TrainSimDev.com

Hi,

TSW is on offer for £18 at the moment so I thought I might as well get it.

To my surprise the graphics seem little better than railsimulator so I have to say I'm disappointed - the textures and assets actually look like they've come from railsimulator and seem relatively 'flat' and 'colourless' so does my setup need adjusting or is that the way it is ?

I've done a bit of railway building in UE4 and the results are quite impressive - so I was expecting TSW to be at this standard.

Happy Christmas everyone.

Cheers
Paul

Without being able to see what you are seeing its hard to form an opinion. That said, when I first got CSX the locos were fantastic but scenery items less so. The Rhur Sieg and Trans Pennine have a much better feel to the surroundings. The LIRR is supposed to be good too. All the above seem to suffer from lack of details I've come accustomed to especially on user made routes but they are getting better with each release. Still, like I said, without seeing what your seeing, its hard to know if something is amiss. For me TSW stopped me playing TS just because it looked so much better. Which is crap because TSW is not quite there yet so I don't do much of either

Hi,

Thanks - I’ll give the other routes a try - the engines were pretty good it was really the scenery that really disappointed - texture colours were really washed out, there was little depth to the scenery assets - the bump mapping seemed to be having little effect - well defined embankments and cuttings seem to have been avoided even though such things are evident on real railways- sunshine lighting on the scenery seems overdone and adds to the ‘washing away’ of colour and surface character.

As you suggest I’ll have a look at the other routes to see if they’re any better.

Cheers
Paul

Hi,

Just checked out some of the German route in the Leipzig area - as you say this looks significantly better than the GWR route that I started with - colours are nice and deep, the foliage is convincing and there is a nice sense of depth to the scenery features - reflections and shadows seem to be better too.

Thanks.

Cheers
Paul

The devs will only get better with time i'm sure. When the dev tools get released, it will really start to flesh out. Glad you found the latter route more to your liking.

steve

It is really all the same as with the transition from MSTS to KRS&RW. Not just the moaning about the initial lack of content and the climbing prices per route mile. You also observe that it is straightforward to bring old content (or newly created, old-style content) to the new platform, but it is not at all easy to make it look much better than before without wrecking performance.

That said, the old Kuju Developer Docs said "engines are the star of the game" (or something along these lines). There is an obvious bias in resource spending, with shiny new rolling stock that obviously got all the resources to look as good as any current game, and scenery that looks like the state of art in RW for the past half decade or so. (save SpeedTree which is a just a licensed plug-in)

On a side note, the most praised routes seem to be "Ruhr-Sieg Nord: Hagen - Finnentrop" and "Northern Trans-Pennine: Manchester-Leeds", just going by the opinions expressed on forums.

Speaking of scenery, if anyone can tell me what happens with these buildings here. The poster reskinned these buildings, and the anomaly regarding shadows under the roof is still there. The left-hand side of the nearest house looks right. The right-hand side has the same bright margin under the roof that we got used to in RW. Any idea of what goes wrong here so we can avoid it in the future? Clearly the texture is mirrored, but which normals need flipping to make the game engine render the same shadows on the right that it shows on the left?

My guess is the normal on the tiled roof on the right side are flipped ?

Cheers
Paul

I purchased it from the beginning, and buy DLC whenever it is discounted, but haven't been able to get into it as a game. For me, it's a feeling of detachment, in that I don't feel comfortable with what happens in the cab to what happens with the train. I don't feel in full control of it as I do in TS, and to me the physics and the intended reality are not there yet. Maybe it's just me as I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere.

Looking long term, I'm pleased to have been an early adopter to support the next generation of train sims, at least financially. I feel it's going to be easier to create assets for the engine rather than the undocumented mish mash that TS is now and has always been, so very much looking forward to creating a more realistic environment than the sometimes clean and cartoony world of TS.

This game has a great potential.