I've been in this since MSTS, Railworks, and TS days. I've seen and downloaded all types of content from the beginning. What I wanted a discussion about to our market was about what type of experiences TSW offers since the first iteration. TSW started with Freight, and soon after we got High Speed/Commuter experiences. We did also ended up getting Steam albeit limited for the moment and some unique classic railways/past eras. What are we missing? We got: Freight, High Speed runs electric and diesel, commuter operations, Steam. We don't have the experience of taking a passenger train through the unknown, through mountains and over bridges, along the coast. Railworks and TS, and even modded MSTS gave life to coaches like the Dome Car, baggage, lounge, superliner/surfliner, etc. This would be a Completely new experience to give to the Train Sim franchise. Yes we had them before and there were cool views as a passenger, but to walk around these quite detailed cars and maybe even through the dining car or baggage would be amazing. You have double decker types this would be an easy achievement. I do understand your licensing issues, I do understand the work it takes to make a route, and the proper content to give to the train experience like sounds and other dynamics as well. But can we openly discuss this missing aspect to the love of trains, there's a whole world to riding on a train or even driving one through these long distance routes. How cool would it be to watch the engine puff out fumes from the dome car seeing it bounce around on the rails, or going to those open view balconies of current dual level passenger cars, or any of lines that allow open windows on the doors at the end of each car you could push a key and stick your head out for a view of the side of the whole train. How cool is it to see your train along a curve and see the engine pulling away through the scenery? Alaska Railroad, you partly touched on this experience. (Anchorage to Seward barely does justice. I hope one day you take a ride from Anchorage to Fairbanks) Only freight was done though. Amtrak Superliner, P42's - You have a license for Amtrak and you also have done these models and sounds before. Surfliner, Licensing issue? Models done before. VIA/Canada rail? The whole experience is traveling through the tundra as a rider. What about classic lines behind the F7 you already created? I know there's a group of us out here who have been wanting this different type of content from the regular pattern that's been given since TSW1. Thoughts? Concerns? What's the stance on this?
Id love a rake of Amtrak Superliners, but the issues you have is distances are generally long with stations spread out and services infrequent mostly just one train per day in either direction so gameplay would be extremely limited!!
Via has licensing issues. I think the problem with surfliner is to do with the length and route complexity. For it to be playable, you need 100-200 miles of track and there's a lot of scenery elements since it is a scenic route. From my experience in tsc, the scenery changes often and if you have to do that for the whole route, it's quite complex. Hopefully we see the superliners and the p42
If this was seriously the issue - the modernized follow-up to Train Simulator, a game which is basically 16 years old, a game that can handle the same model and texture quality as TSW and offers almost unlimited route length (just without all the postprocessing UE4 does) - can't handle a route like Surfliner because of scenery changes and route length? This is a good laugh. Which takes me to the conclusion that the real issue with TSW (I do like it though, don't get me wrong) is the cross platform development. The decision to release a simulator on consoles, which are technically restricted, was just wrong in my opinion. If they had concentrated on PC development only, it would all be very different now. (And maybe taking their time for putting out well-tested content like SCS do with ATS/ETS2)... And by keeping things consistent across platforms, the PC development is always restricted to the consoles' lower capabilities - it's just not allowed to run in notch 8 . I can't understand how you would play a sim on a console anyway. Can plug my PC to the TV if I want a big screen.
It's not impossible, but definitely more difficult. Lots of people want it so maybe it'll come someday. But considering the average route length is about 50 miles, I don't think we would get the full route in tsc. Maybe it'll get cut in half, who knows It's not like kassel wurzburg which is the longest route in game since skw's scenery doesn't change much and more than half the route is tunnels. It's much more complex to build stuff in unreal than to use railworks. You don't need to create scenery that extends for miles, lots of the assets are 2d instead of 3d. Don't require a lot of details. There's no 24 hr timetable or simugraph to worry about. You can't just have a low quality route in tsw otherwise people will go mad. And tsw is built for next gen and pc players. Then it is scaled back for gen 8 users. Consoles don't hold things back. They run games really well for cheaper than a pc. Even if it was pc only, it wouldn't have changed anything. Routes wouldn't magically get longer or better.
TSC is not restricted to 2D assets - in fact a lot of routes use full 3D assets. It's up to the dev what he wants to use. Some (RSSLO) stick to 2D vegetation, some don't. And I don't think that the amount of work is a valid point for a company like DTG, being the leader in the train sim market. They're just too fast pumping out DLC - in turn the community is begging for it. So who's to blame?
Wrong on both counts. There is no technical limitation on route length, on either PC or console. UE obviates that, because landscape tiles are loaded in as you approach them and are unloaded behind you- theoretically you could make a route of infinite length, subject only to HDD/SSD storage limits. What limits route length is development time and budget. Every mile of track and associated landscape has to be created by programmers, who get paid; the number of man-hours expended on a project is calculated against the expected revenue the project will generate. And TSW is much more complicated and takes longer to develop per mile than TSC (not to mention MSTS or RW). Ergo, routes are sized to fit under the $40 price tag minus profit margin. You aren't going to see the Pacific Surfliner- not unless DTG decides to launch a "jumbo" line of $100 routes.
I'll let this speak for itself, if you're right, then there's something wrong at this big company DTG is. And consoles are limited, it was even stated by Matt on a stream, in terms of limited texture storage. There's comparisons between TSW and TSC LIRR in some thread. TSC is even more detailed. And does asset building take place in UE editor or established 3D modeling software? For development: It's just how much man hours you're assigning. You could, instead of putting out two routes, release one longer route. People are paid everyday anyway. I won't defend DTG on that matter.
We'll just have to wait and see what dtg decide to do. Anything is possible but dtg are the ones who decide what route gets made and how long, etc
There's no "if" in this equation, there's games on consoles with very large worlds that show they're capable of doing it. Most obviously MSFS runs on Series consoles natively, that does have to stream the world data, but mind you that also goes for PC. Unless you have ludicrous amounts of storage you're not gonna be able to locally host that entire game's data. Another less obvious, but still rather great example is Minecraft on console, that's had the same infinite worlds the PC versions do since Bedrock came out. I'd note includes the Switch by the way, which is way behind PS4/Xbox One in power, and only has 32GBs of storage out of the box. Older consoles might've been able to do it too, but at the time Minecraft came out on seventh gen consoles there were limits on the file sizes of games, as digital releases of big games were still a new thing. I'd note there were 80GB PS3's even early in the systems life cycle, and that I don't believe is much less powerful than Switch. So if that can handle a large Minecraft world, PS3 very likely could as well. Simple fact is with the multiple hundred gigabytes of storage on modern consoles they pretty much have the same capabilities for large worlds games on PC can go for as well. You could use better compression, or reduce asset and texture quality though if that's a huge problem though. There are PS4 games which have been brought over to Switch, which again has some massive storage limitations. A recent example is Nier Automata, which got ported to Switch last year. That game was originally 50GBs, but got cut down all the way to 11GBs on Switch. A bit of a extreme example probably, but goes to show what can be done if that's a big issue for your game. Having said that TSW's on Xbox One and above, so these massive storage limits Switch has aren't so much of a issue. There's lots of PlayStation's and Xbox's running with 500GBs and above, and it's became reasonable to make modern games with files sizes reaching the 100GB mark at times. The sub-10GB sizes of most modern TSW routes likely aren't approaching anywhere near the space limits of most machines. Hell, my TSW install is around 85GBs, and that has a bit over a dozen routes. Meanwhile Final Fantasy 15, a game which is somewhat old at this point, was 90GB+ back in 2015 on PS4 I believe.
So as we have the facts now, there is only one reason why they can do 100 miles on TSC but not on TSW - the Unreal editor? If building a long route is "too complicated" (I don't know if DTG ever stated this or if it is just an urban legend) they should just hire professionals. I think all the answers have been given. So this new game as much as I like it won't ever give us a Stevens Pass experience for reasons, well, figure it out yourselves. Good to have both sims.
I think its time vs profits. IE they can only go so far before a deadline so they have to cut routes short or suffer poor scenery. Cajon Pass's scenery is a good example of a deadline killing the scenery, as the Pass itself is not up to par with the line between Barstow and Victorville.
I was just opening this up because I've read a dozen times about route suggestions, "being too long and complicated" and was curious what really prevents this from happening. It's like you said, Blacknred81 And, yes I know, the timetable is another matter. I know from Zusi3 how difficult that is (and they have timetables with up to 700 services in 12 hours!)
I must be honest it is starting to get frustrating that we get routes a certain length in TSC but not in TSW. If DTG aren't going to build longer routes then maybe look at an extension occassionally. Dresden to Riesa would be more immersive with an extension to Leipzig for example. Extend ECW to Hastings or Ore, even though the route as published isn't exactly long. The new MML, which I know isn't a DTG route feels like it would be better going all the way to Sheffield so you could complete a journey.
Taking broader strokes on the OP title, missing styles of railroad/way… Proper tram system such as vintage Blackpool, modern Manchester Metrolink or Sheffield Supertram. Proper heritage narrow gauge such as Ffestiniog or Welsh Highland. Swiss rack railway. Miniature railways such as Ravenglass or Romney Hythe & Dymchurch.
Blaming consoles is a cop out. The modern consoles at least (Gen 9) are no more technically restricted than mid to high level PCs (other than a few specific situations like the DLC limit on Playstation). I see people streaming TSW from PCs where it is looking and running worse than my consoles, because many people have PCs that don’t match their specs. If TSW was a PC only game, it’s not like they’d only be making it for people with extremely expensive high end machines. You’d still have technical restrictions holding it back, just in the form of the fact that they’d want it to go to a wide audience including people with older lower end PCs. Sims on consoles aren’t going anywhere. Microsoft cemented it by bringing MSFS to Xbox (which actually looks and runs better than TSW while simulating the entire world). TSW issues are not caused by consoles. You might be right if you were specifically talking about Gen 8 consoles, considering the PS4 and Xbox One are about a decade old now. They may hold things back. At the same time though they’ve sold in the MILLIONS and lots of players use them which I’m sure helps bankroll TSW with DLC money. I personally don’t think what limits route length is even technical. It’s two major things: 1. To create a proper detailed route exceeding 100km is a lot of work. DTG’s culture is to pump things out quickly. You even see in some of the routes that are longer (I.e LGV Med) the detail suffers in scenery. 2. DTG I think has figured out that the average player wants services that let them play a route in 45 min to 1 hour. You will notice that for the most part whether you are on a short route, or a long route, services always target roughly 45 min to an hour. Long routes have generally been fast trains, and short routes have generally been slower/multi stop trains. One exception being US freight but even there they’ve lately been splitting services for those (Cajon Pass and SMH).
