I Finally Erased RailWorks
- Thread starter boleyd
- Start date
The peddler freight is actually more fun on bigger layouts, since that adds the challenge of trying not to "stab" the hotshots on the mainline. Different strokes thing, for those who don't care about AI traffic and are happy being the only train running, railworks is actually the better choice. For me, I had to make a decision between smart and ugly or stupid and pretty. So here I am. Last page of the previous link;
http://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?285908-Attitude-Check!/page11
Note what Mike10 said at the bottom, he was right. :wave:
http://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?285908-Attitude-Check!/page11
Note what Mike10 said at the bottom, he was right. :wave:
TS2013 is the best Railworks yet, big improvement over TS2012:
Since I only like switching, the AI and physics doesn't matter.
Runs a whole lot better than Trainz 12.
Harold
I hear with the new RW you can go up really steep grades with a very long consist, and accelerate with around 10% power. ..
The worse part about Trainz is it's lack of draw distance. I started with Trainz 2009 on STEAM and is was great. Pull all the way back and spin around and nothing "popped" up or disappeared as the view was spun around. Ran the old Reading and Northern for a long time thinking that was how Trainz worked as Steam never updated.
Got 2010 and all that disappeared with the distance limiter. Bought every version since and having a scene "pop-up" while spinning really tanks switching enjoyment. Just hoping!!
Am beta testing David Peterson's CMTM Jay Street and Trainz12 really isn't fun to play in switching mode. CMTM is a great system but Trainz really ruins it with it's stuttering and wheezing. Try to tell myself that Trainz is fun but it isn't. Having a draw distance of 2000 meters isn't very good in the year 2012. The sparkly Speedtrees really aren't very good on the eyes either.
Have at it "fanbois" but the Jet is crashing to a creaking end. But you can run it as an "App".
Will still run a virgin 2009 to remember how great the old Reading and Northern route is and think of what could have been.
Harold
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Unfortunately no sim is perfect, but I think Trainz is alot better than any of them I have seen , and I tried the other 2 popular one's before I bought Trainz. Shame that this thread seems to be turning into a Trainz bashing session.
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No worries; the sooner we shake off the detractors; the better!
Having come from the world of RailWorks. my only complaint is that learning Trainz is almost a full time job. RailWorks is a game and therefore if you can't be running your lone train on a built-in route in less than an hour Pong may be more appropriate. The problem with Trainz is that it is a simulator. As such, it is inherently complex (wonderful, thanks). Fun and games + expecting 50 cals mounted on the gondolas is not going to happen - I hope. The greatest asset of Trainz, for me is the DLS. It is also the source of some problems. Its overall value would be enhanced with a few fixes. After all it is just a database and they are not a recent release item. I am starting to see some mention of an SP1 update. A lot of customers are beginning to feel some anxiety as the list of problems has grown but no update. If N3V fixes 80% of the reported issues then happiness will reign, at least in front of my PC.
Railworks has now been erased. I can't help myself but I sneak back to the forums. Same old stuff off the street gamers who never researched rail operations, discussing the fun of using scenarios and getting points on the public scoreboard. The few remaining people who understand railroading are now bemoaning what may be a clampdown on 3rd party addons. After all it is easier to have a closed program than one that has non-vendor stuff strewn all over the Internet and sometimes interfering with the payware routes and assets.
Back to the learning curve on Trainz, the last of the RAILROAD simulators.
Railworks has now been erased. I can't help myself but I sneak back to the forums. Same old stuff off the street gamers who never researched rail operations, discussing the fun of using scenarios and getting points on the public scoreboard. The few remaining people who understand railroading are now bemoaning what may be a clampdown on 3rd party addons. After all it is easier to have a closed program than one that has non-vendor stuff strewn all over the Internet and sometimes interfering with the payware routes and assets.
Back to the learning curve on Trainz, the last of the RAILROAD simulators.
Why is pointing out a huge flaw bashing the game?
I wish Trainz "worked" for me, it has a lot of great features.
If you don't complain the game will never change, all the things that were bashed about Railworks seems to being fixed. Yeah, there was a lot of bashing on "Trainsim.com" where the Railworks fanboys don't go.
They probably can't fix the AI or the physics because the original code is screwed up.
Trainz lack of "draw distance" to me is more important than than anything else. Run a copy of virgin 2009 and see how screwed up Trainz really is in that department.
Harold
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On and on and On.......yada yada........ First of all, unless all the people posting on the forums dedicated to Railworks are liars, not very many things on the 2013 version have incorporated fixes from the previous version, if any, so it would appear that your statement is not backed up by the facts. Electric lines that are still jagged, AI that doesn't work correctly, inability to easily create scenarios, almost no AI in the free run if any, poor frame rates in some areas, weird sound problems, HO train type dynamics, etc. . As I said before, no sim is perfect, but in my opinion RW has a much longer way to go to reach the level that Trainz is at, and in it's present direction, I frankly doubt it will ever get there.
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Comparisons are inevitable, if it wasn't for comparisons I wouldn't be here now since I never would have known what Trainz does better than the other two. Main reason you hear so much comparison HERE and not on the forums for the other games is because Trainz is good enough to survive the comparison, the others simply don't have what it takes.
I believe that Railworks is a game. Therefore, discussing individual faults that do not enhance the GAME nor bring in more money, are a waste of bandwidth. As the saying goes, it is what it is, or it is what it has become. I went through the divorce. Although I moaned, whined, etc. I always wanted the things that met my interests to be fixed (normally the items are listed here). Over a year ago it was becoming clear that this was the direction - a game as a money maker. Boy was I mad. I and a few others were ignored and the the path to a game started to reveal itself. I set my goal that if the program continued on its apparent commercial path I was going to erase it. I chose the latest update and mentally prepared my self to dump it. Yes it sounds silly that someone could become so wedded to a railroad program. The reason was that it was a hobby and entertained me for many hours during the day. I enjoyed those hours and now because of a decision of a game oriented CEO they were being erased. I believe that a few other people also shared a passion for the program but in other areas. So some were quite upset. I only say this because a portion of people devote a lot of time and money toward a hobby. When that hobby is taken away they are understandably unhappy. The funeral is over and the body is buried and I have no desire to get out the DVD and resurrect Railworks.
Harold,
There are a few issues here and in particular with the current versions of Trainz that don't help matters, but before we discuss the current versions, here's a bit of history on the problem. These routes that you're talking about here have lots of spline objects, older buildings without any LOD, and old flipboard trees. This causes lots of stuttering and pausing as the sim has to continuously readjust its self to display the objects. flipboard trees are very taxing on the CPU as they have to be interpreted before they are sent off to the GPU for rendering and finaly display. N3V actually solved this issue pretty well using SpeedTrees. I know you'll groan, like many others here, but it's true. The SpeedTrees are handled close to 100% by the video card instead of needing the CPU for the preprocessing. In the old days, the simulator would just push through the stutters and in many cases crash to the desktop. Starting with TRS2010, N3V decided to put a limiter on the graphics engine to prevent the system from crashing. When the sim "feels" like it's overloaded, the graphics engine will limit the draw distance even with the highest settings enabled. We have complained furiously and loudly in the forums, asking for control over this. The discussion went back and forth as we asked if maybe we could have a slider to control how much the sim feels it's going to crash, but typically of how things go these days, and not just with N3V I may add, our request went unanswered.
I can say that Dave Peterson did a great job with this layout. The problem caused lots of frustration for me as well as I could not figure out what was causing the issue. Then one day, while working on my own route, I noticed that a section that loaded fine previously in TRS2009 and below was acting weird in the newer versions. I deleted the baseboards and rebuilt them using newer buildings, fewer splines, and updated textures. (I'm actually very proud of my renovation too, I may add.) Today this section is one of the best running on my very extensive route. I then went back to Dave's route, which I had downloaded many moons before, and did some renovating. I removed the spline sidewalks and put in newer roads. I modifed Maddies' road with a sidewalk and put cobblestone textures from FMA's roads. By doing this I removed all the indiviual splines and replaced them with a single road. I then embedded the track into the road again and replaced many of the big blocks of buildings with individual ones. This was a lot of work, but it sure was worth it in the end. Sadly all of this ended in vain shortly because my system had a major blow-out and I lost everything except my own route that I had backed up. But I can say it was a learning experience I have never forgotten and have applied the same techniques to other poorly running routes that I have downloaded in the past.
John
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nfitzsimmons
New member
What I find a little disturbing here in this thread is the attitude, "The best rail sim,ulator is the one that I like, and anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot."
Everyone has their own needs and preferences; that doesn't make everyone else srupid or wrong.
I play all four of the major sims for the following reasons:
MSTS - The first real rail sim. It has been heavily modded and long-term users know how it works and how to get around most of the original problems. It has a huge number of good routes and equipment available and some of my favorites are only found here.
Railworks - Sometimes I like to take a casual ride and just devote a couple of hours to trainwatching. Of the four I think Railworks has the best graphics. It's fun to watch raindrops obscuring the view in the cab, and the weather changes are better done than Trainz.
Trainz - I have 2009, so I speaking from that perspective. I like Trainz because of the huge amount of items that can be used for route building, and for the AI. Highly detailed routes are easy to build and as an old retired model railroader I appreciate that.
Run8 - OK, it's a newcomer and it's dedicated primarily to multi-player. Currently there is only one route available (but more have been promised) byt the physics are the best, and still being tweaked. It's more like "real" railroading than the others from an operations standpoint, and there's a fairly steep learning curve that requires the engineer to pay careful attention to things like slack, careful throttle operation, and realistic braking.
I play all four in about equal amounts depending on my mood at the moment and enjoy each for what it does well.
So please stop all the finger-pointing at the other fools who don't like "my favorite" and just accept that other people may be looking for different things.
Sometimes this thread (and threads on other forums which cover this topic) seems like a bunch of 4 year-olds in a sandbox.
Act like adults, children.
OK, now everyone is welcome to beat up on me.
Everyone has their own needs and preferences; that doesn't make everyone else srupid or wrong.
I play all four of the major sims for the following reasons:
MSTS - The first real rail sim. It has been heavily modded and long-term users know how it works and how to get around most of the original problems. It has a huge number of good routes and equipment available and some of my favorites are only found here.
Railworks - Sometimes I like to take a casual ride and just devote a couple of hours to trainwatching. Of the four I think Railworks has the best graphics. It's fun to watch raindrops obscuring the view in the cab, and the weather changes are better done than Trainz.
Trainz - I have 2009, so I speaking from that perspective. I like Trainz because of the huge amount of items that can be used for route building, and for the AI. Highly detailed routes are easy to build and as an old retired model railroader I appreciate that.
Run8 - OK, it's a newcomer and it's dedicated primarily to multi-player. Currently there is only one route available (but more have been promised) byt the physics are the best, and still being tweaked. It's more like "real" railroading than the others from an operations standpoint, and there's a fairly steep learning curve that requires the engineer to pay careful attention to things like slack, careful throttle operation, and realistic braking.
I play all four in about equal amounts depending on my mood at the moment and enjoy each for what it does well.
So please stop all the finger-pointing at the other fools who don't like "my favorite" and just accept that other people may be looking for different things.
Sometimes this thread (and threads on other forums which cover this topic) seems like a bunch of 4 year-olds in a sandbox.
Act like adults, children.
OK, now everyone is welcome to beat up on me.
nfitzsimmons
New member
Maybe that's why you don't comprehend the subtle humor of Shemp.
Not many folks today are up on people that were popular in the 40's......
nfitzsimmons
New member
And 50's. Sniper and I are of an age.
norfolksouthern37
what's a normal map?
taken hours ago in TS12...
taken days ago in TS12 to illustrate that trainz has better scenery than run 8, and that you can in fact see Caliente from Cliff siding.
that sure looks like draw distance to me.
taken hours ago in TS12...
taken days ago in TS12 to illustrate that trainz has better scenery than run 8, and that you can in fact see Caliente from Cliff siding.
that sure looks like draw distance to me.
Run 8 looks really pathetic compared to these shots.