Aerosoft aren't exactly what you'd call a 'go to' company when when it comes to quality and value but on Monday I did break my duck and finally purchase one of their games....admittedly with the help of a huge chunk of reward points but nonetheless, I now officially own Fernbus. "so what has this got to do with DTG?" I hear you say. Well, much like our favourite train simulator, Fernbus also comes with those terrible shadow/detail draw distances, performance issues and all the other 'quirks' we've come to expect from badly optimised PC ports....but instead of going down DTG's 'you get what we give you' path, TML have accepted that their game engine will never function correctly on consoles and given us performance sliders to compensate that fact. Don't like the shadow draw distances? Hide them away! Hate that horrendous lighting? Tone it down! Want to improve/reduce environment details? Use 'epic' or 'low' settings to do so! etc...etc Sure, the dozen or so sliders that TML have given console gamers might not seem like a big deal when compared against the plethora of performance tweaks available on PC, but once those shadows and trillions of 'god rays' have been toned down and immersion levels have ramped up accordingly then you do start to realise how much of a big deal it actually is. I'm not saying similar levels of performance tweaking will magically transform TSW into being an awesome game, but what I am saying is that if my experience with Fernbus is anything to go by then simply having any ability to tailor a game to personal tastes is a huge step in the right direction when it comes to developer attitude towards console gamers. So yeah, maybe it's time for DTG's 'treat console gamers like children' team to stop trying to convince us that Microsoft won't allow such actions an/or all our consoles will burst into flames at the very thought of introducing such tweaks and start to regard us as equals within TSW.
Sounds fair, I personally appreciate it when you're allowed to completely map your own inputs on console, very few devs put that option in, and it's usually Indies, most go with fixed sets of inputs e.g. Immersion & Classic, which comes with it's own shortcomings. Probably cause it's less complex. Also we have basic things like turning dynamic weather & motion blur off, which helps, I'd want an option to stop snow build up on the windows, it looks atrocious.
I agree with this as well. I believe the player should be able to customize certain things to their liking. If a player doesn't want unrealistic layers, we should be able to have them removed. We should be able to customize the hud and turn some elements on or off or move them around like in other games. Have a option to adjust npc density like in bus simulator 21. Perhaps have the option to adjust how quick the dynamic weather changes like in tramsim and the list goes on. It's something that would improve the experience for console players to have them be able to play the game how they like
Fully agree with this, Ive been raising this more and more as we get more and more silly layers thrown in to routes for "game play" reasons.
Don't see how DTG treat us like children - a lack of options isn't an insult. It's not as if they don't trust us with the possible options (it's not as if anything bad could happen to them). I get the overall point and for the most part agree, more options with the look of the game would be appreciated. But it's quite an extreme statement / title.
I would just like to see more time spent on optimising the game for each console, because at the moment there are unfortunately some pretty glaring performance issues. Why for example do we need native 4K when a lower resolution with checkerboard rendering would surely help with the choppy frame rates whilst still looking pin sharp.
I'd like to see work on just basic nuisance bugs like how on console every last route and loco is permanently flagged as "new" in bright yellow.
It's so annoying. Kinda makes it harder to see images of routes to pick as well. Don't see why they haven't sorted this out yet.
I have too been vocal about unrealistic layers but it has not been addressed yet. I agree with the points in the OP although I do think the wording is a bit over the top.
Just to confirm - Fernbus on Console has these options? If so - i'll go pick it up and have a play, see what they've done and what we can learn from it. Matt.
We certainly don't need it to show as "New" for nine months and counting, no matter how much we play it!
I have some good fun with Fernbus but other than the settings options, I feel like TSW is superior and it’s not even close. Half the people that play Fernbus have to YouTube how to get into a game- the UI is not very intuitive. Have you guys looked at Tram Sim at all and seen anything there that you’d like to implement in the TSW series?
I really like a bunch of games which offer these kinds of granular PC style options on console, it's pretty good on XBox in particular where you have Series X and Series S, and while most such games came out during last gen and thus let you maximise everything on X and still usually manage 60, you can choose which options you personally prioritise to get a solid 60 on Series S. Or even if you choose push stuff up to where it dips as low as 50 if you have a VRR display which can compensate for the framerate dips.
I I like the IBIS system, I assume that is similar to what the GSMR is supposed to do. Also I like the fact that the passengers open the doors and all you do is unlock and lock them. And finally wheelchair passengers.
I don't agree with this statement. PC games have a lot of setting sliders because there are 100000 different machines out there. A console is a closed system and every game should run at its best. Period. I own Fernbus too and it's a terrible game on console, and putting in visual sliders is just a big f@#$ off to optimization. I prefer a simple quality/performance option.
However, "best" is a very subjective matter. Some people for example, think depth of field effects don't look like absolute garbage that shatters immersion by making it look like a film shot on a camera rather than a first person field of vision. Some people notice shadow flickering more than they notice the absence of other effects which can be dialled back to allow more overhead for smoother shadows. There are a lot of games out there that plenty folks don't believe look "their best" on console, because the players' priorities do not always align with what the devs picked for their "performance" and "quality" modes
I don't really agree with the OP. This is not the solution for TSW when I read this: I haven't played Fernbus but from how you describe it it sounds another ugly looking simulator PC port. I have been a console player for decades now and the reason I am still a console player is the ease of use. You buy a console, attach it to a TV, you start up a game and your are playing. I had a PC playing period for a year I guess and I hated it because of all the settings you had to apply to make your run game smooth before you could play the game. I'm only talking about in-game settings. Not talking about installing drivers and such. It always resulted in me not enjoying the game knowing I had not the best experience because I refused to buy a new more powerful PC for a game. What has this to do with the settings of Fernbus? Well if I get this many sliders I will always will be in doubt if there isn't a better configuration of sliders. I only want 2 sliders in game. Performance resolution and quality resolution. I don't want DTG to compensate a "bad looking" game with sliders. If the game engine can't produce quality console games there is only one solution: use or create an engine that lets you make good looking games on consoles. On one hand it's good for console players that more smaller PC games are being ported to console but if developers who reap big rewards of going console don't adapt to their new found bread honey it will hurt them in the end. TSW was one of the first odd looking games on consoles I gave a chance to develop: "let's see where this crappy looking game will take us". I've seen the game now on two different console platforms and sliders is not the way to go. I think DTG's bread and butter will go stale soon if it keeps treating us as PC users. We need a game that is build with consoles in mind. Console games don't need any sliders. Consoles need games you start up and they look good from the start, no settings required
This is why I appreciate how on XBox this is a system-level feature, overriding any individual game's layout, letting you remap your inputs in the console settings for your account, and if you have an Elite controller save them to the internal memory of the pad itself so you have them wherever you go, mapping multiple profiles you can toggle between with the pad's input profile button. It's the only way I was able to play Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw, which has terrible input options, by creating a profile that swapped all that game's inputs to match Elite: Dangerous instead.
Anyway, Fernbus shouldn't be used as an example because is just a terrible game. TSW is waaaay better in everything, even with its flaws. Just take a look at this mess. For me, a complete waste of money... https://www.youtube.com/live/pxBMBOVyHCw?feature=share
Bad games can still have examples of a single thing they get right. A game can be literally completely unplayable but have some really solid UI implementations that other games could stand to learn from, or an otherwise terrible game can nail one single mechanic that provides a convenience that would translate well to so many others.
If they put these sort of settings in to the gameplay then it might solve the gen8/9 issues, but of course because you could then try and run something on a gen8 console that would break it, they don't want to/are not allowed to do this. I do agree a console has a certain level of performance and that is fixed unlike on PC. I also think that the argument that is is a way out of optimising is quite apt here. We've had terrible draw distances forever, and the ability to turn the shadows off seems a decent one at this point (and more likely to get done).
Never encountered that before from any game with such settings, the worst you can do is push the framerate on a launch model XBox One (I've tried) to about 12fps by dialling the settings to match your 90fps Series X settings.
OMG remember when CP77 didn't have separate XBox One/Series versions? And merely ran in backcompat on SX/S but with "gen9aware" enhancements? And how if you started a game on Series X then tried to load that save on say, your friend's XBox One, it'd dip to single digit framerates because it would have cloud saved your graphics settings (shared saves because of the single SKU) as the Series X preset, and BECAUSE there were no ingame sliders to change this, you were stuck with that?
