West Coast Main Line: Trent Valley From All Aboard Studios

Excited for this one, and agree it’s going to be great to “hop” even if not fully joined all the way between London and Crewe.

personally, have dipped back into Crewe - Birmingham again recently using the 390, 220 and more LNWR oriented 350 and not been having any blurring / performance issues with these on PS5 Pro after the recent update… avoiding the LM 350 as think this creates issues

 

Me too. Never really had the blurry textures. On ps5 console also

 

Thinking that too. While thrashing alongside the M1 then Kilsby Tunnel is going to be fun, bearing in mind the focus of this route is still the Class 350 operated local services then how can you not go via Northampton, especially considering one of the major depots is there.

Nevertheless, providing AABS have indeed learned lessons from B2C then this will pretty much be Day One.

 

200+ hours on both routes with all layers says otherwise

 

WCMLoS is definitely not perfect.

Stutters quite a bit in certain areas around the big stations.

I don't get a lot of blur other than when switching cameras though and it resolves itself quite quickly.

Blackpool is similar, but with less stuttering for sure, but then the track layout is far simpler.

Don't think there is any hope for us on console going forward to be honest.

DTG knows this, but obviously are not going to say it, because they need our money!!!

 

That needs to be done just trains, honestly give it one more year and will probably have the power to do it

 

I am sure just trains have said in the past they have no intentions of doing the Carlisle - Glasgow section

 

Pretty they said not at the moment, not a flat out no so it could further down the line

Probably waiting for gen 10 consoles since that’s what they would need for something that performance heavy

 

At last a decent long run for our fast trains like the ICE got on that 115 odd mile German route.

 

If they carry this on the class 66 is going to have a major tantrum, it will be all over social media with crying vids and death threats and everything

 

No they never said “ not at the moment” can you upload a screenshot of just trains saying that.
The trouble is the distance. It is over 100 miles. We only have 2 routes in the entire TSW library that is over 100 miles.
Time, cost and money involved is what’s the deciding factor.

 

I hope we get the 730s eventually seeing as we are getting a 2025 timetable for Birmingham Crewe

 

And we’ll then have all the clambering to drop gen 9 as it’s holding us back

 

They also never said fully no which could be taken as not at the moment

also they have experience with doing a 100 mile route but anyways if we want this route to be done good it must be done by just trains

 

I know I might be the minority here, but I’m really excited for this route having grown up on the WCML. Big fan of the 800 series also. But I understand why people want more variety of different routes first

 

What 100 mile route is that then. If you are going to say Preston - Carlisle that’s not 100 miles.

yet again you jump on someone’s post TRYING to say they are wrong yet can’t back your own comment up. You never learn do you.

 

I'm sure I recall someone from JT saying Motherwell into Glasgow would be a complete nightmare to do.

The timetable would be quite fragile to, with all the in and out working at Glasgow Central, ensuring pilot or outgoing train engines don't beat the incoming stock to the platform.

 

TBF Cathcart with the 380 upgraded route and timetable copes really well and Glasgow central is packed

 

AAS getting flack for things that aren't their fault isn't particularly fair. The blurring issue has been ongoing since TSW4. I've given up debating people on the subject though as I've made my mind up who is and isn't to blame.

Birmingham to Crewe was a very ambitious first project, and for all its initial faults (of which most will be resolved and AAS have taken time to take feedback. Some developers don't revisit routes for years, so I have to credit the implementation of improvements and how quick they have been done). Outside of that I have complete faith in them as developers...

This new installment is a VERY ambitious project. But we have needed a modern long distance route since ECML. I'm rooting for AAS, and I'm confident they can pull this off and as new developers have probably learnt a lot from Birmingham to Crewe.

If they pull this off, which I'm confident they will, this will be one phenomenal stretch of track for both passenger and freight. Also a great stretch for the Class 390, 805, 807, and the ATS Class 90 to stretch it's legs.

I'm not ignorant to the ongoing core issues saga, the only doubts I have are based around the core issues. And if DTG are happy to advertise this stuff for Gen9 they best have a comprehensive plan for the core...

But on a final positive note, we will have a fully comprehensive Avanti West Coast fleet going forwards. No need for reskins of other traction to make up for it, we'll have the real Mcoy. And we will have every 350 sub class in the game!

 

Holy [EDIT - Jan - Language] I love this !!!
Didn't want to wait for years to do a London - Crewe (even up to Carlisle if you're not too particular).
At last a real long run in TSW.

Now we need route hopping 2.0 and... the Caledonian Sleeper !!!

This time my TSC installation seems to be on its way to trash bin at last.

 

A “Paywall”, imagine DTG expecting fair recompense for their work. All DLC’s are paywalls with your logic, as is the game itself.

 

So why don’t other routes have the blurring texture issues as bad as this route and why does it appear to be limited to one type of train that this route comes with.
Genuine question

 

A JT Dev has said again today on the Discord that don't look to them to do Glasgow to Carlisle as the scenery is just too dense, plus they may be moving away from the North soon ...

 

Thank you which is a repeat of what I said above there you go star#5823 happy now. So they did say what I said after all

 

In my experience, most routes released over the last 2 years suffered from blurring textures to some extent or another (on PS5 myself for reference). There are probably less than a handful on my platform that don't suffer from blurry issues. It has improved slightly, but there is still work that needs to be done. I'm holding out to see if the 2D map issue Matt talked about in last month's stream will make any difference.

 

This definitely scores well on the LAMPOIL test!

Four stations already modelled, all possible layers now present and available, a third-party timetable for the first-party MK to Euston section (which almost certainly is a no brainer to link up with this new route.. and the Birmingham to Crewe one) and an opportunity for someone to fill in the Northampton - Rugby - Coventry - Birmingham section (with hopefully Leamington Spa to Nuneaton too) with a tidy network route!

 

The 350's been problematic since the Euston-MKC route it released with, which puts the onus back on DTG (or Rivet maybe) imo.

I don't get bad performance on B-C at all fwiw, certainly no worse than the TSW standard- on a midrange laptop- i only play in 1080p though, so maybe that helps with the texture issues.

In any case, i'm excited for Trent Valley- hope it's just as detailed as their B-C route.

 

Really excited and makes for a great end to the Season of Reveals (quite a contrast from a year ago with the Thomas debacle) - now if this was the first section of the West Coast Main Line to be created for TSW, it would be relatively bland on it's own, but over 300 miles from Euston to Carlisle is incredible (we just need a timetable mod for Crewe to Preston to set it in the modern day - I say "just" - Crewe to Preston isn't even out yet and I haven't even created a scenario personally) - please, please, please ATS, let us have Crewe to Wilmslow and then we can have a really satisfying Euston to Man Pic via Crewe...mega excited for 2026 now !!

 

I will be buying it unless there is a nasty surprise. I am enjoying Birmingham to Crewe and for me it is a very well made and immersive route.

 

On the 9th of Dec Q+A it was mentioned they have moved past that theory.

Now they think what is happening is everytime a train passes you it remains in the texture pool instead of after a certain distance removing itself from the texture pool. Hence the busier the route the more frequent the appearance of blurry textures are. As every train you pass just adds and adds to the pool.

 

Hasn't it been this way for a long time? As long ago as Rhein Ruhr Osten and Hauptstrecke Rhein Ruhr, layers were needed to not make most routes feel empty. Nothing new here.

 

Thank you for the informative update!

Hopefully, in theory, it does make the issue somewhat resolvable if the theory is proven right? I certainly hope so for the sake of the long term game.

 

I think Tom also said at one stage on a livestream that doing the whole route with that much dense scenery would just not be practical. It'd take ages to model properly.

Edit - Saw someone else mention they said that again today too. Should've read all the way down.

 

I´m still baffled that trains can´t use alternative platforms if things go wrong. Even Transport Fever can do that!

What´s the problem with Birmingham to Crewe anyway? I don´t have the route and I did not follow the thread. Is it the usual blurry textures console problems or anything else?

 

Textures are the main one now, it was completely unfit for release with timetable gaps, silly little bugs and stuttering but now the only gamebreaking issue is the textures again which is out of AAS’ control

 

Looking forward to this route and it would be nice if we could get a mod so we could get the route set in the 80s and use the mgr’s from the jt route.

 

I know it's nearly Christmas but what's he got to do with it?

 

Simply put, the science behind the blurry textures is that the texture pool is limited in how much it can hold and as it gets full, it scales down texture resolutions to keep up. The more unique texture files that are called upon, the fuller the pool becomes. This is why modern routes get blurry textures more than old ones - B2C has far more unique models and individual items and there for unique texture files crammed into smaller spaces than ECW, which reuses many of the same building, foliage and vehicle models over and over again.

Based on that science the only thing I can think of which explains the AABS 350's issues is likely because of the improvements they made to it. It likely has way more individual textures to load than the DTG 350 or other units, or maybe the textures it does have just need to be optimised better. But even if that is the case, it still falls to DTG to fix the texture issue as a whole because if that really is the reason for the 350 being worse than other trains, then it proves that the game at this time is absolutely incapable of adding more detail to the trains in its current form. From that perspective, if they can't fix it then it might well prove to be the case that TSW as a platform has in fact hit its technological limit.

And how many DLC do you have?

At my peak on PS5 I owned literally every single UK and German/Austrian DLC, around 300GB if it was all installed at once. Sometimes within seconds and sometimes longer, I got blurry textures on near enough every single route.

Thanks to the summer and black friday sales I now have almost all the UK content on PC as well as dozens of mods, I haven't had pretty much any of the PS5's performance issues even once, since a PC naturally won't suffer from the same memory limit as a PS5. But then again I haven't had the same blurry textures either, and from what we've been told the limit on the texture pool is part of Unreal itself and not a wider memory issue exactly, so perhaps it comes more into effect as you own more and more content for the game to actually call upon.

Some pictures from my time on PS5:

 

Happens to me in free roam with no trains after a while, so if that is what they are hanging their hats on then yeah, all is lost.

 

True but AFAIK it's all units. We saw on WCL and to some extent SoS what can happen when late running occurs and there is no flag on the schedule to prevent the pilot or outgoing train engine getting in the platform first.

 

No. Absolutely not. Dear DTG; No more WCML or expect a terse and sardonic letter of complaint from the other side of the Thames Estuary.

This has been a joint message on behalf of the TSW Essex Liberation Front and TSW Essex Users Association.

 

That's an extra loop line that branches off from roade cutting,I'm guessing it's a big load of extra development time that probably won't fit in the schedule,and Iam wondering with drivable freight from the Milton Keynes section, as you've got just the intermodals to Daventry as most of the other freight traffic heads on the Northampton loop until it joins back at rugby,Looking forward to this one but hope it's a bit more bug free at release that Birmingham to crewe

 

Or even two months after release!

 

That sure is a lot of WCML. Anyway, I'm quite looking forward to this. I thought B2C was a stellar route, not without it's own share of issues of course. Will be nice to have more sections for the 390 to stretch its legs on (and the eventual Hitachi's). Also very cool to be able to have such are large chunk of railway corridor in game, we're finally getting to a point where TSW can rival TSC for actual full drives and I'm all for it. I'm hoping that this route does actually have neutral sections implemented for the inevitable rail tours, I thought that was a sorely missed feature in the previous route. I also find it a bit odd that the route re-treads Stafford to Crewe but we still don't get the Stoke branch, which is a bit of a shame. Overall cool to see regardless.

I think people are rightly concerned about the potential state its releases in given how B2C was delivered. I would however, bare in mind that numerous route specific issues have indeed since been fixed. I don't see All Aboard making those same mistakes twice, especially when it leads to more work on their end and further loss of reputation. Throughout the previous debacle, the developers seemed pretty forthcoming about what their plans were and addressing the concerns people had around the quality. I don't think it's unreasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt with this announcement, at least until release is closer and we have more details.

When it comes to core issues such as the Mipmaps getting stuck at their lowest resolution on console (texture blurring), although it is entirely reasonable and justifiable to be angered by this, there is genuinely no point whatsoever in directing these complaints at third parties. That is DTG's responsibility to fix. Third parties are not in charge of optimising the core, they are only building off what they have available to them. I'm not entirely sure if people are just expecting partner devs to just stop working on their products or what, but it is meaningless to keep bringing it up on every single thread. There also seems to be a lot of rose tinted glasses regarding these issues, they have been prevalent for a long time and effected many routes. Some routes are indeed effected more than others, it seems pretty obvious that this is down to traffic density and possibly scenery so larger and more intensive routes will suffer more. I don't think this means developers should then extensively cut back on their plans. The game can clearly handle these types of scenarios under the right circumstances as shown by it running decently on numerous levels of PC hardware, it just needs further work done on it's console counterparts to bring the experience to parity.

If the product suffers from these issues to a degree where it is poor value, then by all means do not purchase it. Let DTG, as the games developer and publisher, know the reason for your lack of purchase/refund by going to specific threads relating to core issues and explaining there. Show them that it needs to be the number one priority from their end. I'm not saying "let them off the hook", but maybe direct these types of concern to the relevant parties instead of just saturating every forum post with the same thing, especially pre-emptively.

I also notice that people seem to be under the impression that only the 350/4 and 807 will come bundled. I might be wrong on this front but, I just assumed that was the team letting us know of the new trains specifically introduced with this upcoming route. I would think it would make sense to also include the 350s that they made with B2C otherwise it's gonna be a very sparse looking timetable. A lack of detail in something is not necessarily the same as confirmation that something isn't happening, so it seems weird to me that people are already jumping on this. Here's to hoping that they will indeed actually backup the available stock selection for those who do not have the relevant layers.

Anyway, here's a LOVE meme (interesting censorship )

 

Something will need to be done about the services that skip Milton Keynes. Many services' first stop are Nuneaton, Stafford or Crewe and it'd be quite jarring for a huge chunk of services being non-playable.

 

I'm not really one for saying "oh there's to much WCML" as I truly believe you can't really get enough of one route. I would much rather get the entirety of the WCML, rather than say "oh I like WCMLS but I'd rather of them have done this part" and feel short changed or unrepresented. As a matter of fact I feel privileged to have such a selection and variation in eras. "Oh I feel like driving a commuter service to Milton Keynes in a Desiro today, I'll fire up WCMLS", or "I'm feeling like a good old InterCity drive today so I'll fire up Milton Keynes to Crewe", or alternatively "you know what I'm feeling in a retro mood today I'll fire up WCMLOS in a 86/87". The variety, atleast on my end is very welcome.

Also, if you go through the threads, I'd say Milton Keynes to Crewe was one of the most requested lines to fill in the gap. I don't think any of us expected to get the whole bloody line in one go though!

The problem is historically there were a limited amount of developers, so when DTG was creating ECW, BML, SEHS the community got fed up with third rail land because there was a lack of third parties and those particular routes would be your lot for a while. I think now we have such a variety of developers coming into the game, we shouldn't worry about "is this to much of a particular line of region", we will have developers catering for all regions going forward. To much WCML still? Not for me. But for those who are getting fed up with WCML content, just don't buy it, and I'm sure not to long down the line a developer will create something that does appeal for you.

We are getting to a period in the game that we are being blessed with variety. And remember, there's only so much of the WCML that can be done before other untouched lines that haven't been represented will have to developed.

Anyway that's my two pence piece!

 

Theoretically a service can finish with a 'Go Via' objective, so it is possible to make a service playable when it, for example in the case of WCMLS, just leaves Euston and never stops again until it passes MK. Why they didn't do this I can only assume might be down to them deeming it to not be very rewarding gameplay or perhaps there actually is some limitation that I don't know about.

What I do know however, is that the game can't launch a session with trains moving. Even AI services when you launch a timetable start from a standstill and just start driving again afterwards. We can assume that the 2024 timetables for B2C and WCMLS coming with the 805 will be made to couple with the timetable of WCMLT (idk what the actual acronym will be yet but this just feels cool to me for now), so presumably the services through MK in both will line up to where you could drive a train from Euston up to MK, switch routes and then continue the exact same headcode to Crewe. It's unfortunate that this can't work with trains on the move, so I can only assume that they will have to give it the XC BCC treatment and implement more trains stopping at MK on both the routes north and south of it for the sake of gameplay.

 

In a few years, we'll either have all the ECML, WCML and MML, or TSW will be dead and launched under a new game. I hope it is the former, but assume it'll be the latter.

 

yet again you jump on someone’s post TRYING to say they are wrong yet can’t back your own comment up. You never learn do you.[/QUOTE]
Blame the ad and normally it’s safe to round up when it’s 90+ (basically normally meaning 5+ as a standard which would just round up to 10, basically maths )
Also last time I checked you do the exact same thing of no evidence

 

You said I was wrong. I was right.
Maths not really your strong point as well so 90 +5 = 100 if you round it up to the nearest number. Somehow that dont add up. And even if it did 100 is still not greater than +100 ie over 100 so my point about that still stands just like i was right about JT saying they had no intention of doing carlisle to glasgow again something you said was wrong.

moving on.