As much as we kvetch loudly about the quirks, bugs, and pitfalls, is there anything else out there that can do this? Tony and the Brew Crew mean well but they're disorganized. In part this is because they're trying to please everyone instead of focusing on a single direction. This is what has caused the confusion in the product offerings, the less than stellar bug repairs, and a host of other things. I can't say that this is from being a small company because I've seen small companies operate as though they are much larger and do a lot more with many more products. It's all about time management and focus where they need to focus their energy, IMO.
I arrived on the Trainz scene officially in December 2003 when I got TRS2004. I had MS Train Simulator and was frustrated with my constantly crashing computer and a very difficult program to build or modify routes in. We thought TRS2004 was bad, geez, MSTS would GPF or blue screen when editing activities, or did any route editing. They issued a single patch to fix that and the random couple breakage issue but that was too little and too late.
During a trip to CompUSA, I found PaintShed for MSTS and used that to skin some boxcars. It was fun and it was, well PaintShed as we remember from Trainz. The more important part though, was the link to
www.auran.com on the package. It was there I found the forums and also downloaded the demo. The demo could barely run on my ATI 9500 and kept crashing with a black screen. I waited, and waited and when I saw an ad for the upcoming new TRS2004, I watched for it and got that the day after Christmas in December 2003. By then, I had upgraded, if we can call it that to an Nvidia card of some kind and the program worked right off the bat.
Like Jack, I remember the layout terminology and always thought of the routes we build as layouts. My very first route, still in existence today, is my model railroad layout expanded to a real-world size. For anyone who has built a model railroad, this is a dream come true. The fact that we can fit so much in so little space, meaning our computers is still spellbinding. One day I thought about this, and said to myself, Imagine, being able to do this when I was a kid, what it would've been like for me then. In 1995 I was working with a 3d modeler on training programs. During our commute, meaning I drove and he gave me gas because he didn't drive and lived a block away, I described a program that I wish we had that could do what we do today. His answer at the time was that it would be impossible to do because that would be too complex. Given the hardware we had at the time, I can see that from his point of view, but he said all the model building, animation, and programming needed to make it all work makes sense. Less than a decade later and it was possible with Trainz 1.0. He has yet to see Trainz in action and I can only imagine his reaction to the graphics and everything else we have today. Our ability to build the world we want and then see it from the cab as a driver/engineer, or passenger from the comfort of a seat in a parlor car is still the best thing.
