West Coast Main Line: Trent Valley From All Aboard Studios

I wonder if the 805 panel buttons will be fixed before this is released?

 

been watching the stream back for a couple of hours and i have to say i’m very, very impressed. foliage and ballast looks superb as i was expecting, aabs set their own standards with b2c. the scenery is also very well modelled with excellent attention to detail, including stations. the introduction of speed set on the 807 is another massive improvement, hopefully this gets back-ported to the 805 as that’s my only gripe with the original loco. i’m still apprehensive about potential blurring issues but the xbox preview looked good, albeit in the 390 which strangely doesn’t badly suffer from bluriness like the 350 and AT300s. this will definitely be a day one purchase for me unless there’s reports of bad blurriness. the 350/4 sounds are also a big improvement, i’m not sure if it was clarified during the stream but hopefully these also get added to the other 350s, at the very least i’d expect the /2 and /3 to receive the better versions. hats off to aabs for what looks like another brilliant route, it goes without saying that b2c had a rocky start but their ability to build routes is second to none

 

i have exact the same impression. Will buy anyway
B2C is now one of my favorite routes (pc)

 

Enjoyed the stream, and the route lived upto expectations. The quality, detail, and timetable were pretty immense. But I always knew it would be from the lads at AAS!

One thing that really struck me as someone who likes long distance routes, is that this route really hit the sweet spot for me in terms of length. I don't particularly find extremely short routes with illogical start and end points of much entertainment value for me personally (the exception to that rule is GOBLIN and North London Line which have end to end, intense commuter runs, and full services), but from watching the stream this really felt like it hit the sweet spot and goldy lock zone for me. It gives the 805, 807, & 390 such a good stretch of their legs and you really get the feeling like you are getting a proper InterCity run (something I haven't felt since ECML).

It was also nice to see the difference that has been made with the Class 350/4. Don't get me wrong the 350/2 and 350/3 are still smashing units... But the new sounds and updates to the 350/4 sound absolutely great and made a noticeable difference. (TPWS Mk4, updated running sounds, and some external sounds).

The route details were also really nice, as was the trackside scenery, foliage, and overall detail in the route, although I shouldn't be surprised from the lads at AAS... Overall a very tasty looking route!

Something that really stuck out to me was the huge and major difference between Milton Keynes on Trent Valley, and WCMLS, and the new Milton Keynes really blew the WCMLS version out of the water and put it to shame.

This will be a day one purchase for me and really look forward to it. I've been waiting a very long time to have a route of this length and a proper InterCity run. Something we haven't experienced for the UK since ECML in TSW4.

Lastly finishing on a positive note it was positive to hear about optimisation improvements that have been implemented, and further improvements that are going on behind the scenes. Actions speak louder then words, and it feels like there definitely is some action to improve and optimise the game, rather then just words and empty promises we have heard in the past.

 

It won’t be that. It was like that on the last All Aboard route. The extended shadows will still be computed and drawn in but you just can’t see them on the outside edge because another texture is drawn over them. It’s only bad at certain sun angles really.

 

Haven’t watched the stream, but showing off on Xbox is pretty encouraging IMO. I would ask if there were any caveats there though, B2C runs fine if you remove the 350 layers but it removes the soul of the route, so I’m not interested in another mainline where I have to run it much emptier than designed.

I’ll of course wait for the day 1 reports to come in, but down the line when the price is more…palatable, it’s certainly a route I’m interested in.

Also, AAS still have to get their other products in order. B2C is still in a rough state on console & I fear there’s not much hope for it overcoming its related issues there.

 

Looked great. Nice to see the speed set on the 807, hopefully that comes to the 805 down the line.

The 350/4 sound gorgeous. A shame the audio won't be ported to the other subclasses, but hopefully that's on the cards for the future.

Route looked fantastic every time I joined the stream. What more can I say. As a PC player I'm sure it'll be a great route. If there are any 86 railtours that would be great but not fussed if not.

 

Don't think the route will include any railtours on timetable mode

 

It’s going to be fun driving from Euston to MK, MK to Crewe, then back on myself to Birmingham new street.

 

Not really, why would they drive the 805 when the 807 is the flagship train of the route

 

Did the route come across as busy on the stream?

 

When they showed it on xbox it performed ok but did anyone notice how many dlcs he had on his xbox. Because does that impact performance if you have a lot of dlc.

 

The reports from the stream are encouraging and I might try and watch a bit of it later on. Still wavering on it being a Day One purchase as, on the one hand it does appear AABS have raised their game and deserve a payday, but on the other… 1. It’s another relatively flat Midlands workaday route so once you’ve gone end to end a few times, where’s the replay value? 2. £33 is tickling my red line as regards pricing especially for a route that consists of 30% recycled mileage and no new trains (Class variant of the 8xx doesn’t count in my book).

Couple of quick questions for those who watched the stream..
1. How does Kilsby Tunnel look? Have they included the large ventilation shafts as you pass through?

2. Was the questIon about missing out Northampton addressed on the stream, along with what happens to all the slow line traffic that would run that way from Roade to Hilmorton and vv?

This is definitely a situation which would have benefited from a 10% pre order discount. So watching closely what happens next Tuesday, betting odds at the moment are 25/1 I’ll buy before the end of next week, dropping to 5/1 first time it gets 20% off in a sale.

 

it could certainly do with more light baking, there’s no light shining onto the rails and above you the ventilation shaft is full of the weird blue haze that often appears around tunnels

 

Thanks for that. Well at least they have modelled the structure itself accurately by the sound of it, which is a plus.

Started to watch the stream and have to say the new 350 sounds are rather nice. Very AC EMU ish. So the odds on a purchase by the end of next week have now dropped to 20/1!

 

Hopefully all the way to Carlisle at some point with what Im working on now and will once another DLC is released (though Unsure if the person who created the Modernisation mod for OS which Im using for this TT will do one for Crewe-preston)

 

Does this have any depots for depo/yard moves.

 

All the places at Crewe as well as Daventry Freight Terminal

 

Very happy how it performed on console. Will most likely be a day 1 purchase for me.

Also sounds like Class 70 is very close to a release aswell!

 

Great thanks.

 

Have they confirmed Daventry as being on the route? I only ask because it’s on the Northampton Line and as we know the whole Northampton line isn’t included.

 

TBH after recent experiences with dlc I find I’m slightly surprised that people still buy these routes day 1 especially after the “hiccups” with their previous route not to mention other debacles with different devs.
Having said that I’m thankful as those pioneers are giving me a chance to read their reviews and decide whether to purchase it or not!

 

Will the 807 be available on WCMLS?

 

People just need to request a refund (within hours of purchase) if the route isn’t up to standard. Don’t wait for it to be fixed, refund it and buy it once it’s fixed.

 

Watching a bit more of the stream (got to Lichfield TV on the 350/4 run), I am now moderately concerned by the very definite stuttering that suddenly appeared around Nuneaton and persisted beyond. Yes some is probably down to streaming and YT but even so, if Matt is running this on his NASA super PC, that’s got to be of concern to anyone on lesser hardware.

Anyhow back to the stream while preparing dinner, more thoughts (maybe) to follow…

 

Really looking forward to picking up another piece in the WCML puzzle!

 

No. The route did seem rather quiet to me, I don’t know how realistic the TT is as per IRL though.
Maybe others can share some insight into this.

It does make me wonder how many services were cut to improve performance. I did expect to see the mainline to show twice the amount of traffic we saw on stream.

 

i thought it only loaded the layers required for that route? having a load of unrelated DLCs shouldn't impact performance i'd have thought?

for this route, they appeared to have all layers activated and still ran fine. they indicated they have improved monitoring of memory usage and were able to pinpoint trains that ate a lot of memory (pendo was a memory killer apparently and were able to halve the amount it used through recent optimisations)

 

Why does only certain class 66s do certain jobs. I mean they all 66s so they all the same job . Expect the rhht 66.

 

They did have all layers active, but they used an early service, notably one that avoided the busiest station (Crewe) & MKC. I’m definitely not pinning any hopes of not seeing the texture issue on the back of that stream.

FYI the 390’s memory footprint was reduced by around 15%, not half.

 

Thanks to Jan for asking and Dan for answering my questions about Kilsby Tunnel and the Northampton Loop.

Kilsby Tunnel (previously mentioned lighting issues aside) sounds like it will be hellfire and worth a visit on foot.

And while disappointing, nevertheless the situation as regards Northampton is understood. I didn’t realise the current timetable has so few trains through to the Trent Valley, though of course we could still have driven the outer suburban services from MKC to Rugby. It is what it is and you could argue the OG WCMLS should have gone to Northampton, instead of stopping short at MKC. As a now retired route builder in the old sims, I know how easy it is to yield the temptation to lay a few more miles of track. It’s filling in the detail and scenery that takes the time.

Odds on this being in my HD by the end of next week, now shortened to 12/1.

 

They drove a train out of there on the stream so I hope it's included

 

oh i thought i heard them say it went from ~120mb to 60. misheard then.

didn't see the whole stream but shocking that they missed out crewe because that's where all the problems on B2C occurred

 

The very short route trailer has a look at Kilsby Tunnel including a view from the vent shaft,


Now I didn't watch much of the stream, mainly because I was falling asleep after a long day up in the friendly skies, but while I was largely happy with what I saw I did notice that Crewe in particular was very quiet (it was the end of the 350 run, there was a 150 waiting to depart, a 323 parked up in P1 and a Pendo did race through non-stop after a couple of minutes), there didn't seem to be any static vehicles especially outside LNWR which would easily have a 153 and a Gronk outside of it during the day and it was hard to tell from the cab view but it looked like LSL's site was empty too.

With regard to the timetable being quiet, let's not forget that a large amount of the freight traffic is missing simply because we don't have the loco's for the job...

 

It didn't seem too bad to me. There are 10 Avanti services per hour during the daytime. 3 turn off at Rugby to Birmingham, another 2 at Colwich to Manchester via Stoke. That leaves the Glasgow, Chester, Manchester via Crewe and 2 Liverpool services. Finally, at Stafford one of the Birmingham services rejoins as it continues towards Glasgow/Edinburgh/Blackpool.
The services aren't evenly spaced either. I've stood at Rugeley Trent Valley and there can be long gaps.
And finally, I couldn't finish this post without mentioning maths and the fact that relative velocities will affect the amount of traffic you see, but that's not a calculation I'm doing during my lunch break .

 

I only watched a bit of the stream but it actually seemed quite good. The sounds of the 350/4 were great, however they said they won't be ported onto the other variants. This unfortunately creates a situation where one variant of the same train is significantly better than the others which irks me a bit.

 

I watched the livestream for about an hour, even though I’m not really interested in UK routes.

What struck me, though, was that there was very little AI traffic, and I’ve never seen so few passengers on any other route as on this one.

 

I’m not really understanding all the issues regarding the double objective.

I first became aware of it on Riviera Line and Birmingham to Crewe, to prevent the immersion breaking close doors on a red, for example overtaken trains at Dawlish Warren have the feature.

If it’s a workaround to prevent that which is undoubtedly immersion breaking I’m all for it. You shouldn’t have to close doors earlier anyway, really and with signal delays in the game no services in reality would ever depart at “00 seconds” on the dot as well.

 

Good stream last night.
Enjoyed it.
Wasn't sure about how busy the route was from the stream, it'd make sense they left room for their new freight loco.
The 350 was the highlight,it sounds very good indeed.
Day one for me;I'm still enjoying the previous AABS dlc .
Hopefully fix the texture problem inside and out on the 805,it's very noticeable on external cab view.

 

This is what concerns me with this route. It’s the West Coast Main Line and it should be busy. However, if it was busy it would blur I suspect.

As for the 350/4 sounds not being ported to the other variants, don’t AABS own the 350/2? So why wouldn’t they be able to port them?

 

I think what they said was there were no plans to, not a flat no.

It almost seems to be a rule of TSW that no plans is a guarantee something will happen!

 

Just watched the stream and very impressed. The fact that it’s running on Series X at mostly 60fps with no apparent blurries and with the full timetable means this is most likely day 1 for me.

 

I watched the stream, the part on PC and a bit of the part on Xbox. All the time I had the feeling, just another boring mainline route with not much going, no amazing scenery or landmarks. But ok, if there where landmarks or an amazing scenery, you don't see it anyway from the Class 350 small cab window.

What I actually want to say, I really want to see something else then mainlines over and over again, maybe the Thames Valley Branches is more my cup of tea. There are also to much German routes mainlines and not much scenic branchlines.

 

They used the 390, which didn't really suffer blurry textures on any route tbf.

The class 350 on console will be the blurry mess

 

Dan mentioned he couldn’t see the team doing another long route of this calibre again, that’s fine since AABS connect all their routes up into a network. I wish more third party developers did this, stuck to one area of the railway and expanded upon it.

I’m hoping Firefly’s next route will be a continuation of their first.

When it comes to the WCML, AABS probably have one more route left in them and that being the MK to Birmingham new street section.
I’ve read feedback on here about them not extending up to Liverpool or Carlisle, so that looks like it’s off the cards.

 

I'm sure he said something along the lines of no more WCML. But I might be misremembering.

 

You are correct, I caught that one too. Though of course that doesn't rule out an offshoot from the current AABS network and it also depends what you define as WCML, as technically Rugby to Birmingham is the "Grand" etc...

As regards the frequency of AI traffic, it was explained on the first 350 run the Trent Valley is not that busy, as trains which started to depart Euston, Manchester and Liverpool etc. around 0600 have not reached the area yet.

 

But of course if they did a run around midday there would be plenty!

 

I personally dont have any blurring with the 350 on B2C and im playing on base ps5. Hopefully this one performs too.

 

Oh I didn’t catch that. I guess it’s not a massive deal breaker getting the remaining part.

If the WCML is done they might focus on routes starting on the WCML and diverging onto another. Crewe to Derby I wouldn’t mind seeing as a starter.
The East Midlands is crying out to be further explored.