Train Sim World 2 - Roadmap Update 22/02/2022

Well we can’t not have our 2 weekly 90 minute discussion on why we still don’t have pres crew updates or not telling us when a PS5 fix is coming, can we?

 

I don't get the negative comments about the dynamic billboards. Everything needs to be as realistic as possible. If a livery is not spot on like it is in real life it's drama all over. I don't know how others play this game but I'm 95% of the time in cockpit view. So all I see in the game is railroad, nature, houses, platforms and people. Platforms is where you stop and get to look around and what do you see? Everything is the same all the time. The billboards have been a let down for me from the start. It's copy paste and they are designed to be as neutral as possible. Dynamic billboards will keep routes alive. Come back to a route after not playing for a while and you get a new experience of the game.

Next up: Bring the NPC's up to spec with how passengers behave. Where are the phones?

 

The billboards won't be "realistic" they will not be the same ones you see on the actual routes. They will be from companies who want to advertise to people who are playing TSW2, not the advertisers who want people travelling on real trains to see their brands.

 

This.

 

I fully agree with your opinion as I feel nearly exactly the same way. But after all these months of waiting- Peninsula Corridor work was mentioned almost a year ago - it's just useless without releasing it. Just imagine Adams team could have been picking flowers or mowing the lawn of the DTG office for at least the past six months and it wouldn't have made any difference to the player experience or state of the game... just imagine we would not be talking of software development but of any other industry- I know a team whose work isn't visible to the customer although it is intended to be wouldn't last for a week in the company I'm working at...

 

Im really excited about the dynamic advertising boards, and anything which increases revenue for the software without hitting my pocket is always a positive for me. Sports Interactive have been doing it in Football Manager for possibly 5 or more years. so Im used to seeing real life adverts in sims.

But I have 2 questions.
1) Will they be tailored to fit the country the route is set in? It could be an imersion breaker for some (myself included) if we get a UK specific advert whilst running in Germany/USA. International brands such as TMobile are fine (even in English on German routes) but the thought of running through downtown Boston and seeing an advert for British Telecom would detract (for example).

2) Will they be tailored to me based on my browsing history? If so I may well need to delete my browsing history before live streaming....

 

In the world of excessive behavior monitoring and user tracking, I am shocked, absolutely shocked that DTG would find it acceptable to A: find dev time to add in a dynamic advertising system that will (edit:could) track user impressions and other stats, and B: attempt to further monetize a product that is not FREE, that has already been substantially paid for and owned by any user that has already purchased the content.

This is 100% a move I would expect from a free-to-play franchise, not one where each DLC costs $30 for a single route. Unacceptable!

 

Sandpatch released with its updates last week.

 

They were talking about preservation crew updates for Peninsula Corridor, not a minor fix for Sandpatch

 

This must be the only community actually excited about advertising in game!
Like 30€ per DLC is not enough, but of course this will make them more "realistic".

 

Advertising has no place in a paid for game. unless it is authentic for the situation. If it were the real ads for the country and time period I would object less, but the fact that they are dynamic suggests they will be targeted. This had better be opt out and able to be truly switched off.

There was a VR Game on the Occulus Quest recently that announced something similar and they had to back down due to user outrage. Their ratings went through the floor until they did.

I really hope this is not what I think it is,

 

I too would like some clarification on these dynamic billboards. Is there any user data collection attached and in what relation are they to the actual advertisements found on the routes (no relation at all, similar fields, …)? Will ads in Germany actually be in German?

 

If the dynamic billboards are targeted advertising that's a big no no for me, and at the very least ought to be opt in not opt out.

 

What is all this stuff about tracking and ads? Where is that coming from? Why on earth would a brand care if I got a gold medal on a service? What advertiser would spend money on tracking how well you do in a train game? The majority of the players is on consoles. There is not that much interesting to track in this game for advertisers.

 

"You will still be able to play with the current billboards should you prefer, however the intention with Dynamic Billboards is to give you the opportunity to have a more realistic experience while you play, with real-life adverts."

I'm not sure how people are reading Google/Facebook-esque "track your life" advertising into that. In fact, I don't see how as a practical matter it would be possible to tailor different in-game graphics for every player (when it takes months just to correct an incorrect PIS reading, for everyone!).

While obviously real-life adverts implies that the advertisers are involved, and presumably paying DTG for it, that really isn't any different from product placement in movies.

 

Not stat tracking, ad tracking.

Ever wonder why stuff you google ends up as an advert on YouTube?

 

So my original interpretation of the dynamic billboards was just the art team getting to let their hair down (so to speak) and create a bunch of fake advertisements for the game to sub in to create variety. If we're getting a new privacy policy, that casts doubt into my theory then. I'll probably be ok if it isn't overbearing and everything is vetted through DTG, but the minute I start seeing anything that looks out of place or tailored - it's going off. There's a reason I refuse to browse the internet without my ad-blocker enabled

Also to those who think DTG's priorites are messed up, remember we're all frustrated on the back log of things, but different teams within the company work on different things simultaneously - and not every team can work on every issue. Little new features are likely just to fill downtime for one team while they wait on another

 

Way to go and HRR can be improved by giving it Rapid Transit treatment which is ICE 3 services either HMA or Schnellfahrstrecke Köln-Aachen DB BR406 in real-life there are DB BR407s

 

If you watch a movie or TV show with product placement (usually Apple or a Sony laptop), that's not personally aimed at you, just a bit of airtime probably in return for sponsorship of production costs. a few years it will be obsolete anyway. Even the ads you see on Sky or Now TV are simply where air time has been purchased, not personally tailored to what the company thinks will seduce you into spending money. (Though with the staggering increase in energy prices - just seen our monthly gas/electric direct debits jump by £50 - there's not going to be so much spare money around anyway). Dynamic advertising in a not particularly cheap, paid for game will be a different bag of nails.

 

I know you’re much better versed in legal matters than me, so I wanted to ask what you make of this: Since it was confirmed in this thread that there’ll be a new privacy policy specifically for the billboards (see below), doesn’t that imply that there’ll be some sort of user data tracking? Or am I completely misreading that?

 

That still doesn't necessarily imply that Google-style ads are being contemplated (or are even possible, since they require cookies and a constant online connection).

I expect what it could mean is that DTG will collect statistics on the number of "views," which would be the basis on which the advertisers pay them. Possibly by counting the number of times a tile containing a particular billboard is loaded. This would of course be an aggregate not an individual stat, much like DTG and Steam currently keep track of how often various DLC get played.

Actually, it could be even more basic than that. It could simply be an adjustment to the PP which allows DTG to share aggregate usage stats for DLCs with advertisers, because McDonald's and BMW would want to know which routes are likely to generate the most views if they put their blurbs there.

 

I don't use Google so no that does not seem to happen. I use adblockers, I block my mails from being tracked, use private relay and I am very privacy aware even before it became fashionable . Nothing that has been announced about dynamic billboards raises a red flag here.

 

Nice to see on the stream the new pis system which should help to fix a lot of current problems with it is being implemented across more trains

hope to see this across the entire relevant stock in the future

Dresden Riesa is a Particular route that can benefit from this a lot as the destinations and off route destinations vary with many different potential stock PIS including the multiple doplestock control cars particularly if you own multiple German dlcs

 

It would have made sense during the development of Rail Simulator. At the same time Kuju was developing Rail Simulator for EA, EA UK was developing Burnout Dominator and Criterion was developing Paradise, which I mentioned earlier, both of which (and possibly other EA games at the time) had dynamic real-life advertising.

However, there is very little to back up the 1984-esque conspiracy that DTG are going to sell our personal data. The Dovetail website, the easiest place for them to put tracking cookies on our devices, has none of the sort.

 

I agree with that, which is why my only take on what we know so far is, it looks good.

My only point was that if any tracking will take place, it will be the usual cookies.

I do think we should save the revolt for IF we need it, as of now we don’t have any info.

 

Gotcha. Thanks

 

Nothing....no news about Roles, MP/Koop...hm.

 

Looking forward to the updates, in particular thanks to Adam for all his hard work. The job he does must be joyful when people enjoy what he does yet soul destroying when people don't, for example the bakerloo line stock in Ealing Broadway... Brilliant! In daytime? Underground station? Right stock (almost)? Now it looks busy!
Thanks too for the expected release period.
Certainly a more forthcoming and pessimistic roadmap stream, keep it up!

 

Haven’t seen the stream yet, but things look encouraging. Has the timing of the doors been fixed on the 166?

 

The timing of the doors no, but if you're referring to setup times at the start of a service on GWE, Adam said no but it is on a case by case basis. I also find it irritating regarding the 166 door timings, when you think you've got the time right, press the button and it immediately says unlock doors, by which time you've gone from on time to 30 seconds late.

 

Haven't been checking in awhile.

Dynamic billboards - Sound's good if there authentic to each route. Like GWR Branded adverts. Especially billboard placeholders in trains like class 165.

Still no indication Rivet games will fix West Cornwall.

 

you are excited about targeted advertising? Blimey.

 

Where did you find the information about targeted advertising? If you would say "you are excited about a carousel that shows different images? Blimey" I would say "guilty as charged". Because that is what is being announced. If the announcement would say 'we teamed up with Google (or an other company) to bring you dynamic billboards" I would get my pitchfork out. At the moment they just announced a carousel for images.

 

There are too much speculation going on with new Dynamic Billboards feature. People just make a argument what they think it's going to be.

 

Well, then perhaps DTG should've been more clear in the article, and leave less room for speculation :P

 

Why? it gets their forum page hits...
Speculation is great for the company even if it's ambivalent or negative

 

For goodness sake, (A- Dovetail are a relatively mid-to-small sized company, they aren’t going to track your data, and (B- Absolutely nobody will look at an ad for AirPods (Though I doubt that’ll show up lol) in the, lest we forget, train simulation game they’re playing, have an epiphany and rush down to the apple store at lightning speed.

 

I think it's more that some people don't want their activities tracked and showing up in a train game which they may stream or other people may watch them playing then start asking awkward questions, like why were you looking at red ladies clothing when I hate that colour...?
A lot can be "given away" inadvertently by such things, and if you have something you don't want given away, especially by something that's supposedly casual...

 

is there any indication if this will be ever fixed ? ...other than the usual "ticket-reply-blabla"

 

You really think that more information would lead to less speculation? More information would probably lead to more speculation because every little detail needs to be fleshed out

I think it's more that people don't really understand how their privacy is invaded and just shout "tracking" whenever they read the word "advert".

 

Worse than nothing new about it, I'm always raising this question, but no position. I don't remember if in the "let's play with Matt" on LIRR he identified this, I hope so, but we are always talking about it on the forums, I've already opened several tickets, let's have faith, months ago we heard about the admission of a specialist or a team of sound experts, but so far no results of this have been noticed, at least by me.

 

And I wonder why people are really bothered about such tracking unless there's a darn good reason, usually illegal

 

Hallo Ladys and Gentleman
I am Michael from Germany and a Xbox Gamer.
Got one Problem if it is one.
I cant get statt the Creation Club because I dort find the button below the Carousel.
so i ask is it for xbox Player reachable or not. Do i have still to wait for an Update?
thanks for an Feedback in future

 

CC is released thursday this week I believe, so you should get an update and then the button will appear on the front screen

 

What you're saying makes sense, it probably would be hard to implement, but having that information on how these are implemented is - at least for me personally - still important to make an informed choice about keeping them on or off. Hence why I was actually curious if there's just going to be aggregate data being sent to advertisers or other data as well. If it's just like you say, then I am probably going to keep the setting turned on. And I don't want to judge the decision to include something like this, or the people who are happy to see the feature be announced, go for it. I don't want to stop anyone from having fun with the game however you end up playing it.

 

Tomorrow

 

Because they are not well informed. Whilst I was already hiding from tracking years before Apple made people aware about what is going on behind the scenes of the app you like, most of the people just didn't care even if you explained it to them. Now Apple has raised awareness and the same people that didn't care 3 years ago now believe that every sentence that contains the word advert means tracking.

 

Dynamic billboards will either be the worst thing since gluing sliced bread back together or it will be fine. Until I’ve seen it in action I can’t really tell, otherwise my imagination will conjure up all manner of frightful depictions of how bad it could be. If it is unobtrusive and/or interesting then it can either be embraced or ignored, or turned off altogether if it offends. Time will tell.

 

I don't know why people are getting so exercised about the notion of changing billboards. Whether it's benign or an attempt to place tracking cookies in the game, what does it matter? Anyone with a working brain knows that our behavior is being continuously monitored by just about every organization we have any connection with and many that we don't.
Unless you lock yourself in your house and never go online and shop or never go to a mall or brick and mortar store, you are hardly anonymous, especially if you dabble in social media.

Personally, I've been playing train sim games for over 20 years and barely notice the billboards. And if they change from time to time, I will be largely unaware. Plus I certainly won't expect that disabling this new feature will make any difference so I'll leave it on, even though I don't sign in to Dovetail. Don't they already use cookies on their sites?
There is no privacy in the world, folks. There hasn't been for a long, long time.

 

The wisest man on this thread, i'm with you sir