I was playing MSB yesterday and the train shakes from left to right and I was imagining how fun it would be if my living room moved with the shaking of the train but then I wondered how boring must this be for real train drivers not feeling the vibrations, trees that pop up, stutter. To a train driver this must feel very artificial. So why is it so many train drivers keep doing services when they are off work?
None of these points are my own. It‘s all stuff Matt has said over time in several streams. Many train drivers are passionate about railways and so spent their free time with trains in one form or another as well. You get to drive trains you wouldn‘t be able to in real life. A DB Regio driver would never get to operate a Br 185 in real life. Same thing for routes. They also wouldn‘t get to operate trains in other countries like the UK or US. Think there was some other stuff as well but I can‘t remember right now.
What do you mean by many train drivers? It’s probably only an incredibly small percentage of train drivers that play train sim.
On the forums there are a lot of players who seem to be a train driver in real life. I also play a lot of race games but not a lot of real life racers in on those forums.
Can’t comment about railway staff from other countries but there’s about 5-6 UK train drivers I can think of who are on these forums. (I don’t know them personally but I’ve deduced they are drivers from their posts) There are some other railway staff who aren’t drivers. And there are some retired train drivers. But I don’t think there’s as many drivers or even railway staff on these forums as you think to be honest.
Racing games are probably a bit different in the sense that professional race drivers are closer to athletes than just "doing a job", so playing a game that isn't any use in honing your skills (unless it is a high-end sim or an e-Series) isn't likely to be that beneficial (and may actually be bad for performance).
But then look at how many footballers play FIFA, even stream themselves doing so. Not just about athleticism of the thing being simmed.
There is almost nothing in playing FIFA on a game console that replicates playing the sport in real life, apart from some things like tactics and understanding rules. Even limiting the game to only allowing you to control one player is still very far removed from the real thing. Professional drivers playing a sim-racer on the other hand, are at least using the same physical skills as they do in their real-life sport, with similar equipment. For some people this could be a good thing (practice/honing etc), for others it can be a bad thing (subconciously learning bad habits, slight differences between in-game and real-life interpretations of car physics/tracks/performance etc)
Well, "a lot" is subjective. But when you say railway staff I realise I probably have "counted" those as well. Who knows too much about trains must be a real train driver in my mind.
There is but they keep their identities secret. I believe Max Verstappen is a keen online racer. Apparently he takes his PlayStation to every Grand Prix. Why do HGV drivers play HGV driving games? Or bus drivers play bus driving games?
They don't keep their identities secret. Max Verstappen is on iRacing on PC. But he doesn't play Formula 1 because he thinks it simcade. Not real enough.
Why do real bus drivers play Omsi 2? Why do aircraft drivers play MSFS? A MRCE will never get to drive a S-Bahn, or a US freight train driver will never drive a CalTrain F40PH. it's quite simple to understand really, a real train driver will spend most of their time in the same train, some of them will want to drive something different. So TS or TSW2 is a great way to do that
Also these sims focus on things that are fun about these professions, and the part these people love about their jobs - driving buses/truck/trains. While ignoring all the stuff that makes these jobs stresfull - ton of responsibility, paperwork, regulations, odd working hours, deadlines... Operating machinery is fun, that's most the time why these people have choosen the job in the first place.
I’d go so far to say we have a few drivers that were involved in the development and running of Stephensons rocket
I like to drive over routes I know ill never sign as a real driver. And running on a simulator takes out a lot of stresses of actual day to day driving!