Greetings, and Happy New Year from Canada.
I am a newbie to this site, and stumbling through here reminds me of my drinking days, stumbling around not knowing wtf is going on lol. For that reason, I hope you all will be patient with me.
OK, here goes.. I have been messing around with microsoft train simulator (am I allowed to say that here) for a while, and have pretty much given up on it. I discovered this site and would simply like to know, what you folks would recommend in terms of trainz sim. for dummies. I looked at ts2010 and it looks very interesting. Anyone have any issues with it? Is it something a dummy like me could learn to use?
Just some initial thoughts would be nice.
thanks again.
Well Heatseeker, you've stumbled into a whole new world.
Welcome to the Trainz forums!
TS2010, like any product, has its quirks and oddities, but for the most part it is very usable and very addicting! I've been using Trainz since I abandoned MSTS back in late 2004, and I haven't gone back. Not even once to take a look at what I missed.
TS2010 is the latest version of a long line of Trainz versions that started way back in 2000 - about the same time as MSTS. The initial release is a far cry different than what we have today. Back in 2000, no one ever thought of interactive industries, nearly 170,000 items (assets) available for use in the simulator etc.
The program is open ended, meaning it's a means to create your own world without limitations on time. The only limitations are your imagination and what your computer can physically handle. With this program (we don't call it a game here), you can be as realistic as you want, going as far as to importing DEM files and maps to work with using some third-party tools.
There are three modules that make up the basic program: Driver, Surveyor, and RailYard. Driver is used to drive the sessions you've created, loaded from the built-in list, or downloaded from the FTP server known as the Download Station (DLS).
Surveyor is where you can modify an existing route, or create your own. You can even merge in other people's layouts and create a megaroute if you want. You also place your consists here. The session editor, which is another aspect of Surveyor, allows you to setup the AI drivers to follow particular instructions, and setup your industries if you have interactive industries to except or create goods.
Railyard lets you view your trains you have installed. This is probably the weakest of the modules, and in fact I hardly use it except to look for broken downloads.
Your content is managed by the Content Manager. This is a separate utility affectionally referred to as CM3.3, or CMP for the older versions. With CM you download the new content, open up assets (downloaded object) for modification, including reskinning, and sometimes repair if the objects have errors.
Now, having said all this, the program will not run on most laptops. You need a decent CPU, plenty of RAM, a decent video card, and lots of disk space. In general, a fairly up-to-date computer with an AMD or Intel i5 or i7 processor, a newer model NVidia video card, and 4 gigs of RAM, running Windows 7 64-bit will work fine.
I hope this answers your question regarding the most addicting rail simulator out there.
John
It's just so many people post here about trying to run the programs with such low-end machines, and then complain about not being able to run the program like it's our fault.
