This might be a cool thing to consider for future coastal routes, a simulation of tides. This is where the sea level changes depending on time of day due to the gravitational pull of the moon and sun. It would be a good way to create a more dynamic visual experience, where the scenery changes with each journey. Tides could be fairly simple to implement; only the sea level needs to oscillate. Therefore more scenery (e.g. larger beaches) become visible when the sea level lowers. It might become more complex if tides were linked to the position of the sun and moon (with spring and neap tides), but a basic oscillating sea level would be a good start. An example: Hayle Bay at High tide versus low tide (on the upcoming West Cornwall local route). -Note how large the beach becomes at low tide. Other examples where this would have a big visual impact would be at St Michaels Mount (near Penzance on West Cornwall Local) and along Ryde Pier on Isle of Wight. Thoughts?
It would be interesting but have no real impact on the game and certainly not enough for the level of dev work that would need to go into it and potential performance impact. It’s well out of the remit of a train simulator. Just simulating the sea level increase would be a massive undertaking. There could be potential for a tide in or tide out random setting but even that doubles the amount of scenery work for the areas it affects. Anything dynamic would be out of the question.
I'm not sure how the sea is modelled exactly in TSW, but in Train Simulator the sea is made up of water texture asset blocks which rely on xyz coordinates for positioning, so creating a routine that changes the y co-ordinate of the asset dependent on a timer might not be so complicated. Simply the water asset has to move up and down by a few metres, the scenery doesn't need to change as the rising water would cover up the terrain.