Upcoming Release Frankfurt S-bahn: Coming Soon!

I own both platforms fortunately but both have issues.

Both versions should be thoroughly tested in their own environments. It’s foolish to build something on a pc and then test it on an Xbox development kit on pc.

Im not sure what dtg do but the amount of bugs that dlcs release with on console suggests they don’t test it on the actual platform as players immediately pick them up first time.

If there needs to be separate versions then they should develop that way even though it’s essentially twice the management.

People are paying half or more the RRP cost of triple A gaming for these dlcs.

So far since TSW5 release the only worthwhile purchase has been the Dutch route. Everything else has had either bugs, performance issues or unfinished or missing content.

 

There are a few, of course. Trainz is another big one on PC, and Simrail is gaining ground (slowly).

And that TSC looks like FSX is no coincidence of course. Dovetail had a big hand in developing and distributing FSX for Microsoft. That's not to say they share code or assets (most likely not), but the feel is indeed similar.

TSC has the big advantage over TSW that there is A LOT of content out for it. For example, in TSW, you have one Dutch line with two stock types on it. In TSC, about 80% of the country's rail network is present, as well as pretty much all the rolling stock of NS, Arriva and other operators. The same is true for other countries.

Done well, a loco in TSC can feel just as real to operate as in TSW, including simulation of the on board computer systems and the ability to "walk" through the engine room*. Those locos are rare though, with most of the locos being a lot less realistic. TSW pretty much guarantees a good quality loco and lots of buttons and switches to play around with, where in TSC it's very much a case of "your mileage may vary".

Comparing a rail simulator to MSFS202x isn't really fair. MSFS creates a world based on satellite imagery that is streamed from a central Azure server somewhere in the cloud. This is incredibly expensive, and the only reason why MS does it, is because it serves as a way to advertise the speed and potential of their Azure infrastructure (and to a lesser extent: Bing).

Also, if you fly close to the ground in MSFS, you'll see the image quality falls apart quickly. The technique is really only suitable to be viewed from above (like one does in an airplane).

Now, the planes in MSFS can be very detailed and realistic, but that's also the case for TSW.



*In TSC, the walking is done in set camera standpoint increments instead of walking around like you'd do in most other computer games

 

It has been noticed by Lukas. As they have the license, I'm pretty sure it will be added in a future patch

 

The TSC code has nothing to do with FSX. DTG only latterly acquired the rights to sell it and patch up the core so it worked slightly better on more recent hardware and sold under the Steam jacket. It’s possible their failed attempt at Flight Sim World derived some source code from FSX, before the project collapsed. FSX was developed in house by MS and was basically a rework of the existing FS code going back to god knows when.

TSC has its origins in the Rail Simulator programme developed by Kuju in 2006/2007 and published by Electronic Arts. Whether this reused some of the MSTS source code is open to debate but we have to assume Kuju devised their own graphics engine which has been tweaked via Railworks into TSC and now pretty much abandoned by DTG.

 

DTG Harry I hope this is ok to post here, if its not appropiate then you can remove it

I had my first run on Frankfurt S Bahn yesterday afternoon. I was on the PS5 with reduced timetable.
All I can say is that although I am against having a reduced timetable I can understand why Gen 9 has it. I will be doing some more runs & tests again this afternoon (this morning I am job hunting, after writing this lol). I wont say anymore as I dont want to encroach my NDA, But I will stream from after the embargo is lifted on Monday* (other ambassadors are available ), Like I said I am not happy about having a reduced timetable and still you guys paying full price as well. But I can fully understand why there is a reduced timetable. I would also recommend those with a Potato PC (or Gen 9 equivalent PC) to use the reduced timetable as well. Having said that I do quite like the route. Bit of a shame that we have to have the reduced timetable.

*Provided I havent started a new job by then or won the lottery :p

Hentis

 

I definitely get the impression DTG bit off more than they could chew with this DLC, I think if they knew how much of a pain it would be beforehand, this route would not be made.

 

Don't forget the 465, 313 and HST too!

Even so, in my opinion, I don't understand why such a memory-intense route was chosen; Frankfurt-Fulda has already been a major indication of how a Frankfurt route already handles on console, so surely this wasn't going to be a complete mystery.

 

This has been known since the very beginning of TSW5, when there are problems of the same kind with Frankfurt on the route to Fulda

 

These are risks that a company has to take. They already did it knowing that this route couldn't run on 8 gen consoles, but I don't think they imagined that 9 gen consoles would fare so badly. Anyway, sooner or later they would run into this problem, which can affect the future of TSW so much.

Finally I think they have now realised that they have the elephant in the room and seem to be getting very serious about the whole memory and optimisation thing, allocating resources and highly skilled external staff.

I am sure that the hard work that is being done at the moment will be beneficial in the medium and long term.

Despite the discontent that sometimes seems to prevail in the forums, in my opinion there is no denying that DTG and other developers are always trying to make the game better and better. Sure, sometimes it doesn't work out as well as they intend, but I think it would be worse if they didn't try.

 

Don’t really get what they were going for, if you make a product that can’t reasonably be ran by over half your customer base, then there is a flaw in your decision making process. I haven’t watched but I’m reading that even PC performance is poor, do DTG check steams hardware surveys? The vast majority of people are still on GPUs which are on par or worse than current gen consoles.

What’s the point in making anything set around Frankfurt HBF if you can’t replicate the environment to a good standard? Why is DTG still struggling with making optimal assets? Their city building is poor & their building assets don’t stand upto much scrutiny, so I don’t get why the asset size is such an issue. I’m guessing it’s nothing more than time crunch, an asset is needed, it’s built & then it’s put in the game, with no effort to actually optimise it.

2025, UE4 has peaked in terms of available skillset & knowledge banks, hardware has never been better, DTG have 10s of years of experience building train sims. TSW is approaching its sixth iteration & the team has been working on it since before 2015, yet we still see flops like this.

Its decisions & outcomes such as this which tell me DTG are done with advancing TSW, the only thing we can look forward too is more gimmick additions, all development on making the actual simulation better (or even fixing what’s wrong with it now) seems to have gone out the window.

 

yep, I think they realize that if they dont solve it at least to some degree now, it will come back and bite em big time later... and apparently they want more content like this S-Bahn route in the future, so it is of a priority

personally, I will buy it as soon as it is available... my PC is fairly ok, even though it is older, so it should run fine, even though with occasional FPS drops that I am kinda used to on busy routes (I am surprised FTF hasnt set my PC on fire yet lol)

 

The one good thing to come out of all of this is that, by letting down the majority of their player base, they appear to have woken up to the idea that improving the game is important. If this was a PC only game the issues would have been swept under the carpet and forgotten about.

 

Well unlike the first few years in TSWs life span, TSW isn't a good and enjoyable product / experience on consoles anymore ( that includes now Gen9 as well ).

We getting more and more DLCs , and therefore layering, meanwhile into upcoming new routes.
Despite DTGs effort to work on optimatisions, the last few releases did show clearly that this heading into a direction where consoles do not really fit into this anymore.
Crashes, blurry textures and dealing with cut-out content for the same price tag is the new reality since TSW 5.

Its maybe not a big deal for everyone but for me TSW on console became a more and more a mess and really unsatisfying experience.
Gen 10 consoles are still year(s) away and if people expect that the developers can pull out miracles, they have not accomplished over the last years yet, well the hope dies last I guess.

Anyway, since I moved over PC it's a lot less hassle and more enjoyable. It's a bit sad but it is what it is now.

 

Ah, alright - I was under the impression they had been involved in the project from an earlier moment. Thanks!

 

How Can you play the Route

 

More than happy to test the Xbox build if needed, there's a good 400gb of content on my Series X...

Thanks again for keeping us informed Matt, again, this can't have been easy once you knew, well, let's just say when the cake didn't turn out well!

 

Matt Can you please use the Community for Beta Testing the Xbox or PS5 builds to give Feedback how it works

 

I would welcome some form of satellite imagery like that away from the track/line as while the imagery is not completely clear it'll be better then the bland texturing we have now, along with autogen buildings suited for the region + autogen vegetation, I don't think that would add/cause a lot of memory issues or Frame drops and would look better on distant objects like hills/mountains and towns, plus rivers and waterways a little more realistic especially with masking to the whatever we want to call it these days within the game .. Just to be clear I'm not talking anything right on the track as that's the area I like the detail like we get now to a degree, since its the immersion we want when driving. I just don't care for how detailed someone's garden or house/building is 100m away either side from the track

There are other things MSFS do like live weather that would be a welcome addition into this game if possible.. dynamic is nice but it feels like whenever I load into a TT, it starts with clear day, then straight to fog, then straight to rain/thunderstorm.. but I guess that's just real British weather when playing those DLC lol

My experience with TSW5 on PC be it short has been ok, I haven't come across any real dramas, and I have 57 DLCs installed (mainly British and German, then whatever came with the deluxe) My PC is old in todays standard with a rtx3080Ti 12g / 32g ddr4 on an i9-12900KF 3.2ghz but I lock my frames at 60 as for me I dont see much of a point going higher as the ride is smooth, I use high settings in game.. But for myself, the experience has been made only better by a community of modders as I do with flightsim and the FS.to Community (with liveries, enhancements and especially the TTs) and welcome continued support in allowing further capabilities for this community going forward in continuing to build on the current game...

 

It varies. The very old (TSW2 launch bundle) 72 Tube Stock has a huge number of functioning switches in the cab, the majority of which you'll never use, but all consuming CPU cycles (the system has to check them over and over again just to make sure they're still off). Bakerloo performance doesn't suffer because it's the only train on the route (and much of the route is tunnel-only with no landscaping). But, as many have complained since Day One, there is no traffic on the WCML lines

 

The sat images in MSFS are streamed from datacenters spread over the globe (in Microsoft Azure), and is an immense dataset (several hundreds of terabytes, according to MS themselves). Running an infrastructure like this for a game, is extremely expensive. The only way MS gets away with doing this without going bankrupt or asking a monthly fee for playing the game, is that they own Azure and the satellite data they use (which basically is Bing sat View). MSFS is used as an ad for Azure and Bing, and the costs of serving up sat data to millions of MSFS players everyday without charging money for it, is written off as a business expense/advertising.

Live weather would be cool indeed. Perhaps one day!

Your PC outperforms the consoles by a large factor, and the 32GB of system RAM alone is four times that what PS5/PS5Pro games have to work with (assuming the PS5 game's dev split the available 16GB of RAM equally between RAM for the CPU and VRAM for the GPU, as that's one big pool of memory on PS5). A 12900KF is about twice as fast as a CPU similar to the one in the PS5Pro*. The 3080Ti also runs circles around what the PS5 Pro's GPU can do, especially on higher resolutions.



* The CPU in the PS5Pro is comparable to an AMD Ryzen 3700X (8 Zen2 cores at around 3.5GHz, although the Ryzen CPU can boost up to 4.4GHz, which the CPU in the PS5Pro can't do). If you compare the 3700X to a 12900KF, you'll see that the 12900KF is about twice as fast as the 3700X in Passmark and Geekbench Multi, and about 40% faster in Cinebench and Geekbench Single. Source: link (scroll doen to the "synthetic Benchmark Score, and view the tabs for the results)

 

Come back to the forums as I was interested in this route, only to read that once again, DTG is making a mess of things.

DTG is not interested in optimising TSW. Anyone believing they will must be relatively new here. All DTG has ever been interested in is making money. The user experience isn’t even on their list of priorities.

 

Wasn't traffic added to the WCML on the Bakerloo line in the timetable update a few years back?

 

I once actually worked out the space it would take and how many racks of drives I'd need, to download all the MSFS data locally, and it was certainly theoretically doable in a garage, assuming I was a millionaire, which I am most certainly not.

My favourites are the Digital Foundry "FrankenPCs" they put together using the various commercial versions that show up in obscure markets of the console CPUs, and then heavily underclocking certain graphics cards of the same generation to match the console in question, for various tests.

 

IIRC, they just added some static stock

 

But then, trying to create a route like this, with the challenge it entails, is not to improve the user experience? Because they could limit themselves to building only simpler routes and not make life so complicated.

If they set out to make complex routes I take it that they want to make our experience better, not worse. It may go wrong as it has on this occasion, but I want them to try. That's what life is all about, always trying to go one step further.

 

I'm afraid there is no place for such adequacies here - this British office is not interested in a stable game)

 

I really do appreciate your reply, it definitely makes the challenges more easily understood.

From a user's perspective, I wish there was a way to make the timetable file dynamic- that is, a flow something like this:

1. User boots TSW and chooses a route (the full TT and layers are loaded)

2. User then MUST select/confirm layers for the route (all nonselected layers are removed from memory and a reduced TT is generated by deleting all services that rely on the missing layers)****

3. User then selects their train and service from those layers remaining and continues on as we're used to.

****I realize this not only adds another UI screen, but probably relies on some programming magic that doesn't exist lol, but i did say, "I wish", not "I demand"....i'm trying lol

 

Mch würde es, wenn der erweiterte Fahrplan für die PS5 kommt

 

Me too.

 

Hi Matt, this looks promising, so hopefully we can move back towards the arrival of performance.

So hopefully the beta testers will test it properly.....

 

Lol. The players who purchase this ARE the beta testers

 

This route show how badly optimised tsw5 is specially on console I'm not picking up Frankfurt s bahn definitely while the game has a big need to have optimisation done if tsw6 is coming this year its something that needs sorting out definitely having reduced timetables on console is only a temporary fix but still can contribute to crashes specially if using dynamic weather or heavy rain/snow and/or thunderstorms. Optimisation will help console and pc users and then hopefully console may get the full timetable, but that will probably not happen.

 

This situation also makes me very uneasy and the fears that this will become the new standard for consoles are great.... but I still believe that Matt and his team will solve it, hope dies last

 

Well, "optimisation" has been a buzzword (for both friend and foe) for years now, but we have reached the point where DTG have no choice but to take it seriously, because any hope of producing routes with the level of detail and complexity users have come to demand is gone unless the core is streamlined and its hardware demands reduced.