Tendency of skipping cabins corridors in twin/cabin (usually german) engines is conerning symptom. It seems just laziness but... Good simulation of vehicle should include as many aspect of operation, physic and structure as possible. Skipping corridors in these locos affects them hardly in gameplay terms shunting, manuvers, stabilizing, rescuing, etc. Drivers don't jump like rabbits from cabin to cabin, they just walk across loco.
Yup. I think it wasn't an issue in early TSW DLC's but with the BR101 it started. It's a shame tbh, as I really like the feature. Kinda gives you a more immersed feeling as if you're actually operating that machine. Shame the BR110/103/193/146/185 don't have it..
I think it has pros and cons. Pro is all the stuff mentioned before. Con is, that developing and making the engine room accessible means there is less time left for other (more) important stuff like a proper cab with wide range of functions. Or maybe it means that there will be no time to make a new coach/waggon with the loco/route.
Allocate more time for development then, instead of just rushing things out as fast as you can. TSW set up a standard in the beginning that meant that you can open engine compartments and walk through engine rooms. If you take that away, then you have simply made a downgrade. The game should advance in 5+ years, not get downgraded. Or how many more features should we loose because of time constraints? Let's have no funcitoning cab doors either, let the player just teleport into their seat as they click on the locomotive then. Sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it?
Thing is, if there was no time for it I'd at least wish for a solution like in simrail, where you click the door for the engine room and get an option to teleport into the other cab
Yes, please... Fade to black and then appear in the other cab. It feels very off having to go outside every time to change the cab, especially when dynamic weather prefers thunderstorms and blizzards.
I think it started way earlier, from the inception of TSW. For example, one of the first German locos, the 185 on RSN, already skipped them. The one thing that the locos which do have them (182, 143, 155) have in common is this: The cab doors open up into the engine room, so there was no way to skip doing one. However, I wholeheartedly agree. Especially TSW, as a simulator that places such a focus on being able to walk on foot, absolutely has to include proper engine rooms. It’s bad enough that DTG move switches around to places they don’t belong in because of the lacking engine room, but the constant climbing down/up the loco when shunting is ridicolous. Worst offender is the 185 shunting scenario on KWG. In reality, you’d switch sides for every change in direction, which I did, and it was just frustrating to do something over and over I’d never do in real life. Then there’s the 103, which has a modelled engine room that’s for some reason blocked off. What gives? It also frustrates me about the Vectron. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic loco. One of the, if not the, best done loco in TSW. But then there’s that last step missing. Again, Voralberg (not the home route, I know, but feels more like the home route than DRA to me) places a big focus on more realistic freight workings, which include a lot of cab switching. I hope DTG hears us and considers changing their stance on including engine rooms.
It's not just development time, but game performance. Every additional cluster of polygons puts more of a burden on the system, and an engine room represents a LOT of polygons to crunch. Which is why DTG haven't modeled an engine since the original SPG GP38 and SD40- not dev time. You can do a corridoe in, say, the BR 155 because the mechanicals are all blocked off by a partition, so don't have to be modeled.
Likewise, if you have a busy route, say BML, but every train is a loco hauled unit with a modelled engine room and corridor. That's no doubt going to cause problems, given that BML with multiple units alone causes major issues. But for a route, say Arosa, where you have at most 4 or 5 trains running at all, then it is much more acceptable.
They’re only partly blocked off in real life. DTG made an artistic choice to streamline the engine room. For comparison on a real 155: Source And that’s fine. It’s the same deal with the 182 - if you’ve been in any real three-phase-AC electric loco, you’ll spot all of the things missing or simplified, but the engine rooms still work very well as a facsimile. I think that expecting a completely accurate engine room is out of the question. It’s just not realistic both on DTGs’ budget and the game’s performance. At least for electric locos, the compromises like on the 155, 143 and 182 are completely sufficient. You can change ends properly and put switches in the right spot. Also, the 103 seems to have a far more detailed engine room compared to the 155 that is - for some reason - blocked off despite the work obviously having been put in to model it.
The model of the engine room does not get rendered unless you are inside the locomotive and looking at it. It would have zero performance cost. I mean just think about it, we can have trains with 10+ passenger cars and those all have interiors actually rendered because they are full of windows - yet no performance issues. And we don't have performance issues with those few locomotives that actually have engine rooms modelled either.
Whenever I have to jump like rabit from cabin to cabin in BR103 to switch on PZB it makes me crazy... There is corridor and isn't simultaneously ...
The fact that many of the corridors between cabs are blocked off is very unfortunate. I‘d be fine with a sparsely detailed corridor as long as I can move around in the loco realistically.
It is said that it would take too many resources in making the loco and while running it. If it were up to me, I'd be okay with an engine room with very little detail, general shapes and simple textures, maybe no light so it doesn't detract much. But I'm sure other wouldn't like the compromise. The DB BR 103 has a simplified engine room, which in my opinion still has too much detail, but DTG was worried people would hate on it, so you can only see it and not walk along it, which is super annoying, even infuriating. There was a mod to delete these invisible walls for TSW3, but I don't know if it works for 4 and haven't tried yet. I really wouldn't care how it looks as long as I don't have to jump out every time to change cabs. But I know some people are really obsessed about every detail, and which ever way the devs go somebody will complain.
Whoever is saying that is lying. We have countless of passenger cars and EMUs with full interiors. Locomotive engine rooms would not take any more development time or computer resources to do.
I wouldn't say lying. Also, I don't think it's completely wrong. It was Matt, in several streams. And I don't know his priorities. But I do genuinely believe he loves this game and is doing his very best. But I do admit that I am regularly not pleased with design decisions by him and DTG in general.
I do like Matt (and the whole team) - but sadly they have been caught lying plenty of times on here and on streams. So I would take everything they say with a grain of salt. They often make up fake excuses on the spot instead of admitting that they just couldn't finish something because of deadlines or interest. If any of them is reading though, no offense. I wouldn't want to attack or hurt anyone. But I do believe more honest communication would be nice.
It would be cool if we had modeled engine rooms. It's a bit odd that this feature is so inconsistent with some trains having it but others not
The BR 103 corridor was quite the mystery to me, can clearly see it’s fine and passable but no access… corridors should be part of the trains !
If a feature isnt being utilised by the majority of the player base and the Devs time can be used better to work on features which get more use in general then the should spend the finite time they have on the latter rather than the previous. Not saying that's the reason behind the lack of corridors but it's a possibility
If such unimportant things as the heating on the BR 103 or BR 110 can be realised, then the corridors should be even better. I think the corridors are a more important feature than a heating system that starts to glow.
TIP for DTG - there should be at least command like: "move to cabin 1 " after pointing the inner doors...
