I have no idea if this is bringing light to an actually bad trend of the game, or if I'll just look like a fool who rambles and complains on the internet. I just thought that it was about time that I talked about this trend found in most new Train Sim World routes. It's not something that is absolutely destroying this game, but it really annoys me and kind of makes some passenger routes less enjoyable to play. I'm wondering if it bothers anyone else, because these AI-generated timetables may have even turned me away from wanting a few add-ons. Yep, AI-generated timetables. These have definitely been around for a while, as you can just tell when some stops are too difficult to reach on time with regular driving. At the very least however, older routes using these timetables put in the effort to make it seem like it could be a regular arrival time, by having the arrival times end in a good ol' ":00" or ":30". It may be difficult to reach stations on time, but at least it looks natural. Then we got the release of Boston Sprinter. I'll use the 807 MBTA train to Providence as an example to show what happened to the arrival times. The train leaves South Station at 09:34:00. Arrival time to Back Bay is 09:39:57? And then Ruggles is 09:43:26. Route 128 is 09:52:49. And so on. You see those random numbers at the end of the arrival times? Yep, these arrival times are counted by the second. That's not right, as train schedules usually list arrival times by the minute. It's clear that these times weren't taken from a real MBTA timetable, but rather came from a computer. And since computers can do things better than us, at times it can be quite difficult to stay on time on some services. Doesn't help that there is not much time to save by early arrivals/departures. Another by-the-second timetable was included in the next route, Nahverkehr Dresden. These times were a bit more manageable thanks to the route's passenger trains all being electric. It was still quite an annoyance, since it clearly is a computer-generated timetable. After the Brighton Mainline brought us back to a regular real-life timetable, I was hoping that the AI-generated timetable would forever be stranded in the Rush Hour era, never to be seen again. Boy was I wrong. Here's a list of every new timetable in TSW since Boston Sprinter. Anything listed in red is a by-the-second AI-generated timetable. - Boston Sprinter - Nahverkehr Dresden - London Commuter - 1938 Stock (Bakerloo Line) - West Cornwall Local - BR Class 313 (East Coastway) - RhB Anniversary Collection - Tharandter Rampe - Expansion Pack (S19: Koln-Aachen) My goodness. The Cathcart Circle Line back in JUNE was the last passenger route to avoid this terrible trend. Out of all of these, the Bakerloo Line is the only route that actually makes sense to have an AI-generated timetable, because I don't think that route has a schedule! All of these other routes have actual schedules! What is going on?! Even if you can't get the schedule, have an AI run the route, and then round the arrival times to the next minute! I really don't like this trend. It makes timetables look ugly, and they make it difficult to stay on time. Even the Joe timetables seem to use the AI-generated arrival times! I don't know how different things may be in Germany, but I bet that they have regular by-the-minute arrival times. I really hope we don't see more AI-generated arrival times on the Harlem Line. I can find a schedule with all of the real times quite easily. Real timetables just feel a lot more natural, and these recent timetables just feel ridiculous. I'm curious to see other thoughts. Do you hate this new timetable trend as well? Do you somehow find them better than the real timetables? Do you literally not care? Do I look like a fool for rambling about timetables in the train video game? I'm curious.
No I agree with you whole heartedly. It’s a weird trend. Will be interesting to see if this to the second trend appears in spirit of steam, because that will be a weird expectation.
Wholeheartedly agree with you. AI timetable are a pain in the backside as you can never keep to time on them, especially on javelin Sehs services.
Didn’t Joe say that DCZ uses a real timetable (which he needed to tweak because the real timetable was actually extremely tight)?
Joe said he used a real life timetable, for DCZ and I believe him, there is no way the AI trains can stay on time on the RB30 services. Also Boston sprinter, I believe CactusJuice said the timetable was the real one and I believe I checked and he was right, apart from the arrival at the termini. HERE is the real timetable, you can check for yourself, as I might be wrong. Apart from that I completely agree, London Brighton is such a great driving experience because of the real timetable, you can go slower, find ways to be more efficient, etc... and it's a shame that is the exception and not the rule. I'd argue that it's not always important, for example on a subway or an S-Bahn line an AI generated timetable is fine, but for everything else real timings should be the standard.
Not worrying, not even new... The main thing here is that whoever is doing the timetables isn't checking them, and the AI generation of these timetable is missing a "round up to next minute" inclusion.
At the time, I didn't realise there could be such a thing as an unachievable timetable in real life. The AI generated timings were done as a last resort in hopes that some of it would be achievable. Now that I'm aware, I look for any signs of tight timetables at the beginning of a project. The new services running Köln S12, for example, needed a couple of tweaks but apart from that, it remains mostly accurate to the real thing. I'd like to point out that with this expansion timetable, the task was to add S12. S12 has not yet been previewed. You may notice, though, when you do see the S12 services, the timings are accurate to the timetable, being rounded to 00 or 30.
That's quite strange as the 2022 real life timetable is perfectly fine... not sure about the 2012 one, but it would be quite strange that the BR143/DoStos timetable would be faster than the one made for the BR1440 (Coradia Continental EMU). Although the fact the timetable is correct for SKA just made the pack a lot more appealing to me.
I compared the 2012 timetable with the 2021 timetable and the 2012 was only 1-2 minutes more relaxed. Not really enough to help the 143s. Though they would get to each end Hbf a few minutes early after departing the previous stop ~5 minutes late. Based on how it was explained, I presume the Hbfs are where the timings matter and stations between aren't so important to get right. Only speculation at this point.
This is the timetable I've been using to run the RB30 services, which ends up with a ~10 minutes delta going from Chemnitz to Dresden, some station timings are unchanged compared to the TSW timetable, but some are definitely larger, and even departing at the scheduled departure times from the major stations I managed to stay on time with some aggressive driving on the BR143. I would be curious to try with the Talent - although following that timetable means getting a silver medal I can see some middle stations being less important in terms of timings, so 30s/1m delay wouldn't be a big deal, but I think it would be odd to have trains normally running 4/5 minutes late.
So first thing: Nowadays RB 30 and RE 3 use EMUs, they might be able to squeeze some more minutes out. Your theory about why the real timetables are authored like this sounds pretty reasonable if you ask me, it's still strange. But the RB 30 is really impossible to do how it's done atm.
I agree to. Plus when the setup time for the train is way to tight in a lot of the Routes, it would make everything even tight again. Do we need to raise a request ticket on this issue?
I had my suspicions that Boston Sprinter was somewhat accurate. When I originally made this post, I was expecting to watch one of the in-game MBTA services, and compare how off it is to the real deal. I was surprised to see that when comparing the two, they both gave the same amount of time. So while real life trains have 5 minutes to get from South Station to Back Bay, the in-game trains also get 5 minutes! While it was surprisingly accurate to real life, I still dislike the Boston Sprinter timetable, thanks to those by-the-second timings. It feels wrong. Perhaps it’s just a “mildly infuriating” kind of thing for me. So the Chemnitz timetable is easier than the real thing?! That’s nuts. I saw you say before that while the trains can arrive at Dresden and Chemnitz on time, the intermediate stops are nearly unachievable. That is weird. Very weird. And for the expansion pack thing, thank you. I didn’t realize that the S12 wasn’t previewed. Sorry about that, you did good there. However, the preview did show the S19, which was where I saw the by-the-second arrival times. Were those timings taken from the already existing services from the Rhein-Ruhr Osten layer? I have my doubts over that, as those layers weren’t added very long after the addition of the Main Spessart Bahn layers, which did have regular-looking timings. I’m glad to hear that the S12 will be accurate, but that just makes the S19 from the preview look quite weird.
We are constantly told that DTG staff read all the posts in this forum just a pity they don’t tend to reply. Whilst some players complain about sounds, scenery etc the two things mentioned hear actually ruin the gameplay. I’m sure most of us like to run to time but these two issues make it impossible on several routes. I have said before why don’t DTG standardise the start up time so we get sufficient time on every route. Currently some are impossible to achieve. If these generated timetables are wrong then the practice should stop. I realise Arosa was a Rivet game but it took almost a year for them to change the timetable. Prior to that it was impossible to run to time. It’s very disappointing that we now have the same issue on DTG’s latest release and with many older routes. This thread will probably be ignored by DTG staff or we will get the standard response. Completing a ticket is a waste of time. Finally we were promised regular smaller updates and not seen anything for 2 weeks with the previous update doing little to solve any of the major outstanding issues.
I mean, Joe did respond in this thread, which is a much more direct communication than via the community managers or even Matt.
I'm not too sure why the S19 was shown on the preview. It's the same as what was there when I was given the timetable to expand, I haven't touched them. I did want to completely re-do them but time was against me. I hope you like the new S12 at least.
Well, at least it’s nice to know that you did a great job with the new stuff. I shouldn’t have doubted a Joe timetable!
I have it good authority that some Train companies do actually have it down to the second as part of their timetable in real life as it builds up to a full timetable, I've spoken to train drivers that will have odd clocking on times like 02.13am, it seems weird but it all builds up.
Passengers loading times? In reality, at small stations, the train may arrive late, but depart on time - only a few people get on, usually in a hurry.
I was thinking about if there was a option that you don't get timed loading, but immediate loading and unloading. When arriving at a station, you can choose by yourself when you departs, after 10 seconds or 3 minutes, depends if you are on time or not. (Also a good option for speedrunning )
Good idea - one I've tried already. If less than one second, the instruction auto completes without you/AI opening the doors. Also, if the load time is too short, the NPCs won't have enough time to board so I try not to go shorter than 20 seconds.
Anything else isn't really realistic anyway. Even with 20 seconds most of the time not all passengers can board. At least with a short dosto train (like RB 30).
But it looks like on the DCZ RB30 stops are only calculated with 18 seconds at all, with 20 seconds loading time, and, well, if you watch the passenger flow, you need somewhat between 30-40 seconds...
In fact, if you're late, you take the next one. Decisive are the exiting, not the boarding. And if you dawdle when you get off, you can continue driving.
In real life, when I was a guard, much blowing of the whistle and shouting to encourage the "Monkeys" (Sorry passenger's) to get on the train quicker, when running late, was done. Did not work always, there was always one, who would walk slowly along the platform and wanted "Thier Carriage door and Seat to get on. When we got sliding door stock over slam doors, a few got left behind LOL. Taught them next time to get on the train. The advertised time is when the train "Leaves the station", not the time you get on it. It would be good inTSW if you could close the doors quicker, when running late.
Haha yeah and I've seen videos of people not shutting the doors so the poor guard must walk along and close it for them! You can depart once the loading circle has finished. The departure time is when the load/unload instruction will compete but you can depart before that as long as the circle is complete.
That's still to the minute, and woudl make sense if they're driving the 02:43 service from the depot (ie gives them half an hour to catch up on what's going on on the tracks, any new restrictions, ongoing works etc) What we're talking about is when you get an arrival time of 09:43 and 22 seconds with a departure time at 09:43:52 Timetables may be precise but not THAT precise (in these days of automatic doors there is no doubt somewhere that says close your doors at x time which is 6-10 seconds before the minute, but that would be so the train can leave ON the minute rather than a few second after)
Oh plenty of those, though the enjoyment of slamming the door very hard makes them all jump LOL I was just wondering if they could code something so if you are running late the circle complete quicker if you blow a the horn or something. Just an idea.
What I was wondering about, would it be possible to change the UI display in a way that the seconds at the arrival/ departure times are not displayed anymore? That way you could keep the AI configuration while us users get a more realistic display. At least until japanese routes are released.
I think that it is more that where as if you have minutes, you get a leeway of a minute before it flicks over to the next one making you a minute later. it is is as precise as seconds you have no way of gaining anything. Even if the Japanese manager to do it
I admit the solution would not be ideal, it's more like choosing your own time format where the seconds are not displayed in an excel spreadsheet And before I fiddle around more with my phone autocorrecting every single word because it's not german in desperate search of a proper meaning of my words I shall better give an example : Arrival 14:24:15 Displayed 14:24 Departure 14:24:45 Displayed 14:24 as well Departure 14:25:15 Displayed 14:25 So in my idea all the timings are there with there current issues, yet at least the problem that you don't need to arrive / depart at a specific second would be at least hidden. The circle etc. would not be touched - just like changing formats in an excel doesn't change the Inputs but the way they are displayed
