In today's routes, the modelling of scenery and buildings usually extends beyond the trackside. We can see it from the flying camera. How awesome would it be to have invisible walls either removed or set further back from the track so we can explore. Three routes come to mind with good explorabilty * Arosa Linnie * Niddertalbahn * Scotrail Express I did a poll on my stream this weekend and it was an overwhelming yes (90%) so I'm curious if this idea extends beyond my stream audience? Paul
Personally I think all invisible walls should be removed as well as the end of session walls, there’s no need for them in my view. I shouldn’t be stopped from doing something I can see and could have done with the only issue being the walls/end of session.
Having just made a timetable for Tees Valley Line, there is so much of this route cut off by invisible walls. While the scenery in some of them might not be up to par, they have trackwork. There is a cement works, a dockyard, and a freight yard. All have fully laid track, and all would be amazing to use in the timetable. But I can't, because they are blocked off with the barrier, so only AI trains can get to them.
I say yes. I don't see why we can't be able to explore more of the world and have less invisible walls. Perhaps it can be optional
I think it would be better not being optional and just removed, it doesn’t provide very much/ if at all for extra work to make it optional and it being removed means work isn’t spent putting it in.
Yes, they all need to be removed, both the ones on tracks, and the ones in the scenery, as they block the camera from getting shots at certain angles. Fun fact, Cane Creek doesn't have one on the mainline, so you can keep going till the track runs out, its how I was able to take this photo of a "floating" train
Yes, even if just to the point we can explore stations. 100’s of hours of 3D modelling yet often we cannot even go further from the platform than the ticket barriers or immediate concourse area.
Not that bothered to be honest. I‘m there to drive a train and don’t much care for the scenery I can’t see. However, the benefit I can see to this is that it would resolve the issue of collectibles being stuck in places you can’t access.
Stations should be more accesible, definitely. However, getting rid of all invisible walls isn't practical, as you would just be exploring a wasteland. It also would make the game feel unfinished.
I'm more on the fence about invisible walls in general, but in terms of the 'end of session' barriers on the tracks, a few of them would be good to go - personally I'd love to have access to Stewarts Lane depot in BML so that GX ECS stabling out of Victoria would be possible in free roam.
I tend to be a driver and not a wonderer, but have the end of game walls on track sure would allow for a more extensive playing experience when you can get to yards and industrial areas that now have them up.
Some invisible walls are in really strange places, on the recently upgraded Dresden you can hit the end of session in the same place from either direction, it's on one of the 3 sides of a triangular junction. It won't have been used for any services when the route first launched but with free roam it's very easy to spawn a train to head up that side only to get kicked out the game for trying.
On the Peak Forrest strange locations are blocked as well., but walking around it due to a shunt track is possible. I have seen this a few times on the Peak Forresg Route.
I would love to have more accessible areas! Obviously, unfinished locations can be blocked off. And it would eat lots of development resources to give all neighborhoods and fields surrounding the railway perfect looks and collisions, so I understand why we can only walk next to the tracks themselves. But what annoys me are fully detailed and modeled areas that are blocked off for no reason, like the back part of the Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe station and the main area of the Glasgow Queen street terminus with all the shops and destination screens. If you’ve already put in the work modeling these stations, why close parts of them off?
I agree, the best example is the upper part of the buxton station. Peak Forrest has many more locations, which are modeled complete and blocked. Now with the tsw4 features i hope they get reworked, since you get "player left accessable area" message and have to spawn again.
I would like to have acces to all station squares in front of the station buildings and either squares as well. One of the most desired stations squares I'd like to enter is Liverpool Limestreet at the Spirit of Steam Route. In practice I can't get any further then the fence though. Another location is Brighton. That station is amazing. I have seen the station square in real life and took pictures inside the main building with its amazing canope. Though it needs overhaul anyway.
Personally I don't mind the way it is now. It is common practice in game development to seal off areas that are not part of the gameplay, therefore underdetailed. Of course, I would be happy to see more detailed industry sidings, and maybe more depth to station interiors (like GCT main hall, for example). But I think invisible walls and physical barriers are perfectly okay.
For this reason I agree too. Although it wouldn’t be so necessary in future if routes included the ‘main’ depot of the train you drive as standard - reasonably speaking. The Soho depot in BCC has tracks laid, and ai services moving, but is hidden behind an invisible wall so we don’t see its unfinished state. No need to break the walls if it was finished!
I was at Buxton I think it was on Peak Forrest and noticed half the station is fairly modelled but locked of by invisible wall… I know Edinburgh Waverley to be the same as that aswell. why they are modelled but locked is a mystery to me, and another reason invisible walls are not needed
While walking the length of a couple of routes, I fell through the ground once or twice. Possibly the invisible walls were put up because that scenery is only safe to be looked at but unsafe to travel onto.
Camera boundaries should be removed as these are often badly placed too close to the track. One half of Cajon Pass is a classic example of this, where you can’t even get the full extension of the boom camera at the side of the train. Cane Creek on the other hand allows the free cam to go far from the track to get fantastic distant views of the trains, something that elevates the playing experience if that’s what you want to see, which I often do. I understand why there are boundaries for walking access but they are also sometimes badly placed as well with barriers to places you need to go to. As long as there is a disclaimer to warn of unwanted side effects of wandering too far away I don’t see why all boundaries can’t be removed as an option. It’s more the camera boundaries that annoy me though.
I don’t think the main problem is they are invisible, the problem is whether they should exist also putting time into this kind of feature except removing it, isn’t worth it at all in my view, I’d rather see the time spent on the trains or scenery etc rather than weird floating tape which is very immersive breaking.
Tear down the walls and set the camera free! I'm still okay with unmodeled areas being closed, but I often find it just too restrictive. But I can live with it. But why the hell isn't the free camera really free? At least at height, that would be great views!
I don't mind the invisible walls but it is annoying when I can see there are stations on the map and I can't get to them on a train. Like on the Boston-Providence Line, you can see so many stations around Readville that are inaccessible
I also had a bad experience with RT. My train in free mode, took a side track to avoid a passenger train. An invisible wall ended my journey. DTG should remove these walls, or when I'm on the train like that, the that didn't end the ride.
On Brighton Mainline there is a station that should actually reachable as it’s just a loop off the mainline but you get an out of area event as you enter the bridge before it and that really is annoying. Having the walls at the extremities of the route itself is fine but there’s nothing more annoying than shunting on a piece of track that is extensively on the map (I am looking at you Middlesbrough docks and Reading west triangle) and then getting kicked out!
There's a few pretty good points here that I agree with, however there's some that I still feel that invisible walls have their uses. I don't believe that areas that are textured and modeled should be locked off, unfortunately right now, there are very strange invisible walls that keep you away from seeing them up close or at all. I'd also think it would make the world feel a bit bigger if the walls were less restrictive. However, I can say that completely untextured and barren areas are a bit of an eyesore, and frankly I don't think too many people would have an interest in driving to them. Only use I could see in going out there is to explore what's out-of-bounds, that's about it. I used to try and drive out-of-bounds for immersion reasons as I wanted to go further, understandably I was a bit disappointed with what was beyond the End of Gameplay wall. My idea, on the base game is that the walls should be moved further away, textured and modeled areas should be accessible even if they serve no purpose as of right now. However, as for driving out of the gameplay area. It should be an option in the settings to turn off the Invisible and EoG walls, once turned off it would give you a clear warning that driving out of the intended area of gameplay will result in seeing untextured and unfinished areas, why? Because there'll be plenty of people that'll complain about it being unfinished... despite it being outside of the intended area of gameplay. Alternatively, you could just replace the EoG wall with a portal prompt. For example: If you are driving an ICE3 service from Dresden to Riesa and end up driving to the wall, instead of ending your session, it will give you the option to start an ICE3 service in Schnellfahrstrecke Köln - Aachen if you have the route installed. Ultimately, I don't really like invisible walls PERSONALLY, but I can definitely see why they're there.
Oakville. Has the best set up for free roam and local delivery set up. Half the sidings in the yard are blocked.
Invisible walls are there to prevent you from accessing areas that arent modelled. if all the walls are removed people would just complain about the lack of modelling in areas. I agree that some spots are annoying and they need to be moved farther from the track but they arent inherently bad
I personally feel that the invisible walls shouldn’t be so invisible when you open up the map. I’ve tried various ‘stock moves’ on different maps, only to get close to the destination and hit an end of game wall - I would’ve like to have known the limit of gameplay before attempting what, on the map, looks like a feasible journey!
They block of tons off areas that are modeled. Tees Valley Line has several industries, a large freight yard, and an entire dockyard that are all modeled and textured. But they are blocked off by invisible walls. They aren't modeled to the same detail level as the real close areas of track, but are 100% modeled well enough to be usable.
I don’t mind the walls as such, but I’d rather know what’s in bounds and what isn’t. I’ve had a frustrating time on the BML recently where I’ve been able to reach places I assumed where ‘in bounds’ only to drive back up towards the mainline and be hit with a ‘end of session’ notice that is clearly triggered by crossing a threshold, and not by marking the route it protects. It’s effort to change, and probably something too strenuous to change entirely, but something to mark what is playable, and what isn’t, would be nice
Completely forgot I posted this. Some wonderful discussion here on both sides of the question with some excellent reasons for and against. Way to go community. I get the idea of being concerned about heading into area without scenery, what if the air changed colour or something like that to indicate you're leaving the intended play area but it still let you access those juicy yards and sidings that would be fun to play with in free roam mode? Paul
For half a year I have been using a mod to remove these same walls and wandering in Sloumo X4 I will say - outside the railway lines there is nothing to look at at all, just a relief. The places are not smoothed and hardened - by void. In general, as the structure of cards in Trinz where all the cards from the squares consisted outside which the void. And so, in empty areas, the breeds could build and state scenarios for them, as in the same trainz, where the places outside the railway lines were realized and interesting. The ferries were available for control, aircraft on which could be flying, even driving a bus around the city (alas, only on invisible rails)
I think the invisible walls should be moved back so it gives you extra room to take that photo in photo mode and do a bit of exploring. The end of session thing its a marmite one for me. On Midland Mainline I regularly drove into Toton via Free Roam, the same with Brush works Yard and Radtcliffe Power Station. But Since the last update most of the buildings and infrastructure have been removed from Toton. Also the lines have been removed from the map ala Oakville sub. The reason because people were showing it in videos or streams and saying how poor Toton looked compared to the rest of the route. Even though you were not able to drive there in the game via Scenarios or Timetable services. Personally I dont mind exploring these parts and knowing full well that these parts are not finished and used as placeholders so AI trains can wander in and out. Doesnt matter to me that Toton Depot was a huge ass white square that looked similar to the depot building. I understood that its was there as a marker and the fact that area was not "final" , including the Square box signals on the floor or dangling in the air. Its just a shame that some people used this as a motive to try and cause problems where in reality there wasnt any. But that unofrtunately is some people in the TSW community to a tee. Not everyone mind. Hentis
Have to say Glasgow Queen Street on the Edinburgh Glasgow route. All that work on advertising how the station was built in TSW by Rivett, and showing us the outside from the road look and bam you cant go out there. Such a waste. Hentis
I can agree with the removal of the invisible walls for trackwork, (all of the inaccessible trackwork on TVL being a prime example) that would allow us to use all of the trackwork that the Devs have spent time researching and putting in the game. If they're going to put the trackwork in we should be able to use it and the community would be able to come up with some amazing scenarios too
I've always had an opinion on this, especially once Free Roam. If immersion is the concern, I'd remind people that all timetable services start and end within the built up and detailed sections of a map, then get taken away by AI. Under normal methods of play, you'll never go beyond the edge of the map. We're all gamers, I think we all have a rough idea of how a game goes together. If we decide to use Free Roam and drive to somewhere beyond where the normal services go, I think we all know exactly what to expect. Of course SEHS doesn't have the entire UK hidden beyond its boundaries. Look Mum, I'm driving a train in Antarctica! No one is surprised when they plot a waypoint to the end of a track and see something like this. Sometimes I actually like to start out here when I do my free roam railtours or freight moves, driving at regular speed into one of the stations at one end of the map makes me feel like I have actually come from somewhere. In the end, Free Roam was added to allow us to go beyond normal timetable services and have free play across the map in any way we like. So just remove the invisible barriers and 'End Of Scenario' reset walls, restore the unmapped track on things like Bakerloo and TGV, and just let us play.
