Just a quick note for anyone interested - if you opt in for the beta, you get the new scenery upgrades for one of the routes. Haven't downloaded yet, but the screenshots look v good.
The Diesel Railcar Simulator scenery upgrades have now been completed and fully released in the main game. They represent a massive improvement. DRS has always had excellent physics and operational simulation as well as a useable route and train editor. Now it has great scenery as well. I'd recommend that anyone who hasn't already done so, gives it a go.
The scenery improvements seems really impressive. I've been following drs for a while so I'll probably try it out someday.
It’s on sale on Steam at the moment. £11.72 is a ridiculously low price for what you get, now - and every new route, unit, loco, item of rolling stock and update is free. You get everything in the price and never pay another penny. The amount of work the developer puts into it for what must be a very small return, is astonishing.
I have been playing around in the route editor which is a mixture of powerful - you can quickly populate station platforms, define zones (similar to Sim City/Cities Skyline) and quirky - the track laying is not very intuitive especially trying to lay multiple or parallel lines. Terrain is a bit of a mish mash, there's no support for real world DEM or a mapping overlay and rather than traditional terrain forming as in Trainz or TSC it's done by placing height nodes and adjusting these. All looks very triangular, like one of those early 1990's flight sims with pyramids for hills! Don't get me started on the water, my first effort had it running up the sides of my triangular hills! So a fairly steep learning curve but I think it worth perservering and the developer is very receptive to constructive feedback on the Steam forum. There is also a timetable editor though not touched that yet.
It does look very good although I have never been so keen on the fictional routes. I wonder if the trains will get a bit of an upgrade to match the scenery as I feel now they lag behind a little. I do love it as a sim though, would love to see the rest of the first generation DMU fleet appear at some point.
