Arosa Streaming First Impressions

This is a really weird mindset to have. I buy a route that INCLUDES a freight car... but I have to buy another DLC to make use of that asset in timetable which should've been used in the first place? NO!

 

At what point does ‘bad’ become ‘unacceptable’? In my eyes that screenshot is getting a bit too close to the latter.

Who remembers when ‘Gouraud Shading’ became a thing in the early 90’s? I know it’s a bit of an extreme example, but when I look at that screenshot from last nights stream I see F16 Strike Commander from 1993






Tell me that that second screenshot doesn’t resemble some of the distant scenery in TSW? When we have the good (to name a few; RSN, SPG - easy to forget how good this looks, ECW and seemingly Clinchfield judging by the screenshots) I don’t get how this can be deemed ok?

 

I’m still happy, I didn’t have high expectation for distant scenery. The architecture looks good to me and the train modelling looks fantastic. I anyway got extra discount on my order as I still had a voucher from filling in a survey.

As for freight services. From the research I did so far, there are no regularly scheduled freight services. Freight is scheduled on an ad-hoc basis and is generally just added to a passenger train. Stand-alone freight trains are run only when required. So it’s realistic operation that they are not in the timetable. But in my opinion it wouldn’t have hurt to put a few in or even just randomly added a wagon to passenger services.

I will drive mostly in the snow. I think that looked a lot better at the end of the stream. Ultimately I’m looking forward to the route. I’ve been there a lot so it’s one I know. Will I play it a lot, probably not. Enough to get my money‘s worth out of it, but there are basically only the two variations Up and back with variations for request stops. So I don‘t see myself working through the whole timetable.

 

From what I've read of the line the freight wagons are usually hitched to the passenger services even today with the EMU
https://www.albertbahn.hu/english/railway-photos/switzerland/rhb-arosa-line-chur-arosa
Maybe Rivet could look to adding in either scheduled or random freight wagons into timetable mode as this seems "proper" for this route
And of course then you'd need the timetabled handling of the wagons wherever they disattach from the passenger train

 

Yep, wagons are frequently towed as part of the passenger service.

This however would mean that the timetable would need more involvement than copy-pasting for the entire day.

Once again it's a real shame that the service mode is a let down (if only Rivet learnt from the 204)...

A half dozen extra moves for the freight wagons would have sold this to me. But having a timetable full of "A-B runround B-A runround" and repeat means that this route is far less interesting operationally.

 

You can't do it THAT simply. If they were just a part of the train, you'd run around them on one end, have them in the front and it would add nothing. You should pick them up somewhere, bring them down to Chur, maybe have another loco handle them there and you take another set back up the mountain to the various sidings.

And this is also a big thing - we don't need all services with them. Put them on a couple and it's fine. BR Class 31 has 3 passenger sets on TVL with the dead C101s and it does its job. Have us bring 3 pairs of freight cars down from different sidings and 3 up, that's it.

 

Careful with that "relaxing" phrase. We don't yet know how tight the timetable is.

 

I entirely agree. The 31 didn't bring many services, but it did bring a variety of different services. This is why I think the 31 is far better value than the 20.

Rivet, please in the future consider adding more variety to your timetable mode. Whilst I imagine it's too late for Arosa, please learn for the future... In my case, this has lost you a day one sale.

 

This

 

I tis just a beer more than buying a second clas ticket for a return journey for one day.

 

There is a lot wrong with the HUD related to direction. I created an issue for this some time ago. It may help if you all support this issue. Just fixing this gradient issue for Arosa does not solve anything.

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/direction-dependent-aspects-in-the-hud.34341/

 

In this case I would open one during the ascent or descent of my trip to Switzerland.

Usually I don't cry too much about games, I'm from the 70s and have been playing since 1981 on the first consoles so I think it's good performance and graphics.
I have known much worse, notably on amstrad CPC with cassette or on the Atari 2600 with pong.

I keep saying that for me TSW2 is a moment of relaxation and that I will expect nothing more from it.

 

The absence of freight in service mode for me is a huge disappointment: more than the distant scenery issue

 

I quite agree. The distant scenery could be improved, but operational things mean so much more to me personally.

 

I mean: I don't know what people were expecting with distant scenery. To me distant mountains in MSB or RSN doesn't look much better than in Arosa Linie

 

Till I don´t have the DLC I won´t judge it but initially you have a way to control the distant scenery detail:

r.LandscapeLODDistributionScale
foliage.LODDistanceScale

The first one increases the terrain mesh detail ratio with distance (above 1) but this is very demanding in terms of performance. In routes like LGVM it could ruin the overall performance due to high train speeds. Maybe here is possible to go with values 2 or 3. The second does the same for trees. This is normally not so demanding for performance, so you could go with 4 or 5 values. The problem with distant ground textures is that the less detailed LOD appears to be always a flat texture (the typical standard green we see on mountains) in most routes. When you come closer to terrain near the tracks then you could see cultivation details on fields, mixed textures and things like that. Maybe they just need to allow that lowest LOD includes more details or even disable that LOD directly, so that the intermediate detail LOD is used instead also for distant ground.

Unreal also supports photoreal textures, if they want to use them:

Create a Photorealistic World in UE4 - YouTube

Cheers

 

I haven't looked too far into how it's handled in real life, but if in real life there are sidings and the wagons are shunted or otherwise coupled onto the rear of the passenger cars (which is what it looks like in the pics on the website I linked) then this could be replicated, and when they're dropped at the end of the line or wherever that happens could also be replicated.
Doesn't have to be "simple", but unless there's a major reason NOT to keep it simple...

 

You can see a lot of sidings throughout the whole route. Nearly every station has a siding for one or two cars. That's why you usually just throw them on the passenger service. And if according to Jasper there's no reason not to have them... well have them!

 

It's the "throwing them on the passenger service" part that I don't know about, does the passenger service reverse onto them, is there a shunter that put the wagons on the back, is there some other mechanism...

 

This is how I feel the stream went. This is the rivet site vs the stream....

 

ThE MoUntAInS On RSn aND MsB lOoKED sO mUcH BeTteR
Yes they do because they are little bumps (not even hills) compared to the 1000m + high Mountains.
This is something completely different, only because a little hill looks quite decent in other routes, tall Mountains won't.

Edited by DTG Natster

 

Let’s hope that it’s possible for modders to add some trees to the background scenery like they were able to add the fencing in SEHS. I don’t see how anyone (unless you never go to external view, but still) could not be bothered by the bare mountain scenery. This isn’t just one mountain or one portion of the route. The ENTIRE route is mountain. It’s Switzerland, that’s literally the entire country. This line is just driving 25km up several mountains from Chur to Arosa. The irony here is that Rivet were actually known for their top notch Swiss routes in TS classic, so I don’t know what happened with TSW. Like I said before, it can’t be entirely related to optimizing performance. Spamming 2D trees on the mountains would even make it look better than it does now.

 

I think the lack of trees is to mantain good performance on consoles ... sadly everytime it's always the limiting factor in TSW DLC

 

The 'quality' of this stream even overshadowed the 'quality' of the distant landscape...

Criticism against Rivet is not well tolerated by everyone here, but I think they should stop being surprised.
Today I'm trying to watch it a second time, but I'm in pain. For me, the presentation of a new route is always a celebration.
I don't care whose fault it is that something went wrong again. This is another setback and that's it.
Jamie, have mercy! I know you're a great guy, but you can't do that

After that, the overall impression is as it is, no different.

 

Having just returned from Skyrim I wonder how such an old game can have such excellent mountains at decent draw distances.
I'm sure Rivet would loved to have had better scenery and can only assume that performance was the limiting factor.
That said I would have chosen an easier route to start with.

As the inclinometer, it's almost irrelevant as it's uphill one way downhill the other.
The fun will be in the guessing.

 

That was my reaction watching the stream last night. Just look out the window, it’s obvious.

But this is quite an old bug now and it really ought to be fixed.

 

I had an Amstrad CPC464 back in the day; I know just what you mean!

 

Maybe DTG just need to buy a good external video capture device to be used for the streams instead of reducing the game quality just to get better performance during them. The higher the shown quality the better for sales I guess...

Cheers

 

Your source is?

 

The source is in the source. Mr. Rivet mentioned something during the stream. Somehow, almost at the beginning.
I don't know English well, but it sounded like a 'compromise'.

 

i was all for buying this route as i though this would be nice to view around while relaxing and driving.
But now im 50/50 in buying it, ill maybe waiting for the sales again. ill have another look at a stream instead of a Dev build and can you stream this on a console instead of a PC

 

What are we optimizing for? PS2 and Xbox 360 or a PS4 and Xbox One? We're talking about 2D trees here not 8K textures

 

There is one thing that bothers me though, is that on the screens there are more trees than on last night's live!
So what?
-the game was set to medium quality?
- Was it a console version?
-Screens are misleading? (false advertising?!?)
-Jamie's PC is not powerful enough to maintain decent live and the game at its full graphics? (in this case change quickly because it was not possible as direct)

In any case the live was horribly jerky, even though the FPS counter indicated 60 the quality of the live was really bad.
So even if a few trees are missing it accentuated the "crap" effect of rendering the line.
In the end, it is not very direct.
Jamie is nice but his vacation does not interest me, I wanted to see a good live and it was not really the case.

In short.

That's also why I still pre-ordered last night, I want to get an idea myself by playing and if it's not good I'll get my money back.
I have 2 hours to test the road with steam (thanks to steam for that matter)

I hope that tonight for the Clinchfield presentation we will have at least a very smooth live.
I expect this road a lot more than the Arosa and I will be ruthless with DTG.
I love the USA too much to let "LOVE" pass, especially on a historic road like this.
As the Americans would say:
I want value for my money, and I want top made in the USA.

 

Jamie has a new PC, not the one he used for previous streams. His new "potato" as he calls it is more than capable of doing live streams. He's done quite a few since he got it and each stream has been fine.
The issue last night was with the restream service. It has been playing up for weeks (last week when Adam was streaming, the audio lag was so bad they turned off the cameras).

As for screenshots/game images it's called artistic licensing. If you actually read the posts on the forum/website you clearly see that it states that it is in development and images may not represent the final product.

 

Will I be the only one gazing into the distance tonight to compare rivet vs dtg?

 

I'm one of those crazy people who actually own everything TSW. Yeppers, I own it all. Bought and paid for fully legal Steam copies. Sure, I'll never be able to play everything, not even close. I do it because I can. They don't release THAT much, at least not more than I can afford (note: wifey let me buy ). I do it for several reasons. I like to support DTG ( most of the time), I like to have variety so if I feel like trying something new, I can, and also, it's a sort of a collector thing, I suppose. It's a hobby, not just a game, and as far as hobbies goes, not a very expensive one when compared to other hobbies I have had in the past like old muscle cars, custom built motorcycles etc. (some I still have).

That said, and after looking at the stream again.. I'm not touching this one. Not even with the proverbial ten-foot-pole.

The train look awesome, interesting loco, and probably great to drive. Interesting signaling system too. Cute stations etc.. However, I will not spend a nickel supporting releases looking like this. This is 2021, and I feel, well entitled even, to be able to expect something looking better than games I played 15 years ago. I know some argue it's all about the gameplay, and yes, gameplay is extremely important too, but so are the visuals. We hear the word immersion mentioned a lot, and I'm all about immersion, in train games as well as in other games, but looking at what we were shown yesterday...my immersion just boarded an express train, and went south at 320 kmh.

 

It’s just not good enough. This “Switzerland’s really clean” malarkey is no excuse for poor texturing

 

Todays Stream with Matt and Sam is not much better Just sayin'...

 

Hopefully there will be another streaming before release of Arosa...

 

So seeing Clinchfield this evening I just wonder if there has been some tech that is unavailable for rivet or if there are some other deciding factors int erms of foliage for them.
My lord, chlinchfield is absolutely loaded with trees and even though I have barely any interest in that, I almost want to buy it for the feeling of driving through the woods.

Well Arosa... Is it because the game has to load more tiles due to distant mountains than other routes, which then hinder the amount of trees seen? And if not - how are the chances of improving the scenery after release? I don't think that will ever happen, so that leaves a bitter taste. Arosa is so close to being perfect, just the distant scenery and the lack of usable freight wagons in timetable bring it down.
Well maybe we are lucky on pc and get a mod for the Chur street textures at least...

 

While that could be a reason, in some parts of the routes right next to the track the trees are lacking. So that can't be the sole reason.

 

However, much of that work is handled by shunters, not the mainline Ge 4/4s and Allegras.

 

It wasn’t the trees that worried me, it was the rock textures.
Just compare Arosa’s with the Clinchfield ones.

 

These are two screenshots from yesterday's Clinchfield stream. You can't say those mountains in the background are close. Yet they are densely populated with foliage. Even with LOD pop-in and a less than perfect quality stream, the difference is night and day. In my opinion, this is the illusion that would be needed on Arosa Line and this is what I expected honestly. The difference is staggering between the two pieces of content.

 

It looks pretty special to me. Can’t wait to play it!

 

I completely agree with you, DTG has just exploded everything with the Clinchfield.
D-Day Purchase.

It is sure that there are trees everywhere, but it is also their game and they have been working there for 3 years now.

I am a little disappointed for the Arosa but ...
I still take the Arosa to support Rivet, I have the means to take both routes.
Anyway I have all of the DLC on TSW, I'm a compulsive collector, I want everything to never get bored.
I have of course a few lines preferred but I play with all the DLC in general.

 

I was shocked by the Arosa stream as well - not by the technical problems (FPS) but by the (distant) scenery design. It looked partly worse than comparable TS2021 sceneries!

To me it gave the impression of a half-finished dev build. Not only the strange tree distribution in the distance, but also the horrible washed-out green textures from the year 2005 - it doesn't look like that in any mountain range in the world, and certainly not in Switzerland (I know the area). GrayDawg ´s screenshots show that impressively.

Sorry, but this is a complete failure for me. Zero immersion. I've bought every TSW addon so far and always had fun with it. Even if the graphics were sometimes not optimal, it was always good enough and DTG has also really improved steadily (best example: Clinchfield!). But what Rivet has delivered here... I can also play Microsoft Trainsimulator instead. Sorry for the harsh words but I can't support this financially.

It's 2021 and the game runs on Unreal 4. If the technical limitations were really so massive that I (as a developer) could only deliver so little, I would postpone / discard the addon. What use is the most detailed train if the the landscape looks like Omsi or Zusi.

 

There is certainly a noticeable difference. I am not even interested in Clinchfield but I might get it as the screenshots are very appetising.

As for Arosa, I was very excited for it, it has a lot of positives but the more I see those screenshots of the bare and very basic mountain ranges I shall wait for now. I will see what people actually say about it when they have it up and running on their own machines and see what screenshots look like then and what the feedback is.

 

Dtg is the first studio to make advertising which doesn't want us to buy their product
And I am bit afraid by the lack of improvement with the new lines.
Still the same problems and the same feedbacks after streams, after purchases etc.

 

It isn't their product!