I'm in the process of hunting down the elusive fences on the SEHS, and for me I'm finding it easiest to walk the beaten track, and I must say walking it really makes you appreciate the ambient sounds and dynamic weather. Three hours into the walk 20 of 25 fences found, I find my self in a snow storm with the wind howling and trains racing past every few minutes throwing up clouds of snow is actually sending a shiver down my spine and making me feel the chill. The ambience of this game is just superb! Except for the sound of a crowded station on a deserted platform in the middle of nowhere! Apart from that little gripe, What a cracking job DTG, on the ambience and dynamic weather. Superb! Right, back to my stroll. I knew that I should have put a coat on To truly appreciate the sounds and weather, I recommend doing a walk along the tracks. It really is chilling!!!
This strikes me as just adventurous enough to be worth attempting. Please specify in detail where and when you "spawned in" -- a term that always makes me think of Salmon. Thanks in advance!
Btw, heads up, there's actually 36 fences (and that of each collectable actually, 25 from the original SEHS + 11 on the extension) for a total of 144 collectables. The game UI doesn't reflect this, but there is more. Hopefully DTG can update it to reflect the additional collectables in the future. And don't worry, the new fences should all be fairly close to the new stations, so you won't have to walk the entirety of HS1 to find them.
Yep Adventurous indeed. I only do it as it helps me to focus my mind! I spawned at St Pancras Int' Dartford, Faversham, and Ashford Int' and walk to Ebbs Fleet Domestic. Some routes aren't accessible by foot due to the invisible wall. Out of St Pancras you have to walk through the tunnels which is fun. Luckily trains don't kill you, they just throw you to one side!
What! me being sarcastic? Never! Seriously I'm in the process of walking the entire route that is accessible. Unless you're referring to "What A Cracking Job DTG On The Ambience And Dynamic Weather"? As you're just not allowed to say anything Bad without getting flamed for having a opinion on a product by some members. So I'm being nice by making a post on what a cracking job DTG have done
I will say that the snow accumulation seems to be a bit too quick. Might not necessarily be a bad thing since a typical TSW service is less than an hour, so maybe that was an artistic choice, but maybe some sliders to adjust that would be nice.
The only thing with the dynamic weather that spoils it for me is how the weather changes. One minute you're in a snow storm then the next minute you're in the middle of a thunderstorm with lightning. I would like to see it where a route when played is either sunny, snowy or raining, and not all three in the space of twenty minutes. Now whilst walking the route you will notice how the light changes. It's not gradual like blue skies slowly going grey. It is instant! Just like flicking a switch. It literally goes from sunshine, blue skies, to white skies, snow, to dark grey skies, thunder and lightning and straight back to sun and blue skies again. When walking the route it's almost as if you walk through where the joins of the scenario's and timetables start and end? But still the snow scenes and the thunderstorms are very well done. It is this what my appraisal is aimed at. I really wanted the snow just to continue all the way up to the end of the walk along the route. There is a great little touch whilst walking in the snow, every now and then you get a random faint little blurred spot appear, it only lasts a couple of seconds. It's almost as if a snow flake has landed on the camera lens. So yep, a Cracking Job DTG on the Dynamic Weather. Improve the Transitions between the weather types and it will be amazing!
Nice to see some praise, and yes I totally agree with the great weather. I do wish the wallpaper paste, sorry, rain on the windows looked better though (gotta complain about something lol).
I wouldn't say it was a cracking job. I can be playing a sunny service on sehs and ntp but 4 minutes later, the route will go to max fog. One minute I can be playing in clear skies, but 3 minutes later it starts snowing but with no clouds in the sky. The transitions are just too quick and aren't realistic. Not to mention the new lighting having a washed out effect and environmental night time lighting in built up areas being non existent as if cities like London, Koln, Glasgow Birmingham and others all have daily blackouts. Another example of a good idea, but poor execution
You obviously didn't read my post just before yours, about the lack of transition and that you get everything within a space of 20 minutes? My initial post was how I felt whilst walking in a snowstorm with trains racing past. The rest was mainly light hearted sarcasm, due to the fact that some members seem to think that this sim/game is perfect, and don't like it when people voice their opinion on the flaws/bugs that have been around from day one! Hence my "Nice" post. LoL!
Yeah, they definitely need to slow it down or at least have an option for how fast it transitions (cause they'll never be able to please everyone obviously), cause as it is rn, it's just too fast. It makes me tend to avoid dynamic weather. Would also be cool if you could have the option of setting the starting weather and ending weather and have go from one to the other over course of a service. Or better yet, and my personal favourite, have live weather as that's how I like to play at least (but ofc there's a lot of additional technical challenges involved in that). But as it stands right now, dynamic weather just isn't something I enjoy to use a lot, especially in winter where it really favours the snow (like idm the rain, but sometimes you just want to have a relaxing drive and it can be hard to do that in the snow when the wheel slip is bad). Hopefully DTG can revisit the weather system again in the future and make some changes and/or additions to it.
Live time/weather option like MSFS would be ideal, but I think the current system is fine. They will never please everyone.
Yeah, agreed. Current system is fine, but definitely has room for improvement. Apart from the slower transition speeds/transition speed option, the other points are definitely more so of my "ideal wish list/would be nice if" stuff.
The big problem I have with dynamic weather is that you start off with clear skies or slightly overcast and it then progressively deteriorates into a massive thunderstorm and never goes back the other way, i.e. becomes fine again.
Totally agree with you. The weather should be done as clear skies gradually darkening, then we get either rain/thunderstorms, or snow, then back to clear skies. they shouldn't all be crammed into the same timeline in the space of a few minutes? A thunderstorm in the middle of winter, in the UK? It just doesn't happen. Especially after or during snow! The "Dynamic Weather" is really a excellent part of the game, but sadly how it's executed fails it badly. Dynamic weather should represent the weather at that point in time (the time of year). Snow mid to late winter. Fog, Autumn and mists in Spring. Rain anytime. Thunderstorms throughout the summer months into Autumn. If the boffins at DTG can set the routes to the current day and date. Surely they can set the weather to the current season? If DTG can do this then it will Truly be "Dynamic Weather!
Just drove a class 66 service on SEHS with today's date, weather went from clear to dense fog. So dense that I could not even see signals from the AWS magnet. As for the comment above about weather not going back to what you started with, I have experiences that on several situation.
It's interesting. I've definitely had that happen, but i've also had clear>storm>clear as well. A while ago one of the devs posted a mock-up of the dynamic weather decision tree and it seems to make sense with the probabilities they use, etc. I think the most realistic solution would be to increase the time between weather-state changes, but since most runs are an hour or less, that would result in very little weather changes at all, which isn't an ideal way to show off your neat weather tech. I think it's ok how it is with maybe some tweaks to reduce highly unlikely situations (e.g Thunderstorm in January, but TBF we just had a brief thunderstorm the other day in Philly suburbs, so.....)
Hot Air Balloons in the middle of a Snowstorm? So Funny! I just had to stop my train to get a screengrab LoL!
