I noticed that Matt said how the routes are done by hand, placing scenery and so on. Does anyone know what happened to the method they showed off on the LGV Méditerranée route, automatically generated from maps and then touched up to look better, or was that a one and done? It seemed to me that they were quite proud at the time in how much time they saved with this new method. I hoped this automation would make route generation easier and would allow longer routes, but maybe that only applies to routes that have few stations and hardly any cities. Then again, that would make a Russian route all the more doable.
At the time it was mentioned that the tool they were using could only do very rudimentary things like colour in tiles according to where grass/tarmac/ballast was on maps (which is not the same as actually building a road or laying the tracks or the ballast), and populating trees and hedges. For LGV that worked because an awful lot of the route was made up of assets like that, and therefore it meant route builders could spend less time per-tile in the rural areas that made up most of the route, and more time on the areas that required a lot more bespoke asset placement. As you suggest, for routes in more urban areas, or with more complex geography, it is likely their tool isn't saving a whole lot more time, because the vast majority of the assets necessary for a route like Boston-Providence or Riesa-Dresden are not automatically populated by the tool, or if they are, they are too repetitive and therefore detract from the experience, so the same amount of work is necessary to add variation and realism.
The discussion about assets unique to new countries on yesterday’s stream makes me hopeful we’ll see another French route
Be nice to see another tgv route but railways depending I’d probably only buy if it had local or freight in conjunction. The train was great but the route kind of felt like a wasteland due to lack of detail in the middle
The whole route was a bit of a wasteland. If it was the full Rhones-Alps route like in TS it would be a lot better, but then we'd be paying £59.99 for it.
