Thought some of you might be interested in a feedback of TSW3 from an Xbox Series S owner’s perspective. First of all I have to apologize for my very poor English, since I’m German, but I hope you’ll understand me anyway. I was a little bit concerned when DTG announced TSW3 and all the graphical improvements of it. Thought that it might be tough to master this for the Xbox Series X’ little sister. Spoiler: It does! But first things first – Installation was without any problems, also the profile import from TSW2. The main menu looks very clean at the first glance. But after using it for a couple of time there are some design and usability issues that I can’t understand. I must say that I’m a professional UI designer, maybe this is why I find some decisions which had been made in terms of the UI let say “strange”. The buttons for the train and scenery selection are very small, hard to read if you play like me sitting on the couch in front of a 40 inch TV. Using two kinds of grey for the menu selection is in my opinion not the best choice, especially if the selection is highlighted in darker gray. Learned behavior for most apps and software is that highlights means to use a brighter color. I think it would be much more intuitive to use if the current selection would be highlighted in a different color, for example in the bright orange of the TSW3 logo. I also had problems to select the DB BR182, it seemed that it was missing. But then I found out by chance that you must select the BR182 MRCE, than the red DB version appears in the sidebar. But this is not very intuitive, especially while other trains which are available in different versions are separated in the selection menus. The menu to change the weather conditions is not very intuitive to reach, too. It happened to me a few times that I started the train service by mistake, although I wanted to change some weather conditions before. But what about the first impression of the game itself with the Xbox Series S? The overall performance is pretty good. I have no problems with stuttering or anything similar, no matter in which weather conditions I drove till now. He game is running very smooth, not only using Kassel-Würzburg, but also with all of my DLCs. I really love the eye adjustment feature! It looks great, especially in sunny conditions. I must say that it looks a little bit weird in foggy conditions, because it’s a little bit too bright there for my taste. The new lighting system is okay for me, but it is not the game changer that I’ve expected. It looks good if you walk through a train station by foot and is much more fun to play at night, because there are a lot more shades of gray, which means that the surroundings stand out much more than in TSW2 by night. And the headlights of the trains are so much better than in TSW2, especially those of the ICE 3 (which still have no light cone on all former TSW2 routes, and this is a bit of a shame, because it’s no fun to drive at night, no matter on which route!). The biggest drawback in my opinion is the rendering distance of the shadows, especially in sunny or light cloud conditions. It looks like there is an invisible curtain about 200 meters in front of the train, everything before this point looks pretty nice, but everything behind it just looks terrible! When I saw this effect for the first time, I thought I would be back in the days when I started playing TSW2 on my Xbox One. The drawing distance of the shadows are not perfect on the old DLC tracks, too, but the preservation crew did a very impressive job improving this there, and I wouldn't complain if the shadows in terms of drawing distance in TSW3 would look similar as in TSW2 . The nearer you come to an hill, the worse is looks, because the shadows on the hills pop up only just before you reach them. And there are a lot of hills with the tunnel entries on SKW! In TSW2 I changed the weather conditions to “very cloudy” in order to avoid those ugly popping up shadows there. The game looks much better in cloudy conditions for me. Same with TSW3, but if you select “heavy clouds” while using dynamic weather, you can bet that it will rain at some point during the journey. I will talk about the dynamic weather in a minute. But let me say first that in my opinion DTG have to improve the shadow rendering in order to give the player a much more satisfing gaming experience. I watched a lot of You Tube Videos from guys who claimed to play TSW3 on a PC System with graphic settings at “ultra high”. And these ugly shadow rendering effects appears there in the same way, too. I wonder if the shadow distance is better when playing on an Xbox Series X or a PlayStation 5? Maybe an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 owner will leave us a comment here. Talking dynamic weather – I really like this feature in general, it’s pretty cool to drive from dry into rain. Or from cloudy weather to a bright sky, which I’d just had once untill now. My experience is that the weather mostly changes from good to worse. In my opinion dynamic weather is not perfectly balanced yet. It is way too dynamic! In my mind there should be no weather changes in about 70% time. In 20% time only small weather changes (like from light clouds to bright sky or from light rain to a little more rain and back) should happens. And only in 10% time there should be changing conditions from good to very poor. Currently you start with heavy clound and will end mostly in non ending thunderstorm! That is too much! Please don’t get me wrong – I love this feature, but it needs some more developer's care. The dynamic clouds are a nice to have for me, but nothing more. They don’t bother the Xbox Series S performance. Yes, they look very nice indeed. But to be honest I could live without them if we would get better shadow drawing distance instead. There is another small improvement on TSW3 which I appreciate very, very much! And this is the much better adjustable controller stick sensibility! Setting up an ICE3 in TSW2 was some kind of nightmare, because it was so hard to place the curser with the controller’s right stick. Now it is possible to set up the AFB or anything else which can’t be controlled by the controller or by keyboard without freaking out! (I use one of these cheap little chat pads which can be docked to the Xbox controller. With this I can use most of the keyboard short keys for things like headlights, wipers, SIFA, etc.) Another cool new feature is the Safety System screen in the HUD. It will help new or not so experienced players to understand the german's PZB system much better. I have switched it out , but I will activate it for learning new routes. The last thing I want to mention is that the preservation crew did a very impressive job on HHL. Since I life near Hamburg and travelled by train to Hamburg HBF for years, it’s nice to see that amount of traffic there after the update. And driving at night is so much more fun because there are so much more lighted objects round the track. Nice! The only drawback for me is that the ICE 1 is not included, and I wonder why? My first thought was that it is not possible to use the ICE 1 on the old TSW2 DLCs. But I tried to make a scenario with the ICE 1 at HHL, and it works. So I don’t understand why it is not used for the update, especially since the ICE 1 is used on the route to Lübeck and not the ICE 3. Things I like: Installation process and profile import Overall performance on Xbox Series S Eye adaption feature Dynamic weather feature in general Improved train lights on ICE 3 and in general Safety System inlay (PZB) in HUD Improved controller sensibility of right stick (RS) DB BR101 services at SKW Preservation crew update for HLL Things which are okay: SKW scenario in general Dynamic Clouds New game menu layout New lighting feature Things I dislike: Shadow rendering drawinf distance Dynamic weather should be better balanced Headlights are still useless on ICE 3 at SKA, HMA, HHL, etc. No ICE 1 available at any DLC Empty FIS on ICE 3 on SKW, missing or incomplete FIS on ICE 3 at HLL, Dresden, etc. Drivers cabin rain sound is too loud Bugs I’ve recognized yet “PZB Wachsam” is not working on DB BR146.2 anymore, on any track Curtain of fog in tunnels when driving in foggy conditions on SKW Still no passengers lights on DB BR 146.2 at HHL and Rapid Transit Rain on windscreen of Talent 2 still visible when standing inside of Dresden HBF Wrong FIS on Dostos at HLL route Hamburg HBF – Bad Oldeslohe
