Is this forum abandoned by N3V as (official) communication channel?

[pdkoester]

Do you mean giving the drivers another job? Oh, that would be interesting, just saying. /s

Just the way other websites have automated help bots.

 

[pware]

Could you link these competitors for us Peter? I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Here is a few that I have found (but not downloaded and used) in no particular order:-

RUN-8
Zusi-3
Open Rails
Train Sim World (apparently the successor to Railworks)
Railroader
Just Trains
World of Subways
Train Simulator

 

[MRLK]

Here is a few that I have found (but not downloaded and used) in no particular order:-

RUN-8
Zusi-3
Open Rails
Train Sim World (apparently the successor to Railworks)
Railroader
Just Trains
World of Subways
Train Simulator

Which of these would you recommend from a first glance and why?

Cheers John

 

[Forester1]

Deleted

 

[pware]

Which of these would you recommend from a first glance and why?

Quite simply none of them. I have never tried any of them. Apart from Trainz I have only ever used RailwayTycoon and MSTS. Tycoon, especially the last version, was more cartoon than railroad. MSTS lacked a usable world builder.

 

[amigacooke]

Which of these would you recommend from a first glance and why?

Cheers John

I think Train Sim World would be one to evaluate. Dovetail are a UK company and therefore UK stock gets a good priority. TSW4 was updated to TSW5 at no additional cost.

Think of all the time you could save not searching for missing kuids

 

[pdkoester]

I think Train Sim World would be one to evaluate. Dovetail are a UK company and therefore UK stock gets a good priority. TSW4 was updated to TSW5 at no additional cost.

Think of all the time you could save not searching for missing kuids

Sadly, to me anyway... TSW2 and up are basically all the same for USA content. Nothing really improved. And seems very limited for what I like.

 

[lackoo11111]

Here is a few that I have found (but not downloaded and used) in no particular order:-

RUN-8
Zusi-3
Open Rails
Train Sim World (apparently the successor to Railworks)
Railroader
Just Trains
World of Subways
Train Simulator

JR EAST Train Simulator

 

[Vuil_Sekreet]

The days of "the Forum" are basically over. Nowadays reddit, Discord, facebook and so on are used to communicate with the player base. This I have seen with most games I play(ed). There are pros and cons to this. Personally I miss the "old days" of single thread forum discussions. Discord and the others with their endless channel chattering is horrible as a tool for keeping knowledge centralised.

 

[oknotsen]

Actually, I would think AI could be trained to spot SPAM posts by bots

There is some pattern based detection in place. A substantial part of the spam never reaches the forum. It get's detected and ends up in an approval queue (just in cases it flags something legitimate what happens less then 10% of the time).
I ban a lot of members and delete their topics on a weekly basis that never make it to the forum. It varies per week between 25% to 60% of the spam.

 

[pware]

The days of "the Forum" are basically over. Nowadays reddit, Discord, facebook and so on are used to communicate with the player base.

Discord and the others with their endless channel chattering is horrible as a tool

The little time I spent on Discord has turned me off it. I like having time to compose and edit (and re-edit) a post or even do some research before clicking the send button. Discord seems to demand immediacy like a face-to-face conversation. But that is my "old forum" preference.

 

[IsambardKingdomBrunel]

Run 8 i own, very good for operational realism, but poor graphics. Open Rails is free so you can't really knock it.
TSW all versions is a pile of crud, just fancy graphics and more a game than a simulator, i do own it.
Trainsimulator (Railworks) and now TSC 2024 is my go to simulator for driving. Far more realistic loco's than Trainz operationally, cabviews are far better so are the sounds.
Trainz for driving still feels like a model railway to me. But for route creation S1 is unbeaten for simplicity and usability.

 

[JCitron]

The little time I spent on Discord has turned me off it. I like having time to compose and edit (and re-edit) a post or even do some research before clicking the send button. Discord seems to demand immediacy like a face-to-face conversation. But that is my "old forum" preference.

I've been on Discord too not only for N3V's but also for a couple of other servers. Daniel Shaw's storm-chasing (www.severestorms.com.au) and one for my music teacher's Authentic Sound.

While I like real-time chatting and the ability to share screens and what not, what I don't like is the constant stream of information in each topic if I view the threads. This makes finding anything or reading difficult. For me the text is one big blur and editing is a pain.

The other gottcha is the time-limited links. Posted images and links are only good for a short time just like the rest of the threads. This also makes researching topics difficult and far worse than the search features of a forum as bad as they can be.

 

[ess1]

The point is that once upon a time the Trainz retail product was the latest and greatest on release and is now no longer so.

Oddly, when I told Virgin media that I was leaving their subscription service, they suddenly found they could offer the service at half the cost they were previously intending to change me, because they suddenly decided I was a loyal customer.

I left anyway as my alternative plan was even cheaper.

Tried that once from Singapore with family. Upon return to UK found out they had called my bluff!

 

[rwk]

The thing with Dovetail train sims, is that almost everything is payware. You will spend a lot of money on their products and routes made by others might require payware routes you don't have. Trainz does the same thing sometimes with assets, users sometimes use payware assets in their routes that you can only get by buying a payware route by N3V or third party. I only bought an NJT North Jersey Coast Line route I think. The northeast NJT and Amtrak routes in the Dovetail sims are very realistic looking with the actual stations modeled. Trainz, not so much. There was a Trainz NJT North Jersey Coast Line route from the old Zetaboards Trainz Commuter Rail which was nowhere near as good as the Dovetail version. But, there are good Trainz routes as well. And Trainz is easier to build your own routes with than other train sims. I could never figure out how to edit a route or create a new route in MSTS. I stopped playing MSTS soon after I got Trainz.

 

[ricomon35]

The thing with Dovetail train sims, is that almost everything is payware. You will spend a lot of money on their products and routes made by others might require payware routes you don't have. Trainz does the same thing sometimes with assets, users sometimes use payware assets in their routes that you can only get by buying a payware route by N3V or third party. I only bought an NJT North Jersey Coast Line route I think. The northeast NJT and Amtrak routes in the Dovetail sims are very realistic looking with the actual stations modeled. Trainz, not so much. There was a Trainz NJT North Jersey Coast Line route from the old Zetaboards Trainz Commuter Rail which was nowhere near as good as the Dovetail version. But, there are good Trainz routes as well. And Trainz is easier to build your own routes with than other train sims. I could never figure out how to edit a route or create a new route in MSTS. I stopped playing MSTS soon after I got Trainz.

Can't really compare a freeware route that uses available DLS assets to kinda-sorta model a facsimile of a real life rail line, with a payware route that models every proprietary thing on the line.

 

[amigacooke]

Can't really compare a freeware route that uses available DLS assets to kind-sorta model a facsimile of a real life rail line, with a payware route that models every proprietary thing on the line.

I wouldn't say it's an entirely fair comparison, but the comparison will be made as it's ostensibly a modelling of the same route.

 

[rwk]

I never saw a Trainz route this good and there is no decent NJ Transit/Amtrak route in NJ and NY in Trainz unless you build it yourself. There is DEM of the area by fishlipsatwork though. This is a NJ Transit route in the Dovetail sim.

 

[zatovisualworks]

I never saw a Trainz route this good and there is no decent NJ Transit/Amtrak route in NJ and NY in Trainz unless you build it yourself. There is DEM of the area by fishlipsatwork though. This is a NJ Transit route in the Dovetail sim.

I can assure you, dear comeback home, that can be done better in the latest versions of Trainz. I'm not impressed at all.

The difficult to impress side of Alberte

 

[rwk]

I found this Trainz site a while back with lots of NJT locomotives and coaches but I need a decent NJT route in Trainz to run them on. I started the Port Jervis line which I have DEM from actually Binghamton, NY to below Mahwah, NJ two routes merged together and a DEM of the Hoboken area, and I will build the missing NJ segment by hand. I already created a slope below Mahwah, NJ to bring the elevation down to 0 because the elevation at the Hoboken DEM end is about 0. The only Newark, NJ area routes I could find in Trainz were incomplete ones.