Seeing that you already created 2 routes going through Penn Station, I somewhat have to suggest that you link both routes together. After all one of the weak points of train simulations to date is, that you are always limited to a rather (or even ridiculously) small portion of a route. Making those routes larger over time would help increasing the realism of the simulation.
DTG can't make routes if they go over a certain amount of miles due to lag. Connecting 2 routes together will probably break it
It's possible to create extremely long routes in TS2019, take a look at the Western Mainlines for example: all the way from Paddington to Cardiff and Exeter, with extensions bringing it to Plymouth and even all the way to Penzance. With 64-bit TS2019, these routes should run better than ever. TSW is a wholly different game, with very different underlying technology. I've heard some rumours about the Unreal Engine not being optimised for large maps (after all, it finds its roots in the first person shooter "Unreal") but I don't know how true this is... or how much of a problem this would be. The main reason for having short routes is a commercial one: building enormous routes takes a lot of time and efforts while there's relatively little demand for them: few players are going to want to drive all the way from London to Penzance in one single uninterrupted run. The artists and developers do have to get paid, so the route's price would have to be quite high which further limits demand.
That's why I'm hoping they can try to implement a merge of NEC and LIRR as a proof of concept. It seems like a logical way to exploit the work that's already done and add some interest at some point after these routes are no longer brand new.
They said why they chose UE4 was that it could handle routes over 70 miles long. Clearly, that was a lie.
TSW can support routes much longer than those in TS19. Current financial constraints mean that DTG can only create shorter routes. Once third parties start creating content, both DTG and third party routes should be longer.
The main problem with longer routes in TSW is the development time- criticize TSW all you want, there is still more detail in TSW routes than in some TS routes, and TSW probably has a smaller development team. This means that it takes longer to make routes, and so the routes are shorter. I should also add that there are no through services from anywhere on the NEC route to the LIRR or vice versa. No trains on the LIRR go beyond Penn Station and Westside Yard, so merging these routes would be a bit useless. EDIT: TSxx is also capable of very large routes, look up "Northern Europe Final."
I kinda meant beyond both routes- not much point in combining the two when you can't drive for any longer. AI LIRR or Amtrak could fill this section of track.
The ability to dynamically switch between the three options on these routes (Amtrak, LIRR and CSX) would be a really big improvement on service mode.
Uh, no. No consumer level computer could handle that let alone the engine itself. It seems like you just disregard any faults of the game. Plus the file would be huge.
I think a lot of consumer level computer are capable of handling more realistic service and larger maps. After all, that's what options in games are for. And on top of that by combining routes you can "grow" the game over time. Right now, if you drive a LIRR train there are only other LIRR trains, although the NEC has been made beforehand. So why not use the already existing files for improvement? As it has been said before, you could drive a LIRR train, switch to Amtrak at Penn Station and in the future switch to something else elsewhere.
So far, DTG hasn't stated why the routes are so short. However, I think that what raildan said has the most merit; dev time must consume a massive part of a route's lifecycle. The reason why Sand Patch Grade isn't coming to consoles anytime soon isn't that it's longer, it's probably concerns that the scenery is too resource intensive. Go have a look around the route, and you'll quickly see that there are thousands upon thousands of 3D trees on the route, and I rather strongly suspect that it would melt most consoles into a pile of slag. Ruhr-Sieg Nord is the first route so far to have 2D trees, so it's entirely possible the trees on Sand Patch will be patched out one day for the consoles. Only time will tell.
Right large routes. I could see 200 miles maybe 250. But not 1,000. But you still fail to recognize the games shortcomings.
That appears to the answer I expected regarding joining routes. I also use MS Flight Sim. The files depending how many extra add-ons you download (photogrammentry - aircraft, etc) you can expect to be in the region of 5GB. The mapping is updated cached live whilst you fly halfway around the world. So Train Sim could do it too but as said previously not commercially viable (at present)
Alot of time people search up threads and respond to them without ever looking at the date the last post was made, it's also apparently not against the rules to necropost if you add to the conversation per JD.
Good idea and for Matt he did say that mergers can happen due to routes using common origin point. Here is his exact quote.