Platinum's new features: The Good and the Bad...from my point of view

[Rail4Pete]

Hi, some folks like me decided to benefit from the 50% discount offered to try the new features of Platinum which are mostly The Surveyor/Driver switching mode and the new camera views.

THE GOOD: Surveyor / Driver instant switching mode is a real great feature and time saving for a route builder. You drive a session and suddenly you see a change you want to make , so you switch to surveyor, you make the change, then you resume your driving session within seconds.

The new camera view are great tools especially for making video. The ''Fly'' mode, the ''Drone'' mode, the ''Walk'' mode and the ''Carz'' mode. WALK mode let you go everywhere like if you are a tourist walking with camera always at the same hight from ground level....at a walking speed so, obviously you can't follow a moving train at 50 mph ...you are walking. Fly and Drone mode are also very good.

THE BAD: The main concern I have is about the ''Carz'' camera feature. With this, you can click on any traffic car moving on the road and have your camera moving with it at the car's speed (till here this is good)...But, while the camera rotate around the car it does not rotate on itself to look away from the moving car. That way the camera is always facing the car (without rotating wheels) like if you are running outside of it/next to it. I mean if you are like me, you want to chase the train from the moving car while filming but you are always behind that car, so the car is always between you and the train, you can't rotate it on itself to get rid of the car like if you were sitting in it and have a free view throught the open window as you would do in real life. I bought Platinum specifically for this feature and it does not give what is expected in the purpose of video making when chasing a train. That is the bad that makes me mad after spending another $50CAN.

I have not used Platinum much yet as I got it yesteday, but when exiting the game after saving (when editing in surveyor mode) there is a small bug that throws a blank screen you can't close without restarting the PC (you can reduce it but it will not closes).This issue might be only on my PC ...I have to figure it out.

I am still using T.A.N.E for building my route as I have not been able to find the answer to this: What would happens with my work if N3V closes its doors...will we loose our work/access to the game ? That might never happens but when you are working on a route for the last 10 years, you want to be sure you will be able to keep it running no matter what.

Rail4Pete

 

[boleyd]

I do not have any problem like yours when closing Platinum. Not a cherish remark but to let you know it MAY be unique to your install.
My issue is that in switching modes on the fly I end up with an extra session at times. Probably a cockpit error but I Have
returned to the "old way" until I can decipher what I am doing wrong. Need to try those new views.....

Because of the virus N3V is exposed, or at the least may be without some talent for a few weeks. We can hope the code has a fail-safe in it that makes validation a non-issue. The "last one out the door" pulls the switch!

 

[frogpipe]

... What would happens with my work if N3V closes its doors...will we loose our work/access to the game? ...

An EXCELLENT question!

 

[pware]

What would happens with my work if N3V closes its doors...will we loose our work/access to the game ? That might never happens but when you are working on a route for the last 10 years, you want to be sure you will be able to keep it running no matter what.

Because of the virus N3V is exposed, or at the least may be without some talent for a few weeks. We can hope the code has a fail-safe in it that makes validation a non-issue. The "last one out the door" pulls the switch!

These Doomsday Cultist posts pop up far too regularly but probably understandably today.

I do not know the average age of N3Vs staff but I suspect that they are not in the high risk category (70+ with asthma, emphysema, pneumonia, cardiac disease, diabetes, baldness, etc) - although I am not too sure about Tony who has probably lost a lot of hair and aged greatly over the last few years. I think we can rule out covid-19 as a possible cause of N3Vs immediate demise.

Online retailers, such as N3V, will undoubtedly boom in the "new convid-19 and aftermath world order" so I suspect that they will probably survive a lot better than the bricks and mortar shopfronts who seem to be closing their doors in large numbers, temporarily they claim but I suspect that many will not reopen. Another iconic Aussie retailer, RM Williams, has just announced its "temporary" shopfront closure while I was typing this.

N3V have stated that in the worst possible scenario, steps will taken to remove the "phone home" authentication in TANE/TRS19 but the DLS/DLC would be another matter - someone has to pay for the servers and bandwidth to keep them going (that is what your FCT pays for).

What would happen if, as a result of the current crisis the financial system went into complete mega-depression meltdown taking Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Apple, Google, all Linux developers (I would not want to leave the Linux supporters here out of the apocalypse) with it? Some are predicting this.

I prefer to be optimistic. Otherwise why bother buying any product, not just N3Vs, because it could all be blown away by the middle of the year (or sooner)!

Enough depression for now, its almost time for my meds!

Apologies to the OP for the off-topic branch line.

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

Re Covid19, we all work from home, so safer than an office environment.

Re N3V disappearing, as we've said every time this has been brought up for the past 20 years, we'll do whatever we can to ensure continuity. We've had some very rocky roads in the past, and they look well behind us today with each release doing better than the previous one.

The goal with the car cam is of course to replicate the train cam - I think the issue is as you say, the carz themselves. So thatis an area that needs improving rather than the camera. There is a choice of other cams that don't focus on cars, so choose one of those.

a small bug that throws a blank screen you can't close without restarting the PC
>>
no-one else has reported this so I suspect it is related either to the steps you're taking or the content you're using. More details may help us track down the problem.

 

[Rail4Pete]

The goal with the car cam is of course to replicate the train cam - I think the issue is as you say, the carz themselves. So thatis an area that needs improving rather than the camera. There is a choice of other cams that don't focus on cars, so choose one of those.
.

Cars can be improved...yes, but on short term the real point is to make the camera rotating on itself so you can look away from the car. That way chasing trains from the road, while filming, would achieve its goal/purpose. The other camera views will not achieve this particular goal which has been in real life for years in all era since trains, cars and camera exist.
Rail4Pete

 

[JCitron]

My issue is that in switching modes on the fly I end up with an extra session at times. Probably a cockpit error but I Have
returned to the "old way" until I can decipher what I am doing wrong. Need to try those new views.....

It's a cockpit error as I found out the hard way as well. When prompted to save changes, choose do not save session so that you don't create a new session, or worse, overwrite a current operating sessions with all the AI out of starting position. We owe Clam1952 for mentioning this in the forums in another thread.

 

[boleyd]

That Save Session thing was confusing. Save a SESSION or one of those Route Sessions. Do we still have Route Sessions?

 

[JCitron]

That Save Session thing was confusing. Save a SESSION or one of those Route Sessions. Do we still have Route Sessions?

I agree it's confusing and we do still have actual setup driver sessions. If you are driving those and discover something that needs fixing, remember to choose Save route and not session because you'll end up with stuff out of place. The driver-saves will have a time-date stamp associated with the name.

When making a lot of route fixes, I'll go about things in the methodical old-fashioned Route edit - exit - drive actual session - exit - edit route, repeat, wash, repeat. It's a safer approach in my opinion because it's during these longer sessions that we get interrupted and tend to then make mistakes.