Okay I'm flogging what seems to be a dead horse again, but neither of the two major issues affecting a massive two thirds of TSW's customer base are being addressed, namely the painfully awful TSW3 Xbox audio quality and dreadful PS5 optimisation. Both, noticeable by their absence from the latest May 2023 roadmap. My Series X is now relegated to the cupboard of shame out of crackly-over-compressed frustration, but this morning on PS5 I was reminded just how badly that particular TSW implementation struggles to maintain half-reasonable frame rates, when I took a class 66 with aggregates out of Dartford headed for Hoo Junction. It was sadly a major stutter-fest, yet the same service is relatively smooth on Xbox Series X and PC. It is evident that DTW literally did not tick all the right boxes when they ported the game to the PS5. The painfully slow loading times show that the game is not making full use of the super quick SSD speed of this generation, and something else about the implementation is tanking the frames compared to the rival Series X - by 50% in some cases. The situation is now getting dire as the routes get more complex. Save for a few recent AAA PC ports, no other title suffers such disparities between platforms as TSW. Imagine Call of Duty Warzone 2 with the same audio quality on Xbox as TSW, there'd be rioting in the streets! For a company that boasts multiplatform development, they really need to get a handle on these technical issues which should just not be happening, and that probably means recruiting (or consulting) devs with the necessary competences and experience.
Given up on them optimising PS5 to be honest. Not expecting end to end 60fps with layers etc but Victoria and Bremen stations in particular drop to low 20's and give me headache so don't touch them on PS5 version anymore.
This is the biggest issue on XSX IMO. But overall the XSX is a better experience than PS5 (I own both). The PS5 definitely suffers performance issues in some areas where the XSX is buttery smooth (London Victoria is the most glaring example). I don't understand it because they are very close in hardware specs. Most games perform identically on both consoles and some (Elden Ring for example) actually perform better on PS5 so it must be some sort of developer issue.
I just tried running a HS1 service on SEHS on my PS5 and the experience was anything but smooth. I couldn’t complete the service as the stutters were much too distracting. Think I’m going to continue to stick to my laptop for TSW. While it doesn’t do 4K too great, I’ll take 1080p 60fps on Ultra settings over the PS5 performance. The game seriously needs a good looking over on PS5.
Im XSX and have been playing a lot of SOS and it does lag around the big yards and the fps isn't great. Hoping Peak forest is a little kinder on the frame rate. I also have the same issue with SEHS stuttering especially when watching trains pass on free cam. Older lines like TVL and GWE run great for me though at least. Hoping that maybe add ons manager will smoothen it out a bit?
I play on Xbox series s, what sound issues are people referring to? I've not noticed anything myself, but I've never played it on on pc, so have nothing to compare it to.
You are flogging a dead horse I'm afraid.... Many, many moons ago Matt said during a stream that bugs and glitches were graded in A-B-C / 1-2-3 order (I forget which but you know what I mean), with anything categorised as 'directly affecting the ability to complete a task' categorised as "gamebreaking" and given the highest priority for fixing. XBox achievements being one of those items. So yeah, if the time taken to fix a "priority" gamebreaking bug like broken achievements is measured in *years* then you may as well just give up and accept the inevitable when it comes to the 'trivial' stuff like audio issues and overall performance.
It differs between trains, you just get very poor quality sound effects, usually the AWS is the worst offender, but basically whatever sound is the loudest in game at any given time, will have a low quality/static overlay. Generally the sound is just poor quality compared to other platforms.
I hope they realise it will affect sales If they don't fix it. I was ready to buy more routes, now after hearing of the poor audio quality compared to other platforms, I'll hold off on that.
It seems whichever console you choose to play on, you’re shafted one way or the other. I’m pinning my console hopes on the PS5 Pro which should give the frame rate the kick up the backside it needs. Crazy that the power is already there but remains unexploited by Dovetail’s developers. Brute force shall therefore, our savior be. I am saddened to say though that Xbox players are pretty much stuck with crummy audio. What’s really surprising is that Matt has both a Series S and X, yet Dovetail are to all intents and purposes in denial, and that after all the months and months they seemingly wasted successfully fixing the audio in TSW2 only to bring out TSW3 shortly after but with new issues.
It does seem a bit wasteful to go out of your way to record actual trains (which what I assume they do, wasn't there a blog about this last year, about the Arosa line?), only to have the recordings butchered by 90s-style 128 kbps mp3 compression.
