Anyone still use MSTS?
- Thread starter nathanmallard
- Start date
I still use the activity and route editors within MSTS, but no longer run the sim itself. For about the last year, I've been using Open Rails. Yes, it has its glitches, such as locomotive exhaust that looks like smoke from a forest fire, and digital cab readouts being huge, but these, and others, have had workarounds established. After doing some tweaking, Open Rails runs and looks great on my system. MUCH more stable than MSTS, which used to crash about 25% of the time. Now I can run a route from point to point without having to worry about saving every 15 minutes because of the dreaded crash.
This is nothing against MSTS... it will always be the original sim for me and is what got me in the train simulator realm.
This is nothing against MSTS... it will always be the original sim for me and is what got me in the train simulator realm.
With the community that still works to create content, add-ons, and tools for the game, i'd hardly call it dead.
I just installed the gamer for the fifth, yes, FIFTH, time yesterday, from a portable hard drive i had it backed-up on. I also splurged for Open Rails to try it out, and was pleasantly surprised. While i do find Trainz superior to MSTS in the route- and session-creating departments, there is NO shortage of content with the game, whether it be American, British, French, or German, as well as a lot of other countries.
While the vanilla MSTS game has not aged well, with all of the dedication the community has poured into it, i consider it to be almost as good as Trainz 12.
I still use MSTS, as well as having the PRR Megapack in a separate installation, as well as OR. I still enjoy the original Amtrak route from Philly to Wilmington and Baltimore. The designers really nailed some key parts of the route, such as outside of Wilmington, where the line runs between 495 and the Delaware Bay, as well as the Wilmington station itself.
I haven't had to reinstall it in at least 12 years. I've moved the original installation (as well as the Megapack) from PC to PC over the years with no issue.
I haven't had to reinstall it in at least 12 years. I've moved the original installation (as well as the Megapack) from PC to PC over the years with no issue.
Haven't used it much since TANE but I do like to go back and redo some workorders (session) from the NERR which is still open. Here is an example of one, which would include the equipment used and the workorder file with the pickups and other moves. Never been able to match this in trainz.
North Eastern Railroad 2003
---------------------------
Rout: Ohio & West Virginia Buid 10/w/update patch
Work Order: NEOW-048-006
Time: 9:00 A.M.
Season: Autumn
Weather: Clear
Duration: 1:10:00
Train: SD40-2 with 100 empty grain hoppers
Class: 2
---------------------------
Good morning,
After bringing down the train from the Wisconsin Central yesterday,
the train has been cut and put into the yards. Your job today is to
assemble the 5 cuts of grain cars behind you and take them on down
to Cambridge Interchange yard and will continue on from there.
There will be heavy traffic this morning.
In front of you is Recycler and his crew, heading for the coast.
Behind you in the yard is Dandy1, heading to the stub. (nature call probably)
Also behind you is Elementh moving tankers to the fuel depot.
You will have to wait on Elementb to reverse next to you before you start your day.
You need to watch out for those two...Rumor has it that Elementb and Dandy1 were
playing tug of war with the switchers last night on each end of a graincar cut.
You will have to manually throw the switches BEHIND you.
Switches in front are in the Dispatcher's hands.
No particular order to pick the 5 cuts of grain cars.
when picking the five cuts, keep in mind to keep the veiw to the back
of the train because the front of train will go through 2 tunnels.
Reminder: lots of slack in this consist...make sure one end is done moving before
you reverse the other direction.
Have Fun.
---------------------------
Speed Limits:
Yards = 20
Main = 50
Other = as posted
Yard Switch = 20
Main Switch = 40
Drive Safely!
--------------------------
048
Dandy1
Designer of Activity
North Eastern Railroad 2003
---------------------------
Rout: Ohio & West Virginia Buid 10/w/update patch
Work Order: NEOW-048-006
Time: 9:00 A.M.
Season: Autumn
Weather: Clear
Duration: 1:10:00
Train: SD40-2 with 100 empty grain hoppers
Class: 2
---------------------------
Good morning,
After bringing down the train from the Wisconsin Central yesterday,
the train has been cut and put into the yards. Your job today is to
assemble the 5 cuts of grain cars behind you and take them on down
to Cambridge Interchange yard and will continue on from there.
There will be heavy traffic this morning.
In front of you is Recycler and his crew, heading for the coast.
Behind you in the yard is Dandy1, heading to the stub. (nature call probably)
Also behind you is Elementh moving tankers to the fuel depot.
You will have to wait on Elementb to reverse next to you before you start your day.
You need to watch out for those two...Rumor has it that Elementb and Dandy1 were
playing tug of war with the switchers last night on each end of a graincar cut.
You will have to manually throw the switches BEHIND you.
Switches in front are in the Dispatcher's hands.
No particular order to pick the 5 cuts of grain cars.
when picking the five cuts, keep in mind to keep the veiw to the back
of the train because the front of train will go through 2 tunnels.
Reminder: lots of slack in this consist...make sure one end is done moving before
you reverse the other direction.
Have Fun.
---------------------------
Speed Limits:
Yards = 20
Main = 50
Other = as posted
Yard Switch = 20
Main Switch = 40
Drive Safely!
--------------------------
048
Dandy1
Designer of Activity
1.7.0519 update mainly with the irish routes on the old toshiba satelitte 6110 i brought fictious Ballyshannon and the 2 parts of Enterprise, does make a decient driver sim, like the way it handles the gear boxes in the old irish BUT's lots of fun to drive and is still something that traiz does not handle well. Found in most cases it was easier to buy routes on cd just because of there size wand get every thing you need already. Did love the version of Blackpool trams with all its updates and many other routes i either downloaded, downloaded with help from smace or brought, there where some very nice routes in the sim. I have quite a collection of cd's here
Like all sims has its good and bad points.
Tom
Like all sims has its good and bad points.
Tom
cascaderailroad
New member
I saw a Wailwerks' video of a train on superelevated tracks, it was lifting off the rails 4 foot riding on 1 wheel ... lol
Then I saw a MSTS tank car twain' on the Horseshoe Curve with couplers stretching a dozen feet, like rubber bands ... lol ... lol
Then I watch T:ANE videos ... and revert back to TRS2006
Then I saw a MSTS tank car twain' on the Horseshoe Curve with couplers stretching a dozen feet, like rubber bands ... lol ... lol
Then I watch T:ANE videos ... and revert back to TRS2006
gremlin1812
New member
G'day, I still have MSTS and also OpenRails and at the moment find myself using them more than trainz for the simple reason that I am sick of fixing stuff with every new version and the fact that every new version is full of bugs and the fixes often create new bugs and there has never been a version yet that has been fully fixed before bringing out a new version and TANE is no different. I have a PC dedicated to MSTS and OpenRails and they work well OR isreally moving ahead.
Regards
Barrie
Regards
Barrie
Years ago I first discovered it and added some routes but then by sheer chance on a search came across Trainz. The techy side of MS is a hard one for the average non-techy like me and on a general search one day discovered Trainz 2004 and have not looked back since as I can build here a dashed lot more easily than with MS outside of just playing with it. When I get problems with health issues Trainz is a better direction than even the NHS!
OR is a much older program then some here seem to think. I was pure MSTS and OR until I switched to TRS12. OR is open source, it's unlikely it will ever die with that community either. But for me, I got tired of waiting for OR to mature. They still haven't fixed steam emission's? After I've been gone a good 4 years? Case in point....
-Falcus
-Falcus
SuperSpeedMaglev
Wonderfully Old Fashioned
I've got to admit, shots like these..
...they certainly make MSTS look anything but dated. If you didn't pay close attention, you'd almost mistake that for Trainz! :hehe: I started out with TS2006.
I'm almost convinced to give it a try, though the idea of complicated route building/editing....
...they certainly make MSTS look anything but dated. If you didn't pay close attention, you'd almost mistake that for Trainz! :hehe: I started out with TS2006.
I'm almost convinced to give it a try, though the idea of complicated route building/editing....
Although MS was the first simulator I bought years ago I still think that even allowing for the comments about sorting things above Trainz is by far an improvement. After all; you can do far more with Trainz widely tan you can with MTS and you don't have to be a techy genius on even routine stuff. My old MTS discs are somewhere but haven't bothered looking for them!
cascaderailroad
New member
I have MSTS, but could not get it to run as it took up allot of space on my PC ... I wonder what is the easiest train simulator, "Surveyor", routebuilding, tracklaying wise ?
BryanMar3046
Hayajiro Conductor
MSTS was one of the first rail simulator games I owned long ago. I can't get it running (now) since I lost my Activation Key and my 2nd Install disc.. :'( I think it was the XP boxed edition, but I was pretty young when it was released.
The only route that I actually enjoyed running on back and forth was the Japanese Routes, and the Marias Pass. I have some strange addiction with running random trains on the Tokyo - Hakone Route.. (Including a long BNSF Consist :hehe
In addition, MSTS was once installed on a slow computer that gave me the blue screen of death. Didn't know what that meant long ago, but I was certainly mad after driving an Acela Express Consist for an hour.
Man the memoires, better find the activation key and disk that's lying around somewhere and boot up MSTS again. Fun times...
The only route that I actually enjoyed running on back and forth was the Japanese Routes, and the Marias Pass. I have some strange addiction with running random trains on the Tokyo - Hakone Route.. (Including a long BNSF Consist :hehe
In addition, MSTS was once installed on a slow computer that gave me the blue screen of death. Didn't know what that meant long ago, but I was certainly mad after driving an Acela Express Consist for an hour.
Man the memoires, better find the activation key and disk that's lying around somewhere and boot up MSTS again. Fun times...
I don't think MSTS was ever designed to run on a 486! By that stage (2001) most computers were using Pentium chips and the early Geforce GPU's, though sadly I always thought these were a bit inferior to the latest generation of the 3DFX Voodoo cards of the time. These gave lovely smooth and (for the time) lifelike graphics on games like Longbow 2 but the "upgrade" to a Geforce card had the display looking like a checkerboard.
I'm currently attempting to build a route in MSTS but it is slow and frustrating not to mention (still) buggy and have also run off a Transdem start for the same project in TS12. I have a feeing which one will receive more attention in the coming weeks...
I'm currently attempting to build a route in MSTS but it is slow and frustrating not to mention (still) buggy and have also run off a Transdem start for the same project in TS12. I have a feeing which one will receive more attention in the coming weeks...