a shadow development for TSW “Next Gen” in the background. If successful we will probably see that in 2027 or 2028 along with a curated selection of converted/rebuilt UE4 content.
If it took two years to go from fish to trains (and we're talking about moving from the Kuju engine to a completely different engine originally), I think the transition from UE4 to UE5 will be faster than ever. It's still the same engine, with added features. And, to be clear, UE5 has been around since 2022. We're already a bit late, I'd say...
UE5 in general has enough issues and is not performing that well, especially not on consoles. With TSW on UE4 already has a lot of (performance) issues, it's likely running TSW on UE5 will cause even more issues. So with this in mind, waiting for the next generation of consoles is not a bad idea. Developing a new game from scratch on UE5 will be possible also a better idea then trying to port over a UE4 game which has already several issues. If you look at TSC, this game still runs on an old engine, so if DTG choose the same path, TSW with UE4 will be around for some time. About the bit late with UE5, developing costs time and most of the UE5 games released today has issues. Some of them are engine related and are fixed with newer versions of UE5, but developers who started on an older version seems not to upgrade the game to a new version. Also the lack of knowledge and documentation how to proper use the engine, seems to cause issues.
UE5 absolutely must run on PS5. It will be 2030/2031 before everyone switches to PS6. I think we already have an example of this with the move from PS4 to PS5. It's commercially unviable. Rockstar won't wait for PS6 to launch the most anticipated video game of all time.
Im praying for a release date announce in the november roadmap. I believe the 420 will enhance the experience on Frankfurt Sbahn by far, as i did get a bit tired from the 430 with it having a similar driving style like the 423 and 422. The 420 layering on Stuttgart-Heilbronn with 2 new additional variants makes the wait even more difficult. I dont own the E94 to this day, but looking at the AI 420 layers might change that.
Well, if you like reduced timetables like Frankfurt S-bahn or the timetables on te first TSW routes like Rapid Transit, then TSW on UE5 is maybe a good idea. I prefer they keep using UE4 for now, maybe with a newer version of UE4 so they can use FSR on consoles and PC and DLSS on PC.
I'd prefer that too. But they've clearly said (or at least you can clearly deduce that from the Metro Rivals stream) that this isn't the case.
After a note to myself to stay on topic and talk about the BR420, I'm looking forward to the BR420. How much I like to drive trains like the BR422, BR423, BR425 and BR430, an older S-bahn train is quite interesting and will give a different driving experience. The different versions and liveries and the layering on multiple routes, are making this an interesting pack. If Munchen - Augsburg is getting a new timetable, then it's about time for me to buy this route, so I can drive with this train on Munchen and Frankfurt S-bahn networks.
I am certainly looking forward to it. I enjoy all the German content, but in particular the more historic stock.
Linke Rheinstrecke is one of my favorite routes because of the older stock and the scenic route. However the bug with the headlights on the cabcar is still not fixed. It would be nice when the 420 will layer on this route with the default timetable.
There will be some services in a seperate timetable, but due to the routes performance they only replace some 423 services without raising the number of playable services. I appreciate this decision, as this gives console players the chance to give the munich version a try without relying on TT mods and Gen 9 should be able to hande this.
Is the performance of Munchen - Augburg still bad, even on current gen consoles? I remember something about the amount of signs and track not being good for performance, but I suppose this was more a thing on last gen.
munchen augsburg bad peformance? it has almost no services and its old, how is that laggy? altough, tsw5 and 6 are both laggy anyway, actually tsw itself is laggy, everything is laggy, so I think ur right tough
Soon we will demand the swedish version as well, but these were very short-lived And we have no route to drive them on.
Lets say you have Frankfurt main station, which is already way to large and busy, so DTG has put FFM on a pause until the core performance gets better. Then you have Munich, with the mainstation itself being around double the size of FFM and the track field being 3-4 times larger. Pair that with knowlegde from TSW 2 times and you get a route which has a timetable only representing 5% of the real one, while still pushing the memory usage of any console to its limits. If this does raise concerns for stuttgart, they reported to have made quite good progress in how to do things more efficient, meaning a (compared to FFM) bit smaller station like stuttgart should be a bit more console friendly. Hopefully.
If the loco was for Munchen - Augsberg, I'd be looking forward to it. I have zero interest in the rip off that is Frankfurt s-bahn (on console at least), so not wasting the (not doubt it'll be) £19.99 on a loco I won't be using much
The problem with Munich-Augsburg was and still is RAM usage. Even when the 420 is not available on Gen8 consoles, there is still a problem with Gen9, namely X-Box Series S. That specific console has way to much limited RAM for its kind, but is telling the running software "i'm a full blown Gen9 beast". So, we can't add any services to the timetable anymore, especially not the BR420 what is quite heavy on RAM. It would simply crash on Series S. Only thing we can try is to replace services that are using the 423 yet. But even that can lead into RAM overload and a crash on Series S. Still needs to be tested out when the timetable is finished. Could end in the fact that we can't do it at all. Not really a problem on Series X, PS5 or PC as i know.
All due respect it seems kind of ridiculous that your 420 is taking so much RAM that a early TSW2 route is being overloaded by it. Because what, don't the 8th gen machines have around 8GB's? So that should give you two extra to work with even on Series S. That seems like a lot to work with for just one train, if it's so heavy that even just swapping it out with another train on the timetable is too much maybe the issues the train being poorly optimized, not the console. Also, I have to ask a question about this. So what exactly's the plan if this falls though? Because I hope after all this time we don't have yet another situation of something getting announced, only for it to be shelved or held back for a million years.
First, i don't think i have to justify myself or what i do. I could also be totally silence if you prefer that. But sometimes the often false information spread via the forums have to be corrected. It takes not much more RAM than any other MU train in TSW. It's highly optimised already for what it is. We also tend to gain a minimum of quality and therefor ignoring some of the max specs or the train would look ugly and less detailed. There is still some room to reduce the memory footprint a bit, but not much before it reduces quality massively and visible. Series S has not much more usable VRAM than a Gen8 console, just some extra memory for other things. What we need most in TSW is texture memory and that is VRAM. Series S still has only 8GB of that. As said the footprint of our 420 is not much bigger than maybe the 423 or any ICE or even a complete Dosto train with a 146. And since a 420 contains 3 wagons to form a unit it needs all to be loaded into RAM/VRAM when a single formation of it is used and visible somewhere. AND we are not replacing all 423s but just a bunch of them. So, that means we add our train to the RAM usage. That is the main problem here. We adding to something where is no more room to add something. That tends to crash on Series S then. It's nothing more or less of a problem than that. Even if the 420 would only use half of the needed RAM, it is to much for that route on that console. We have to deal with that somehow. We can't deliver more physical RAM to the users. And keep in mind that the Munich-Augsburg timetable is just a addition and only when possible to give the Munich 420 version some point being a part of the pack. The main focus of that pack is Frankfurt S-Bahn and Stuttgart-Heilbronn with the latter also only as a layer since you need to own the pack to have the trains appear there. There is no other plan than what i said already. If it fails to work on Munich, the timetable will not be part of the pack, the Munich 420 variant will still be part of it. And please, by all due respect too, it is not on you to judge how long i can hold something back. If i want to hold it for another 200 million years, you can only accept that, nothing more. As a free customer you are free to ignore all of it though.
I get that I can come across as blunt, but nothing I said warranted something this off-putting. I don't really care, but seriously, while I like your work you really ain't doing yourself any favors with statements like this. This sort of stuff escalates things needlessly for people more hot-headed than I am. "Optimised for what it is" implies that "What it is" was way too much to handle. PS4 games are "optimized for what they are", but if you're developing something for N64 you have to stand back and be able to say "This is too much" as well. Optimization is just about putting the goalpost somewhere you can hit a goal just as much as it making the goal itself. MSTS & Trainz content had to ride that line all the time, so does modern content even if it's to a lessor degree. Heck, great example that comes to mind is PMDG, they've skipped out on high fidelity modeling in certain places like interiors and wheel-wells for the sake of performance with the DC-6 in particular. So while I get all that, surely wouldn't the next obvious stuff be get rid of the 423 entirely then and have the 420 stand in? Part of the reason I assumed it took up so much more memory is that I figured you had already tried something like that. Obviously I'm sure it's not realistic, but it seems like it would still be reasonable enough to fulfill that want of getting it on the route. Also while not quoted, I do find your explanation of the technical items pretty interesting. I mean, you can do that, Microsoft can also spend five years dragging people along with games that end up getting canned like with Perfect Dark. Doesn't mean it's smart, and they shouldn't get flak for messing up development so badly on that title and stringing people along for as long as they did. (Not that I'm saying anything your team's anywhere near that level of tomfoolery to be clear though) All the discussion around other developers having really poor reveal to release timelines and their own optimization woes made it seem fair to question your practices as well.
Your are right. It was (again) a bad idea to react at all. Nothing said here in the forums will change anything on the dev side of things for the 420.
What makes Munich - Augsburg different from Frankfurt S-bahn? Will the BR420 replace the BR430 on Franfurt S-bahn, or are there other reasons the BR420 does works better on this route, compared to Munich - Augburg.
Munich-Augsburg was DTG's first attempt at a major switchyard and is still to date the biggest they've undertaken. bigger than Frankfurt, Hamburg, all of them. With uncounted switches and signals for the system to handle, and a 2020 understanding of route building and the clever cheats we call "optimization," M-A is essentially bursting at the seams, and an 8th-gen console or Seies S simply can't take any more than is already there.
