West Coast Main Line: Trent Valley From All Aboard Studios

Just your constant moaning, it is pretty evident you are not going to buy this route which is fine, you have your reasons. Some of your comments are just complete nonsense though. Did they or did they not release a patch? Sure it has taken awhile but they have at least delivered on something, even if some stuff isn't perfect still, their first route is a lot better now and they don't sit there and start pointing fingers at every tom LOVE and harry which same can't be said for a lot of other 3rd parties at the moment who seem to just point blame at DTG rather than just get something produced.

All aboard are not perfect, clearly improvement is still needed on the testing front whether thats from dtg or themselves or both but at least they seem to care about making things right. Even if they've slipped up along the way.

 

Understandbly people are still frustrated by ongoing issues which is totally valid and such is totally valid to not buy the route at launch. The recent patch drama shows that All Aboard isn't perfect but they have held their hands up, said they are sorting it which can't be said about some other 3rd parties at the moment.

 

What the hell is even going on…

people constantly bickering and complaining back and forth. I know the situation is rocky, but at least be constructive and respectful.

is it any wonder why devs don’t ever speak here?

 

I wouldn’t mind your swiping at me if I was the only one to have an issue. But I ain’t.

You might want to review your evidence as well. I won’t buy the route day one. However if this route actually gets a decent review and isn’t as broken as me and others expect then I’ll get it.

I hope they have fixed the missing AWS South of Crewe on the up lines.

 

I'm excited for a long line with more sparsely separated stations. That's just what I like. I'll probably buy it at full price.

I don't understand the degree of frustration people seem to have in game forums. Not sure if it is a personality trait of some to rage at things that aren't how they like, or if I'm just missing some intensely aggravating things going on in front of me, or what.

 

Depending on the blurry texture situation (I’m on Series X), this will be Day 1 or at least Week 1 for me.

 

Nice to see they're doing a service on Series X on the stream later. Would be good to see it become a regular occurrence

 

Updated sounds on the 350/4

 

are they any good? and by sounds, do you just mean things like doors, or full running sounds?

 

Running sounds, horns, motor sounds and door jingle sound improved.

 

UTX pipes were clipping at the ends but the bit in the 4 foot remained on approach. Twice I mentioned it & it was conveniently ignored!

 

What’s the AI traffic like?
Seems dead on WCML South & Birmingham Crewe, and I just did two runs with the full timetable. When I could get them to load. Which leads to the question, is this going to work reliably on Xbox X?

just imagine the reactions if this doesn’t load or crashes out on Xbox X!!

 

They are currently doing a run using the Xbox Series X on the stream and the performance looks good - haven’t seen any blurry textures (yet)

 

yep...going to obviously wait and see how the launch goes before buying but i'm cautiously optimistic
when i saw the reduced timetable my initial thoughts were "uh oh" but good to know that both are available on all platforms
sounds like series S users won't have a fun experience on the full one though

 

Ah, but do they have a typical player’s setup with a hard drive full of games and 125 or more DLC loaded on the copy of TSW? I doubt it very much.

I’m not watching, I got bored after an hour and 15 mins and turned it off to watch the rest at a later date, probably at x2 speed. I really don’t like how they have covered the sleeper ends with ballast, covering up where the extended track shadows draw (they draw on the track texture) making it look like half the track is TSW4 track with very short track shadows and the other half is current track with shadows that draw all the way into the distance. It looks bad and is very distracting.

 

To summarise, from what I've seen:
Bad:
The timetable still appears to have the second "lock doors" step at major stations (I doesn't bother me that much to be honest, but I know it bothers some). Dan is just explaining this as I type. It's basically down to helping the dispatcher prioritise traffic.
Stations seem really empty with only a few passengers on the platforms at major stations
There is a piece of OHLE missing at Lichfield
Good:
Bidirectional signalling is used in some of the scenarios (That was my question)
The scoring seems to be the standard scoring (not the reduced scoring on the 805 timetable)
Extra or "fake" station stops have been added to increase playability (e.g. the Manchester service which has its first stop at Nuneaton in reality has an extra stop at Milton Keynes)
There was a TSR that wasn't 40 (it was 75)
The Class 807 has speed set functionality (but this hasn't been added to the 805)

Overall, I think it looks quite good. It seems to perform well on the XBox as well, but I'll let the XBox players judge that.

 

I wasn't too keen on Matt's explanation of the irritating "double stop-at instruction" workaround to stop the dispatcher from reserving the path the second you arrive at a station. It sounds like this is going to become a "feature" of future routes. Surely the actual solution would have been to add a new setting to instructions, telling the dispatcher to only search for a path once the instruction is complete. Wouldn't have affected existing scenarios / services and would have been far more realistic, which you'd have thought would be the primary objective for a simulator.

JB

Edit : anyone else notice his 390 got slowed down by a TPWS intervention a few minutes ago? He was doing 54 in a 60, approaching a 75 limit....

 

Yea the sleeper/ballast shadows are a bit of an immersion killer tbh. Wonder if that has been implemented to help with the blurry textures or can be patched.

 

My only doubt about this route is, will it be as boring as ECML (for me)
There are more stops, but not always

 

speaking of the 805, it's curious how matt didn't take it for a ride, huh? it would certainly have been embarrassing for everyone there to show that messed up panel by the patch from the 28th

 

My impressions are that the route looks good and a lot of effort seems to have gone into it.

I compared it to ECML but I think it better. There is a lot more variety of traffic. Crewe seems more logical a place to end the route compared to a Doncaster.

The performance looked fine. I only watched it up to the class 66 freight run.

I haven't seen anything to stop me buying it but I'll watch a couple of streams on release.

I don't think it will be my most played route and I think I'll still prefer Birmingham to Crewe.