Please Postpone Release Of Cathcart Circle Until It Is Finished

Please Postpone Release of Cathcart Circle Until It is Finished

The route is being demonstrated right now as I type this post (on 28th May 2021), and the release date has already been announced for 10th June. But the DLC has not been completed. Please postpone the release. It is already clear that:

- the timetable/signalling is broken;
- the number of services have not been finalised;
- the audio has not been completed; and,
- the build, including where passengers are allowed to walk, is incomplete.

It is not humanly possible, or fair on the developers and beta testers to expect this route to be completed, and tested, and released into a final working shipping build within two weeks. It won't be possible to set up more services, and ensure that everything is fully tested on PC, XBox and Playstation.

I want to like this DLC - please don't put everyone through another launch disaster, yet again.

We can wait to get a working version.

Please Postpone Release of Cathcart Circle Until It is Finished

 

We are the testers the players because dtg barely test anything thats why it will release so broken you could find a issue 5 min after you start.

 

One of the positive things that I spotted in the stream is that someone (possibly even Matt himself) has actually looked at all of the six scenarios and completed them, at least in the PC version of the demonstrated dev build. You could see that the account had completed 145 miles, and that every scenario had a score recorded.

So - all of the six scenarios have been eye-balled by someone, and, to be honest I did not expect that at all (given the problems with recent releases). So - if it turns out that any of the scenarios are in a terrible state when Cathcart is released, then we will know that this was done with full knowledge.

Being able to complete the scenarios isn't enough though. You have to be able to hear them as well.

And there is no indication whatsoever that Cathcart has been anywhere near a PS4 DevKit yet.

 

You have made your opinion abundantly clear. Please stop spamming all the threads.

You started this thread a whole whopping 10 mins in to the stream

 

Yeah, I know...! I agree with you - shocking, isn't it....? Within the first ten minutes of the stream, it was clear that:

- the timetable/signalling is broken;
- the number of services have not been finalised;
- the audio has not been completed; and,
- the build, including where passengers are allowed to walk, is incomplete.

Within ten minutes.

And - given the advice from both Matt and JD that there is no promise that anything will get fixed in the actual release...... then anyone purchasing the DLC will get to have the same experience.... within the first ten minutes...... ;-O

Personally, I don't blame DTG (they have to make money, and cutting corners can seem to help in the short term). And I don't blame anyone that buys the DLC fully in the knowledge that there is no promise that the broken stuff will be fixed....... you just have to accept what you get, and preferably be quiet about it if you are disappointed. And you have been warned with a strong caveat emptor from DTG's own marketing team, that you should expect to buy a broken DLC.

I blame ScotRail. If ScotRail had a slightly tighter grip on how their branding would be used, then they would be a bit more demanding. But maybe the standards at ScotRail have slipped, and they don't care about their brand, or maybe they have a similar lack of understanding when it comes to project management, that they haven't demanded to see a final build of the DLC, to sign it off, when their name is plastered all over it. I blame Scotrail. It's all the fault of ScotRail, in my opinion.

If ScotRail has done a "fire and forget" deal with DTG, then you can pin all the blame on ScotRail if the DLC turns out to be as broken as Billy Ray Cyrus's achy breaky heart.

Hopefully, the DLC will be fine, as I would like to buy it...... when it is fit for purpose, and enjoy it. I guess we willl all find out on 10th June, about ten minutes after the DLC is released.

 

Why do you repeat each argument in every post you do, are you so afraid people/devs might overread your main argument and not abide to it immediately?
Personally I doubt anything will get postponed. Last week Sam explained their criteria for such an action, which would be the case of where you literally can't play. The sound, passenger and timetable arrival times are of course immersion brakers but don't render the route unplayable. Plus the release date has been revealed in the stores.
Just wait until next weeks livestream and see what has improved, it is likely they will play the shipping build then. Didn't Matt say yesterday, that the timetable has been fixed already?
And if it is not up to your standard - don't buy at release. Once you break out of the "buy at release" pattern, it gets easier everytime to pass and wait for a sale. Wait for 6-9 months and you will be able to buy these addons at 35%-40% discount, and with fixes for the biggest issues included by then as well.

edit: How is scotrail to blame? Do you really think Scotrail will want to check every single piece and bit of this route? I am willing to bet they got sent the train with the livery at most. Timetable times and passenger movement will hardly be points of consideration for them.

 

mclitke, just in case you really didn't get it, that's sarcasm (although synthetic.angel would probably object branding her post like that ^^).
Also there seem to be some gamers who are obviously willing to accept even the lowest possible standard .... (I mean, we all know how "fast" things get fixed, and how reluctant DTG is to fix some things they don't consider game breaking)

 

Yeah - I know - that is what a lot of people do - wait for it to be fixed, then pay less for it. All DTG need to do is create a short 3-4 week buffer in their product pipeline, to catch up on QA stuff.... and then they could release all of their subsequent DLCs in a working state, and sell them at full price to a larger number of people, and get maximum yield - but they choose to rush stuff out instead, and take the lower amount of cash.

No QA = Less Money

And that is fair enough. It's their own business, and if they want to run with "low quality, and less money", then that's for them to decide.

So... there is a back-story to this (for me). I got the impression that the extremely brand-sensitive SNCF went over the LGV DLC with a fine tooth-comb. And the result is fantastic rolling stock and fabulous support materials, including something that is quite rare nowadays - a manual.

I suspect that Cathcart won't come with a manual. And I don't think that DTG would dare release Cathcart in its current state, without a manual, unless they were very comfortable that ScotRail couldn't give a Snapchat about how their branding is used. And for me - I find this disturbing, because ScotRail is an operator of real railways, and although "Not caring much about how branding is used" can sometimes be very low down the pyramid of risk for a company - it's that kind of sloppiness that inevitably infects the rest of the organisation, and before you know it, ScotRail will have a multiple death real life/death railway accident on their hands.

But if ScotRail said to DTG something like "Hey - that thing you are making with our name on it - if you don't mind, it would be very kind if you could let us know how your product turned out, before you release it. We'd like to ensure that our brand is represented by a working product, and not one that is crippled at release. Because "crippled" isn't currently in our marketing strategy...." .......then I think that you will find that the DTG would focus more on quality, and less on the release date. It's just a hunch.

It's a shame that ScotRail doesn't care more about their brand, and more about that great country that they serve, Scotland, by being more demanding when it comes to quality.

 

I am sure whatever this is about. It has nothing to do with DTG or this new route.

Perhaps it is better you seek professional help to help deal with whatever you are obviously struggling with

 

Nice, a hobby psychologist with a couple of semesters studying youtube .... XD

Just to make my point clear: This is not meant as a personal offence, but I really really dislike such kind of comments ...

 

I don't want to get into the Cathcart discussion, but I agree with the point you are trying to make but disagree that ScotRail is at fault here.

In fact, compared with the bad HHL, and Cane Creek, which as far as we know it's coming with the yellow painted CSX AC4400 and the yellow painted CSX SD-40-2 Cathcart is the only route near release that is actually looking really good, both in terms of rolling stock and scenery, and most importantly, you could hear the difference between Cathcart and HHL preview stream, on HHL they pointed at the lack of time/resources to improve the route, while with Cathcart I got a different vibe, like it's almost sure everything gets fixed, but it's not sure if they manage it before release, but I digress, I mainly wanted to talk about your main point of SNCF.

LGV, in my opinion is the route that suffered the most from a bad release, but they kept improving it for months and months to the point of actually adding Crocodile, and now it's just fantastic, on par with some of the better releases for TSW2, the only criticism is that the trees still look odd, but at least they are not flickering anymore.

Was this continuous improvement caused by some pressure from SNCF that wasn't happy with the criticism the route was getting? It sounds ridiculous, but I bet HHL will not receive a similar treatment...

Maybe this played a role as well for the rushed fix for SEHS? Southeastern is another company that worked closely with DTG, some fixes were actually requested by Southeastern, (I can't exactly remember which ones but you'll find them on older patch notes). I guess that means that whenever there is close cooperation between the TOC and DTG it seems like things usually go smoother, this can also be seen on Peninsula Corridor, the quality of the rolling stock is very high IN TSW2020 (except for the GP-38 horn), and we know that's because they've been able to work closely with CalTrain.

I must always remember that correlation =/= causation, but until now, every DLC that involved close cooperation between DTG and the TOC turned a route from bad to decent (SEHS), from awful to pretty good (LGV) and is promising to give us the best out of those 3 recent releases...

 

But do we know the extense of what the licences cover? What if all they had to send in for approval was the livery of a trainset? The DB BR 182 for example is being used by different companies, would DTG need to get approval for the look of the loco from Siemens, the operator or maybe no one at all? The livery design on the other hand is owned by the operators and this is where they want to make sure their brand is presented correctly.
You surely heard of the issues with the DB BR 112 and the wrong size/placements of headlights, if Deutsche Bahn were that keen on the train models, they would have noticed and complained. Seems like TGV and ICE are different, because they have some special advertising and representative role within the respective companies.
But to think that SNCF or Deutsche Bahn, or ScotRail for that matter, either want or are required to go over all aspects of a route, from scenery, sounds and even signal placement, up to the stations in detail, doesn't sound right. These would require whole teams that are experts, to be paid for the time it takes to check everything.
Most likely, from my guess, it is just the things that carry their brand/logo that need approval. Liveries, some branded objects, maybe the trainsets.
I mean, seing how DTG are right now still working on Cathcart, there is no chance a licensing partner would be okay with them still working on a project, while have given a release date, without the final thing being sent out to them for approval.
The train, or to be more precise the looks of the train, have been done a long time ago (we heard on stream it was done before the 313 for ECW was even started) and since then has most likely been approved by ScotsRail. The rest seems to be on no dependancy with ScotRail at all.

This is merely my deduction though, I am no expert in this field. Though I have learned through licensed Kickstarter projects, that each and every color and detail of a character hat to be 100% approved by license holder, and so was each and every tiny or marginable change.

 

I demand rail companies pay more attention to video games! FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY THEY SERVE!

Honestly the things people post on these forums.

 

They obviously don't but they could care about the public reception, for example if Southeastern PR team went to the forum just before release to see the what people were thinking about the route, they could say to DTG: "hey a lot of people are complaining, make them stop complaining because we don't want our products to be represented in a way that makes people annoyed" they care about the end result, not how you get there, that's DTG's job. Obviously they can't judge the product, but I can see a TOC that is involved in the project asking some questions if after the first preview stream you get a forum thread filled with 10 pages of complaints.

DB always seemed to be a lot more lenient, just do whatever you want approach, only exception being the ICE trainsets.

Also we know for a fact the model of the TGV was scrutinised and approved by SNCF, and they didn't accept some of the earlier iterations because of missing details and stuff like that, something that would have stopped the BR112 in early development.

 

Obviously, for a game, this would be ridiculous. Although that said - the guys that are making SimRail would probably do something exactly like this for their real world railway simulators.... but not for their upcoming game.

But I would expect someone from ScotRail's corporate team to take an interest in how their brand is treated, from a company image point of view. And on that basis, I would want a license to be granted on the basis that the end product that represents the brand is functional and fit for purpose, and not some unholy mess, like Oakville, for example. Maybe Canadian National are quite relaxed about how their brand is perceived. Maybe ScotRail doesn't care that much either. I do not know.

I actually see the value of having a company brand represented in TSW, if it is done well. A few years ago, Network Rail, for example, had an exhibition stand at the UK Conservative Party conference that included TSW running the GWE route. I would actually be prepared to sign off a payment to DTG, as part of a budget for brand awareness, if the product was guaranteed to work well. But I suspect that the license arrangements mostly cover limitations for use, timing, etc., including not allowing or facilitating trains to appear crashed, etc., and sent around the internet. But maybe some corporate teams are not particularly sophisticated and are happy to say "yes", but just want the logo to look right...... and I suspect a lot just say "no" because they don't even want to spend the time thinking about any of it.

But whatever the details in the license, I wouldn't want my brand to be associated with a product that is broken, or untested, or released before it is ready to be released, when a short delay/postponement to make things right is all that is needed to make everything absolutely fine.

 

Can this pointless, unfounded thread finally be closed instead of the continuous rewarding of bad behaviour?

Thank you.

 

Thank you for responding (especially since it is late on a Saturday evening).

There's absolutely no problem with any of that, except that the release date of 10th June had been announced, and that is only a few working days away. So, it is not conducive to creating confidence, especially just after the Rush Hour website issue, the HLL PZB issue, and the RT update S6 issue.

Okay - but it is still to be reviewed. Audio is a critical component to immersion in this game - how can this not have been completed weeks ago... ? (rhetorical question)

Okay - that sounds fine. Thank you for clarifying.

As some positive feedback for you - the fact that you are now considering not allowing the door closure to control red signals ahead is an extremely welcome development. This issue plagues routes like the Bakerloo Line and San Fran/San Jose.... and to see this being remedied now is most welcome. Thank you for this..

I have to be honest - this is what rattled me. The uncertainty. If you said "these will be fixed by 10th June" or if you said "there is no time to fix these by 10th June - they don't make the cut", then I would feel more confident about what I was pre-ordering. But the feeling that I got was that you were saying "these may or may not be fixed, becasue we have not assessed what needs to be fixed yet, and there could be a ton of stuff that is wrong that we have not checked yet, that we are not yet aware of, but go ahead, pre-order anyway, but it's a bit of lottery for you, and it is your fault if you take the risk....".

This is my honest feedback to you.

What about Playstation? Have you tested Cathcart on Playstation - at all....? You must know from previous experience that a test on PC and/or XBox does not validate the Playstation build, whether that is the DB BR 155 (yes, that one).... or, more recently..... the PZB lights on the (fantastic) BR 101......

What have you done to test that Cathcart works on Playstation? Has any recent build been tested, at all?

 

I totally agree. There is no technical report to be made as the route has not even been released yet and dev builds are always full of unfinished work, it is a development build after all.

 

I put this thread in Technical Reports, because the problem (as I see it) is a technical problem with the timing of the announcement of product release (10th June) being made very close to that date, but with no indication that the product is really ready to be released. It is just an opinion.

The bug is with the timing, and the order of events in the project plan (if there is one, and it has been followed).

 

Are we just going to be totally ignorant of the fact that the preview stream was an unfinished dev build? Unless you were totally oblivous to Matt's commentary, he pretty much mentioned all of those issues about 20-30 mins into the stream (correct me if I am wrong) and that they were to be resolved before the route is all packaged up for public release.

Not all of these issues mentioned are gamebreaking and of course preview streams as the name implies gives you an early preview of what you should expect from new content by DTG or any third party developer, and of course there will be cases where something doesn't quite work right properly or it's unpolished etc, this is normal in the gaming industry and I for one understand and respect that.

The two week deadline to do all those fixes seems more than adequate enough in my opinion and I know the dev team are capable of achieving that.

It would be appreciated if you take a step back before saying something needs to be "postponed" or "delayed" because most of the time DTG won't make that decision unless it's absolutely nessecary.

 

Thank you for taking the time to add this post. It’s much appreciated.

 

As far as I could see, ScotRail’s brand was at no point shown in a negative light.

 

Thank you matt for clarifying that.
I personally like how DTG have handled this preview stream matt was completely honest with us on all the issues that they were aware of which is to be expected as it was a Dev build but I believe that by next week when we get the next preview stream DTG would have ironed out all these issues as they had obviously already started working on them, come next week I will probably be pre ordering the route.

 

It looked positive to me I'd be happy if that was my brand, the scotrail livery looked really good artwork was brilliant and considering it was a dev build it was in pretty good shape apart from the few issues already highlighted.

 

I very much hope that you are absolutely correct and that Cathcart launches without any issues, with everything resolved, as you predict, based on your research, knowledge and experience. That would be fabulous. ;-)

That is my ideal outcome, so that I can then buy the DLC and get straight into playing it.

That is not what was offered by JD though, in the preview stream - he was quite explicit that no promises could be made, and that expectations should not be raised about changes being made and delivered on time.

We will have to wait and see what happens, I think. I very much hope that you are right, and that my worries are proven to be completely unfounded - that would be utterly superb. I would love to be completely wrong. ;-)

 

I did slightly edit my comment to tone it down a notch, but I'm glad that you have a positive outcome about Cathcart just as much as I do, cheers

 

Oh well, yes, the livery on the Class 314 looks fantastic. My personal favourite, however, is the Class 68:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/376930/Train_Simulator_ScotRail_Class_68_Loco_Addon/

Maybe Glasgow-Edinburgh is to follow soon....

*crosses fingers* ;-)

 

I would also like to thank you for taking the time for this feedback after yesterday's stream. I myself was very impressed with what was shown off, and understand that it was only a dev build and not the final product. Looking forward to that next stream.

 

I absolutely agree that this should not a technical report issue at this time, as what was shown off was the dev build and not the final product. We will get another stream on launch day which will be the final product. Any technical issue should be held off until after the route is released than report anything that is wrong.

 

Having thought about your post, I have realised that there is a fundamental flaw with the founding of this thread. I had assumed that the thirteen calendar days to 10th June only included seven or eight working days, at most.

But I was probably wrong.

If key personnel are working 15-16 hours shifts every day, including Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays from early in the morning until deep into the night, including live internet broadcasts at 9.00pm UK time on weekdays...... then there are actually about 30 working days that can be crammed into the next two weeks. So there might be enough time, from that point of view.

But that sort of crunch, even if it is voluntary (or perhaps even desired, or considered as leisure, by those that partake in it), is not healthy, stable, sustainable, or effective in the long run. It never is. I hesitate to recognise or be thankful for these efforts (although in reality I am very grateful indeed for the ultimate output), because a much better solution, in my opinion, is to effectively plan and resource the work, using more generous assumptions, and to keep a release date as an internal target date until the work has been completed, and a more reasonable release schedule can then be implemented (reasonable on the staff involved).

 

We cannot know for sure how many hours the dev team work per day, and lets not forget that they have been mostly working from home these last couple of months but from what I heard from Matt, the dev team were still in high spirits despite being in lockdown.

The problem with your assumptions based on how DTG use their time wisely comes down to management which is what I believe is causing the devs to struggle for time etc. I've mentioned this before plentiful of times, but to make the most out of the work load you're given is to use an object oriented system. This way the team can work out what exactly needs prioritising and how long they will need to achieve that goal etc. The current method of approach they are using is just not reliable enough anymore and just increases the workload more than it realistically needs to be. Again i'm not exactly a professional at this, and of course there's probably someone out there who understands it better than I do.

 

I am being earnest here - I actually think I made a mistake regarding my interpretation of timing. When JD said in the stream: "This gets released in less than two weeks.... so it might not all get fixed, no promises, etc......" (or something similar)..... I interpreted this as "There are only seven/eight working days to fix all this stuff..... so it cannot possibly get fixed.... but I am saying maybe it will... so why not take a risk and pre-order anyway..... but honestly, there isn't a Cisco's chance in Huawei it will get fixed if you think about it seriously for just one second....."

..............and in my world, a working day is seven hours...... and it is never ever on a Saturday, Sunday, Bank Holiday, Shrove Tuesday, Queen's Actual Birthday, Queen's Official Birthday.... etc.... If you want me to work on those days, then my day rate goes up by a factor of 400%, and I expect another extra contractual day of pay (or leave) in lieue on top...... ;-)

SO...... I thought about it all wrong. If every single calendar day (including weekends) actually counts as two full working days (or maybe even three days..... if they can survive on three hours of sleep per calendar day), then thirteen calendar days becomes 26 simulated work days, or even as much as 39 simulated work days... which is basically "five to eight weeks" in my world.... Up to eight weeks. Not seven days. Up to eight weeks. You could call it two months, if you wanted.

So - can they fix the issues that manifested themselves in the preview stream in seven working days....? Probably not (I would think). But if you think about it as actually being nearly two months in "Dev Crunch Calendar Time" - then yeah, maybe they can do it - and then this thread is, indeed, all a big fuss over nothing. Will they achieve it? I don't know. I guess we shall find out when CCL launches on 10th June (which is apparently in about two months from now).

And when the lockdown thing is fully over, I am going to buy some shares in all of the Chatham/Medway/Kent psychotherapy and (legal) stimulant businesses that I can find. And possibly some funeral businesses.

I still think that it is more effective in the long run to let employees have a decent Work/Life Balance, but maybe that's not how they roll in DTG - maybe they crunch the living daylights out of all of their employees (voluntarily or not). I don't know, I don't work there. And thank the Good Lenovo Google for that....!

 

Dear me, you need to stop overthinking things. If it's not bad enough you were earlier in this thread accusing Scotrail of being on the verge of committing corporate manslaughter because they don't pay more attention to a video game, you're now theorizing on whether DTG employees are ever allowed out of their cages to see daylight. In a competition between your comments in this thread and a day time soap opera, the evil twin posing as a priest to defraud their mother who gave them up for adoption so she could marry the senator who was abducted by aliens, still comes across as less melodramatic than some of the stuff you come out with.

 

Whatever your disagreements are with synthetic.angel, your second sentence is really out of line.

 

I think the previous comments of this individual prove my statement. I am genuinely concerned for his/her wellbeing and hope he/she finds the help he/she needs. And help him/her get in a better place. These rants are obviously not about the route that was streamed, but go to something much more serious.

 

I think its too early to start saying what's broken with this DLC, as we've only had one preview so far, which was ran on an (outdated?) dev build. We've got another stream next Thursday so hopefully these issues stated will get fixed.

Personally I was very impressed with the first stream. The scenery and attention to detail of the stations was amazing and the route looked good too. I couldn't find any glaring issues with it unlike *cough* SEHS *cough* which shows how much they have improved since then.

 

Ooooh - I don't think I caught the episode with the evil twin - it sounds like it could be "right up my alley", so to speak. I will keep an eye out for it. I must admit, I am a fan of the "I, Claudius" books - but, alas, there were no trains in the days of Imperial Rome.... so both the alien thing you are talking about, and the trials of Claudius Caesar take a back seat for me these days.

But...... I would say that the Romans did take their time when it came to planning projects, and they made sure that enough resource was in place to complete the projects in a timely way (even if that meant the use of slave labour, working 21 hours per day - so it's not a new concept.....). And they had a good record-keeping system, which enabled them to roll out their amphitheatres in a consistent and reliable way, without having to rush the last bit in the last seven days, or "two months", depending on your point of view of how time should be calculated. The downside, of course, is that a lot of their roads were built very very straight - a bit like the Oakville DLC, and so were quite dull to traverse. But you can't have everything.....!

Thankfully, the Cathcart route will be a Circle for a change, although the Romans would probably refer to such a large round structure, that has entertainment as its prime purpose, as a Circus Maximus.

 

I think you seriously need to take a step back and stop using such ridiculous terms. We are not living in the 14 century and DTG are not forced to work like medieval peasants under their own will. There is something called the Human Rights act 1998, I'd suggest you look it up.

 

Yeah - I think CCL is going to be really good. If I had to make a prediction, I would say that it will get a mixed reception on 10/11 June, and that a large number of bugs will have "unfortunately slipped the net", but that these probably won't be major........ and they'll be mostly patched by the end of the month. Hopefully the front lights will work, and will shine light on things.

And I might well buy it at the point, although I might have to wait a few more months after that, to ensure that any LOD/loading issues with Playstation get resolved (these take a few months longer, because they are apparently not as important as the bugs on PC).

I am not convinced that any dev builds actually get play-tested on Playstation at all, not based on anything that I have bought soon after the release date. I suspect DLCs probably just get a cursory check for performance on Xbox, and if the performance is okay on XBox, then it will obviously be fine on Playstation 4/5. But PS4/5 handle the UE implementation differently, so there will be issues that don't get caught, like missing lights, hexagonal buttons, broken surface elements (like the Class 20 marker flaps that were never fixed), etc..

I look forward to the next stream - which I hope will demonstrate a Class 314 run at night, in the rain, and on a PS4 DevKit. I can hope, but obviously this isn't actually going to happen......... So, I guess it will be PS FourLorn hope then..... ;-)

But I would finally say this - if DTG discover, in the next few days, that CCL "isn't quite up to the standard that they expect to deliver", then I would be happier for them to postpone the release date, than release it anyway and then tell us that it "isn't quite up to the standard they expect to deliver", and that they will "learn lessons for next time".

 

Thank you for your reply in this thread, and also having to be a voice of reason to get a certain few under control. Happy to see the issues that were noted on Friday have gone through the build process, and things are now working as intended to be working.

 

This is good to hear, have there been any changes in the sounds/mixing? Definitely a bit quiet on the first stream in my opinion (I think a few others agreed tbh).

 

Perfectly (and quite fairly) said! Thanks for all of the updates so far, since Friday's stream. The last minute burst of hard work is really appreciated (although ordinarily I would hope it is not necessary....).....

CCL is potentially shaping up to be an absolutely fantastic DLC (hence my concentrated interest in it.....). For me, it's the interim replacement for the truly fabulous South London Network in TS2012, which would be great to see in TSW.

Has there been any news on the train lights, with the Class 314.....? Can you confirm if they are actually light sources, so that the speed limit signs (and other stuff) can be seen flashing past you in the dark...?

 

Wouldn't that be more related to reflective surface rather than light sources?

 

You need a light source on the front of the train for the effect that I want to see (which you see in all of the German routes, because those routes have been optimised to include this basic feature, but you don't see in NTP because NTP wasn't properly optimised).

The signs (and pretty much every single textured prim in the CCL build) already reflect and respond to changes in ambient light, so the speed signs already look different when the sun is shining on them, or if it is within the shadow draw distance radius of the observing camera.

I am also fairly sure that if you get out of the Class 314 and go on foot, that the speed sign surfaces will respond to your torch (which is a light source projected from your camera view point, or just below it)..

I'd like to see light sources on the front of the train. And if this takes performance of the route over the edge of acceptability, then the route needs to be re-optimised for performance, like the German routes.

Hopefully the light sources are already there.

 

Fair enough, then this route should include this "basic" feature too (if it's that basic why don't all games feature it?)

 

I think it can be "basic" depending on how simplified you want the approximation of real world reflection to be.

For example you could program certain textures to act as dim lights when a light is shined on them. This is a simple model (and probably close to the one used in most video games).

If you want it more realistic you could use ray tracing and have the reflection depend on physical laws like the Fresnel equations. You could even simulate diffraction and interference. This is not basic (actually probably quite difficult to implement) and extremely resource intensive. This last extreme is more of a physics simulation so I doubt even the most high end Nvidia ray tracing algorithms use it (but maybe something similar is used in movie visual effects).

 

I’m impressed with how many internal changes have been made since the last live stream. I assume these changes and any further changes will be present on Thursday’s live stream?