That's a complete deal-breaker then. I have been considering RW for some time. Unlike a lot of folks, I don't really mind running more than one sim, though I only intend to create for Trainz. But, I'm not even going to try RW for this reason alone.
Getting Trainz to look and feel more realistic? Ala MSTS/Railworks? HOW?
- Thread starter Davie_UCF
- Start date
That's a complete deal-breaker then. I have been considering RW for some time. Unlike a lot of folks, I don't really mind running more than one sim, though I only intend to create for Trainz. But, I'm not even going to try RW for this reason alone.
Ditto. Got caught with a game that needed 'Steam' registration once, absolutely never again...
Andy
Really, talking with a well known RailWorks content developer he says that RailWorks draw distance is closer to 6000 meters, which is actually higher than TS2010's which is 5000 isn't it?
Yeah, again matter of personal preference - I don't have any problems with STEAM, but some people have had bad experiences with it. And if you want Railworks you have to have STEAM, there's no alternative.
Draw distance, I don't know about currently, but I measured it once with 500 meter lengths of straight track, came up with 4 visible sections, fifth one fogged out. It was a long time ago so it could have changed, likewise the 30 meter fadeout distance for the procedural flora weeds might have increased since the last time I checked.
Draw distance, I don't know about currently, but I measured it once with 500 meter lengths of straight track, came up with 4 visible sections, fifth one fogged out. It was a long time ago so it could have changed, likewise the 30 meter fadeout distance for the procedural flora weeds might have increased since the last time I checked.
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Must have been before the draw distance increase update with RailWorks back in 2009.
Well comparing how good a default route looks like in RailWorks compared to a default route in TS2010 is kind of a no-brainer.
I'm not saying the RailWorks doesn't have it's problems but compared to Trainz, the way it looks is not one of them -
RailWorks -
TS2010 -
RW draws out to around 6km but the detailed distance is maximum 2km. The "distant mountains" such as they are display with a very stark plain texture and abrupt transition at the 2km mark. Not even as good as the DM's in MSTS which adapted your base terrain texture and were very effective. More noticeable on a mountainous route than in the plains, the latter TBH is more what RW is geared to taking into account the very basic copy and paste and poor terrain texturing (sorry Jim!) effects.
After a bit the biggest problem with terrain painting in RW is not so much the techniques, which can be learned though still nowhere as easy to blend and mix as in Surveyor. It's the general lack of textures and those that are available tend to be too much of a contrast to blend successfully without looking splotchy. Fine close up or on level ground but approaching a steep hill where the tree cover hasn't popped into view, can look like your terrain has the measles! You can't easily add terrain textures in without a major setup exercise. Only one (to my knowledge) all new texture set has been created by a guy over at UKTS. That's something like a 300Mb download and you need to faff about with blueprints/xml files to get them in your route.
I haven't tried the latest iteration of the scenario editor in RW2. As Jim says though it's not very intuitive no way of saving chained driver commands and the AI will often trip over itself if it even thinks two trains might occupy the same block at the same time, rather than doing a bit of basic regulating. That said of course, once you've got a scenario and maybe some moving scenery (sorry, other trains) set up it is nice to be able to drive your train and have the despatcher/signaller take care of the routing. That's an ongoing major gripe of mine re Trainz, all that manual point setting and figuring out your path at major junctions. The system is a throwback to the original Trainz 1.0 model railway and should have been tossed out years ago for some autonomous route setting and traffic control logic.
Re Steam, can't say it bothers me as more and more none railway games are using it. Biggest bind is the lack of control over updates - you can't always keep it offline and sooner or later it will force you on to the latest version. Apparently the font change in the editor was a slip up although the clique still came out in force at UKTS to say how wonderful it was - will hopefully get nerfed in another update but makes you wonder at the amount of time spent on QA at RSC as opposed to selling DLC...
After a bit the biggest problem with terrain painting in RW is not so much the techniques, which can be learned though still nowhere as easy to blend and mix as in Surveyor. It's the general lack of textures and those that are available tend to be too much of a contrast to blend successfully without looking splotchy. Fine close up or on level ground but approaching a steep hill where the tree cover hasn't popped into view, can look like your terrain has the measles! You can't easily add terrain textures in without a major setup exercise. Only one (to my knowledge) all new texture set has been created by a guy over at UKTS. That's something like a 300Mb download and you need to faff about with blueprints/xml files to get them in your route.
I haven't tried the latest iteration of the scenario editor in RW2. As Jim says though it's not very intuitive no way of saving chained driver commands and the AI will often trip over itself if it even thinks two trains might occupy the same block at the same time, rather than doing a bit of basic regulating. That said of course, once you've got a scenario and maybe some moving scenery (sorry, other trains) set up it is nice to be able to drive your train and have the despatcher/signaller take care of the routing. That's an ongoing major gripe of mine re Trainz, all that manual point setting and figuring out your path at major junctions. The system is a throwback to the original Trainz 1.0 model railway and should have been tossed out years ago for some autonomous route setting and traffic control logic.
Re Steam, can't say it bothers me as more and more none railway games are using it. Biggest bind is the lack of control over updates - you can't always keep it offline and sooner or later it will force you on to the latest version. Apparently the font change in the editor was a slip up although the clique still came out in force at UKTS to say how wonderful it was - will hopefully get nerfed in another update but makes you wonder at the amount of time spent on QA at RSC as opposed to selling DLC...
In my opinion trainz needs a sun.No a sun in the sky.Light day effects in the locomotives and the buildings.The shadows in trainz are good but they are on the ground.For more realistic the rolling stock needs light effects when they are facing north south east or west.Railworks is better graphical and realistic but for me is a very simple game.Is like a copy of trainz but with better graphics.I have see very real locos like the tcr amtrak and other F7s and the content of jointed rail of the content that was never released by corey.The acela is another example.I dont know if it has be exported from msts or its has be imported into msts.
For me trainz is a giant that has started being little
BYe
For me trainz is a giant that has started being little
BYe
mezzoprezzo
Content appreciator
Thanks sniper297 for your detailed, informative post.
For me, generally, I much prefer the Trainz scenery.
DLS is a major plus. It stimulates creativity, makes the whole sim and forum much livelier.
The “Alpha sorting issue” is new to me. My (billboard) trees have never turned blue against the sky – or anything else.
Steam – not interested. Used it before with an FPS game – never again. Now prefer to be off line whenever possible.
Looks like I’m happily stuck with Trainz!
Good to see what else is out there though.
Cheers
Casper
For me, generally, I much prefer the Trainz scenery.
DLS is a major plus. It stimulates creativity, makes the whole sim and forum much livelier.
The “Alpha sorting issue” is new to me. My (billboard) trees have never turned blue against the sky – or anything else.
Steam – not interested. Used it before with an FPS game – never again. Now prefer to be off line whenever possible.
Looks like I’m happily stuck with Trainz!
Good to see what else is out there though.
Cheers
Casper
Well there is one common way you should know on how to add realism to trainz. just make sure your computer specs are good enough though. Before you start trainz raise the resolution to it's highest settings, go to options and raise all the bars such as draw distance, scenery, and things like that to it's highest. Also, try tinkering around with open GL and Direct X. Open GL makes the water look realistic. That is all I can help with for now. For me, trainz looks almost realistic, mabe even the same as railworks when you mess around with the settings enough.
I would claim that RailWorks "looks" better. I believe Trainz suffers from an excess of color intensity and some goofy bright sun lighted textures. That may be caused by its long history where weak PCs restricted the number of objects so the tendency was to make those few allowed to stand out along with blotchy texturing to represent FPS expensive vegetation..
I can create scenes in Railworks, with the correct lighting, that feel quite real to me. Lighting being the key.
My personal limitation is that I cannot begin to invest the time to really learn a simulator unless it LOOKS real. I have seen others decry all scenery as useless with only an interest in functions. To each her/his own.
Having carefully listened to the statements of the management and staff at Rail Simulations my opinion is that the game is totally focused on driving a train. Whatever functionality might be added is only to enhance that experience. I do not like to drive trains. I want my own gigantic model railroad and RailWorks seems to have little chance in offering that.
Trainz grew from a model railroad on your PC to a respectable simulation of a real railroad. However, it is difficult to make it look as real as RailWorks. I have dumped and reloaded Trainz several times. I am now on my 4th try. I think that I have found some very few "speedtrees/ultra trees that look reasonable. Not as good as RailWorks but not bad. Most still do look bad. Ground textures must match the vegetation and the railroad's environment. I may have found a small set of those two elements that offer a nice visual experience.
Currently, I am learning how to mix vegetation (height and density) with a "matching, version 2010 hi-res texture for trackside ambiance. Since it looks fairly good I have begun the task of learning the rules and commands that should allow the making of a large mode railroad.
I continue to monitor the RailWorks forums but there is very little discussion about functionality which shows that the current customers are mostly train driver enthusiasts which fits nicely in the Rail Simulations business plan. That plan does not include my interests.
I can create scenes in Railworks, with the correct lighting, that feel quite real to me. Lighting being the key.
My personal limitation is that I cannot begin to invest the time to really learn a simulator unless it LOOKS real. I have seen others decry all scenery as useless with only an interest in functions. To each her/his own.
Having carefully listened to the statements of the management and staff at Rail Simulations my opinion is that the game is totally focused on driving a train. Whatever functionality might be added is only to enhance that experience. I do not like to drive trains. I want my own gigantic model railroad and RailWorks seems to have little chance in offering that.
Trainz grew from a model railroad on your PC to a respectable simulation of a real railroad. However, it is difficult to make it look as real as RailWorks. I have dumped and reloaded Trainz several times. I am now on my 4th try. I think that I have found some very few "speedtrees/ultra trees that look reasonable. Not as good as RailWorks but not bad. Most still do look bad. Ground textures must match the vegetation and the railroad's environment. I may have found a small set of those two elements that offer a nice visual experience.
Currently, I am learning how to mix vegetation (height and density) with a "matching, version 2010 hi-res texture for trackside ambiance. Since it looks fairly good I have begun the task of learning the rules and commands that should allow the making of a large mode railroad.
I continue to monitor the RailWorks forums but there is very little discussion about functionality which shows that the current customers are mostly train driver enthusiasts which fits nicely in the Rail Simulations business plan. That plan does not include my interests.
It's PRETTY!
"Well comparing how good a default route looks like in RailWorks compared to a default route in TS2010 is kind of a no-brainer"
A matter of taste again, I'm inclined to agree with that but it's amazing how many don't. If Railworks wasn't so pretty it really wouldn't even be worth talking about in my opinion.
Funny thing, setting up AI traffic in RW you used to be able to spawn multiple trains from the same portal - but the procedure was pure insanity. Set a train on the track in front of the portal, attach a driver icon and give it a destination, attach waypoint instructions and set the priority and start time, then add it to the portal. If you want one train to spawn from that portal every 10 minutes for 4 hours, you need to repeat all those steps 24 times. And of course the last time I tried it, the portals generated more error messages than trains, the trains get confused and creep at 0.5 mph to the second signal, then vanish and reappear at the portal to try again, they stop at green signals and blow reds, collide with each other like kamikazes, I just can't figure how the AI "logic" would be acceptable to anybody.
I currently have a test session running in Trainz since 10:00 this morning - three portals, one spawning a through train from the south every ten minutes, one each from two north portals every 20 minutes, 12 trains per hour for 9 hours continuously, over 100 AI trains so far and it's still running. Portal north 1 drops off 10 cars in the first yard, runs to the second yard and drops off 10 more, heads for the exit portal. Portal north 2, a light engine MU, waits 10 minutes then follows him picking up the cars he dropped off. The player has the option of stealing some of the cars or adding cars to the ones that will be hauled away, thus adding realistic interaction with the AI trains, and it really don't take much time to set up and debug something like that.
But the switches are still ugly. :hehe: Ideally, get the Trainz AI traffic into Railworks, or get Railworks graphics into Trainz, you'd have the ideal simulator for me.
"Well comparing how good a default route looks like in RailWorks compared to a default route in TS2010 is kind of a no-brainer"
A matter of taste again, I'm inclined to agree with that but it's amazing how many don't. If Railworks wasn't so pretty it really wouldn't even be worth talking about in my opinion.
Funny thing, setting up AI traffic in RW you used to be able to spawn multiple trains from the same portal - but the procedure was pure insanity. Set a train on the track in front of the portal, attach a driver icon and give it a destination, attach waypoint instructions and set the priority and start time, then add it to the portal. If you want one train to spawn from that portal every 10 minutes for 4 hours, you need to repeat all those steps 24 times. And of course the last time I tried it, the portals generated more error messages than trains, the trains get confused and creep at 0.5 mph to the second signal, then vanish and reappear at the portal to try again, they stop at green signals and blow reds, collide with each other like kamikazes, I just can't figure how the AI "logic" would be acceptable to anybody.
I currently have a test session running in Trainz since 10:00 this morning - three portals, one spawning a through train from the south every ten minutes, one each from two north portals every 20 minutes, 12 trains per hour for 9 hours continuously, over 100 AI trains so far and it's still running. Portal north 1 drops off 10 cars in the first yard, runs to the second yard and drops off 10 more, heads for the exit portal. Portal north 2, a light engine MU, waits 10 minutes then follows him picking up the cars he dropped off. The player has the option of stealing some of the cars or adding cars to the ones that will be hauled away, thus adding realistic interaction with the AI trains, and it really don't take much time to set up and debug something like that.
But the switches are still ugly. :hehe: Ideally, get the Trainz AI traffic into Railworks, or get Railworks graphics into Trainz, you'd have the ideal simulator for me.Without being able to see the points on the switch and discerning which way the switch is lined the issue is a deal breaker as far as realistically simulating US rail operations go anyway.
The whole game engine problem with Trainz is very frustrating. With the capability of the editing tools and some of the other features it has the potential of being the most complete railroad simulation program on the PC so far, but that game engine just kills it.
Taking the core program, the editing tools and combining it with a capable game engine like this would be something and in the end I think many wouldn't have a problem paying even more for the program -
http://outerra.com/wgallery.html
http://outerra.com/wfeatures.html
Sorry Snipper297, but I have to agree with Mezzoprezzo on the fencing alongside the track, the fencing is awful, if you drive along the London to Oxford route, and count how many times the fencing is in the air, not touching the ground, I've never seen fencing like it before.
I also love the way in the Railworks route, that the trees come litterally into the cab, especially around Didcot, the FGW HST is swamped by trees, I can imagine on board the train, the passenger being asked the question... Do you want leaves with your soup sir.?.:hehe:
Joe Airtime
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Fences
The floating fence may be caused by a change to the fence after it was placed. I think I have seen originally placed splines follow the ground but if you move an end-point later portions seem to loose proper contract to the terrain. Adding some spline points and adjusting the height will fix that but on a very long spline you will need a lot of coffee. Maybe Auran recognizes that issue and can cause the spline function to rescan the terrain to make it stick to the terrain.
The floating fence may be caused by a change to the fence after it was placed. I think I have seen originally placed splines follow the ground but if you move an end-point later portions seem to loose proper contract to the terrain. Adding some spline points and adjusting the height will fix that but on a very long spline you will need a lot of coffee. Maybe Auran recognizes that issue and can cause the spline function to rescan the terrain to make it stick to the terrain.
Special herbs and spices
Trees too close to the tracks for seasoning the soup, that makes sense. I always thought the purpose was in case there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms. :hehe: Floating objects and foliage too close are a route developer's m!$t@k3, that type of thing happens in all three games. Altho sometimes the problem is unauthorized tinkering, like when someone replaced all the trees in Phil Skene's routes with speedtrees - when Phil originally uploaded those routes they didn't have trees on the tracks.
Movable points, how about it? IIRC Trainz came out about six months after MSTS which would make it around NINE YEARS with those fake switches, we're long overdue. I've been tinkering with workarounds but haven't found anything simple and fast yet. Replacing all the switch levers with switch target indicators helps in most cases, one problem being colors - a yellow target looks green until you get really close up. Green and red instead of green and yellow on the switchstands seems to work better, currently replacing those but still hunting for perfection - obvious which way the switch is thrown from a distance, but not so big that it's out of scale close up. Double head signals ain't working for certain track configurations either, on double crossovers I'm getting red over green regardless of which way the facing point is thrown. :'(
Trees too close to the tracks for seasoning the soup, that makes sense. I always thought the purpose was in case there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms. :hehe: Floating objects and foliage too close are a route developer's m!$t@k3, that type of thing happens in all three games. Altho sometimes the problem is unauthorized tinkering, like when someone replaced all the trees in Phil Skene's routes with speedtrees - when Phil originally uploaded those routes they didn't have trees on the tracks.
Movable points, how about it? IIRC Trainz came out about six months after MSTS which would make it around NINE YEARS with those fake switches, we're long overdue. I've been tinkering with workarounds but haven't found anything simple and fast yet. Replacing all the switch levers with switch target indicators helps in most cases, one problem being colors - a yellow target looks green until you get really close up. Green and red instead of green and yellow on the switchstands seems to work better, currently replacing those but still hunting for perfection - obvious which way the switch is thrown from a distance, but not so big that it's out of scale close up. Double head signals ain't working for certain track configurations either, on double crossovers I'm getting red over green regardless of which way the facing point is thrown. :'(
The issue with fences in RW is that they are neither true splines as in Trainz, or telegraph objects which was the workround in MSTS. I suspect the problem stems from the base of the fence placing level with the height of the rail head rather than on the ground or preferably beneath it. Even worse is trying to free place i.e. snap to terrain as any imperfection punts every second or third piece in the air at a 45 degree angle. One of the reasons why, when you do see a fenced line, the fittings tend to follow the track as parallel lofts rather than being placed more prototypically at the base of an embankment or top of a cutting. In TRS it is much easier to get the fence splines to sit in a more natural looking location.
Jim
Andi06 has moving switches on the DLS (there are others by other people using his script) which do need wiring up with his junction track or invisible track. They are very effective and I use them a lot. Andi has developed switches that do not need wiring up but has been unable to finalise them because of Auran's reluctance (or inability) to answer his queries. If you do a search on animated points you will find quite a lot about them.
Andi06 has moving switches on the DLS (there are others by other people using his script) which do need wiring up with his junction track or invisible track. They are very effective and I use them a lot. Andi has developed switches that do not need wiring up but has been unable to finalise them because of Auran's reluctance (or inability) to answer his queries. If you do a search on animated points you will find quite a lot about them.
One thing I think is the Enviromentals. The Sky can be too fuzzy and clear and cloudy skies don't have much difference. The Sun is also a factor I'd like to introduce. In Trainz, the Sun doesn't reflect off of much andis much too big and round as well as there's no moon. I think we need a bloom effect with the sun and make the actual "dot in the sky" a bit smaller.
Another thing in trainz is that nothing echoes nmuch. We need whistles to end when the button comes up, not when the sound file is up. The Steam effects can bee better too, because they are more in fuzzy dots instead of streams. Real darkness inside of tunnels would be cool, making all rollingstock inside look dark too instead illuminated.
Something neither has done is real wobbily old shortline rails. I would like to see that. Automobile traffic actually spinning wheels would be cool as well.
Another thing in trainz is that nothing echoes nmuch. We need whistles to end when the button comes up, not when the sound file is up. The Steam effects can bee better too, because they are more in fuzzy dots instead of streams. Real darkness inside of tunnels would be cool, making all rollingstock inside look dark too instead illuminated.
Something neither has done is real wobbily old shortline rails. I would like to see that. Automobile traffic actually spinning wheels would be cool as well.
I've used Andi's switches for past few years but I do wish they looked a bit better and had sharper newer textures
I seem to notice theres a lot more prototypical route creation going on in msts/railworks than on Trainz (unless its just me)... for example the line I live on is being done for Railworks and it does look amazing.. which makes me jealous
.
I seem to notice theres a lot more prototypical route creation going on in msts/railworks than on Trainz (unless its just me)... for example the line I live on is being done for Railworks and it does look amazing.. which makes me jealous
.