Sos Uncertainty And State Of Game For 8gen Consoles

Greetings.

After watching last evenings Stream in one sense I'm pretty stoked about the route, locos and the hole project itself. A lot of stuff does look indeed really promising and lovely made. But as with the excitement there are some questions as well as there is a level of uncertainty. For example: why couldn't we see the AI Fireman in action ? Was it because the animations weren't ready in time ? Why wasn't the Wheel Blur fixed in the shown built ? Was it properly tested before this stream ? Why is the route stated 'ready to release' if there is still no possibility to do the Fireman Actions myself (which in my opinion should absolutely be part of the hole experience from the very start) because it looked much easier to drive the Train than I did anticipate.

Coming for the Gen 8 Consoles : How much does this experience will differ from the Version we saw on stream ? Without exactly knowing what we do get it's a big level of uncertainty and therefore it would be mandatory to show this Route on the last gen aswell (especially as there are still so many of us using the old PS and Xbox) "Different Consist of trains" isn't simply answering it, we absolutely do not know what we will buy and get.

In the end my personal fears that this is beeing rushed to an early release seems confirmed at least a bit. Im hoping some of these questions will be answered before this route arrives in the various stores. And does come in the glory as it should be, because I have the feel this is one, if not the most anticipated and most important route for the hole TSW franchise.

Cheers.

 

I am definitely getting the vibe this was rushed. The fireman arrangements, lack of lineside detail and general grime, no catering cars. Let's just hope it won't be fire and forget then wait 18 months for a Pres Crewe update.

 

I absolutely agree.

I think it should be standard to have a last gen stream, showing what we get in comparison to next gen and the computer. Because the experience is different.

On PS4, our longest possible consist with good frames, is around a consist of 60 vehicles, which used to be around 40 and the game would run very slow. And some of the trains on Sherman Hill and other US freight routes are actually still pretty long. In addition to that, last gen consists are still very much realistic.

 

Well I had the same sentiment. Didn't watch the entire stream only a small piece but I also caught the part where the AI fireman wasn't ready yet. It reminded me of the rush hour passengers not being ready on the preview of London Commuter which still aren't present in the game. That's probably where I stopped watching because I was starting to see the game like Matt was describing it. In theory this sounds like an awesome route. The vision is there but I'm wary of the execution of that vision. The steam visuals looked very nice and that made me wonder how this will look on last gen. I don't know how it works and didn't follow the production of the steam route but I caught some of the conversation on how difficult it is to build a steam engine. The steam I saw on the stream looked very nice but looks like very taxing on last gen consoles. This was a demonstration where I also get a bit of worried about last gen support.

 

Two different situations. The manual fireman is a new system which is still under active development and will be ready when it's ready. RH passengers on Brighton OTOH are in theory ready to go -just a matter of ticking a box - but the entire route has issues with framerates which additional NPZs would make far worse, especially on last-gen consoles.

 

Thanks for the quick reply Matt. I'm sure the last gen console users will absolutely appreciate a little showcase!

 

A full stream demonstration of how Spirit Of Steam will perform and look on PS4 ( And last gen X Box ) before actual sale day is pretty vital imo. PS4 is still widely used by TSW2 players but whilst this is probably the first dlc I might? be prepared to pay full price on launch day I’m certainly not going to do that until I can get an idea of what it looks like on PS4 or what I would be missing on my older gen console. Put it this way it’s something that would be the decider as to whether I’d pay full price, wait for a sale, or indeed decide whether I’d actually bother buying it at all until the day comes whenever that is I get a PS5.

 

Would it not be Better to cap the frame rate on gen 8 to 30fps.

 

it should be already capped at 30fps i have never known any 8th gen console to go over that cap unless its the pro or xbox one x

 

Can confirm my OG XBox One is hard-capped at 30.

 

I've been looking forward to this for some time. But I'm a little reluctant to buy it. It sounds like the people on the older generation of consoles the route will dead, with bugger all Al traffic. I don't know, I will wait and see.

Regards,
Nathan Kemp.

 

Well if the firman issue is not dealt with before release it will be here we go again. You would think that after all that’s happened they would hold back on the release until the problem is fixed. Past experience has shown that if not it will be months before you actually get what was described and paid for. London Commuter and even Bakerloo line is proof of that.

 

The problem with DTG and Gen8 ist that, since Munchen Augsburg, it is considered to be acceptable or even normal to have two entirely different playing experiences. I am concerned that this will not change because, sooner or later, more people will get Gen9 consoles and Gen8 will become less important.

No offence to DTG at all and much respect for the task of programming and publishing, but sometimes I don't get the priorities. Just as an example: why is every single piece of track in Munich accessible with hundreds of switches, which nobody in a hundred years will ever do, but a large portion of players does not get all the German locos which would make this route so great?

 

The fact is the game is pushing 8th gen to the limits. Thats what happens with 10 year old technolgy. A 10 year old computer is ancient and won't run many newer games well either.

Give it 2 years and they will drop 8th gen versions I figure.

 

Are you kidding me? This game is not pushing 8th gen consoles to it's limits. Tell me how this game is pushing 8th gen to it's limits because I can't see how this game would do that. I have a series S since last week and I don't understand why it's sold as a gen 9 game. The game looks on gen 9 how you would expect the game to look on gen 8 for years now.

I have been indulging me with gen 9 content all week now and with most games the difference is almost jaw dropping. I found the TSW2 version the least satisfying to be honest. I used to compare TSW2 with games like Gran turismo and that is not a fair comparison. But now that I tried out for the first time the simulator that made this genre of simulators so popular. I never played Farming simulator until this week and my jaw dropped because everything looked so damn pretty for a simulator that I was expecting to look the same as TSW2. It's a shame I'm a city dweller because farming is not my cup of tea.

TSW2 really needs to up their game in the graphics department. I think I saw a glimpse of that in the spirit of steam. It looked better than what I'm used to seeing in streams. But saying gen 8 is holding this game back is nonsense. I think I don't own one game on the series S that isn't available on last gen so why are these games running smoothly on both platforms.

 

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I start to think that TS Classic would have been the better choice for Gen8 than TSW2. As a matter of personal taste, it is less important for me that I can walk around every inch of the train than having (i) longer routes, (ii) more traffic, (iii) higher frame rates.

 

I think it is in regards to RAM memory and HDD data transfer limit where TSW2 is pushing PS4 to the limits. Pure graphic comparison of TSW2 and any other 9th gen game is unfavorable for TSW2, because, as you said and I agree here with you, graphically TSW2 is in last generation.
But you may take under considaration that Farming Simulator most likely does not have so many complex processes working behind as TSW2, that is dispatcher and all AI trains. I think those two eats most of RAM memory of PS4.
Second thing is scenery generation with current FOV (field of view) and here I think the limits may come from PS4 HDD data trasnfer, which is (if I recall correctly) about 50-100 MB/sek, while SDD on PS5 has 5.5 GB/sek.

 

Sure I'm taking Farming Simulator as an example because it's an indie in the same genre. But there are countless of other examples that demand a lot of gen 8 hardware and outshines TSW2 in all aspects. I understand that TSW2 is very taxing on the hardware but I don't think it should be this taxing for a train simulator.

Let's take a game like Forza that I'm now playing. It's basically the same basics as trains but I guess Forza would be more complicated. A car in a video game is basically a train on tracks. The illusion is different because of the handling model but if you take all the graphics away it's just objects moving around on a map. Because of the rules of a train simulator where every train needs to stop at a red light you would think the train simulator game would be less taxing than the car game with a large open map compared to a fixed route where the AI has much more options of which 'track' it . takes. Works fine on gen8 en gen9. Probably really testing the limits of gen8 hardware.

 

Fair enough, but that "10 year old computer" is running quite complex graphics like a charm in other games: Assassins Creeds all the way up, the Uncharted franchise or Tomb Raider, just to name a few.
I can see all the rolleyes from the TSW fans now ........... "nothing to do" ..............."different cup of tea" ........... yadayada.
Still, some part of the (clumsy) graphics engine story of TSW2 has not been told. IMHO

 

Well, if you talk about the optimization level of TSW2 for PS4, it might also be the case here.

Might be right now it is just poor and to remove the differences between 8th and 9th gen DTG would have to sit down and work on it hard. Might be that they would be able to optimize it to the point, where there would be no content differences for both generation and TSW2 would run perfectly smooth.
But optimization is costly, time costly and by that expensive, and with 9th generation being available since more than a year, growing number of owners of 9th generation I'm not expecting DTG to dedicate its resources for optimizing the game for last gen, its simply unprofitable for them.

 

I am concerned for this route, I am still looking forward to it but after watching the streams and seeing no footage from the gen8 version I think the route is going to be barren. There are only 2 locos and Matt already mentioned that AI services and rolling stock have had to be removed to get the route to run acceptably. This does not look good for any future DLC locos for the route that Matt mentioned ‘could’ happen.

 

Is it me or are the loco models on PS4 a low poly count or something as there is certainly a lack of smoothing on the wheels and buffers, shame as looks good otherwise.

 

so I take it from this the reduced fidelity in the wheels and buffers would come under the below :

"It is worth noting that, as with all content, there will be reduced texture sizes and graphical quality on 8th-generation platforms"

 

Very few games have ever looked as good, awesome really, as Red Dead Redemption II, and that was for 8th gen back in 2018, the year TSW came out.

 

I have just been playing this on a Gen8 PS4 Pro, I was expecting it to struggle more frame wise coming out of Crewe, I have to admit I am pretty impressed with the performance. I just wished my Grandad was alive to show me how to drive it properly. So Matt is 2nd best here....c'mon Matt...no pressure!!

 

Shame you couldn't manage to address this prior to launch day or god forbid, actually show us in a stream

 

I have to disagree with you here because detail draw distances on FS19 and 22 are really, really poor and whilst 19 is largely ok the new game has terrible framerate issues on all console platforms. Also, when you start adding in multiple workers working in several fields then the performance suffers even more....even on No Man's Land where there's nothing other than your farm on the map.

In fairness to DTG, with the possible exception of Railway Empire I don't really know of any indie game that pushes the performance of gen 8 consoles as much as TSW does. You have to give a lot of credit to a dev team that is not only managing to do things on an ageing core engine that (I assume) was never really designed to do those things but are also doing it without the benefit of multi-million pound budgets.
Sure, sometimes things go wrong and sometimes things go horribly wrong...but on the bright side, if they didn't then we wouldn't have anything to complain about

My only issue with TSW is that it's fast becoming a quantity over quality product (in a 'trying to do too much and then hoping for the best' kind of way) and that's something I'm not prepared to invest into.

 

I am nit-picking with the buffers and wheels but on a steam loco they are a big part of the experience and on all other routes the locos even on PS4 have looked fine, although I admit that a steam loco has a lot more detail.

 

Sorry my bad, a day makes all the difference.

 

I definitely agree that they should cut down on the detailed interiors. I suspect that’s one of the reasons why there is a lack of variety in passenger stock.

But from comments on this forum there seems to be a subset of people who enjoy riding the trains so they would enjoy a derailed interior.

I don’t think I’ve ever ridden as a passenger or stepped into the passenger compartments.

 

That's good to hear!

I think I didn't even finish the tutorial of Farming Simulator. I don't know how buggy that game is but it looked better in the graphics department on gen9 from a first impression. And yes it is difficult to compare with other games because of budgets. But since I have an Xbox series S I start to feel like a spoiled brat on the playstation platform. I didn't know the game could be so much worse than on the gen8 Playstation platform but Xbox has become a rather eye opener to me. It's difficult for me to defend DTG at this moment. I've always been following this game from the Playstation side of things.

I knew there where audio problems on the Xbox platform and they are fixing it but to think DTG could have sold me their game twice if things just worked like intended. It's lost money for DTG.

First impressions of Spirit of Steam seem to be good I have a gen9 console but will have to buy it on a gen8 platform because I can't trust the gen9 version be less problematic than the gen 8 version. So the discussion that gen8 pushes the game to the limit is a bit confusing for me at this moment

 

I only play TSW2 because it is immersive and allows me to experience the whole route as either a passenger or a driver, if they ditched the detailed interiors I would not bother playing. I get it that some people never step foot out of the cab, but I love the fact I can explore every facet of the train, for the most part I enjoy the limited experience on Gen8 and am in no immediate rush to get a PS5, maybe when I can walk into a shop and buy one I might change my mind. but please dont try and scupper the experience for those of us that love what we already have

 

No I wouldn’t. That’s why I acknowledged that a subset of people enjoy it.