Zusi3 Out Now

[JasonM]

Hopefully with Zusi 3 being released soon here is some information I found on what you will get, I have put the page's through google translate-

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.co.uk&sl=de&u=http://verschiedenes.zusi.de/forum/zusi3fkt/zusi3uebersicht.htm&usg=ALkJrhhFIZN_Tp399HGhRtNdqrJdvQjs6Q dont forget to click on " See your own list" under vehicles.

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.co.uk&sl=de&u=http://forum.zusi.de/viewtopic.php%3Ff%3D47%26t%3D12351%26sid%3D4f8336be5f42689875532f81714a5f5c&usg=ALkJrhhfLq6N9kcHzMj9IrfB8Q44i0SNMg

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.co.uk&sl=de&u=http://forum.zusi.de/viewtopic.php%3Ff%3D47%26t%3D12401%26sid%3D4f8336be5f42689875532f81714a5f5c&usg=ALkJrhixx7lxU0b-UaxuXvUUwnd7JHfvpg

[AndiS]

I held back on the issue because the factual release date is still unknown.

The USB sticks on which Zusi 3 is shipped proved to be of bad quality. This is not the fault of Carsten or the supplier of the sticks, but rather a problem somewhere farther in the supply chain. People are investigating the issue. It only became obvious a few days before Christmas because the failure does not show immediately. Good luck for Carsten that they are so overly cautious or else they would face several hundreds returned sticks.

I guess the feature list has not changed since I translated it and that will be two years ago in a week.
http://forum.zusi.de/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=11740

Anyway, rest assured that I will post here on the day the order form goes live.

[JasonM]

Thanks for the info Andi, let's hope the problem with the sticks get sorted out soon.

I must admit I forgot about you translating that list two years ago.

[JasonM]

Hooray the day has arrived that Zusi3 is now available to order, and a fresh new website.
I have placed my order(managed to find my zusi2 license number for a discount), paid via paypal all ok.
http://www.zusi.de/

Now it's time to wait for the post.

[AndiS]

Interesting. Last thing I heard was the new stick were sent out to testers, to be double sure that they work this time.
But I guess that there is a footnote to Murphy's law somewhere saying that the same freak accident rarely happens two times in a row. So fingers crossed that these sticks are sent out to the masses soon.

P.S.: Just saw that Carsten posted at 5 pm that they have enough positive feedback from testers to open the shop. So that looks really good then.

[BigVern]

Sorry guys but 64 Euro's is a bit rich for my taste (makes the controversial Wherry Lines for TS2016 as being discussed at UKTS look positively bargain basement), even with a discount for Zusi 2 ownership.

Will have to wait until it drops to a more realistic level - the £30 mark rather than £50 and if anyone wants to feed my views back to Carsten please do so.

[AndiS]

The pricing scheme is totally different. Zusi 3 is old style in every aspect, including the pricing. You pay a distinct sum for the base software and you get the rest for free. The modern way is to give you the base software for free and charge for the add-ons.

But there is also no problem with waiting. I am not talking anyone into becoming an early adopter. There is (almost) no documentation in English, only the user interface has been translated. And there is next to no non-German stock. Yet if there is interest, I could jump in with on-demand translations of the more requested bits.

[BigVern]

Well you could argue that new users to TS2016 still need to buy the core programme before any additional DLC while established users have paid their due.

Either way, at that price and with minimal English language support Carsten is going to have a very small and very select group of customers, maybe that is how he wants it.

However with the "big" titles such as TS2016, old MSTS (backed by Open Rails) and even Trainz catering to the mainstream at a reasonable price, the time in our hobby when people would pay that kind of money is over. 15 or 20 years ago, maybe yes we would have been climbing over each other for the rarity of an actual in cab driving sim but these days it's just another one of many.

[JasonM]

My copy arrived the other day and am working my way through setting up etc, trying to set raildriver up at the moment but having a few probs, AndiS can you give me some advice please?
Also any tips on what are the best settings to use in the gfx options etc? I hope the manual gets translated at some point.
At least I worked out how to have the menu/toolbar in English which is good.
From the quick go I have at driving it still seems there are no external sounds on passing trains, but I have not seem many trains yet.

I have purchased Duet Display for the ipad so can now use that as an additional screen and using Zusi Display can have all sorts of info displayed on the ipad which is good.

Right back to setting up.

[AndiS]

One thing that Carsten just pointed out to another person is that if there is no centre position of a lever, then centre and lower position are set the same. And only combined drive-and-brake levers have a centre position. This boils down to calibrating all levers with centre (middle) position equalling low position.

Regarding sound, I know that they had loads of problems. They started out to implement full 3D sound or at least half of that but found that the full version is very, very hard to do, and resource-hungry, too. So they decided to release Zusi 3 with what they have instead of delaying it for another year. I love that decision because I play with muted sound all the time. But many people complain about various details, and everyone about another detail, illustrating the complexity of the domain.

Regarding graphics settings, I am not sure what you are aiming at. Basically you got these 2D cabs only in given resolutions. Sticking with that means the cab graphics don't get distorted or otherwise ugly. If you don't show the cab graphics, then you are free to choose any resolution you like. I grasped that they implemented loads of them, so the native one of your display should be there, for full screen mode in optimal quality.

Regarding the game's rendering settings controlling the distant fog and tweaking the LODs and such, I suggest taking it easy. I had some wild play with these controls, e.g., showing the next better mipmap, which resulted in aliasing and Moiré effects. Also, when I turned off the distant fog completely, I watched trees on the horizon file in one after the other as they met the draw distance, so it was more funny than realistic.

There again, Zusi takes a challenging, unconventional position. Normal games let the asset developer or the scene (route) developer control the appearance of the scene. Zusi gives the user much more power but how far you get still depends on how the scene is set up. If there is no distant scenery, then a huge draw distance gets you nowhere.

Regarding the translation, concise pointers to interesting parts are welcome. Being the earliest adopter, you make 100% of the current sample, but sample size is a bit disappointing for serious statistics.