My opinion is that DTG should develop its own game engine. With its own tool, it would be easier to eliminate non-standard software behaviors such as blurry textures.
While I do agree with you, an own engine would be better for multiple reasons, the questions is are they capable of making their own engine? It will cost a lot of time, effort and knowlegde to do so, so they have to do it right or better not. In general, more and more developers are moving away from their own engines and switching to UE5. I'm not happy with it at all, as the results are not that good and a lof of UE5 games are suffering from bad performance and bad image quality. For the people thinking, UE5 will solve the issues and the game will look way better, well this is not what you see with a lot of released UE5 games. Especially on consoles, the results are far from great.
I agree, developing your own game engine would be very difficult and expensive. But relying on another company's product, and one that is not suitable for train simulation, is not a good idea. Just the blurry textures on consoles certainly affected the entire company's revenue and caused a lot of customer distrust.
I have to agree with you again, but is UE actually suitable for any type of game seeing the current situation? Farming Simulator 25 is using an own engine, at least on Series S there were blurry textures too. Most likely no proper optimization was causing it here too, as I believe it's fixed in the meantime. I think DTG can do a lot with optimization and change stuff in the core. The whole timetable for example is loaded into memory, are the current SSD's not fast enough to just read it from there?
Many posts have been written. In short: it won't be on the new engine. And to all those who have the imagination that a clean slate would somehow fix things: no it won't. Let alone all the technical difficulties of making UE 5 work with a train simulation game all over again. The development processes currently in place would result in the exact same result: routes that are hit-and-miss regarding features. Because one route is started as a copy from another one which may not have all the newest features already included. The extra mile which usually makes the difference between a bland and mediocre route and one that stands out as amazing is consistently the thing that isn't budgeted for. Great routes usually have developers put in their unpaid free time to improve it beyond what is scheduled for. Unless that changes, you will keep having some routes which are genius and others which are mediocre. More important than the engine would be to cut support to old consoles. But that's a catch-22. So long as a lot of people use them, DTG won't cut and so long as TSW runs on these consoles, those people won't update because they likely only play TSW and don't need newer consoles otherwise. Regarding rolling stock, we would still have duplications galore with every route getting a new version of a rolling stock with minor adjustments. So you need to buy the same rolling stock again and again to get the newest updated versions. One reason for this: if you had one version of the rolling stock that is continuously updated, you would need to test it with every route it was ever included in a timetable with. The QA demands would skyrocket.
The big advantage (for developers) with UE5 (from Epic in general) is simply the ability to easily outsource work to smaller development studios. For this reason, many publishers are switching to this graphics engine. It's a sort of "globalization" of programming work. Plus, with NANITE and Lumen, work is better and more streamlined. After that, there is much to be argued about whether Unreal Engine IS the ultimate graphics engine.
I believe, they don't test substitutions on all routes either and if they do you have the same situation as with one version for all routes and the need for testing. The thing is, not every loco of wagon is exactly the same, for example, there are German dostos with green and amber displays.
Let's say that TSW's situation is what it is. This is probably also due to the fact that some addons are more than 10 years old. Therefore, they are necessarily obsolete. If you want to try to change something for better or worse, you have to look ahead. For me, TSW is no longer satisfactory in its current state. I emphasize "for me." Otherwise, the situation will remain as it is. Stop.
I don't think that will ever happen, they seem to be pretty comfortable where they are with no real competition as they are the only ones churning out content for us to consume. Yes, Running Train blows TSW out of the water in many aspects but doesn't cater to a wider audience (i.e. British, German, USA).
Maybe, but they won't get any more money from me. The last addon I purchased was BR 147. And it will stay that way. I'm waiting (certainly something new). Other users are free to think differently. Every opinion is highly respectable.
It's also a known fact Epic Games like to sweeten the pot for using there engine, there's only one outcome if nearly all devs switch to using UE5 and that's an endless supply of the same cr_p wrapped in a different skirt, monopoly is never the answer for the consumer, there are very big reasons different genres of games use different engines, generalisation leads to stagnation that leads to everyone settling for a lesser product.
Simugraph is a physics engine DTG created instead of using UE4s native engine, like when you sometimes see on loading screens with names like Chaos and Phys-X
Why on earth would anyone want a version of TSW with even worse performance than it already has? UE5 is a bloated, overweight processor hog. The only reason game studios everywhere are using it is because they can hire kids off the street who can't code and make them "devs" using UE's point-and-click toolbox.
Because we are already halfway through the year 2026. Technology has advanced a bit since TSW was conceived (specifically, 2014/2015).
Let’s just imagine for one second that DTG are experimenting with UE5, and they have a game planned for next year. They could scrap all existing dlc for UE4 and start fresh for UE5, we’d still have our routes and add-on’s for TSW in UE4. That’s the question though, would players get on board with that idea? Or are they adamant about having all their content in one place, on one game? Personally I’d like to see DTG start fresh at some point. The TSW will never improve much from what we have now performance wise, and thanks to blurry textures DTG are going to keep freeing up memory on existing routes, which in turn makes the game look less detailed. That’s coming from a console players prospective. Running Train on Steam has already set the standard for what’s capable when UE5. I wonder if everyone at DTG is asking themselves “could we pull off something like this” using UE5…
I'm with you on that. A UE5+ train sim is the only way we're going to get a London Underground route/network or similar, or other types of route that TSWx can't handle. A new sim won't delete my TSW routes, or prevent 3rd parties still producing routes for TSW.
