Ok first things first... A disclaimer.. I do not currently own this and have no opinion on how good/bad it is, I am not endorsing or personally supporting this product because I have no affiliation with it, I'm simply bringing the discussion here because the only ones I've seen so far on Facebook are rather disparaging and downright rude towards the developers, which is completely unfair and against everything a supportive community should be. I'm not suggesting people can't cast negative opinions just as long as those negativities are regarding the product, it's flaws (if any) and are made by people who actually own and have tried the product and not just sheeple opinions based upon hearsay and "my mate said it was crap so I think it's crap too". https://www.rwcentral.com/store/product/7-rw-enhancer-2/ (temporarily offline) Please, discuss..
They've currently suspended sales of it while some issues are investigated. I wasn't aware of it, but it looks very interesting. I'll keep an eye open for when it returns.
Had no idea this was on the table. Looks like the guys are forging ahead nicely. Such an ambitious project will always have issues, especially as this is all achieved without access to the source of the core engine. Sad thing is, DTG should have been doing this 4 years ago. Ah well. I'm glad someone's doing it, the hud and menu systems haven't aged well at all, and are frankly ridiculous on a 4k display. I'll sit tight on this one and wait and see what transpires. Looking good though really, can't fault them for getting on with it. Much kudos.
Oh I wasn't aware of that, let's hope the wrinkles are ironed out and its available again soon. I agree with Dunk, it is an ambitious project and bound to have teething problems, but fair play to the team for trying to drag this old dog into the twenty twenties. I will undoubtedly get it at some point of that I'm sure.
Btw I corrected the thread title from (Beta) to (Early Access), it's kinda the same thing I just didn't want to cause any confusion by calling it anything different to what the developers had.
Have RWEpro and it works as advertised. The feature list RWE2 looks really extensive and if it comes through, it will probably be a must buy. I notice the original link with the feature list is now down too. Hope they manage to squash the bugs
I've now updated the link in the first post, it originally linked the blog post announcing the release of RWE 2 but has since been removed, the link is now to the store page as that provides their explanation of the products removal, plus we'll see there when it's available again, any relevant blog or forum posts I find in the meantime I'll post the links below..
It looks amazing and is desperately needed, I will buy once it is available! I use RW Enhancer pro and didn't know that this existed
This looks very promising, i don't own so i can't comment for my own experience but i did seen some one well know to TS Community as a developer in one of the TS Facebook group comment and he said he wouldn't recommend for a few reason's see screenshot bellow
Hmm, I wonder if the experience above is typical of most users. I just install DLC and go, I wouldn't know where to find script files and any I've got will have been installed by DLC, which is all safely backed up.
If you had read other posts about the process on the same FB Group you would see what the process does on the computer. Maybe you should install it as you seem to know better than the person who did install it.
I'll reserve judgement until I hear more but if this is true, then it may be the single most irresponsible way I have ever seen anyone do a launcher before. An example of how to do the literal equivalent to RWEnhancer right would be Assetto Corsa's replacement launcher. It keeps a backup of all the original files. Literally zero reason to be this belligerent, Peter. C'mon. Be civil. I want to back mine up, too. A lot of the .rwp files I use are very, very much unique and many come from websites which do not exist anymore. UKTS has a webmaster which does not respond to new account requests or forgotten password requests which has rendered many files inaccessible (I actually frequently have to ask people to fetch things for me from there), and things like the TnT packs I got off a shady-ass forum so long ago it may as well be aeons. My question is simple: How do you back all your stuff up? Sitting pretty at nearly 300 DLC, I am unsure where I would store something of that size, and am consequently at a loss...
I know the person who posted the comments on RW Enhancer 2 and he would not make those comments if he had not had a problem And he was trying to warn other people tommydee seems to know better Buy a portable drive. Something like this https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Expansion-Portable-PlayStation-STGX1000400/dp/B07DQ5ZH1D/?th=1 You can copy both your Assets and Content folders What you downloaded thru Steam is never lost as it is always in your Steam account.
We did not know you knew this person. Nor is that a reason to give their opinion primacy over anyone else's here. I also think that - given what I've heard of RWEnhancer so far, this seems plausible, but tommydee was airing a genuine concern. As I said, no need to be belligerent. This is a good shout. I've always been hard to trust external HDDs because of their propensity to break with too much movement, but if it simply remains seated atop my case or somewhere nearby, it should cause no issues. I'll check it out, thanks!
Definitely second this. A portable USB Hard Drive is an excellent way to backup Train Sim content (and all your other important files too). Depending on the amount of DLC you have a 1-2TB portable drive will be more than enough. Backup all the your downloaded content (zip, .rwp, etc. files from non-steam sources) so you have a copy of the original distribution files in case you ever need to re-install. Then make a copy of your Railworks folder (it will take a little longer than just backing up your Assets and Content folder, but then you have the whole folder). I am in the habit of making a backup before adding any DLC that doesn't come via Steam, but essentially you want to get a snapshot of anything that might be changed in the Train Simulator folder tree.
The main thing I am concerned with is content external to steam, anything still packed into the .ap folders (because Steam verification does not affect unpacked files and RW reads those first anyway), and scenarios. Replacing stock in scenarios is an arduous task, even with TS-Tools, so to lose all that would be bloody catastrophic. As of 30 seconds ago I am sitting on a very similar 1 TB drive with a USB 3.0 port. Thank you both! I think this will save me heaps of time. Now to get one for my DCS and IL-2 installs...
Regarding the FB post from the *developer* -- I think that is a key part of the comment. A developer of TS20xx content is not going to want an application to go in and change files behind the scenes. They may be working on new scripts for their content and they may be scripts only he/she has. For most of the rest of us, we can recover by reinstalling the files. As much as I am hopeful for the future of RWE2 based on the planned features, when I read that it was taking a significant time to "cook" things up, that would give me significant pause before I thought about putting it on my system. Anything that is doing behind the scenes manipulating of files needs to be precisely clear to potential users as to what the tool is doing. I hope they were not so anxious to get the beta out that they failed to mention this information.
Have a look again at my post. I am not doubting that he had that experience. What I am questioning - on the basis of what he reports - is whether his pain and exposure is typical for TS users. I'm a pretty keen TS user with quite a lot of bought DLC, but even if you obliterated my installation it would take me less than five hours to reinstall it from scratch. My mind boggles at how you could have an installation so massive that it would take hundreds of hours to rebuild. You certainly wouldn't be a typical user. It may be that he's a developer and it's hundreds of hours of coding instead that has been lost. But if you're a developer and you're not keeping backups or you test 3rd party beta releases in your development environment, then sooner or later life is going to teach you some hard lessons. That's not to say that RW Enhancer 2's developers are absolved of responsibility, but I think that typical TS users may be exposed to much less risk and could therefore take a chance and try it out. I would certainly be happy to do so if I could access the software.
An announcement from RW Central posted 11 hours ago... Hello everyone, As you may have noticed, the sale of RW Enhancer 2 is on hold. We made this decision in order to better focus on solving major bugs and especially on developing a whole new "Content Cooking" system. We want to make RW Enhancer 2 a high quality product. The current content cooking system has many weaknesses (too long cooking time, too much disk space occupied, crashes for some users, etc.). So we decided to focus entirely on programming a new system to correct all the black spots of the current one. Thanks to your feedback, suggestions and logs sent, we now have a better understanding of the Train Simulator file ecosystem and we can build a much better system. Here are the features / improvements planned on the new cooking system we are currently working on: - More secure with more checks and without any risk for the integrity of Train Simulator files. - More detailed logs in case of errors during the process. - Possibility to choose the lines / routes that you want to load in RW Enhancer 2 so that the process takes less time if the user specifies the lines with which they hardly ever play. - Reduction of the use of the hard disk during the process (source of many slowdowns if you do not use an SSD) - Drastic reduction of the disk space occupied by the cooking folder (our objective is to reduce the disk space occupied to 1GB maximum regardless of the amount of content owned in Train Simulator. This will allow RW Enhancer 2 to be installed easily on an SSD with little available space. - Full reloading of content only if a change is detected in the files. And reloading ONLY of that particular content. - Taking into account new content installed in Train Simulator without having to fully reload everything - Simplified overall process Only one button to load content into RW Enhancer 2 as the new system will be able to load / process content much smarter. - Significant reduction in waiting time. Only the first load with the new cooking system will be relatively long and then the following loads will be considerably shorter. We hope these improvements will be life-changing for RW Enhancer 2 users. We are working very hard to make the system the best it can be. RW Enhancer 2 will return for sale at the very beginning of December A special thank you for all your kindness and support and we really need it right now. You clearly see the great potential of RW Enhancer 2 and this encourages us to continue to work tirelessly on improving it. See you soon for the return of a cleaner, more stable and more practical RW Enhancer 2!
Well, this is certainly good news. I, for one, am very glad to see a dev take responsibility like this.
Assuming for some reason you had to start again with TS2022 Anything already purchased on Steam is safe and you just download it again. Having backed up your Assets and Content folders any third party assets and repaints can just be copied back in to place And copying back your Content folder would replace all the third party routes and scenarios.
He does a lot of repaints and stuff for one of the well know websites and although he would have had the stuff backed up it still needs replacing back on to the computer drive where TS exists. The RW Enhancer 2 uses a whole new "Content Cooking" system and changes the default files I suspect it is placing the files in to a sort of ap system where all the files load quicker and not just those from DTG.
Okay so I replied to you in another thread explaining .ap archives and so on, when you clearly know what those are. I do deeply apologise for that, I should have checked this thread first. And yes, that has been the going plan since about 9 AM this morning - I am backing up my Assets, Content, and AddIns folder, as well as my RWCore folder with the textures for my driving UI. I use MinimalFahrpult. (Big recommend from a small lady, btw)
RWEnhancer 2 is now back on sale as promised after it's temporary removal to bug fix some serious issues, I never bought it the first time round as I was waiting for community feedback on it before committing, as it happens it was then withdrawn. However I have now purchased it and given it a quick run and haven't run into any issues thus far and the "cooking" time was an acceptable 11 and a half minutes and the size of the cooked folder is 737MB on disc (my RailWorks folder is 233GB). Loving the new HUD, the shaders look good thus far (I was on a rainy spring day at 0800 in South Wales QD) The radio voice is a little cheesy and seems more of a gimmick than anything else but it's still fun to use I suppose. All in all I'm impressed and happy I bought it and also that I waited until this re-released version. Link (same as in first post): https://www.rwcentral.com/store/product/7-rw-enhancer-2/
I'd like to know if that real world weather feature messes up the AP weather pack... or whether it even uses it. I think I'll wait for one of you lot to be a guinea pig if you don't mind ooooh.... just noticed the HUD... that's minging. Sorry, but it's a big fat no from me. Can you turn that off? Do these added weather and weather sound effects interfere with AP sky and weather pack? Does it interfere with ReShade? If so, again... nope! Reshade does more to enhance the look of TS that this ever did, or can.
You gain usability of the software because the file cooking is what the software needs to reference your routes and rolling stock. All the real weather/time does is set the scenario time and weather to that which matches your own local weather, if it's 2am and raining outside then that will be the start time and weather conditions at the start of the scenario, it has no graphical influence on the game so no, it doesn't affect AP weather and the scenario will of course use it if it's enabled on that route, RWE2 basically does what the game already does regarding setting up and starting QD's or scenarios with a few extra options. As for the HUD it is completely off and on-able, not only can you turn on or off individual elements of it you can drag them around the screen to wherever you want them. Already answered you regarding the AP stuff. I don't use Reshade (can't be arsed with all that manual tweaking and finding filters, never fully got my head around it tbh) but seeing as you use RWE Pro with Reshade I can't see how it'd be any different compatibility wise? It's the same shaders with a few new features from what I can gather.
It seems to add sounds and stuff... I was worried it woudl ccause an issue. So long as I can turn it utterly and completely off and use the standard HUD, I'll be happy. That's a very good point... yes.
Reef Sorry, but I am still lost???? You have given us the Gordon Ramsay version now can we have the Bill Gates one, - so that we computer nerds understand what you mean. Thx! No issues for me with the new version - I do not see a vast improvement over the previous one.
Yes it adds sounds (which are all individually turn off-able with simple checkmarks next to each sound) but they are an overlay so they don't alter anything in game just blend their additional sounds over what's already there whether it's DTG or AP Tbf the only sound I've unticked is the chair squeak as it sounds a little too flatulent for my liking
You need to remember Peter I have no affiliation or part in this or any other RWE product, I have no real idea what goes on under the bonnet, all I know is it requires a kind of library to reference things like your routes, loco's, wagons and consists. In RWE2's first release there were apparently issues with the cooking process taking both too long and taking too much disc space. In fact think of me more like the chef in the Disney film Ratatouille (the lad not the rat) than Gordan Ramsey.
One thing I wish it had was the ability to auto launch directly into a service - the route / loco and scenario selection is nice enough that I'd like to be able to avoid the in game UI as much as possible, however in its current state you select the scenario in RW Enhancer 2 and then you have to navigate to and select the same scenario in TS - its a minor inconvenience but annoying.
My biggest gripes so far: 1) When you launch RWE2 it fully expands the window to fill the desktop and does not remember its previous size state. 2) When you end a service it kicks you back to the RWE2 screen, but you still have to exit the game before you can add your next scenario, therefore seems silly for it to minimise the game only for you to have to click straight back on the taskbar to bring TS to the foreground again. 3) Would love an option to have separate elements of the speedo active or hidden like just the line speed or line speed and PBC position and so on, I will say the resize function was a great addition in a recent patch. Also a small bug is when it kicks me back to the RWE2 screen I think maybe due to the fact that TS is DSR'd to a higher than native screen size I end up with no minimize, resize and close boxes in the top right of the RWE2 window, you can still use the program though and can exit it by hovering over the taskbar icon or right clicking the taskbar icon.
