So railfans, a massive, and I mean MASSIVE upgrade for WSR. Awesome sauce I say. I bought it back in the day when it first came out and was… well, less than impressed. But wind the clock forward to 2023 and our December update and we get news out of the blue that WSR is being upgraded. Not just a little, but A LOT! That it’s free is super awesome, and boy does it look good. However, it raises a few questions for me. Like after years of begging for route upgrades and being told they are impossible or cost prohibitive, we get this - randomly, out of the blue, with amazing screen shots and a zero dollar price tag. I have… many many questions
Honestly you would think rail fans would stick together, but I guess not. Sorry for being optimistic.
I think the biggest question is why have we been frequently told both by DTG and the apologists, that route upgrades and extensions are not possible. Fairly obvious there was an unbaked master copy of WSR which has been taken out of storage to be worked on. And that’s not being negative, the opposite in fact as it gives a slender hope that DTG might see the merit in revisiting other older content and creating “Special Editions”. Imagine TVL extended to Bishop Auckland and Boulby, or NTP to York and/or Liverpool. I would actually pay to get extra mileage on some of the older routes. The only regret with this WSR facelift is that DTG seem to have missed the opportunity to do a GWR steam pack, with a Hall and Pannier plus some period rolling stock. Yes we would still have to contend with the shonky steam physics, but they would be more appropriate to the route than the Jubilee and Flying Dustbin.
If (please note I said if) upgrading routes is the new thing can we expect a upgrade to the GW express Paddington to Reading route, maybe completing the electrification of the route all the way to Reading, with some fancy new electric stock to run on it too?
I only had the roadmap stream on in the background, but did I hear that the upgrade was someone's pet project and done in their own time?
They said the dev was tasked with doing a steam timetable but took on as a personal project upgrading the scenery as well. They didn’t say if it was done in their own time, companies that value their employees often set aside time for personal development and the dev here will have learnt a lot of new skills, as well as being rightfully proud of what they have delivered, so it’s a win win for both the dev and DTG, well and us customers too.
Throw in the three outer suburban branches, Windsor, Marlow and Henley and I’d happily buy a Special Edition.
I wouldn’t get carried away with all kinds of fanciful ideas of other routes being revamped and extended or new locos coming as part of single devs taking on pet projects as an extension of a timetabled task from DTG. If anything like this happens in the future then take it as a bonus.
Both the route upgrades and timetable were personal projects of mine trying to learn more of the TSW tools in my free time, with no one from DTG asking me to spend time to work on this. Being a personal project is also why there are no new locos or route extensions and also why the update is free I did enjoy working on these additions and have a couple of other routes that I'd like to see similar work done to.
We appreciate what you have done/are doing Liam. Just that we are always greedy for more, whether it's seeing TVL out to Boulby or hearing the bark of a Hall on the WSR.
How much work is required upgrading to Tod4? I know it's putting in the Tod4 object, and I assume replacing all of the light sources on older routes with new ones. Does it also require baked in lighting/shadow changes? I'd honestly love to try upgrading TVL to ToD4, but I don't think we are able to edit enough of existing routes in the Public Editor to do it.
It needs ALL branches to Greenford, Brentford, Colnbrook, Windsor, Marlow and Henley. Possibly even Basingstoke.
I get that and I'm with you for wanting more. I would love to have actual GWR steam locos for the WSR A lot of work. Like you said you'd have to remake every light source and emissive material plus light baking which WSR didn't have thankfully. You also need to rework weather materials to allow for the new snow and rain. It's a very long process and would be even longer on routes with indoor spaces/tunnels.
Hopefully we will see a bit more diligence on projects going forward. Recent releases have taken many of the kinds of opportunities that older routes did not and are therefore lacking because of. WSR will be all the better due to Liam's work.
We have a saying where I come from… “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”. DTG Liam, thanks for all your efforts, really looking forward to seeing the results and running on the improved WSR.
Looking forward to the WSR remastered also did they mention where the extension to Norton Fitzwarren goes
I'm not sure they did. There is a turning triangle to the south and west of Norton Fitzwarren so it's likely to be that. There's also mainline connection east of Norton Fitzwarren which allows trains to reach Taunton station and beyond.
The player boundary was extended up to where the WSR joins the mainline with new trackside scenery added.
Highly appreciated, and as I understood it, the upgrade was not planned by the officials, but is a spare time project of a DTG employee. So cheers to the "coalfaces"!
I’m really happy we’ll be getting this. I always liked WSR and for free is a very nice surprise. So I’ll add my thanks to DTG Liam
Really excited for this - been enjoying the route for years in TSW and was lucky enough to visit it in real life earlier this year and travel it in full behind a Class 33.
One of the biggest gripes I'm having with TOD3 that you can't have a clear blue sky. Even with zero cloudiness there's always those high cirrus clouds.
Just want to add in that it looks like from the images shown, who I thinks name was mentioned as Liam in the stream, seems have done a really good upgrade for this route. It’s one of the things I hoped to see happen with at least some routes, but that stuff would usually be shot down by developers and gummy bears talk (regardless of right or wrong on that) I’m looking forward to seeing it in action, I did actually originally purchase the route completely unfamiliar with the speed limit as a high speed fan… yea definitely not put much time into it so far. I definitely want to change that with the update
Yes! To all of the above. TVL is my favourite route, and I think it would be amazing with new lighting and weather. I’d love to see some old GWR steam engines too (I got to drive a Prairie tank this summer!)
Time Of Day v4 - The lighting and skybox system introduced in TSW3 (volumetric clouds) TOD3 is used in TSW2 routes (the flat bitmap clouds) TOD1+2 in CSX:Heavy Haul (very ugly clouds and lighting)
Not properly, youd need to change materials and rebake lighting. Which you cant do on a cooked route. You would need the original plugin files.
Note that when I said CSX:Heavy Haul I'm talking about the initial release. TOD1/2 Sand Patch Grade itself has been updated to TOD3 for TSW2+. Maybe one day a dev decides to update it to TOD4, as it's a very popular route I hope so.
DTG Liam just have a small question regarding layers. If DTG decided to do small steam locomotive pack or add another engine with a new route would that be able to sub into the new timetable on WSR?
Oh boy I can’t wait to receive that update ! Thanks again to everyone involved into this great project of “refurbishing” WSR, I’m not gonna lie that I haven’t touched this route for a long time but after the update, I’ll be using it more often. Thanks again ! Looking by these pictures it looks beautiful.
I'm very intrigued to see the rework because I enjoyed the route and thought it looked very good already. Will be interesting to see how it's changed and especially getting a steam timetable! Think the 4F will soun great at those speeds. Although the physics may be an issue
