I don't suppose you could add VR into the sim as an experimental only branch could you? Have one or two clever people working on that and see how the uptake is and gather valuable experience and data from the experiment at the same time. As an experiment the user expectations will be lower than if it was a full dedicated VR path.
VR represents a complete redesign; not of the graphics, but of the way the user interacts with the train controls and other manipulable things in the world. It's very difficult to design this interaction in a way that makes sense both in VR and non-VR (look at Derail Valley, for example). Unless you abandon non-VR altogether, you're forced into compromises which aren't particularly good either in VR or in non-VR. And since the VR market is tiny, you can hardly do that. Not to say that work on this won't happen, or that it's not being thought about, but it's not a matter of little tweaks here and there: it's basically a new game.
While I don't think we're going to see VR support, experimental or no, anytime soon (if ever), I actually don't think it would require such a drastic redesign at all. All the interactable objects are already defined in 3D space, which goes a long way. If we didn't already have 3D interactable objects I would agree.
SCS Software manage quite well doing this with both their truck sims and as I understand it just one person in their team supports the experiment. A steering wheel with a few programmable buttons work there and I would think for any experiment involving TSW, the keyboard input would be acceptable. Other programmable devices, like a HOTAS, would also suffice for controlling the sim. If VR is on the drawing board at all then an experimental branch would provide valuable knowledge and information for the whole team, even if that information disproves the concept.
yeah, vr and raildriver have been discussed ad nauseum in the community. so far the response has been something along the lines of... we may look into it in the future. I would love to put my headset on and find myself in front of a train in tsw (one can dream, right?) in the same way like dcs. apparently american truck simulator works amazingly with vr as well even though afaik it isnt advertised as such or wasn't even made for it. oh well.
UE4 has a load of default VR functionality available so it would be really interesting to see if/how that could be applied to TSW. Would be awesome to be able to properly look around a cab as you're driving. Outside views might be a bit weird, but I wouldn't have thought they'd need to do much with the control system - you could still have your controller move the pointer in its usual position, but free up the view to the VR headset (maybe), at least on PSVR. Players using keyboards might struggle unless they're able to locate keys blind.
I use VR with MSFS and they use the mouse to control all aspects of the cockpit which works very well; I can't see any reason why TSW 2 couldn't do something similar. After all MSFS wasn't necessarily designed to support VR - it came along some time after the initial game release and I think having VR support would make the whole experience far more immersive. The trouble is, now I've used VR in MSFS, playing TSW2 seems very tame.....