any opinions on Railworks2??

[mezzoprezzo]

Everything looks very real to life in RailWorks, in Trainz it doesn't, ~snip~

Hi Steve.

I cannot agree with that statement.

Here’s a shot of the real deal and part of one of my routes as modelled in Trainz. I’m quite pleased with the result which, to me, looks and feels real. The hard work was in the research and painstaking positioning of everything. The Trainz software made it as effortless as it could be and I enjoyed every minute of construction. You see what you get as you lay down every piece of track and asset in Trainz. The Railworks spline laying is really weird.

This isn’t the best of examples either. There are plenty of route builders who are way ahead of me!

How about you posting an equivalent Railworks comparison?

Cheers
Casper

Imageshack

 

[zatovisualworks]

Gracias. Yo te recuerdo en mis oraciones.

Quizás mis descendientes te lo agradezcan algun día... :hehe:

The not-so-saintlike side of Alberte :wave:

 

[Mouse84]

Why does this RW garbage keeping coming to the Trainz forum?

 

[philskene]

Two words - "Free Speech"

Because this is the only place in the whole Universe where its many deficiencies can be discussed.

On the other sites the Mods stamp out any critical comments almost immediately.

 

[Beattie]

Anyone ever thought that railworks was snailworks:hehe:

 

[Euphod]

Here’s a shot of the real deal and part of one of my routes as modelled in Trainz.

There must be something wrong with my Surveyor Module Casper, it doesn't work that well for me!

 

[IsambardKingdomBrunel]

Nice work Casper.

IKB.

 

[IsambardKingdomBrunel]

Trainz is more like model railroading and RW2 is more like real railroading.

Complete and utter drivel. There is nothing more like a model railway game, than RW2.

Due to the toy game physics, limited functionality and bland scenery.

IKB.

 

[IsambardKingdomBrunel]

After looking into the issue of DEM and railworks, I see that everything has to be in hgt format, everything I use is in Geotiff, I just checked the seamless server and it doesn't appear to offer it unless they're calling it something other than "HGT" and my naïveté is showing:hehe: so I've quickly lost interest again and will stick with what I know…

DEM is available free for the UK in hgt format, its not as high res as you guys in the USA get for free though.

But as i said earlier it is just a matter of creating the relevant folders in RW & RW2, along with the routes blueprint ( done in 30 secs with RW Tools ).

Then the terrain is self generated in the Route Editor, using the "T" key.

Apart from that and the excellent cab interiors, i don't rate it at all. It certainly in my opinion as an ex-railwayman. Does not simulate anything like realistic railway operations, due to the poor physics model and the lack of functionality.

IKB.

 

[theokus]

Hi Steve.

I cannot agree with that statement.

Here’s a shot of the real deal and part of one of my routes as modelled in Trainz. I’m quite pleased with the result which, to me, looks and feels real. The hard work was in the research and painstaking positioning of everything. The Trainz software made it as effortless as it could be and I enjoyed every minute of construction. You see what you get as you lay down every piece of track and asset in Trainz. The Railworks spline laying is really weird.

This isn’t the best of examples either. There are plenty of route builders who are way ahead of me!

How about you posting an equivalent Railworks comparison?

Cheers
Casper


Imageshack

Casper.... damxxx good job!

 

[mezzoprezzo]

Thanks guys!

Still waiting for a response to the challenge. It's gone very quiet.

I'll take the opportunity to re-iterate the relative ease with which Surveyor allows construction in Trainz (done in my routes without DEM - all "hand raised").

I did forget to thank all of the great creators for the time and effort they have put in, making all of the wonderful assets.

It's always a pleasure when placing the models to "Fly" around them, close up, and wonder at the time effort and research that has gone into constructing them. The endless hours spent on all of this stuff is truly appreciated.

It would appear that Railworks have been left far behind in building a community of enthusiasts prepared to share in this way. After the software, the sharing of assets has to be the greatest contribution to the advancement of Trainz.

Cheers
Casper

 

[zatovisualworks]

There must be something wrong with my Surveyor Module Casper, it doesn't work that well for me!

Mine sometimes coughs... I better try to get some pills from the Casper's and Others' Pharmacy... I was said they heal...

The spring cough cough side of Alberte :wave:

 

[Vern]

It would appear that Railworks have been left far behind in building a community of enthusiasts prepared to share in this way. After the software, the sharing of assets has to be the greatest contribution to the advancement of Trainz.

Indeed it is the community spirit which helped the hobby to grow even back in the days prior to Trainz and MSTS. There was a pooling of knowledge and people worked together to solve problems and raise the bar.

Now I'm not anti-payware having bought a few items for Trainz over the years, but it saddens me when I look at UKTS tonight and see the announcement of a payware scenario pack for Edinburgh to Glasgow. This is the money culture gone mad, to me. I can understand charging for a well finished route or even a good quality rolling stock pack, but for a bunch of activities... Time was when people would have been proud to share that for free. I know they can be time consuming to create and I guess fools and their money can be easily parted etc., but that really is pushing micro payware culture to the limits.

Maybe it's me, perhaps I need to start thinking in different terms, I'm living in the past etc. but the day I pay for a scenario pack would be a sorry one indeed.

Edit: Just looked at the AP site... It's £5.00 for six scenarios and you need a load of other payware to run them.

I'll be putting the money towards TS2012 instead...

 

[theokus]

Indeed it is the community spirit which helped the hobby to grow even back in the days prior to Trainz and MSTS. There was a pooling of knowledge and people worked together to solve problems and raise the bar.

Now I'm not anti-payware having bought a few items for Trainz over the years, but it saddens me when I look at UKTS tonight and see the announcement of a payware scenario pack for Edinburgh to Glasgow. This is the money culture gone mad, to me. I can understand charging for a well finished route or even a good quality rolling stock pack, but for a bunch of activities... Time was when people would have been proud to share that for free. I know they can be time consuming to create and I guess fools and their money can be easily parted etc., but that really is pushing micro payware culture to the limits.

Maybe it's me, perhaps I need to start thinking in different terms, I'm living in the past etc. but the day I pay for a scenario pack would be a sorry one indeed.

Edit: Just looked at the AP site... It's £5.00 for six scenarios and you need a load of other payware to run them.

I'll be putting the money towards TS2012 instead...

Vern,

It is a choice that everyone must make for themselves.
You can buy something or not.
It surprises me time and again that "huge noise" about a few pounds.
I do not buy anything.
Where does this hatred comes from when talking about money?
It would clearly be different when you had to buy but no one is forcing you to buy.
Why should everything be free?

We live in a free world and no one is obliged to do anything.
Wether we like it or not

On the other hand I have the utmost respect for a community that does something for each other and for free. And I see that here but also in RW.

 

[Vern]

Quite right, I do have freedom of choice and it has nothing to do with hatred.

I renewed my annual DLS FCT for @£12.00 this afternoon which is money well spent.

I will not be pay £5.00 for a small collection of scenarios which I would probably play once and forget.

 

[jointedrail]

Why does this RW garbage keeping coming to the Trainz forum?

Thank you!

Mike

 

[mrscsi]

Well I see that even after coming out of my coma this dead horse is still being beaten. Upon awakening from my coma I stumbled out and quickly made a cup of espresso and fired up the computer.

I then decided to see what was at the end of the rainbow in railworks Barstow-San Bernardino. So I switched the monitor over to the 46 inch Sony, fired up railworks and took a sip of espresso.

After 15 min. and 12 or so miles I just couldn't take it any longer. So I guess I'll probably never see San Bernardino in railworks, because the absolute monotonic sound was driving me nuts…

Now I know the sound of Trainz isn't a whole lot better, but at least you can hear it. I wasn't sure whether I was going deaf or my speakers were going bad, that is until I heard a clack-clack that was so loud it woke me up proper.

For that sound to be as loud as it was in Trainz the engine noise would have shaken this place to the ground, but I could still barely hear it in railworks.

And then there was all this talk about content manager, while I'm going to assume that package manager and packager does the same thing (or tries to) in railworks. If so I didn't see anything absolutely stellar in either that would make me want to run right out and remove Trainz from my hard drive forever…

I like to go in and take an asset that may be really cool but may not do exactly what I want or may not look exactly like I want, at least half the fun for me anyway is taking that asset and modifying it (FOR MY OWN USE) and re-skinning it and making it look and act the way I want it to.

Now I don't know if that's possible in railworks, I approached it the same way I approached Trainz, clicking and right clicking and exploring. I didn't see anything in railworks on a right-click menu that said "open for edit" or "open in content creator plus" or anything equivalent.

The way I taught myself how to use content creator plus was simply trial and error, clone an asset, open the clone and start modifying stuff and going out and looking at it in surveyor or driver and seeing the results. Now I won't try to claim that I am God's gift to content modifiers, I learn new stuff each and every day, it's what keeps me doing it…

I may just be getting older, and don't have the patience to sit down and explore like I did in Trainz when content manager and CCP came on the scene, maybe that's it. But I just didn't see anything I could recognize that was intuitive or inviting exploration in railworks like there was in content manager.

But I'm not going to fault anyone for their opinions, if they like railworks better than Trainz, that's their itch. But I will feel inclined to respond to posts that tend to be misleading about Trainz versus railworks, in the process I hope to learn some things. At least we're not like they are over on most of the railworks forums, completely deaf to any dissenting views…:hehe:

 

[theokus]

Quite right, I do have freedom of choice and it has nothing to do with hatred.

I renewed my annual DLS FCT for @£12.00 this afternoon which is money well spent.

I will not be pay £5.00 for a small collection of scenarios which I would probably play once and forget.

I totally agree

 

[NikkiA]

Now I don't know if that's possible in railworks, I approached it the same way I approached Trainz, clicking and right clicking and exploring. I didn't see anything in railworks on a right-click menu that said "open for edit" or "open in content creator plus" or anything equivalent.

You need to use a third party (payware for this function) tool (usually RW_Tools) to convert the textures to something editable. But even then, a lot of the textures are in some weird format that doesn't convert right (eg, the original class 37 is like this - almost all, if not all, 3rd party reskins of class 37s are from the payware class 37 that came out shortly after RW) or is simply mapped in a way that just isn't conducive to reskinning.

If you're lucky and the texture converts properly, and is mapped well, then it's not really much more difficult than trainz reskins. The only major caveat is that the use of DirectX shaders mean that the texture isn't the only determining factor for how a specific area of the texture looks on the model.

However, the fact that RW_Tools is required to do this kind of thing means that there is a payware barrier of entry (unless you were lucky/forethoughtful and grabbed the license that Mike was giving away in memory of his deceased dog...) to personal reskinning- something that trainz doesn't have. The cost isn't high, but it is non-zero, and can be sigificant to someone that doesn't have disposable income.

 

[theokus]

I then decided to see what was at the end of the rainbow in railworks Barstow-San Bernardino. So I switched the monitor over to the 46 inch Sony, fired up railworks and took a sip of espresso.

…:hehe:

I drink Senseo:hehe::hehe: