I noticed in London commuter there are planes flying over head at Gatwick, the planes are not very good, they are just wrong. So I thought, how about the other way around, how do flight simulators do trains? The train looks American despite it being a UK airport. London Stansted Express?
They were allegedly modelled intentionally wrong to not interfere with licensing, although the speed they approach there makes me shiver every time, expecting to hear an explosion few seconds after they leave the screen. TSW5 routes have licensed and properly modelled airbuses.
They look like a flight sim person would think an "average" generic commuter train would look. The buses aren't a specific brand either. Can you imagine the work to try to recreate every "accurate" car, bus and train you fly over in the entire world? It's not a bad design to be fair for a static asset.
Well, it's a flight simulator, and the focus isn't on a completely accurate representation of trains. Conversely, for me, in a train simulation, airplanes don't need to be depicted with 1:1 accuracy; the main thing is that they fly overhead somehow. Furthermore, it's somehow noticeable that in games other than railway simulations (shooters, GTA, RDR etc.) the tracks always look kind of strange.
They do an okay job with trains in GTA, RDR and ATS/ETS... for what they are. I mean they're not drivable (well without mods) but you can even railfan a bit on those if you want.
Apparently, (euro) truck simulator (2) and OMSI the bus simulator seem to have decently designed trains, a friend has showed me...
I noticed this also looks at the ETS2 console store page trailer. Theres a screenshot of a freight train going over although the logo is "BB" (hard to see here but clear on my Xbox)
That's an intentional logo choice. They don't use corporate logos unless they have the license for them. So for example in the game they have "Scania" trucks because they have that license, but they don't have "Wal Mart" stores so they use "Walberts" for the super markets. In this case they don't have "DB" for German trains so they use "BB" and a slightly different shade of red to get around licensing. It's actually something the players look forward to since the in-game brands tend to get well known.
MSFS also done cars and although like the trains I guess they can't copy branded products, but more effort was put into the cars. BMW 1 series-ish, Smart Crossover-ish
External/free camera ? PS : you can "get" there at ease if you have landed nearby (and you can land almost anywhere).
I'm sure you do it anyway ! I have ripped out so many high-voltage lines this way... (well, I suppose...)
Is that the default airport textures or the modded one? I only fly to Heathrow or London City but some of the mods are pretty good. And as a member of the MSFS community an forums, I can promise you they complain about the little details that you rarely see just as much, and probably more, than anyone does on these forums (especially for 3rd party content). There are threads there that discuss the inaccuracy of certain tree types in obscure places that are seen maybe .01% of the time and the reactions to it are as you’d expect.
Color is one thing and was a separate conversation regarding seasons (which were added more properly in 2024). I’m talking about general height and location, things you don’t see all the way up from the air. It also wasn’t meant to put down the requests, but just to show how detailed the asks/complaints are over there and how they now go into things that have nothing to do with the actual flying. I started with FS95 and it just makes me laugh when I see those things because we were happy if we even had trees at all back then.
