PC Class 90 Announced

it does make you wonder if this wasnt on gamepass would DTG really bother with consoles

 

Some stuff hasn't even had a 1st patch yet.

 

Ditto here… I7 4770 with 24Gb RAM, all mechanical hard drives and a GTX 1650 4Gb GPU. It still runs most games quite happily though below spec for a few newer titles such as Bus Bound, MSFS 2024 and Roadcraft. Plans to replace it currently on hold following the rapid spike in hardware prices, though still toying with putting a RTX 3050 in there if I can be confident the CPU won’t bottleneck it.

 

Console vs PC isn’t the issue though. It’s making the appropriate updates for the textures so that console isn’t impacted by them due to how memory usage works on both the console and UE4. This also will help those with lower end PCs for performance.

Plenty of other games do this and run fine on both. MSFS, NBA 2k, and Cyberpunk come to mind. Having separate versions would cause significantly more issues on both console AND PC and end up probably causing more bugs due to the need to update and test 2 different versions.

 

It makes one think that the planned large-scale patch, which threatens to eliminate blurry textures, will simply worsen the textures on PC, since one version of the game .

 

The way Alan was talking on the DTG live stream last night, it sounds like ATS are planning to release multiple class 90 DLC packs over time.

He also mentioned a class 60 and class 91. Not sure if that was a hint of future projects.

 

Quite a lot of us are from before it was put on gamepass, hell I owned the original version game for console where it was just called train sim world (a few years later turning into 2020)

 

I think console versions were more of a DTG shareholder and investor choice, than a developer one.

More platforms = more sales.

 

I dont get why some players are still complaining. Especially since some of us are here for years now and by that time should have learned that DTGs attitude regarding their core issues simply haven't changed.

And why should they change ?

Stuff is getting sold regardless, cashing in enough revenue so the business can continue.

Pretty much since their rush hour release the discussions are basically the same. Especially on performance.

Its right to criticise a bad product, please dont get me wrong here, but sometimes its better to stay away from stuff that constantly frustrates you. Its my personal opinion of course and im aware that there isn't really a solid competition out there so i feel as ever for the die hard train fans just want to have a good experience.

I've stayed away for a long time now, came back for Liberec - Stara Paka Route, and got absolutely what i expected : a(nother) superb DLC developed by a third party that is plaqued by DTGs unwillingness to fix the core. Like i said, nothing has changed in that regard.

 

I was happy with the way things were before. Yes, there are bugs, and some are fixed in mods, and others are corrected over time. But now the situation with simplified textures is completely out of bounds.

 

PC players having to suffer due to console players again.
Console players should just go play the Thomas the Tank game

 

Have to admit, my enthusiasm for this has dropped, quite heavily!

I'll wait to see if/when what mods become available to see if it gets layered onto other routes, otherwise going to be a sale purchase in the future when initially was a nailed on day 1 when it was first announced

 

Right let's get this back on topic please. Don't want the mods to lock another thread because 2 people want to start measuring argument....

 

How does the future of this loco look? I'm a bit confused on how this loco fits into the UK cargo collection. I have so many Cargo line DLC already, and this loco will only feature on one route with the standard cargo wagons? Will the C90 become the default loco for cargo lines in the UK where suitable, or will all future cargo lines DLC still feature the 66?

 

It will need its own layer in every timetable, only thing it will ever be able to substitute for are other electric freight services of the appropriate era.

Hopefully those layers will take advantage of the cargo line packs, but given how the UK third party devs seem to dislike using each others’ content, it’s not something I’m expecting.

 

It’s more like they don’t want to force people to buy extra content for normal gameplay hence in the class 90 case it uses slightly updated standard wagons instead of cargo line 3

 

I dont know how to explain it properly, but surely DTG need to start putting their feet down on the third party developer situation and draw a line in the sand - "you want to make TSW content, share your toys"
Not saying that Firefly need to share their secrets on optimisation, or AABS share their light emmisives for buttons/screens. But surely having any TPD being able to use any other "TSW DLC" in their route can only be a net positive... If the Class 90 was included as a layer in the AABS timetables for example there would be more reasons for people to buy it and it would probably get more sales... likewise if the Class 20 from the CL Nuclear pack was available in more timetables than its own (with 4 services lol) it may have been able to get some more sales..

I dont know, im pretty dumb with this business stuff but to me it seems a really stupid idea to keep letting every developer have their stuff in isolation from the other developers stuff.. why not just let each of them have their own "TSW" game at this point... thats what its becoming, all of these separated timetables make the game feel disjointed

 

It doesn’t seem inconceivable to me that anyone interested in a freight locomotive, would also have interest in cargo line packs, especially given how many routes those layer onto already.

Wagons are also substitutable, meaning the layer wouldn’t have additional dependencies if they didn’t want it to be one.

 

That makes sense to a point, if using the Vol.3 FCA spines would mean the 90 needs the Cargo Line vol.3 then leaving it with the FKA spines means that a DLC isnt locked behind a DLC. but it could and *should* still be in the same timetable as the other stock is - we dont realllllyyyyy need 5 WCML South timetables, id argue that 1 would do, or if you MUST have a separate timetable from the default one, then have DTG's one and a TPD one

 

PC users should just go play on TSC, Leave TSW to us Console users.

 

The explanation so far makes me put this loco on my maybe-when-it-gets-more-content list. They should indeed make third party developers play nice. I don't know how the royalties work with the DLC but I guess if someone uses your loco you get a piece of cake?

 

I think it has been said quite a few times now that the majority of TSW players are on a console nowadays, with a fairly decent portion still on the 8th gen too. So it is always a little funny to me when PC players decide that TSW would be better off if the console kiddies just went away.... it would be a fairly safe bet that if that were to happen, TSW would likely go away too. not imediately but without all that $$ coming in there wouldnt be nearly as much content available or being made. in my opinion of course.

 

i cant recall which third party was speaking on this, maybe it was an ambassador (likely TSD) but if i recall correctly, if a TPD makes a DLC then the royalty share is them and DTG (and maybe the platform) but if they use another developers thing then they have to also give them a royalty share..

for EG: if ATS were to make a route that used Northern stock and included their Class 323 then it would be just DTG as publisher who gets a split. If ATS were to make a route that uses Northern stock and used Skyhooks Class 158 but remixed to a NT Class 158, then DTG and Skyhook would get a split.
I dont know if this is the same for something like the Class 87 railtour on MAC as ATS didnt *do* anything with the train but just have it apear in the timetable as a layer.

I *think* if it is using another developes stock then they get a split, but if it just apears in the timetable as a separate DLC/layer i dont think there is a royalty share.. if that makes sense at all lol

 

PC players should not need to have lower quality textures just because it is better for consoles, and at the same time console players should not need to go play something else or be stuck with blurry textures.

What everyone else does is make the models with high quality textures, and when the game is built for consoles reduce the texture quality as needed so it is best optimized for quality/perfomance ratio in those systems.

I don't see why DTG should do any different, or why should we accept it.

 

I don't remember when, but back when it first came to consoles I'm pretty confident one of the things DTG emphasized time and time again was that consoles wouldn't hold back PC. Granted, debatable how true that ultimately was, but that was the commitment they made. And doing builds with things like lower resolution textures is entirely normal on older platforms. It doesn't make sense at a certain point to force a PS4 to use Switch level textures just because it's "easier" for the developers. Like i'm pretty confident most PC ports of games usually do try and supply things like higher resolution textures and uncompressed audio regularly.

 

I’m sure someone can explain this much better than I can and I’m only basing the below on what I’ve gotten out of the livestreams and other YouTube videos explaining the issue. Short answer is it will not worsen textures for PC. It’s also not going to be a large scaled patch for the whole game but rather a test route and then rolled out across the others if it works as designed. If I have the below incorrect, an expert can please correct my understanding.

1) Issue today = 4k textures are being used at too far of an LOD, causing memory leaks/issues since the game is trying to draw too many 4K textures
2) LOD fixes = to prevent that memory leak/issues, smaller scales textures will be used at a further LOD or some non-near distant textures. (For example, if you are rolling quickly through a station as an express train, you don’t need to see 4K textures on signs or the cars in the parking lot as you blow by them)
3) Prioritizing necessary 4K textures = as a follow up to the above, this is force the important textures that you see up close to prioritize 4k textures first while the ones you either don’t see or are at a distance will use lesser textures, hence getting rid of the full “blurry textures”.

I know when MSFS had a similar problem, they did something similar and even added more in-between textures for certain distances to balance the memory leak on console. So if you were on the ground, you’d see detailed airports, 5k feet = less detail, 10k feet = even less detail, and 30k feet the least detail (as an example, not sure what the actual draw distance was set at vertically or horizontally).

The last thing I’d point out is that this doesn’t mean console is getting crisp 4k textures all over, it just means they get prioritized to what you see the most on the screen at the immediate moment view (in cab vs outside cab). For PC though, whatever your graphic setup in game compared to your memory should still drive how the textures pop up. Lower end PCs will be helped by this as well, but if you have a powerful PC, this should have no impact.

 

Basically the same reason why we have a class 66 for 4 of the cargo packs, according to skyhook awhile back before nuclear they mentioned that all new content has to work independently of each other like you can’t sell just a wagon and I’m taking a guess that might be the same for a loco where you have to use the standard stuff or make your own

 

Probably a similar situation to the class 387 where they couldn’t add it to the GWE remaster without having it cause problems for when a branded version was added (basically making you pay for the same layer)
so that’s my guess

 

I'll put money on having to cater for console players becoming a burden/obstacle to most developers, especially ATS...
It's at detriment to TSW. We can all see how good mods can make the game. Console TSW should be a standalone game like the Thomas franchise.
Cross compatibility sounds great on paper but I think now we are seeing how it's a technical nightmare for everyone involved.

 

This sounds great on paper but it’s not practical. I don’t know how many times this has been said, but having two separate games actually makes things worse for all parties. If you think lack of bug fixes are bad now, they’d be even worse.

As stated before the issue isn’t PC vs Console, it’s proper optimization. Plenty of other games have no issue with it, so it’s on DTG to get TSW up to par with what other studios are already doing.

 

I am a PC player so I am only going off stuff I have read, but WCLMoS, despite being a massive route with a lot of AI traffic with great loco variety (comparatively) was pretty good as far as issues go? The texture thing seems to come up more on modern routes?

 

And to put context to this since it’s be raised several times, the reason why separate versions of a game would be bad for us (assuming 3 for PC/PS5/XBS)

1) Assets have to be updated across all 3 versions separately
2) Testing bug fixes/new updates would be 3x longer since they would have to be tested separately
4) Development teams would have to be separate, so less developers working on the overall game as they’d be split by version
3) PC users may end up being neglected because if more issues pop up on the console version, more focus would be placed on fixing those issues vs the ones on PC
4) As such, the already growing bug fix list would be 3x as much and grow faster with less bandwidth to fix them because the team working on it wouldn’t be built to scale

I understand why PC players think they are being held back by console players. I’ve seen the same narrative on MSFS forums, but that is not and should not be the case if the game is setup and optimized correctly.

 

You make

You make fair points. I don't think the scalability across all platforms was talked about enough at the start of TSW. It's a mammoth task to keep the core and all DLC ticking across all platforms.
You can sense developers are now growing frustrated. Skyhook unable to publish updates to products (Class 20). ATS unable to supply a half decent timetable or latch on to another timetable for this release for one reason or another.

 

Maybe at DTG, but I remember reading quite a bit on other train forums (Because I hadn't bought the game at the time, and thus didn't really read these forums) about how badly it was optimized. Mainly that yes, many objects were of way higher detailed than necessary at distance, which is what Jonny points out here. This was very much called out very early on, but in typical DTG fashion instead of trying to be preemptive it took these console blur issues to start taking it seriously.

 

The way it’s setup now is actually much easier than if they separated it out by version. That doesn’t mean it’s easy since there is so much content. But having it built on PC and then scaled for Console was the right decision. The balancing of hi-res texture optimization was not (as discussed below). As a console user I am looking forward to the fixed route to test once it’s ready and see how much of a difference it makes. If it’s anything like what was done for MSFS, it will be very serviceable.

 

I cant think of a situation where someone would be buying a cargo line wagon pack and would have NO trains to pull the wagons, unless i am mistaken (which is very likely) can't the german and North American locos also hook up to the HOA, TEA, FNA, FCA (etc etc).. and DTG themselves are selling a wagon pack that doesnt have a loco attached to it, the "WCML Bogie Hopper Wagon Pack" which granted is *for* the WCML South, but you could buy it without owning the route and still be in a situation of having wagons sans shed.

A loco DLC itself though doesnt need wagons i dont think. the Class 90 could come with no wagons and it wouldnt matter as its a loco that can just use whatever wagons are on the route, same too for the Class 70 and even Class 66 - they dont *need* to come with anything except the loco itself. its always awesome to get new freight wagons but i just dont understand why the 90 needs to be in its own timetable with seemingly reduced layers/AI to the other ones when it could easily slot into the default one (using the same FKA and also being DTG's timetable) which makes both DLC more vaulable to eachother

 

All of this certainly looks good on paper. But after what's happening with the Class 90, where the textures are terrible, it's hard to trust DTG not to use this technique often.

 

I wish there wasn’t another WCML timetable. I would’ve preferred it layer onto the original or 805 timetable.

 

How about no Marc. I don't want to play a game based on a game engine that was made for the Playstation 2.

Personally think that we should be pushing DTG to optimise better and allow people the option to choose what level of detail they get for their platform.

Personally I've dropped my max FPS in TSW to 30 and it's more than adequate and I can smoothly run in Ultra settings with a Beast engine.ini file (Jetwash).

The obsession with 60 FPS in a train game is kinda laughable to be honest as it doesn't need a high refresh rate, you see signals miles away.

I'd rather have a game that's smooth, detailed and running reliably and consistent at 30 FPS than one that's a stuttering mess at 60fps with low quality textures.

 

Yeah, that's what's putting me off the most. Isn't the point supposed to be that everything interlinks and works with each other? I could understand if the timetable was in a different era but it just feels unnecessary - is WCMLS really that badly built the original timetable can't be built on?

 

it’s annoying but i wouldn’t say it’s a big enough issue that console players shouldn’t have access to tsw. if we can’t play tsw, then neither can you. the game is carried by our investments

 

it's strange, how did PC players manage to TRAIN SIM WORLD long before it was released on consoles?

regarding investments, you need to know about Train Simulator Classic (RS/RW/TS), which has been available exclusively on PC for almost 20 years.

 

Yes tsw managed with one route (I think it only had 1 until the console port)

 

Train Sim World started as a experiment on PC I believe, and then really became mainstream when it released on Xbox One. When SPG wouldn't really work on consoles, funnily enough due to memory constraints...

 

With DTG now owned by Pullup, I'm sure there is a larger emphasis on making profits compared to before.

I agree but that would make ATS rely on DTG/AABS to redo the TT. Since 90 freight services are double-headed you cannot just sub in the train, it would require a new consist.

 

Just watched a few minutes of the stream. Immediately apparent was the awful sound squelching occurring quite frequently, with Matt presumably running on his NASA home PC. Yes it’s another core bug but immediately puts you off buying any add on which is likely to generate the effect and unlike the AC’s on Shap I have never noticed the effect on WCMLS before.

DTG really need to take ownership of this problem which seemingly has nothing to do with running on potato PC’s, otherwise they are losing 3P’s potential sales (and their own cut of the take).

 

It's interesting because when you watch Alan's personal stream the squelching wasn't there or it was minimal. Could it possibly be something on Matt's"NASA PC" as his audio started off sketchy.

 

Vern, it's just a stream. I was just recording a video of the game, I don't even remember the audio settings, but it was much worse in the video than I hear in the game. And I listened to it on the same equipment.

 

I don't think the DTG streams are always the best quality. I would always watch a post released stream if there are any concerns.