It happened again, yesterday's preview of the new Harlem route showed that the track sounds are virtually inaudible. They are definitely there, but something that is so significant and representative of these trains should be far, far more noticeable. Even LIRR had better track sounds, at least until the update to TSW 2 broke them. There have been quite a few criticisms of this in other threads. I particularly with the track sound I heard yesterday I refuse to buy this DLC because I know it's something that's going to prevent me from enjoying it. In the time I have been reading these forums, I have always seen that the community has responded very enthusiastically when loud track sounds have been implemented, and very critically when they have not. Among other things, these sounds are something that make the trains so special and unmistakable and that's why any fan or lover of the railway world (which I imagine most TSW customers and developers are) value them so much. So, one thing I find very hard to understand is why DTG doesn't try to implement these sounds in the right way. Given the reaction of the community, it should always become a priority, shouldn't it? They always read the forums and say they always take our opinions into account, so it doesn't make much sense that they make the same mistake over and over again. It's not about specific sounds of a particular train or locomotive, not even a horn which are very difficult to record and even more so in times of a pandemic like the current one. They should just implement the ones they already have, and get some good mixes. I don't see the excuse here for not doing it, nor do I think it's that hard to make the community happy. Or maybe it is, I don't know. But I've never heard from DTG an explanation about this particular problem. That's why I open this thread, to try to clarify this issue, maybe we will even get some response from DTG in this regard, why they neglect this so many times, which is fundamental to enjoy an immersive experience? And I'm sorry to make an example of another developer, but I'm going to do it. TSG is a very small team, but they always implement these sounds well. Those who have enjoyed their work will know what I'm talking about, G6 is amazing for example. Also BR 101 or the more recent BR 612. If a company with much less resources than DTG can do it, I'm sure DTG can also do it and take more care of these details.
A good tsw experience in sound is coming from 5 main points, which increase the immersion significantly: 1) Traction Sounds (The actual noise comming from the engine / Traction Motors) 2) Brake Sounds (Pneumatic sounds, rubber sounds etc.) 3) Track sounds (Flange, Joint, junction sounds and the noise of the typical train characteristic) 4) The sounds of the top part when bogies are moving, or sounds causing stress on the frame 5) Inside Cab Button and lever sounds If one of them is missing, it will drop the driving immersion down worse than wrong sounds ever could do it. The good thing here, the sounds are not missing, they are actually just too silent, which can be solved by a mod. I asume DTG has changes in employees too, so they are for sure all well software programmers & developers, but also the entire train knowledge behind their products is a real challenge in my opinion. My favourite example is Rivet with the 1938 tube stock. Actually a really nice train i cant enjoy because its sounds, takes away the entire immersion based on its pure silence when driving it. While TSG is on the top notch side aswell when it comes to sounds, i have to say dtg has also very impressive products soundwise. The Cl.33, cl.20 and many other of the uk diesels are well done. So with the new m3a and m7a, they have to tweak the volume, to a way its immersing like a typical US Metro North train. *Post edit: Actually the Cl.52 is one of the best UK diesels dlc from the sound and the driving experience. Even without sitting in a real cab, the player gets the impression of being in that loco. I think DTG is on a good way, they put a lot of effort into sounds with last dlcs. Also the 377 and 387 i can enjoy despite the missing flange Noise. So as my conclusion, dtg can still improve their audio, but my annoyance over the harlem route lenght is way bigger.
Matt did reply and wrote this to me " PegasusLeosRailwayFanatix listening, and will see what can be done but I don't expect anything to change before release at this point now."
If only the team like Matt and the Audio team know how this is the most important immersion feature is to us as a community. I thought that those people who are creating these trains should know that track sound, or like you said flange sound is one of the top more important sounds that ether break the game or not. I mean this is the most common knowledge that someone who creates a train should know that the sound of the train should really sound like the train but most important the track sound as well. Right now all of the TRAIN IN-GAME Almost felt like the train is not on the track rather like not on anything basically it's hovering because of the track sound. They should already know by now that train sound on track should be in the game. What were they thinking that train magically float on the rail with no sound? Sorry if I am being rude to the community and the team but I am trying to express my feeling here. I really do hope you know where I am coming from, and trying to make a point here, because this has gone way too long already, no matter how good the team creates these new routes and trains, they forget the ONE Most Important Sound and that is the TRACK SOUND (FLANGE). If only the poll function was still here, I would have started a poll to see how many people would vote for this.
Do you know which modder knows how to edit the sound file? I know that ItsYA165 is one of them, and he collaborates with Bescot
Well they did get rid of polls because they were being "abused." If you made a poll, some people would accuse you of using it to drive your own narrative or bias about a certain issue. Frankly those people who would say that could've just ignored a poll. Not so difficult to do in my opinion. But anyways you are correct. This game has been out for 5 years. This like track noise is a key part of immersion. Not every route has continues grinded rail. That should be something that should be a key part of any route. What I find odd is that boston sprinter seemed to have the track noise done well but since then it's somewhat gone backwards. Why is it when an improvement is done to a route, it doesn't seem to be a confidence that it would feature on future routes such as track noise. Lack of consistency seems to be a problem with this company which is a shame because they do have passionate and talented people who do a good job in alot of areas but it seems that talent doesn't get consistently shown in other dlc's for some reason. That should change in my opinion
I don't know which route in the game has good track sound? I think the current LIRR Have Track sound, and Boston but don't know about the rest of the route in games. Can someone find out?
Can’t you find out yourself? There are loads of videos of people playing the game, all the routes and all the trains, all over youtube. I’m also assuming you have the game yourself. Load it up and have a listen. Any DLC you don’t have you can watch online.
Yes, as some of you say, they have done a very good job on some occasions. That's precisely why I don't understand why it's so difficult for them not to do it all the time. They know the importance of these sounds because they love trains as much or more than any of their customers. Do you know anyone more passionate than Matt, for example? It doesn't make sense that they try so hard and it's wonderful on some occasions and so disappointing on others. There has to be a reason why there isn't a minimum standard of quality with these sounds and it would be nice if they would share it with us, as they have done with so many other things. An example of what I'm saying: The 314 track sound in Glasgow is wonderful. On the other hand, the 313 which was later launched, has not been included the sound of the wheels screeching in the curves. When I heard it I couldn't believe it, these two trains are very similar to each other, so these particular sounds should be too. They just forgot them? I definitely cannot understand these irregularities
The only Modder i know is "london midland" who made the aws volume mod for l2b. Ask him to look into the track sounds of the harlem line, before its even released and fix dovetails lazyness, would embaress me to be a DTG customer for all tsw products. It just cant be that paid products have to fixed by good modders. They spend time and effort too with the main difference of not seeing any cent. Same situation, where "the shotte" fixed the entire 44cw of skyhook, and sh still managed to have the rear boogie wrong around after the update. DTG gets the cash, i dont see any reason to take them out of the resposibility. If for some reason we see that this remains unsolved, its easier to make the existing soundfiles louder, than implement complete new sounds, since probably no modder has the simmugraph tool.
Track sounds are critical. Metal on metal, especially on bends and across points is not quiet. They are noticeably absent (too quiet) in the Harlem Line DLC based on the other nights preview. When TrainSim-Matt plays the route for the first time, I don’t understand (him being a train enthusiast) why he is not challenging the audio teams and why he is happy to show a route knowing the feedback that will be given.
I fear we will never get consistently great sounds in TSW2. I briefly dipped into TS the other day and went for a 37 thrash along NWC with a set of rake MK2's all with AP sounds, WOW, pure heaven those sounds, then I went for a spin in the TSW2 Class37, dear god, the difference in sounds is night and day. Slightly off topic, I notice in RW Enhancer2 they have incorporated sound announcements for stations in TS, looks good from what I've seen/heard via their demo.
Additional to a good audio mix, it would be nice to have more audio options in the settings, to level different sounds to taste. Like environment ambience, engine sound, track noise, safety alarm etc. This way everyone can have it like they want.
The lack of consistency is ultimately what will cause TSW to fail. Yes, some routes will be better than others, however the railway basics (ie the train actually sounding like it’s on the tracks) need to be the same regardless. I know that ‘railway basics’ is quite broad and covers alot of stuff, but let’s be honest, at some point or other, DTG have mostly implemented all of them. The issue is consistency, someone somewhere needs to have a list of stuff that releases are checked against, stuff that shouldn’t be allowed to fall back through the gaps. TSW 2, the almighty engine upgrade advertised by Matt himself, as the TSW that can do more. Well I’m sorry but each releases seems to do something abit less in place of something else. That’s not really doing more. DTG seem to spend so much time, and so much effort, in making these wonderful new things that we can enjoy, only for us to see them on 1 or 2 routes, then it’s down to poor Adam to have to implement it, and even then we don’t see it. The most laughable thing really is how quickly it’s taken the Rush Hour concept to die, I mean did DTG really not notice that it wasn’t implemented on MNR until that stream? Like OP said, something like track noises is an easy win, it seems DTG just like to do things the difficult way.
Yeah, I keep saying this as well. Every rollign stock should go through a checklist to get them to a standard quality. Because there are trains that are completely missing rolling noise or rail-gap clack, or snow layer for winter weather or headlight flare effect, etc. Standard things like these should be a minimum, because it's ridiculous how some trains wil have them and some do not. Animations also should be checked to prevent things like the Cane Creek locomotive animation issues, the crossing plates not animating on the Sherman Hill SD40 or the countless american locomotives not having properly animated bells.
Yeh matt can tell the audio team to make some changes but I don't get why he basically doesn't especially when he's effectively in charge. There should be a standard when it comes to track noise such as the screeching, the clickety clack, rumble, etc and if a train doesn't have that implemented, he should send it back to the audio team so they can implement it. The BML class 377/387 not having screeching noise when on curves particularly at Victoria should've been a red flag and sent back to the audio team to fix for example. Otherwise the community will have this reaction. He is one of the most passionate people in the company after all. That shouldn't be difficult to do. Unless it's just a case of rushing the product out so that dtg can get money quickly. You can't just dump all the things that could've been added when the route was being built to the preservation crew. I guess the mentality of 'Release now, fix later or never" is still a common practice in the company. Something as simple as rush hour passengers should've been implemented before the stream went live for instance. All DTG would really have to do is change a number in the game file to increase the number of people in the station like PC players can do. That's not difficult at all
The rather ironic thing is, is that the Rush Hour passengers themselves aren’t even anything special. Certainly not how DTG have been marketing it. I believe if you are playing on PC, you can manually input a value into your ini file and set the passenger density yourself. So it’s not like it’s even like it’s a trivial task for DTG to do. No idea how this got past QA (which ironically is the cause of delays to several things) as well as how it was only realised now to be missing. This will be yet another thing added to the post-release fix list which will no doubt take months to be released. It’s silly little things like this which let TSW down.
In a more general sense, the impression I get is that there is a disconnect between successive routes. You would expect that each new route would build on previous releases, incorporating any features and improvements which have been developed. Instead, each new route seems like an isolated effort, not seeming to draw on previous experience. So, when a new route is announced, we can't count on it being an improvement over what's gone before. Will we get animated grade crossings on every new route after SEHS, will Rush Hour features be implemented routinely after Boston? Will any sound and lighting improvements be consistently included? Why shouldn't Harlem be more like BML, Dresden and Boston? Based on what we've seen, it will instead be " Rush Hour Lite. "
There's a lot of features that pop up on a route, dazzle, and then disappear. This seems to be more evident. Every route people ask for Dresden lighting, everytime the question is asked it's a "the team has learned from lukas (I think) and have implemented some of it. I'm beginning to be of the ilk of anything that impacts a gen 8 console is fobbed off because it's the biggest user base. I fear we're on a journey to a name change "train arcade world" for consoles
I think you can only change it after it’s release, you can’t do it before since you can’t download the rout yet, so it would be hard.
Unfortunately my only interest in TSW is primarily British-only DLCs. Even then, it has to be to my taste.
Yeah I understand, your the best, when it come to these sound. Unfortunately there isn’t anyone in US that know how to mod sound in the mod community, I really do hope Matt can really get the audio team to work on the sound before streaming next week, or else It have to be put on Adams team which it’s already backlog by many of the old preservation item, which therefore push this even more back probably till another 5-6 year and we still won’t see this at all. Thanks for trying LondonMidland
Why couldn't TSW 2 Have this as well? This should be brought to their attention on stream tomorrow. We need to make our voice hear.
