You'll find a much better reception at Railroad Model Craftsman. They published a 2-part article by Mark Baldwin a few years ago, a guest editorial by me in the second of that series, a full article by me year before last on an MSTS subway route, and have two more Trainz articles by me waiting in qeue. Editor Bill Schaumburg has said he's willing to publish one article a year on VR. He's also very happy to have had some positive responses and no negative responses to VR articles.
Way back, Brian Eckard and I had a long 3-way phone conversation with Terry Thompson, then MR Editor. We, with the support of Henk Plaggemars, were pushing to get regular coverage. Terry was an MSTS fan, but his marketing guru put the brakes on any possibility of regular coverage. Since then, Terry has been given another job, MR sees VR as a model building aid and I have not submitted any articles to them (mainly because RMC has been more receptive).
I suspect MR lost a lot of confidence when MS dropped MSTS. Auran has yet to make the impact that it should have and Kuju's latest offering doesn't live up to expectations. I suspect that when MSTS2 hits the shelves in another year we will see a revitalized VR hobby.
This is just my take on things, but remember the initial MSTS was not user friendly when it came to route building. I believe MS built MSTS on the Flight Simulator model, which has a good 3rd-party payware business going and two slick magazines covering the hobby. FS and MSTS were never intended to be easy for the average user to create in. Trainz is so easy when it comes to route building (which is a main reason why I like Trainz so much) that 3rd-party payware developers haven't thought it worth their while to develop routes. The reality is, most free routes - like mine - are fictitious, using only off-the-shelf items built-in or available as DLS items. If a 3rd-party developer were to seriously undertake a real route with true scenery and rolling stock, I believe there would be a market.
Al
