OK, so I held off jumping into TSW3 initially in the hope that some of the early gremlins would be ironed out, but I've now taken the plunge and bought the deluxe version yesterday. TSW2020 and TSW2 never played nice together for me on XBOX One or XBOX Series X, so taking the lead from a prominent forum member I moved TSW2 and all its DLC onto a storage expansion card, and installed TSW3 + DLC on a different card, so that only one would be accessible at any one time and the two games would be isolated from each other. Installing the DLC was straightforward - once I'd downloaded TSW3 I highlighted the tile, clicked the menu button, ticked the boxes for a few of my compatible owned DLCs and downloaded them. When I relaunched TSW3 all the DLC I specified was visible and accessible in the game. In terms of TSW3 itself, the good news is that everything I tried worked pretty well. - I imported my profile, and my TSW2 overall progress plus the progress that I'd made on the DLC that I installed was correctly ported over - I tried out a few Training Centre tasks and everything worked as expected - I did some runs on Schnellfahrstrecke Kassel - Würzburg and didn't encounter any issues - I continued my journey on the Harlem DLC that I'd started on TSW2 and it worked as expected - I did a couple of timetable services on Cathcart Circle and again they worked fine. I do have to say however that everything so far feels very TSW2. I admittedly haven't yet experienced dynamic weather, but otherwise I'm not seeing obvious improvements, e.g. a boost to graphic fidelity or performance. I am however wondering whether TSW3 has opened up the possibility of longer and/or more complex routes as the Schnellfahrstrecke Kassel - Würzburg route is really long by TSW2 standards; if so then that's great! What's a bit disappointing is that some of my TSW2 gripes - a "phasing, flanging" sound at times on external views, flickering dials in cabs, obvious pop-in of shadows and scenery - seem to have made the jump to TSW3. Also, on external views the ICE on Schnellfahrstrecke Kassel - Würzburg seemed very bleached out - maybe I need to disable HDR? I also don't like the use of the colour grey to highlight menu choices - that's horrible. Also of note, when I switched expansion cards and went back to TSW2 the additional progress I'd made in TSW3 didn't transfer back to TSW2 despite me being signed in which might be an issue for some. Anyway, very early days yet for me. I'm pleased with the lack of major issues so far (e.g. crashes, showstopping bugs) but I'm a bit underwhelmed with the lack of in-your-face progress since TSW2 (with the caveat that I'm yet to try out all the new routes or dynamic weather). Looking forward to playing more, though!
Can only agree with your first impression. To me TSW3 only made the game playable on Xbox. Feels like TSW2 but fixed of a lot of prominent issues.
I have tsw3 on my ssd and tsw2 on an external drive. I likely won’t uninstall tsw2 until I run out of space on the external drive. the tsw2 routes play more or less exactly the same in tsw3 which is essentially what dtg told us to expect. the tsw3 routes look better but other than that play as a tsw2 route would in tsw3 which is also what they told us to expect. I haven’t had any additional performance issues or any issues at all. I also have no custom liveries or scenarios. Which dtg thought last night is likely a root cause of performance issues in tsw3 on Xbox I play it in 4K not 1080p resolution
I find the "washed out" look on the TSW3 routes is jarring at first, because it looks a lot different than the lighting in TSW2, but when you sit back and look at it objectively compared to what the real world looks like on similar days and times (especially bright summer days at noon for example), the TSW3 world looks a lot more real and you get used to it as it goes on. TSW2 routes are a little on the dark side, which makes the new lighting look blown out at first. One thing I do find in general is that since TSW2/3 don't have any gamma or brightness settings in game, I have fine tuned the look in the game by adjusting gamma settings right on my TV. I am using a 55" Sony X85J with a PS5 (yes I know this is Xbox forum but I doubt there is much difference) and usually run TSW3 with game mode on and all settings at default except I adjust to the "+2" gamma setting. On most routes that makes the world look right to me. But that will vary from TV to TV. And actually even from route to route, HSC looks awful with +2 gamma so I lower it back to default, and Sand Patch only looks right if I put the gamma to max. But overall that setting looks good on most TSW2 and 3 routes.
That's great news! But I have a question for TSW3 players on Xbox One (not S or X). How's the performance?
Yep, agreed - I wasn't expecting the TSW2 DLC to look better, although I guess I was hoping for less pop-in and banishment of the audio issues. I'm also not convinced that the TSW3 route I've played looks much better than the TSW2 routes although maybe I just need more time with the game to see the improvements. I think that's right; the effect when coming out of tunnels, for instance, when the screen completely bleaches out before returning to normal, is definitely more realistic. That said, the inability to tweak the gamma from within the settings is a miss as external views have a disappointingly washed out feel at times
