Out Now Niddertalbahn: Bad Vilbel – Stockheim, Out Now!

Normally I don't do any of the tutorials because mostly the set-ups are quite straight forward, but I couldn't get the 628 moving, so did the tutorial and I wasn't aware that you needed to hod the 'Engine 1' to the 'Start' position, after I tried again, it gave power!

 

The route is amazing! At the beginning i had some doubts about the max speed, the length of route and the locos. After i drove few kilometers i completely changed idea: the fields, flora, lights, sounds, etc. are very detailed... and the passengers finally climb aboard the train.
I had found your high quality of details and features in G6 loco pack, when it was launched, and this route confirms your hard job. I hope you will work on new projects in the future (while i wait for the launch of DB BR 420).

I found only one bug: when i open the valve of PZB and SIFA, the light on PZB and SIFA's indicators is still switched off. So i can't drive with security systems.

 

Not many my think to try this but since the 628 has standard german train link and pin couplers you can pull or push most german wagons or passenger cars around and surprisingly the 628 can push or pull a fair amount of them but you need to use a route with a place to place something to pull or push to do this.Preferably without the dreaded redlight plague and with manual switches.

 

I do have to agree with the positive feedback on the route! It is sooo atmospheric and detailed. It is engaging and relaxing at the same time, and the most immersive route so far. At times I've felt like I was watching cab rides from real life. This really is great work, and it'll keep me busy for a while, hopfully until the next release of this level

 

Its been mentioned on this thread that this is a know problem. There is a patch that hasn't been released yet. You should still be able to activate the safety systems using a keyboard. 'ctrl + ent' and 'shift + ent'

 

Thank you for the information but i forgot to tell i play on xbox one x

 

Is there any video of how it runs on Series X? I'm curious about stuff like how the console draw distance looks with that dense foliage compared to PC.

 

Runs great in Series X. However and TSG have noted this, the LOD range for very high detail is reduced from a standard DTG route. And this is very noticeable when you have the external the maximum distance in front of the train as you drive but otherwise you would not notice this.

For me it's the best performing TSW3 route hands down, next to zero stutter or frame drops on Series X. Very well optimised across the board.

 

You are right, I just noticed that on Linke Rheinstrecke the traffic is fast too. Perhaps it's something with these "older" car models?
Which, by the way, look a wee bit too old for the Rheinstrecke's supposed 1997, but spot on for the 1992 setting here.

I did, however, see one bug on Niddertalbahn, when cars went through closed crossing barriers right in front of me, but sadly I did not note the location.

 

Agreed. It runs really well on XBox X. I’ve not noticed any stuttering and compared with some other routes the performance seems impressive.

 

The same on xbox one x

 

You can still use a keyboard (on the xbox, just plug one into a USB port) . I play on pc mainly but I sometimes play on x box one s and plug in a keyboard for the awkward controls that are easier to use on a keyboard.

 

My expectations from the route were fully justified. TSG thank you very much for such a high quality itinerary! I get crazy pleasure from the gameplay! Most of all I was struck by landscapes and new vegetation, the route looks alive and real! I would like to lie down on the lawn near the railway track and watch the passing trains. I want your team to grow quickly and please us with a lot of DLC. Looking forward to your new masterpieces!

 

While I appreciate people's opinions, none of them are what I need which is to see it myself and judge it by my standards before buying it.
The mention of lod distance.gives me pause as TSW3 is already very iffy for lod pop and how it interacts with the lighting.

 

So with me there are no or almost no pop-ups. The vision is great, even distant villages and forests are visible. No comparison to the Rhine route with the plopping forests.

 

Depends on how you look at it and what your preferences are. You can absolutely see the LODs change a lot in close proximity to the player to get to the very nice, high detail models. If you’re specifically looking at the scenery to observe it, it is very obvious, maybe even jarring.

But that description does a disservice to how it actually looks like while driving. If you’re driving and enjoying the scenery along the way, it works very nicely and produces amazing results. Here, I’d say the sum is greater than the parts.

 

This can easily be avoided by adding the following to the ini. file at the end:

foliage.LODDistanceScale=5

This means that the strong change in the level of detail of the vegetation should no longer be visible.

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By the way, according to this article, TSW3 is currently (or was) #3 on the Steam charts! Followed by the Niddertalbahn in 4th place.

I would say: congratulations!

 

Except that I was specifically requesting a video of it running on XBox where these changes cannot be made, hence needing to see it before committing to a purchase.

 

When you do that on XBox or PS4 the framerate would dip down to nearly 0. So that is not an option. Not for the players nor for us. You basically switch off all LODs with that setting and always force LOD0 (higest polygon count).

LOD changing is everywhere in the games. Even most modern AAA games have lots of obvious visible LOD popping, if you watch out for it. The difference is, that lots of those games don't have the player moving that fast, and/or using a scaled down world to hide a bit of these things (you are moving slower than it actually looks). We can't scale down the world in TSW. It is a real world scale game. So, LOD distances are quite short to gain/preserve performance. In Niddertalbahn we used a technique to avoid instant popping of LODs. But even the smooth change (what also have a cost on performance) of LODs is visible to a certain extend when moving faster.

Yes, there is a way to make it even smoother. BUT, that, in the first place would involve way more development time and in the second it would eat up way more memory what then is a problem again on consoles. Objects (whatever it is) usually have 5 LOD stages in TSW. To make it way smoother it would maybe need 10 or 15 stages. So, it would also need two times of memory for the meshes then, what would end up in decreasing details all over to prevent out-of-memory problems. Especially with foliage it is a big problem. And again, if you look at other games, with the same effort as you do here in TSW, you see the same popping. We (the developers in the game industry) are all cooking with the same water (the max available hardware performance at the player base).

 

Exactly. Hence my original request to see how it runs on Series X, so I can judge for myself if any of the necessary compromises for performance like this are deal breakers to me.

Hopefully someone will stick up a timetable run on youtube at some point, but I was hoping someone might know of a channel that already has done.

 

(Obviously not knocking what the TSG team have accomplished with this, by the looks of it it overcomes a bunch of my issues with many TSW3 routes, but fundamentally when it comes to lod, the issues I have trouble with in TSW3 come down to how the popin interacts with the TSW3 lighting to really draw the eye to it, and that's a core game issue any amount of excellent route building work will still bump up against)

 

Maik Goltz

That's right, the manual settings only apply to the PC, of course. A PS4 wouldn't do it anyway like you said.

Sry, I hadn't read that it was about an XBox.

 

I would say no, it is not a thing down to the core of TSW. It is a general problem when using real scale and real time light in a game engine. The shadow draw distances are quite short, the distance field shadow drawing too (about 1200m max). The distance field AO is a performance and memory killer, so it seems not using the full distance extend of 1200m. You basically can't beat the problems that coming with that. There will always be a visible drawback at the edges of these max. distances of engine render features. The only possible solution i know of is, to bake light (as many games do when they are not using per second real time ToD). Not possible in TSW as it uses real time ToD. Yes, i know there seem to exist games that using baking and ToD, but that is mostly some kind of fake and not real time. As example the meditation in AC:Valhalla and other of these titles, the ToD gets switched fast and always to the same day/night time with a camera looking to the sky to hide the hard light change on the assets. They "simply" switching the light bake texture set. It is all pre baked. For a per second real time ToD you need a bake set for every 10 minutes if a day. Not even the best PC on the world could handle that yet.

 

Yes, but for the purposes of TSW, it only really became as noticeable as it is now with TSW3's across the board increase to brightness. In TSW2 the same billboarding in the distance is far less noticeable due to not being brightly reflective or washed out compared to the detail of the same objects once they pop in, so there isn't nearly as much of the eye-catching sudden flicker between the states and the low quality version definitely draws attention to itself less than it does under TSW3 lighting.

 

No worries, it was a few posts deep into a discussion of it.
Anyway, to get back to my initial request, if anyone can recommend a youtuber who uploads XBox content who is likely to upload a run at some point, I'd appreciate it. Gives me somewhere to keep an eye on rather than having to just do keyword searches every few days, and if I like what I see this very well might be my only TSW3 purchase of the rest of the year.

 

I'll probably do a TSG purchase soon: BR101, G6 and NID.
Then I need to steal my son's Elgato, to record a whole run

 

I bought an Elgato, and then a couple of weeks later, builders severed the fibre to my building.
Still using my mobile internet. It's painful. Streaming is right out the window.

 

The 101 is actually a dtg release. Tsg did his usual thing on most German releases like physics and sound.

 

Very nice route! Could be a candidate for the route of the year 2023, although the year is still quite young.

 

This is basically DTG release. TSG did only loco settings as model is made by somebody else and distribution. With the credits in manual there you can see that all main work was done by Lukas and Edward and they are DTG workers who worked on the route in their free time without deadline from DTG. Which prove that if DTG workers have time then they can really create nice route. So Lukas and Edward, thanks for that nice masterpiece. I hope that those 2 will make another route.

 

You are wrong, again. It is a 100% TSG production. What you think, that TSG is related to a single person, is a wrong assumption. TSG is a group of people wo create products for TS/TSW. If you want to blame me personally (what i think was the goal of your post) then please do so. Don'T blame TSG as a group of persons. Thanks.

 

Congratulations TSG, for producing a stunning and enjoyable route. I love it so thank you.

 

Well, after several days and many hours of play I can't add much more to all the good things that have been said about this route, it is simply wonderful. It feels so different to anything we have had so far in TSW! I emphasize how different it feels depending on the time of the year, this is something very new and denotes the care and effort they have invested. I only wish that these great professionals can continue to delight us in the future with new projects.

It is necessary to highlight the few launch errors, of course there are some, but far fewer than we are unfortunately used to, and of less importance. I play on ps5 and the ones I have detected are:

-Sifa and pzb on the 928 which has already been noted and the solution is near.

-Some services with unreachable score for some medals, especially with 365 that I can't get past bronze.

-The external camera sometimes goes a bit crazy when moving it around and trying to position it in many places. Suddenly it jumps and goes to the sky, etc.

-The sound of the horn on the 628 is too loud inside the cockpit. I play with headphones and almost never use it because I feel it hurts my ear canal.

-The external sound becomes too quiet very close to the train. I mean, a diesel like this I think should be heard from more than 20 metres away, and here it's not, especially when it's accelerating. Although this is something I have almost always noticed in TSG products, from an external chamber the trains become audible too late and disappear too soon when passing in front of the camera, it is not too progressive. This is also very noticeable in BR 101, BR 612 or ICE 1, Wait for a train on the platform as a passenger and you won't hear them until the trains are almost next to you. It's strange because this developer is the one that takes the most care and attention to the sounds. I would like to see it improved in other future projects, although it is a minor problem that doesn't affect immersion or gameplay.

-Moving cars often sink into the asphalt and the wheels don't turn.

-This wake effect on the windscreen wipers is not new to this route, but it is more visible here than on other routes. I don't know if something could be done to disguise it a bit, or if it's something in the core of the game.



-Sometimes the doors do not respond when you press the joysticks on the controller to open or close them, but they work correctly when you press the buttons in the cockpit.

And little else, some minor things I've already seen reported but they are minor.

Regarding the layers, when I match any 103 or 110 it makes me very happy, thanks to Joe for including them

 

Sadly on PS5 and XSX/S the only option to get rid of it involves turning on the awful motion blur which hides it, as the antialiasing cannot be toggled manually on console (though trust me, you want the AA on and TAA is miles better than garbage like FXAA.)

 

Also, a difference to note is that TSG has acknowledged the few bugs there are and is working on them, while DTG haven't even acknowledged most of the bugs that plague LFR, let alone promise improvement.

 

Also want to say congratulations on a job well done the, I have been enjoying the route the scenery is absolutely stunning.

 

That was nothing against you. I thought that TSG is just you because you can read it here: https://train-sim-world.fandom.com/wiki/TrainSim-Germany. But that doesnt matter, again it was nothing against you. What i wrote that Lukas and Ed are basically DTG workers (or am I wrong there too ?) and acording to the manual (https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1998966/manuals/Niddertalbahn_Manual.pdf?t=1679587225) - the credits section i can see there that they did "Basically Everything". My point was that if DTG creators got more time without deadlines that they can make really nice routes and they just prove that with this release.

 

That counts for basically every creative company. But that is not how the world works, unfortunately. There are always deadlines, even Niddertalbhan had a deadline.

 

Probably helped with everything in terms of teaching , explaining, knowledgebase . etc you need to have atleast somebody to ask something.

 

Shoutout to Yardem for getting me a decent recording of a run on XSX to get an idea what to expect. Some noticeable lod pop where the high lod versions have different rotation, but honestly for the amount of detail on display here, that's more than acceptable, and the sheer density of the foliage helps avert being distracted by the common feature on a bunch of other routes where the more distant low lod objects stand out more under TSW3 lighting.

This is definitely now on my to buy list.

 

The frame rate is very consistent. In a one hour run, I experienced maybe three "hiccups" and they were very short. I don't know if they are noticeable in the video. Definitely nothing like the massive ones I experience on BRO, for example.

 

To be fair, in terms of hardware demands I don't think this route, with a single train running at no more than 60 km/h and very little additional AI traffic, compares to BRO which includes multiple train types running at higher speeds and with a lot of constant traffic on the line. It should be much easier to get good performance here.

 

The amount of foliage moving in the breeze more than compensates for the lack of traffic. This route is alive, more so than any other route in TSW.

 

Not to mention the visual life created by the deep draw distances, and the huge number of bespoke building assets which draw the eye because they aren't the same old rubberstamps

 

I have violated my rule and bought it before the patch and at full price, just to reward TSG for Doing It Right.

 

Just because the Niddertalbahn is a tranquil branch line does not mean that it is also more performance-friendly than the Rhine route.

In terms of design, vegetation and the view from afar, these are worlds compared to the Rhine line and yet the Niddertalbahn runs quite well (except for a few short places where the forest is too dense or a lot of vegetation can be seen in the distance - but no wonder!) and better than the Rhine route, which is particularly noticeable due to the "forests" popping up on the slopes, the dead Rhine and the same houses over and over again. I like them too, no question, but the fact that the Niddertalbahn still runs so well with so many more details and vegetation (this is the performance killer no. 1 in the TSW, after that only a lot of switched off AI traffic follows), already speaks for the DLC.

A really good job was done there, in all directions.

But yes, I also have to admit that if the slopes on the Rhine were as densely forested as the forests on the Niddertalbahn (e.g. at and around the station Eichen) - and that consistently on both sides of the Rhine - we could have expected even worse performance.

 

For me Niddertalbahn runs like hot knife in butter on my XBox Series S (XSS), no noticeable stutter och micropauses.
Linke Rheinstrecke on the other hand, is quite the opposite; one secoind of micropauses here and there.

My conclusion is therefore; TSG probably builds better "optimized" routes than DTG...

 

This may also be the case for me breaking my rule of not buying another route until we get better brightness and contrast or HDR sliders

 

I'm very happy with the look of NTB on my rig. Although I'm using Reshade and some .ini tweaks.

 

I‘m continuing to have a lot of fun with the route. Completed the rest of the scenarios yesterday and unlocked the mastery rewards. Can’t wait to see the new machines on the fields when I do my next run later today!

The 373 Sugar Beets scenario is just magnificent. It starts off really innocently and then descends into madness as you’re forced to take a broken 628 along for the ride. Delightful!