Something which I’ve been thinking about, when travelling on the ‘real’ railway and comparing it to TSW, is how signals operate. Here’s a few things I’ve noticed, and what I think would be nice to have in TSW: - Incandescent signal bulbs/aspect having a ‘fade’ transition, as their bulbs wouldn’t turn on and off instantly, like LEDs do. - Route junction indicators/theatre boxes showing their path before the signals clears. Often in real life, these would illuminate first, before the signal clears to yellow/green. Typically 3-5 seconds before. So initially the signal would still be on red during these few seconds. - Sometimes, signals ‘run up’ through the full process of their sequence very quickly. So if a signal clears from red to green, it’d sometimes go red>yellow>double yellow>green very quickly as it ‘steps up’. - Working ‘OFF’ indicators would be nice to have. I believe they are in the game, however they aren’t set up and/or turned on. Of course this is dependent on location, as well as other things, such as interlocking. I think these ‘small things’ make it feel a bit less ‘perfect/scripted’ and more to how a real railway would run. Anyone got any thoughts on this/want to add anything else to the list?
In relay interlocking this is very much the case and yes having the aspect or Light sequence animate just like you have described would be so very cool. Model railways imitate this.
Thanks! I’d really like to see these things in the game as I think it’s the smaller details like these which make it feel a bit more realistic.
Definitely agree! Signalling is one of those bits that I’m fascinated about and take a real interest in. When I notice small errors that TSW achieves within this department, just kills a little bit of that ‘simulation’ and immersion for me. Personally I think they need to polish the foundations for signalling such as approach release or the flashing yellow aspects for diverging routes etc. GWE is where I’d like to see some of the signalling polished, plus include all the above that you’ve stated!
In this video, you can see the signal 'step up' through all aspects very quickly. This varies depending on the type of signal, as well as its location, however something like this would be nice to see in TSW, to add a bit of variation.
