Xbox For Pc

So with the current issues surrounding an XBOX memory leak among a few. I was considering making the switch over to PC using XBOX app. But I remember once trying this way back in I think TSW2? Mabye even 2020. And I got nothing but crashes upon startup.

I had a few questions, and feel free to direct me to a forum post which will help me I know we shouldn't be posting duplicated questions but I struggle to use the search tool as it only really searches for 1 word rather than a web browser style search engine.

1) what are the benefits of switching to PC for XBOX, such as upgraded features that our fancy PC friends get?

2) will I keep my addons? Id assume so

3) Is it an easy process? (Is it worth the time?)

4) Are there any issues I should be aware of before switching

5) What sort of PC Specs would you recommend as I only have a mid-level PC, I can run TS Classic fairly well but high end (personal made) scenarios give me some grief.

6) Do any XBOX issues carry over to the XBOX PC version?

7) Overall, would you recommend it?

Thats alot to take in so I do apologise, but if anyone has a spare minute to help I really appreciate it

 

1) You can use mods.
2) Yes
3) Yes, just install it from the Xbox App on PC.
4) Nothing that I can think of.
5) TSC is not a good guide to how TSW will run. Post your PC spec and maybe someone with similar specs can comment.
6) PC version suffers the same bugs as every other version but I never saw blurry textures on a PC.
7) It's what I did to start with, but ultimately I switched to the Steam PC version because there are far more sales and I could slowly replace my DLC Quite cheaply over time

 

I like the idea of number 7, I suppose while yes it costs money it can become a bit of a game in a way to hunt the sales down, I always wanted to make the switch but I only got my PC in '21 and I've been on the TSW pathway since XBOX One days of regular Train Sim World and had a pretty substantial collection, and I know the Steam version is highly superior in terms of overall user satisfaction. Thanks!

As for my PC Specs, I know a little but I'm by no means an expert but I ran a checker and it spat out this info

Processor - Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6400 CPU @ 2.70GHz
Video Card - AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x67DF)
Operating System - Windows 10
RAM - 32 GB

 

Well, you have already a pc, so you can easily try it out. Your routes will be available in the Xbox app on PC, so you can just download TSW6 and 1 route and see how well it runs. How it runs, is depending on your hardware, to prevent blurry textures, enough VRAM is needed. The recommended specs mentioned on Steam are Intel Core i5-9600K @ 3.7 GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 @ 3.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB or AMD Radeon RX 5700 with 8 GB VRAM or more.

 

Mabye the processor is a little weak but yes ill give it a shot. Thank you again

 

UPDATE: So Far its good news. My XBOX X could never hack it running on Frank to Fulda. I would always have to avoid Frankfurt if I wanted to run any further than Hanau. But I just ran a heavy test (Rain, Cloud, Livery Layers, High Graphics, Everything), and we seem to be going well, Laggy yes, but I'll take that any day over a game ending crash. Further update when I've got things installed and layer testing.

 

Did you have all layers active too? On Series S I don't have crashes now on Kinzigtalbahn, can't say anything about the past as I own this route just one month. On Series S you only have some AI layers, like the BR642 and BR628 around Frankfurt HBf, but additional timtable services are missing. So it is possible without crashing on Xbox, additional layers seems to be the problem. Around Frankfurt HBf it is laggy, however, when the parked dosto's are gone in rush hour, there are way less stutters around the bridgde. Also around Hanau it's more stuttery then other parts or the route.

 

Be aware that you will not be able to use the editor on the 'Xbox PC' version of the game.

 

Which editor do you means sorry. As in the PC editor for timetables and stuff? Thats ok. Im mainly searching for a workaround of the XBOX Series X crashes and any other added benefits are taken as a bonus such as mod usage. Thanks for the heads up

 

Yeah, the PC editor that you can download from epic.

 

If im right its a smaller selection that you can use and some mods are not compatible.

 

Most of the ones I tried at the time I used XBox seemed to work, but I haven't used it for a long time now.

 

I would be very interested in finding out some more about this, as another console player who is considering switching to PC. I have a lot of content through the MS store which would mean me playing that version.

The access to mods was a big part of the appeal to me.

And if you can't use all the mods and the editor does not work, then my enthusiasm would dim considerably.

 

Now I just Fatal Error as soon as I load a route.

 

I had no issues with mods from Train Sim Community. As long as you read the requirements, its as easy as drag and drop with PAK Files into the right location. I have 3 BR185 Livery packs from TSC and they use the KWG 185 as a base so I just dropped it into the TS2-Content-DLC directory inside KWG and its been fine until I downloaded these 'new drivers' as recommended by DTG-Chris

 

I suspect that's an RX 560 to 580

 

Update on Fatal Errors

Full Context
I as stated above have a livery pack that because of a DTG end issue, Will Crash the game if you try and use the liveries in formation designer BEFORE you spawn the dependency locomotive (KWG 185). I had used a workaround by spawning a 185 then adding 2 locos from the pack, and 45 Falns Hoppers, leaving the final consist as 2 Raildox 185s and 48 Falns. In the same time between launching a route, I had just completed the above driver install which was recommended to me by DTG Chris. Upon launching Dresden-Leipzig I then received a Fatal Error and subsequent crash, this was my 1st crash of my entire week since making the switch to PC. I thought it may have been the formation that I had just created causing some background issues that led to a Fatal Error. However, following some Troubleshooting I can report the following info.

[Route] - [Location] - Info

Dresden-Leipzig - Dresden Hbf - (With the Consist not spawned, but in the files as a created consist). Crashed within 15 seconds twice

Frankfurt-Fulda - Frankfurt Hbf - (With the Consist not spawned, but in the files as a created consist). Crashed within 5 seconds

Cane Creek - Potash - (With the Consist deleted in the same game launch, but before I started a route). Ran fine (Low end route anyway so expected)

Dresden-Leipzig - Dresden Hbf - (In the same launch as Cane Creek, With the Consist deleted). Ran as it did before drivers, slight stutter but no crash

Cane Creek - Potash - (With the Consist recreated in the exact same way). Ran fine and the consist was spawned with a stable game too. (this proves it is not an issue with the consist)

Dresden-Leipzig - Dresden Hbf - (In the same session as Cane Creek). Crashed again within 25 seconds

Dresden-Leipzig - Dresden Hbf - (With the Consist in the background, not spawned). Crashed again within 25 seconds

Once again, I didn't have a single issue with PC until I downloaded these drivers. The game does not last long enough for me to run into the underpass, up the stairs, along platform 1 and to the freight avoiding line to even spawn my consist so it must be the drivers.

Please can you advise me on how to reverse these changes, as now I've lost access to Frankfurt-Fulda AND Dresden-Leipzig which were both running fine WITH the Livery packs for days before without crashes.

 

Hi yes will do, sorry spent like 20 minutes on my previous reply. Even if it doesn't I will need some sort of help to get back to where I was performance wise as I had 0 crashes whatsoever before.

 

Fire up system restore and recover your PC to the last backup dated before you ran the driver installation.

It is ALWAYS recommended for any PC to do a full system backup prior to any installation of any patch or update to the system files, as sometimes they can be incompatible or have bugs.

 

You can uninstall the driver package from control panel > remove software and also from the device manager. After a reboot of the system, check Windows Update for the default driver.

 

That won't necessarily fix the problem entirely though, as it's possible it replaced files required for the prior configuration to work, whatever previous driver version OP was using. Whereas a system restore will overwrite anything with what we know worked.

 

Well, I used system restore many times on a lot of PC's, but my experience is not that good, so I will not recommend it. When something occurs after installing a driver, better remove it. Unless you have made a good back-up with something like Acronis, just removing is the prefered way.

 

I make full system image backups with Macrium Reflect, but I assume most general users are going to be using the inbuilt windows backup.
A system restore is always cleaner than just uninstalling something though, that is how you end up with all sorts of junk around your system that was left behind in need of cleaning up.

 

Drivers got replaced/updated all the time, by Windows Update or by standalone updaters, so no need to use system restore here. You actually taking a higher risk with using system restore, only use it when there is something seriously wrong with your Windows installation and you are not able to solve it. It's more like a last resort in case of trouble, if you want to keep your system clean, use a separate back-up solution for restoring to a previous state. Even better, don't use Windows

 

I would never allow any kind of automatic update systems to run, far too often, especially with windows updates in the last few decade, they push a dodgy build only to pull it after it bricks a few thousand of the first PCs to download it. Graphics drivers are one I will never trust auto-updates for because they can completely wreck performance in many games when an update is pushed. Restoring a system image from yesterday is always safe, takes a few minutes assuming you have a sensible setup with the OS isolated to a small solitary dedicated and speedy drive, and recoverable in 100% of cases if something goes wrong during the process simply by overwriting it again. Only a drive failure can really bork it, and that would cause bigger problems, and at least you can clone the backup to a replacement as if nothing ever happened.

I take system images daily, only ever manually install updates to any software, and regularly roll back to an earlier one the moment a new driver or similar breaks something, no harm no foul. I always take a fresh image before installing any software, just in case, as issues will often crop up fairly quickly. Especially with graphics drivers, though I take care only to ever update those as and when a new piece of software requires new features and will always test them for compatibility with other titles. It's one of the reasons I prefer GoG over Steam and rarely use Steam unless I have no choice for a game, as while rolling back a Steam update to a game is at least made relatively easy via the console, it's a pain having to do that when a game has no option to disable updates altogether. (A few times I have rolled back a version of one game on Steam to one which did not require the latest Nvidia or AMD driver, depending on my system at the time, as the driver in question had features required for the latest version of a game, but which introduced problems in several older titles, so was out of the question to use until the issues were addressed. Something I can at least say Nvidia seem quicker to respond to with turnarounds on getting out a usable build in weeks instead of the 9-12 months it can take AMD to fix a fault). With this method, I never run into the issues many of the people I fix PCs for experience of their drives ending up being about 10% leftover cruft from uninstalled software that takes up drive space, and often interacts in annoying ways with the things that should be there, and even causes slowdown because sometimes a process will be running in the background accomplishing absolutely nothing as the things it exists to support have been uninstalled. Or worse, sometimes the uninstall for something removes dependencies it updated which other software you already had installed uses, and then cannot find.

Even when an issue can take a week or more to rear its head, this method easily fixes it with no loss of data as I can simply find an image on my backups drive taken before the offending software made it onto my system, restore it, and then mount the most recent image I took before running the restore, and copy all my desktop and documents folders across. Obviously a slightly more optimal version might be to deploy every new patch, update or piece of software within a VM clone of my system drive and see what happens, but that is overkill for most use cases.

50% of the times when I am called out to fix someone's PC, and it's so bad I need to reformat and reinstall Windows for them, it's a matter of them keeping no backups and having set everything to auto-allow updates rather than requiring manual confirmation for everything and/or trusting any random installer someone on the internet pointed them to.

I always, of course, set up system imaging as part of the rebuild of their system, so as to ideally never need to be called back out, since at worst I can give them a three step procedure to fix it themselves when an update or install breaks something.

 

Luckily, the majority of people use automatic updates, otherwise we even have more security incidents. Driver updates are usaly coming with Windows Update too. Back in the day when I was using Windows, I restored the previous made back-up, applied the wanted/needed changes, directly made a new back-up and after this, the system was ready for use. This is not something everyone wants to do and even I was done with it. So I ditched Windows, and now I'm a happy Linux user.

For work I have to deal with Windows, but with all the problems of Windows, I have a good paid job. The system restore option has only give me more issues then it resolved issues, so I can't advice it to anyone, other then the last resort to fix a not working system. Often it turns out, reinstalling a clean version of Windows is faster then trying to resolve issues. Sometimes reinstalling Windows, while keeping personal stuff and applications also works, but no guarantee at all.

 

Windows Update is the cause of more than half of all the bricked systems I need to repair

I would never trust it over manually selecting the security updates I need.

Ahese days though, luckily, it's a lot less of a problem, as many of the standard requests I get from people are "Please remove Win11 and give me back Win10 that does what I tell it to, not whatever it thinks that I should want it to do" - and update causes a lot less trouble and instability on win10 these days.

Never use the bodged half-arsed version of windows system restore that gives a mishmash of incremental differential rollbacks, though. Always use a proper image. I give everyone I fix a system for a fully set up install of Macrium Reflect and configure it to autorun on a schedule that fits their day to day timetable. I'll often ask stuff like "when do you usually take a lunch break and leave the system on?" and schedule it around that. Usually you never even notice it running in the background as the performance hit 5 minutes a day is negligible and the shell integration for mounting backup images to explore and recover individual or bulk files from is so intuitive and super accessible to non-power users.

 

I can't say Windows 11 has more issues as Windows 10. You also has to keep in mind that a lot PC's are upgraded from Windows 10 to 11. So all the s hit from 10 is transfered over to 11.

I've seen a lot of update issues on Windows 10 in the past, systems not wanting to update at all for example. So can't say 10 is more stable or better then 11.

 

The main requests when I am asked to install Windows are:
"No bloody Copilot, no bloody Onedrive, no bloody Windows Hello, no bloody ads, no bloody search that looks on the internet instead of my PC, no bloody tiles interface, no bloody centred start menu, no bloody missing right click context shortcuts, no bloody Widgets, no bloody missing Control Panel features, no bloody "smart" Notepad, no bloody Edge, no bloody Taskbar Grouping...."

I basically have an installation flow set up that installs a barebones Win10 with a bunch of registry hacks to re-enable a bunch of Win7 functionality and the Win7 UI restored, which satisfies most of these requests..

 

All are reasons to not use Microsoft products, this push for unwanted stuff is going on for a long time now, it made me switch to Linux.

My current Xbox is the last Microsoft product I use, it will not be replaced by any Microsoft product either. Most likely my next gaming device will a SteamMachine or other PC running Linux.

 

Ironically, while I am perfectly comfortable with a Linux live USB as, ironically enough, my primary frontline tool for fixing people's Windows installs - I've never been able to comfortably get a version of it cobbled together that does all the stuff I want in the way that I want, that can substitute for everything I can do in Windows. And not for lack of trying, either. I've had that on the go as a side project since around the time Vista dropped.

 

I've tried many distributions and different desktop environments with mixed results, but since I use Manjaro KDE, I'm quit happy. It does everything I want and way better then Windows. Only thing I don't use it for right now is gaming, but most likely this will change in the future. Manjaro has the same base as SteamOS (Arch), so I've trust gaming will works well too.

 

I used KDE a bunch way back when, MATE has been my go-to environment for a while now, ever since Gnome decided to take a left turn into incoherence. I tried for a bunch of time to get Manjaro working several years ago, around 2018-19 but I just could not get a bunch of hardware compatibility for the system I was testing it on working in it.

 

Both KDE and Manjaro has changed quite a bit for the good. I also tried Manjaro years ago and was not happy back then, also KDE had his problems, but Plasma 6 is quite good.