I would like to thank you on behalf of Alex and all the readers of this thread for the invaluable and perceptive translation services that you have so selflessly provided. The official streams are mostly useless to watch. Shallow and pointless shilling with zero actual informative content beyond delivering the predictable message of "Look at this new product. It is amazingly good. Go buy it now..." No critical content, just a constant dreary and monotonous sales pitch with dull corporate "yes" men nodding away in unison as they ruthlessly pursue the only thing of importance : PROFIT. The only reason to occasionally watch is the unintended comedy value of the often Oscar winning levels of acting required by the presenters to ignore glaringly obvious glitches and the ever present awful immersion breaking stutters during a route run.
I don't hate Modern EMUs, it's just that we still only have one first generation British DMU, Two second generation DMUs, a 170. The oldest EMU we've got is the 313. Otherwise it's variations of the 377 galore, the 465 is only playable on one route as is the 700. It seemed we were starting to get a wide variety of new and old rolling stock, now it's just a 377 and the obligatory 66.
All that happened is that DTG copped out. Rather than come clean and say: "We're sorry that our steam products are not up to standard, we'll do our best to fix things on the existing content, implementing the promised features, while also making improvements as we go forward with future steam content" They went with the wrong approach: "Steam doesn't sell, bin it" Steam sells, low quality products do not. You only have to look as far as Train Sim Classic to see there's a successful third party community. It's just a way to side line the truth, pass on the blame and for DTG to feel better about themselves. Nobody's hating modern era routes, if anything does appear to come across like that it's in frustration of the whole situation. You could say we're... *ahem* blowing off steam. I play all content, I just don't like how the variety in TSW's future seems to be rapidly narrowing down. I want steam, I want diesel, I want electric, in a mixture of time periods. That's the secondary point of this thread, steam getting the chop sets a negative precedent for those who enjoy historical content.
Absolutely. Done properly, modern EMU's can be fun. However DTG don't exactly ace at those - we have the forthcoming 380 with its narrow letterbox window and most of the various fleets for the UK have very poor sound, notably the Class 700. And not being able to correctly source sounds is an oft trotted excuse for those products too, so no reason to rule out steam traction on those grounds. A few £100 bunged in the correct direction would get you access at a heritage railway then get in a sound engineer who can extrapolate and synthesise the low speed recordings to match what's needed according to any archive footage with the loco at speed.
Sorry, bad footie reference...VAR is the video assist referee that is used in the Premiere League (and elsewhere) at their football (soccer) games to aid the ref and assistants in making correct calls on the field. VAR's made so many questionable, controversial, decisions this past couple of seasons that fans and teams (Wolves, for example) have been wanting it removed.
Very well put. My thoughts exactly. As my broken record says: As the market leader, DTG should be building TSW into a complete train simulator, not this ever- narrowing iteration it has become. I believe that the emerging competition to TSW has come about partially because of the gaps that have developed in the game. The potential of the original TSW and TSW2 has not been realized and has been forgotten by the current crop of managers.
Thanks for confirming what the VAR is. My fault for not following football very closely these days (or rugby and cricket for that matter either). TSW is dying fast for me, the current sale has helped but along with SimRail, TSC now dominates my train simming time. London to Dover and Ramsgate for free was irresistible even if the 375 is quieter than its TSW sister (that can be remedied by subbing in the 4CIG or 4VEP). Southampton to Bournemouth also going for a song which just happens to have scenarios for the Bossman Clan Line. In fact with confirmation that MSFS 2024 is coming out in November, the 200+ Gb that TSW currently occupies might be finding a new tenant. Though hoping by then to have sourced a new PC as this one can’t be updated to Win 11 and the end for Win 10 is officially nigh.
Im still running TSW on a 15 year old pc on windows 7 . Watched the steam red box countdown, but actually its still working lol. "Windows 7 will stop working in 0 days..." By the way tsw is running very smooth without stuttering. Just replaced the graphics card and ram to 128GB, i guess the board doesnt even support that. On top changed to ssd.
Main concern will be no more security updates for Win 10, particularly using the PC for banking, e-commerce etc. Also will this new MSFS be Win 11 only?
I spent yesterday afternoon formatting my C:\ drive and reverting back to Win10 x64 Pro. I used a work around from YT last September to install Win11 on this unsupported pc. All legal as i own the Pro licences for Win7 and Win10. Same as you Vern i am saving hard, to replace my Mobo, CPU and Memory. Cannot afford a new graphics card yet. I didn't actually see much point in Win11 Pro over 10 Pro. Apart from the fact 10 is out of support next year.
Yes, it's unfortunate that PC's and their components age so rapidly and that aging seems to be accelerating. My PC is only 4 years old but it already seems to be behind the curve. My main SSD is rapidly approaching capacity with huge TSC and TSW installations as well as all the other games and programs I use. And my RTX 3080 feels ancient already. Given current prices, I figure it would cost north of $4,000 to replace it, so it will have to last at least a couple more years. I could upgrade it, but in the US at least, the cheapest way to get a new M2 drive plus a 40xx card is to buy a whole new machine.
Without getting into the sorted details, Yes it can be costly to upgrade/replace a PC and or its components, I am no rich man, and at one time I did spend a fair amount of duckets on building a PC, which would have been my third but that is over 20 Yrs. My current PC "PowerSpec" was purchased as an open box + warranty, for a little over 1300.00 + Tax and all I had to buy extra really was the power cord, I'm still paying off a little each month and even upgraded my GPU via warranty cause of A single fan going bad on the other GPU. "This is not advice" but if you have a MicroCenter in your area or online, give it a go and see what they may have, mine was in-store only, I used/use a very popular online payment option its name starts with AF___. Also as I have been informed Inland is a Microcenter brand. While trying to remember the name this just so happened to turn up in my search for those who like to put the pieces together.
I put a semi modest spec through PC Specialist and it still came back at £1200. Hoping when I do go to take the best of my 3 mechanical hard drives over to the new PC for extra storage, but the cases I was looking at don’t seem to have many drive bays compared to when I bought this one, 11 or 12 years ago. Graphics cards still seem to be the expensive component, no point in having anything less than a RTX in a new build and while the price gouging is less than at the height of the crypto farming nonsense, still quite pricey.
I have found the RTX 3080 spot on, been able to play TSW on Ultra settings in 4k, MSFS in 4k on fairly high settings, Duex Ex mankind divided on high settings in 4K and lately Resident Evil Village on high settings. The problem is that most PC games on the day the come out can only be run by top spec Machines if the highest settings are chosen. I quite happily sit a few years behind the latest spec as I dont want to have to explain to the other half that I have bought a PC that is the cost equivalent of some house renovations or a 5 star holiday. MSFS 2024 is on the horizon that will no doubt need something super power to get it running on high spec. I will wait till after day one to see what similar PCs to mine acheive with it as to wether I decide to plunge in.
I am looking at £829 for an Intel combo, mobo.cpu and ddr5 mem or £699 for a Ryzen cpu, mobo and ddr5 mem. My pc is 10 yrs old so i am out of the loop as to what is good for gaming and not so good. Or even if it will fit in this old ATX form box.
Just played around with that PC Specialist and that is crazy what they want and no GPU or integrated.
I know we are veering wildly off topic now, but seems PC Specialist have moved to the pricey end of the market since associating with Currys. Overclockers UK are another potential supplier but I have had issues with them in the past over quality, including some years ago a motherboard where the CPU slot pins were damaged but they refused to accept a RMA and insisted I had damaged it trying to put the CPU in.
I always go to Scan.co.uk Vern. Might not be the cheapest but they are reliable. Oh and back on topic, i installed TSW4 without all the rubbish that came with it. Just my Crewe, Pennines and Darlington routes. Ran the 8F, which is an absolute joke. I bought my youngest grandson a Lego trainset last xmas, which is much more realistic.
I build my PCs from components. I also usually upgrade one major part of it at a time - so the outlay at any given moment is not so great - and keep the old components as spares. Eventually I have enough spares that I can rebuild the original PC from them. This cycle has repeated several times over the years. It takes some judgement as to which component is presently the limiting factor, but this is usually not too difficult to work out. As a case in point, my "main" PC is now a Ryzen 5800X3D with 64GB RAM and an RX6750XT. A few feet directly above it - on top of the desk rather than below - is a Ryzen 1300X with 16GB RAM and an RX480. Tucked away in a dark cupboard is my old Radeon HD 7770, just in case I need it.
I have used Scan for parts in the past, so might see what a system from them comes in at. Looking at OCUK last night their “Graphite” gaming PC isn’t bad for £1199 but only comes with one hard drive, 16Gb of RAM when 32Gb the minimum really for gaming these days and no optical drive. At one point I did build my own PC’s but lessening eyesight and neuropathy put an end to other than swapping out the occasional part.
I never buy a complete system Vern, just upgrade components. But this time i have to go the combo route. As my mobo,cpu and mem are not compatible with modern replacements of the same type. Plus i like the box as it is able to house my 3x physical SSD's and 1x HDD and my 2x M.Disc DVD and Blu-ray media writers.
I have thought about that Mike as I do like the case but there is so much that needs replacing figure it’s easier just to get a new build.
The CPU-RAM-motherboard combination is a fairly common set to replace all at once. Typically, at least on AMD platforms, the change of socket needed for a new CPU is mostly due to a different type of RAM required by that CPU. When the old RAM will work, the new CPU can often be put in with just a BIOS update. (Intel is more in the habit of changing the socket for each CPU, every year, even though everything else stays the same.) But replacing that combination doesn't necessarily mean that you also need to replace the GPU, PSU, case, and drives - which is what you effectively do when buying a complete new system. In recent times, the GPU is the single most expensive component, and it's also frequently one that OEMs cheap out on in order to boost the headline specs in other areas. Having specified a basic GPU (or none at all), they will also often include a small PSU that can't reliably support a good GPU that you might happen to have sitting around. These are details that you have to check very carefully when buying a pre-built system, but which are easy to take care of when building your own.
Yes I've fallen foul of that in the past. An otherwise decent machine but a 400w psu which precludes any major update. Last time I bought a PC I specified a 1000w water- cooled psu to future-proof it for potential upgrades. Another mistake I've made more than once is to buy a PC with a case that's too small to accommodate a regular size GPU upgrade.
It's your money Vern you have to do your own thing. Plus i understand what you are saying, less hassle to get something complete. I think i will just about manage myself to fit a pre bundled mobo. With my eyesight and milk bottle reading glasses LOL
