All Aboard Studios Route- Crewe To Birmingham New Street.

Learning the route to get to hudless has been the hardest experience yet for me. The gradients really do vary south of Wolverhampton and plenty of speed changes too, even two temp 60mph for bridges before hitting back up to 75mph. Nearly there now to set up hudless and give it a go but will take some serious concentration. Hats off to the real drivers.

 

My one gripe about this route, is why the hell didn't they use they animated trees, maybe just me but it's a tad immersion breaking when your sat there waiting for a signal to change, in obviously rough weather, and the trees and shrubs are just sat there doing nothing, not even trembling tho there's an obvious storm raging.

 

Probably because it would of been even more of a hit on performance

 

Not sure if that's the case tbh, if you check fps with wind and without wind, there is literally no difference (on my system at least) and as for performance of the Birm-crew route, I've had none really, i still get a locked 60fps and my GPU sits at around 70% utilization, and CPU gets to around 20% usage across 6 cores.

 

Well this one is a first.
First time playing since last Sunday, so went to launch TSW6.
Failed on the load screen before actually getting into the main menu.
Kicked me back to the Xbox front screen.

Second time launched, got into the game, went to resume the last journey, Crew to Brum (1Z99), which was only 6 miles left to do.
Failed halfway through the load, dumped back to Xbox.

Third time the same, as was the fourth.
X box Series S.

Never had this in three years of playing, from TSW3, on any route or any saved game.
I very rarely had a crash, even during the issues reported on TSW5 WCML launch route.

Can load the service no issue from the start, so it seems loading the saved game whilst the train is in motion is way too much to handle.

How did it get this bad.............Just dissapointed, as if this is the case, my save game function is now useless and that will make all 1 hour services unplayable for me.

 

I could certainly believe that for MTA stuff with the amount of stupid TikToks I've seen
Over here in the UK it's pretty easy to get your hands on active operational timings, both planned and live, so I'd assume that's probably (?) not the reason.

 

I think it more likely that, as said above, the date was picked for compatibility with existing rolling stock, as well as the fact that 2019 reflects the busy pre-COVID timetables which in many places have still not been fully restored

 

Playstation 5
Service 9M84 Glasgow Central to London Euston.
Spawns you at Smethwick Galton Bridge and not in the train :/

 

On the 350/3 Literally no Sanding light pops up even tho it is clear you are needing it as its not braking and slowing down as fast

 

Its really annoying. I can't play the 220 and 350 due to Blurryness. 390 is the only one that doesn't get affected

 

Well that was a wasted hour...

I notice that some trains have driver's seats without collision, I think that should probably be the standard because this bug is actually infuriating.

 

This route is absolutely unplayable with the train that it was intended to be used with. Literally the entire route is a blurry mess in the 350. There’s not a single stretch where you can drive without the entire screen being a blurry mess.

Can someone at DTG or AAS tell us how we are supposed to drive a train when all the controls are blurred out and every station looks like a PS1 build. Shocking quality control.

 

DTG fix the core,
was really wanting to buy this route, but those blurry textures are just too much. Had enough of that with the Mildmay line.

Such a shame the people making these third party routes are being let down by the core game.

 

I think you have it kind of backwards. The blurry textures are inherent in Unreal, if the route overloads the system. Mildmay and Birmingham-Crewe, among other recent routes, are putting demands on weaker hardware it can't handle, and that is the route devs' fault.

 

Had similar on PC.

 

Surely TSW is scalable using the UE settings, so perhaps DtG ought to tweak them to reduce console settings (LOD etc) to a level that eliminate the blurriness? Even better, give console users options to allow to setting 'Low', Medium', High', Ultra' like PC users?

 

To a degree, but if that's all you're changing than that LOD draw distance is gonna be cut back quite a bit. Especially since the most dense and detailed assets are gonna be at or near trackside. Heck, DTG have done that before, I remember Mittenwaldbahn particularly getting a lot of complaints over the poor draw distance ruining the mountain scenery on Series X. So they're kind of damned if they do, damned if they don't.

 

I think the main struggle with consoles is there lack of RAM, having to share between CPU and GPU, and only having a pool of 16gb must be hell, I'm on pc and the game itself regularly uses about 14gb of RAM and about 10gb of VRAM

 

I was so looking forward to this route, but I didn’t want to pay to be a beta tester, and having an Xbox S, I feel like it’s almost not worth it unless some serious optimisation takes place. It’s a shame really, as most routes have been running very well on TSW6. I no longer get crashes on WCMLoS which had plagued me since it’s release.

 

The update this past week arguably made the route in a worse condition than it was last weekend.

 

Not sure if it's relevant but the thing i have noticed a lot is performance on my series X or PS5 takes a dive on games that rely on streaming from the NVME drive once i hit less than 50gb space left, i get more stuttering, don't notice much in the way of load times increasing tho, cant speak much for TSW specifically as i rarely play it on my series x any more, maybe worth testing for those of you with larger route libraries on consoles.

 

BTW I have found a way out of this (which is totally a DTG thing to fix, not this route) - basically you stand up until your head is poking out the ceiling and you can't even crouch any more, then you open the door while leaning against it.

It is a ridiculous bug though, and surely easy to fix (e.g. the suggestion of removing collision detection on the seat).

 

Unfortunately that doesn't always work, in this case I was stuck on the dashboard so I couldn't get close enough to the door no matter what direction I was looking or which way I was moving.

 

Whoever had the idea of bringing a state of the art train simulator with photo real scenery and extensive layers of ai traffic in super busy stations to consoles weak on memory? Someone didn’t look very far into the future.
Perhaps tine to have route builders for pc and console as separate entities.

 

It's on the route devs for programming too much stuff in the route that older systems can't handle?
So.... the solution would be to put less into the game?
The guy above was already whining the trees weren't animated enough (although he must have a REALLY high end system if there's no significatn drop in performance from hundreds of additional animations)
I think we're talking extremes of system capabilities giving entirely different player experiences.

 

Beautiful route. Can't remember what service I played last night was with the class 390. Birmingham New Street to Crewe scenery wise top notch 3rd party devs are pushing TSW to the limit and sounds like console players are taking a hit with that. I haven't been able to drive the 350 yet will do a run later on PC. I hope theres no blurry textures I didn't notice any last night. I do like the urban feel between Birmingham New Street and Wolverhampton. Its an enjoyable route with loads of service's I was chasing yellows leaving Birmingham New Street to Wolverhampton it keeps you on your toes not many routes give me that feeling. I know AAS are developing the class 805 for this route and I hope they do another route for TSW.

 

My two cents: Been thoroughly enjoying this route. Great combination of the congested commuter running through the Black Country and the open fast runs up to Crewe.

Only grumble is with the blurry textures (I’m on an Xbox Series X).

But otherwise just a fantastic route!

 

The route is great just the blurry textures and stuttering that made me refund but once they are sorted i will re buy

 

Decided to see what its like on the Stafford to Euston Line. Well Over 2 miles of track not bad. What says we could get a Stafford to Euston route 0-0

 

Next stop: Fantasy Zone

 

Oi hahahahaah I love living in my Fantasy

 

The solution is to develop those routes with the system limitations in mind, and take the time to make better looking, but less demanding assets. If that sounds insane I refer to this video of a guy making a better model of Mario for his N64 projects.

Optimized assets don't have to equal bad looking assets, the eye texture example is a perfect example of doing way more with less. This logic taken up on a asset by asset basis adds up, and is fundamentally why The Last of Us titles can perform well and look damn near life like on a PS4. Conversely bad optimization gets you, well, TSW not even looking and playing well on machines a whole generation ahead of target specs.

And to be clear, while I don't think this was a good beginner project, I also don't think WCML is beyond what 9th gen consoles can do.

 

One also wonders what sort of guidelines DTG are giving to the 3P's about keeping the detail and poly count to a level that the consoles can cope with? Or have they been left to figure it out for themselves?

 

"More with less" is easy to say, difficult to accomplish.
"Last of Us" is an entirely different, less demanding application.
People downplay just how much is happening at once on a TSW route.
It also takes time (hence money) to "improve" things. The guy "improving" Mario didn't accomplish much for a huge time investment, likely as much as the original model created by Nintendo. Was it worth that much time to redevelop it for the small gain?
Twice the time for 20% better looks? Even 20% more money for 20% better quality... people would probably complain about.
That's also 20% less content (best case scenario)

So which are you willing to trade off?
20% better graphics (best case scenario) for... 20% more cost?
20% less routes built?

The ONLY way this "optimization" works is if it costs zero time and effort.
But that's just silly.

They probably could do a bit more "optimization" but it's a vague enough term to be a magic "fix it" phrase for most people.
They want the "improvement" without the extra work (and cost)
Like when a corporation tries to use words like "synergy" as a replacement for costly investment.

"Yes, I know we need twice as many people to actually run the business... but have you considered just "synergizing" a bit to make up the difference?"
If I had a dime for every time we were told "Do more with less" over the years.
At some point less does mean less.

 

He's made many videos on Mario 64, and the gest of it is that it just wasn't all that well made initially due to it being such a early N64 game. Lot of these things he's doing is stuff that costs very little to do if you're actually building games from the ground up with them in mind. Case and point, later N64 titles actually were made a lot better and much of the same tricks he's using. See Banjo Kazooie vs Mario 64 as a great head to head example. it's way better looking, while targeting the same performance level on the same hardware.

Also, not every mistake made was some massive time sink, he's made videos talking about really silly mistakes that even the devs at the time likely could've caught and fixed with minimum time and effort. The eye texture thing is a good example, there was no reason they couldn't have mirrored the eye textures at the time, it's just waste resources.

All in all this isn't so much a case of "Spending 20% more time" it's "Making the assets in a way that they would've if the game came out late in the N64's life". And when you're making your own rom hacks, making new levels and mechanics, and having to completely reprogram the game anyways, you might as well do all this extra optimization while you're at it.

 

Why should those of us on a decent PC be held back by console (or in Vern's case, I think he says potato) guys?

If it can't be made to run adequetely on console, it shouldn't be released on console. Not made rubbish.

 

Because if they can't sell it on console, there is no mass market for the product which means it becomes a niche like Open Rails, SimRail or Run 8 and DTG would have to move out of their plush Chatham HQ into a converted container!

 

We've always been told there was a fairly even split between PS, XBOX and PC if you cut off consoles you lose over half of your player base and over half of your income?

Even the PC players Need the console side of the playerbase or the game would disappear.

Edit - This was also proven by DTG continuing with 8th gen support because of how much of the player base was and still is on 8th gen.

 

It's been stated over and over on the forums, so I'm sure you're familiar with the mantra: the market for TSW is about 67% consoles, so without them you would not have the game on PC today.

 

Uh, it was originally developed for PC.

 

Relevant quote from Matt earlier this year:

 

Doesn't matter, they switched early on and console sales are key part of keeping the game alive. Bare in mind, lot of the PC crowd didn't adopt TSW, they stuck with TSC because of how much more content it had. Heck, to be frank remember reading forum posts that TSW routes were half the length of their counterparts and things like how bad NEC was myself and having a reaction along these lines.

Heck. Flight Sim World was PC only and died around the same time, and I saw a lot of parallels with how incomplete both that and TSW were. I honestly though TSW would die within the same year as FSW based on everything I read, and honestly, they probably would've been done for without consoles. They realized they could pivot to a market where they have no competition from TSC, and credit where it's due I think that in retrospect was genius on their part. I just wish the people who made that decision had the smarts their product directors did.

 

Every new "feature", every extra km of track, every extra layer, every extra you can't even see added to TSW for "coolness" is increased performance requirements for a system... any system.
That's just how it works.
It's a widening gulf between the "it's good enough and I wanna use my old system" people vs the "I want every cool new bell and whistle and super long routes with tons of layers, no matter what" crowds.
You can't do both.
Honestly if we have to pick one, the "freezing" new features and content at the current level until tech catches up is the best solution since, yes they can work on optimization more (instead of the "cool new thing") and it gives people time to get better systems...which will improve personal performance perception. It can even help contain price because not having to develop ever more "new" stuff means just repeating existing processes which is faster (and thus cheaper) meaning more routes for the same price instead of fewer routes for more....and fewer "bugs" since they are using existing well used processes.

(How many people will be tasked with making new... I dunno... "dispatching mode"... and making it work with dozens if not hundreds of other elements to the game, causing even more issues? All so it can be marketed and used by a tiny number of people? By just not doing the new "thing" those people go back to making more routes/trains/etc, ironing out existing bugs, and not adding yet more code interactions (ie "fresh problems") to the mix.)

When the Gen 8 person's console finally dies and they buy a Gen 9, they will see better performance, even if the game doesn't improve.
As someone said, this "cutting edge" tech ends up PC only which splits your base and makes consoles (and potatoes) stutter. It's a smaller and smaller market the higher you get up there in tech because fewer people have the highest end computers.

I've seen it with other games that get too far ahead of the consumer curve and drive out their "lower end" system playerbase.
It's not intentional, it's just natural for devs working on top of the line systems to assume that's "normal" since that's what they see every day, and many problems that would be minor or non existent on a high shelf system are significant or game breaking lower down the scale.
If you're a dev working on a work computer giving you 90 fps and it drops to 75 in an urban area you think it's acceptable... but what if you're on a low end "average" computer that gets only 45 fps at the best of times?
Very different experience.
And of course, lagging in one area can cause other dependent animations and systems to get out of synch and or fail, creating more problems that high end systems don't have... and they can't even recreate. I'd bet that's where a lot of the NPC and physics issues come about.

I'd be curious to see just what features how many players use and how much they'd be willing to pay for those things.

 

But with a console version in mind.

 

There can still be releases for consoles / poor PCs. I don't understand why every add on needs to run on them. If they're barely running on consoles then the console market for them is presumably limited as it is and the PC:console ration is highly misleading.

 

If you did routes like that the cost would absolutely sky rocket because they'd have to find some way of earning the money back they'd lose by not selling it on consoles though. The dev process if anything would take even more time with such a detailed route and timetables etc.

I don't believe the ratio is misleading at all especially when Sam was running the community team all those years ago and the games definitely grown since then on all platforms, if there was so fewer players on console DTG wouldn't put so much effort into producing content and making it run on them IMO

 

I don’t have access to DTG finances but the cost of developing a route is going to be fixed regardless of how many platforms it’s on. So unless you want lots of short 15 to 20 highly detailed but PC only routes (I don’t) that sell maybe 500 or 600 copies then keeping consoles and lower spec PC’s on board is essential. It’s just a case of DTG and the 3P’s understanding better how to construct and optimise content within their chosen game engine that can still look nice without needing a NASA super computer to run on.

 

Just look at what they did to gen8 with TSW6, all the base routes were stripped of layers, some such as Leipzig won’t even let you use the trains you buy with the route. Then the first DLCs out the gate aren’t available to them. Pretty pointless endeavour if you ask me, but it’s obvious DTG are just milking the last drops of cash left there.

Myself & I suspect others have upgraded to gen9 because the need for more power was obvious for TSW, but even now DTG are struggling to get the game running smoothly, these are consoles which have pretty strong comparative PC specs, even more so when you look at steam hardware surveys and see what the most popular PC specs are (spoiler; they’re weaker then PS5 & XSX specs). In fact this years most popular GPU wasn’t even a PC, but a laptop spec.

Honestly I don’t buy into this whole consoles are too weak, extra KM of track will kill them etc. we’ve seen time & time again DTG are just careless when it comes to knowing what they’re doing when developing on them. Z-Fighting, sound compression, content size limits, storefront distribution, build publishing & many others are all errors that not only do the majority of developers avoid, they certainly aren’t making the mistakes over & over.

This texture blurring is just another in a long line of blunders DTG have made on console builds IMO, we’ll just have to see if it’s one blunder too far this time. Hopefully it is though, this won’t get fixed until the cash pipeline stops flowing.