This is not a criticism but a serious question for those who know about programming, If Microsoft can map the whole world into their flight simulator, what limits the length of routes in TSW2? For instance, on GWR why stop at Reading and not continue to Bristol or Oxford?
Because Microsoft is a multi billion pound company an had the ability to do so dovetail as even though is a big company and very good at what they do haven't got that technical money and time to do so
Microsoft map the world from the height of a flying plane (if not a satellite). They only map points of interest to low flying level, In TSW I can walk to the edge of the play area on foot and view everything up close If I use the free camera mode I can fly from Gillingham station to my front door (I live about 100 yards away) Can you do that in MS Flight Sim? You also have every station made in as much detail as the artist can muster. Admittedly there are things which could be done better using mapping tech from a big boy (distant scenery being a big one) but the up close and medium range stuff? Because locals will KNOW when things are wrong and because you're "flying at 10 feet" they need to be bang on
1. Microsoft Flight Simulator is only on PC (and XSX/S), whereas TSW is also on the Far Less Capable XONE and PS4 2. It gets most of the Buildings from the Internet: Imagine Live Train Data being streamed from Across the World on Every Railway 3. TSW and FS2020 are based on 2 completely different and unrelated engines 4. Microsoft is a Multi-Billion Pound Company. 5. The size would be Massive. GWE on its own is 11 GB, FS is 128 GB NO DLC. 6. It would need a NASA computer to get an Average of 20FPS 7. The Price would be Huge
1. First of all this will never happen 2. DTG do not have a budget like what Microsoft has 3. Just a terrible idea
Longer routes are definitely possible. As DTG are a relatively small company compared to the likes of Microsoft, they set a scheduled amount of time to create each route. I suppose this is based on the sweet-spot between time and money invested into the route development and the sales following release. The time allows for shorter routes of a higher quality rather than longer routes of less quality. Unless technological advances speed up the process of route-making, or the price of DLC increases for them to make longer routes (which I seriously doubt will happen), I think route lengths will remain within the same range we have seen so far.
I've just opened up the stats on xbox's storage tab. The base game is 13.7 GB. GWE is 3.1 GB. Of the DLCs I have, LGV is the longest, at a small 5.9GB. I own TSW2 (duh), NTP, SEHS, Cathcart Circle, GWE, Island Line, Rapid Transit, Class 465/9, East Coastway & LGV Méditerranée. That only adds up to 42.9GB. The issue with longer routes is that the more time DTG use to make, the more it costs, so they have to stick within a certain length for these reasons.
It's a lot bigger on PC 11.35GB to be exact, I have 11 routes + base 3 and 7 loco add-ons and this adds up to 133 GB in total, i think this is down to higher resolution graphics but I'm not 100% sure that's why
Oh, is it only on console that the whole thing has to be downloaded for an update? is it just patched on PC?
I said something similar on another thread speaking hypothetically and people jumped on it, “can’t happen”, “would look terrible” blah blah blah. With the right budget it can happen. In the future as such technology develops it will be used in different ways. MS flight sim is not just taking satellite imagery and putting it in the game. Its using algorithms to build out the entire cities based on shapes, height and design.
Yes you can. In cities where photogrammetry is not available the world is built out using algorithms to create buildings based on data they do have. Its not just an overlay of satellite imagery. Flight sim also has custom airports etc recreated in high detail. If the budget, access and manpower was there, then it could be done. If for example Microsoft made Train Simulator they could absolutely use the same tech to build out routes then tweak the parts they need to.
But Microsoft don't make TSW2 and DTG aren't Microsoft and don't have the same budget or manpower, so this is completely irrelevant.
It's fundamentally about how the scenery needs to be presented to the player. If you go into flight sim you'll find the majority of the scenery is 2d satellite imagery projected over topographical data. That actually looks quite good when you're flying a plane at 20,000 feet. When you get lower flight sim adds more detail with some relatively basic 3D models which again look good at a distance but if you get down to ground level you find most scenery in flight sim isn't particularly detailed (because it doesn't need to be). Even the majority of airports in flight sim are pretty much just based off satellite imagery and automatic generation. Train simulators can't really get away with that, you want more detail in scenery, and that scenery is going to require much more memory and hardware resources in a given geographic area which limits how big you can actually make your world.
Ah, so they make it up... Lets see how that would go down with the TSW crowd (Answer is it wouldn't. There was a month's long "discourse" about the wrong type of fence a few months back...)
Does anyone remember how much scenery was in "Southern Belle" a game for the Sinclair Spectrum? It was mostly stick drawings but I had hours of fun with only 48k of memory