What I mean is, how are they able to go to different train companies and be given the green light to take photos and sound recordings of their rolling stock and parts of the property that the public doesn't have access to? Is it as simple as money? I'm assuming the team has to take track safety classes for each railroad they will be modeling as well.
Not a DTG person, so this is purely guesswork: They decide to build a route in TSW and get in place what they want from it. Then they approach the appropriate train operating company to acquire a license for the rolling stock, stations and anything else they want/need. If the license is given (of which the terms vary between each one) they then go about setting up sessions to record train sounds, which can only be done when the train isn't carrying passengers. Start modelling the tracks based on Google maps (this isn't how they do it but close enough). A bunch of other stuff such as modelling the trains (they likely take tons of pictures all over to it as accurate as possible. They need permission to access the train they want (sometimes they don't achieve this, ECML being an example where they wanted a Class 800 but only a Class 801 was available). There's probably some stuff I've missed, or that others could explain better but that's a very basic way of putting things.
(I can only speak for DB AG) For everything. What you do/want to do on the DB site you need the permission of the DB/no matter if it's just a photo of wheelset or the light/and for sound recordings, the DB provides the necessary locomotive (if necessary) which takes time./And it's the same with train stations, but maybe DTG also uses pictures from Google/ but how exactly it is here at DTG I can't say but here's a little insight into how rivet games did that with the DB BR204(v100)() start at 03:07
Pretty much as described above. Depends on what level of access we can get really. In an ideal world, we'll talk to the operator and they'll see an exciting opportunity and want to be involved - they'll help organise a trip with us to come visit them and give us access to the equipment and people needed to make it happen. This happened with Caltrain and Metrolink most recently, it's happened multiple times with DB, Southeastern and many other operating companies. On those trips, we'll go with a ton of equipment, take thousands of photographs, attach microphones and then they'll run the trains for us. At Caltrain, we were on a standard revenue service but the engineer was really helpful in responding to requests for how he should notch up and down to help our recordings. Metrolink put two completely extra non-revenue services for us to get our recordings from. Amtrak, we attached gear and then waited with baited breath to see if it was still attached 900 miles later (spoiler: it was, those sounds are on the Acela). When it comes to physics and setup, we scour the internet for information, or we see if we can get it from the operator. If neither, it's a bunch of guess work looking at cab ride videos and gazing at gauges to see if we can determine what's causing things. Usually we can find *some* documentation but often it's incomplete and if it's a more complex system it often makes no sense when you're looking at the gauges. The class 700 is a good example of this, we were only able to get a reference survey to the *training simulator* not the real thing and thus didnt get enough insight ideally as to the underlying behaviours - though we didnt know that until looking into it really closely, as it seems that each vehicle in a 700 is braking with unique brake force rather than it being all the same throughout! We took a best guess based on the info we were able to get, and then tuned it all up to match the evident examples of stopping distances etc so its probably pretty close. If we can't access the trains at all (such as LIRR) then its all railfan photography, railfan insights, comparisons with things we know, occasional engineer insights if a local railfan is able to find a helpful engineer and so forth. Sometimes we can't even find many photos - particularly true of cab interiors or quite often the very tops of locos or the close up detail on the underframe and the team just have to make a best guess (which is usually pretty good, they have had a lot of years modelling trains and can kinda guess mostly what components they're expecting to see etc). It varies wildly, but the team can make a train happen with whatever we get - the quality of the end result varies though as a result. Hope that helps Matt.
Is the rumour true that DTG will be moving offices to Scotland from cozy Chatham (take your wet weather gear), and that Scotrail will be adding graphics to their trains saying "as seen on Train Sim World"?
This is not the thread to be spamming your bug list! There is a set procedure to report these either in the Troubleshooting forum or via the report form. Back OT, when building routes in MSTS at the start I had to buy the Ordnance Survey maps covering the line and plot by eye and hand the grid references which then had to be bulk converted into latitude and longitude then again into the arcane format Kuju used in their marker files. The gradient profile is also fairly essential if you want to make an accurate route along with, for UK routes, the sectional appendix (speed restrictions and operating instructions) and the signalling plan. For historical routes such as my SMJ it became even more challenging as there was nothing left on the ground, some stretches you couldn’t even discern on aerial imagery where the line once ran. Ended up spending a fair amount on books and research material (when the library couldn’t help) to get as much information as possible.
RailSimulator.com has been always in Chatham I mean, rail transport isn't a small hobby or something that is super uncommon - not as big as cars though but big enough that it makes a positive favor towards their company/brand/etc.
I assume they dreamt about the planned route the night before, woke up at the crack of dawn, grabbed their sketchbook and started jotting down the details of their masterpiece. Only to be told by the board of directors that 100 miles for a route build is unrealistic, and a route based in Syria will not sell well.
Would like to echo this question from OP though: How do you get operators to cooperate with you exactly? What is the motivation for an operator to grant you access and give permissions? Is it a money thing? Do they even get a share of every copy of the respective DLC sold? Is money even part of the discussion? Or do they simply see it as a great opportunity for being part of a video game and kind of the promotion of their services/products across an audience which is not only composed of local residents (for example railfan tourists), and money is not a vital thing at all in the cooperation with you? What is the thing an operator makes to say "Yes, we want to cooperate with DTG!"? Especially interesting since we found out quite recently with LIRR 2.0, concerns especially for safety reasons seems to be a strong point against a cooperation or at least restricting access.
I've dealt with Brand Licensing numerous times over the years, though I have no insight into how it works between DTG and rail companies. Mostly, the money is immaterial. The most similar example of those I've worked on was for a domestic appliance company who had a licensing agreement with a toy company. We would get a few pennies for every toy that had our company logo on it. It brought in a few thousand pounds a year for a company making millions, so made almost no impact on the bottom line. Where brand licensing is a benefit is marketing. So, to use the toy example and massively over simplify it, if children were playing with toy kettles and toasters that had our branding, they were more likely to think well of us as a brand and purchase our kettles and toasters when they grew up. For a rail company, having their brand in the game, so long as it is done in a way that is in line with their brand values, can benefit their brand image. It is essentially free advertising.
Exactly. And that is the thinking of passenger rail companies. However, the calculus is different for freight railroads, because they don't sell to or market to consumers. Railfreight contracts are negotiated by businesses, who are not really likely to be swayed much by toys or videogames.
Money might enter into it if a heritage railway was involved. Though I suspect that more likely to be a one off donation than royalties. Anecdotally, as part of the licence Blue Arrow got with the Severn Valley for exclusive rights to put the route in MSTS, they may have had to pay a percentage cut of sales back to the railway?
To offer some gaming example as I understand it the reason why so many brands work with Forza isn't because Microsoft come to them, it's the car companies coming to Microsoft for that exact reason. Similarly I've heard it was Mercedes who came to Nintendo about wanting some of their cars in Mario Kart 8. down to them actually paying them for it I believe. It cannot be overstated how much just having awareness of the brand helps, especially when you're talking games that are selling 10+ million units.
SCS also seem to have excellent relations with the truck manufacturers. Though evident many of the industries and other locations are a bit fictionalised. Run 8 has plenty of Dennys (mmm Dennys) but a fictional Motel 8 chain.
Now probably, especially since trucks like the 49x have been added in at the same time as their real life debuts. But back in the 2010's that certainly would've varied quite a bit, some like Scania played ball from early on certainly. On the flipside as Mercedes Benz was actively convincing Nintendo to add their cars in SCS were desperately trying to get the trucking division licensing to brand the Actros, took till 2015 I believe to sort that out. Meanwhile ATS had so few trucks for quite a while due to being unable to sort out deals with anyone besides Paccar, took till 2020 to finally get Freightliner on board.
I would suspect a very long process of teasing the door.open, finding the right contacts, liaising with them and then finding some commercial terms to get over the line
What if it were (at least for some cases) different though? DTG focusing to cooperate with certain operators more than others because of a variety of reasons. Funny to imagine spokesmen of operators struggling to get a deal with Dovetail simply because DTG either won't to make a deal or react too late so that they started to lose interest in the cooperation.
