The reason I ask is so I and other people can suggest routes for TSW2 that are within the confines that Dovetail can do with a route. I know the longest route is Clinchfeild but can they longer if they want? All with in what a console/pc can do.
First of all welcome to the forum, I hope you enjoy it From a technical side the routes they can do routes that are hundreds or thousands of miles long but from a work perspective they are still limited by how much of the route can be auto generated by the route builder, the longer the route the more time and money it takes to make. When the next version of the terrain auto-gen gets made we should start to see longer routes as more of the route can be made by computer with humans finishing the complex bits. It also comes down to complexity Sam has said that they could make a single track straight flat desert route with two stations 1000 miles long but as soon as you add features such as hills, curves, stations etc the shorter the route has to be TLDR: More complex = shorter, less complex = longer
Essentially it's down to development person/hours rather then technology - especially as they want to stick to the £25 price point. But as production speed increases then you can do more km in the same time. In terms of modelled area each route is similar to a AAA game world, just very long and thin Another factor would be the number of new or custom assets needed - for example if they were to do a Spanish route then they'd need to create a load of buildings in the local architectural style for generic scenery as well as the custom stations. They have bought in pre-made models in the past for scenery but that'll depend on what's available model wise on the pre-made market
Route length isn't an issue because it loads in and out of memory as you're driving through it, in tiles. SO you can have a thousand mile route, but only five or ten tiles loaded at any one time The issues with regards to memory and scenery are more about assets and how many are on screen at a time, how complex they are, how complex the lighting is etc etc whether it be trains, local buildings even trees. You'd be amazed at how many trees there are on each route. With regards to development time you then have to factor in how many assets can be generic (such as trees, rows of houses or apartment blocks) and how many have to be custom (most stations, landmarks etc). The more custom assets a route has the longer it takes to make And then there's the trains...
Technically it would be possible to do the entire Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul- if anyone were willing to pay a thousand pounds for it.
For the TL;DR folks here: From a technical standpoint there isn't a limit. However time and finance are playing factors in the process
DTG have said that they will only find out what the limit is if they ever exceed it and as they haven’t exceeded it yet they don’t know what the limit is. There will be a technical limit at some point.
It's not that DTG can't make longer routes, time and cost prevent them. All in all, just don't want to.
Reasons primarily being the intersection of the practical and the financial. In other words, they can only put so much developer time into a route before it becomes unprofitable to sell it at 25 pounds.
That's great, so that wouldn't be a problem, but why do many layers give problems for Console players for example Hauptstrecke München Augsburg?
Put it this way. Flight simulator has recreated the entire earth 1:1. The only limit is really man power, developer skillset and financial backing... and hardrive space. If they wanted to utilise the cloud then even that limitation would be removed. Can you imagine the possibilities for other games in the future using the same/similar tech that MSFS is using. From a TSW perspective it could mean massive auto generated worlds from the cloud data, and super long routes. Could cut development time significantly, leaving the developers to custom design the tracks and stations, and code the game.
It's because of all the different trains in each tile, if there are 20 trains on the route only 2 or 3 will be loaded at any one time but if there are 60 trains you suddenly have to load 6 to 9 trains at a time which adds a lot of pressure to the system running the simulator. München Augsburg has a lot of trains and catenary in the busy areas so has too many calculations for the console to work out, each train has all of its physics, speed, braking, doors etc whereas a tree is just a tree and gets loaded once and has no other calculations going on behind it TLDR: More trains = more demand, less trains = less demand
If money and time was no object, DTG could make every route on earth, regardless of length. Sadly, as a business the company limits what can be done. Routes are definitely getting longer and as the game evolves, we might hopefully see longer routes still. I do agree with DTG though, is a long route going to be fun? It can get boring just pressing circle to acknowledge AWS etc, so a good amount of variation on a route could be better instead of length.
I think this is why there are a few people talking about the North Clyde route in the suggestions. Its a long route (potentially 75 miles Helensburgh to Edinburgh) but has lots of variations, branches and different terminal points, and varied scenery to keep things interesting. Paddington to Reading got boring really quickly on the HST. Scale it up, London - Scotland express routes would get boring quickly too.
Can you imagine all the bugs and issues if they for example made the whole of the E/WCML? "I got 2.5 hours in and then got stuck behind a red light that wouldnt change." etc etc etc. Thats why shorter routes are easier for game play?
To me a very varied route with lots of branches and different types of services, adverse signals, etc. is a lot more interesting than a 200 mile main line. That being said, I'd love to see some (60-70 mile) mainlines, as long as the traffic on it is interesting and varied, and not 50 minutes of SIFA/DSD aknowledgements.
Yes, they even talked about it in a stream I believe. Sattelite imagery is great for creating distant scenery, but not the close-up stuff. DTG does use autogen for the base of routes nowadays I believe, but they still have to spend a lot of time creating the close-up scenery, which makes something like what MSFS is doing (currently) impossible for TSW.
What? Have you played Flight Sim 2020. Some of it looks better at Street level than TSW. The tech will 100% be adapted in the future to make massive worlds in other game types.
I have - Some of photogrammetry looks really good but other bits less so. While it's a big step forward it's not there yet. and MS have a huge inhouse mapping service to provide the data.
Long routes and variety can go hand in hand though. Look at routes such as hrr for example. That route has with layes Freight, Regional Express and S Bahn. RRO has freight and S Bahn but the two routes are short. Services can be done rather quickly as well. I hardly play hrr because of how short the route is. I rather have a nice long route with variety if needed instead of a route in which services can be done in 30 minutes or less
I have a question to the upcoming route Riesa-Dresden, will it contain LZB for IC and ICE or how fast can the trains go on the route?
