Railworks 3 to be released in september

[wholbr]

Hi Vern and everybody.

snip~With my Blackpool tramway not far off release ~snip

To hear that you are creating the Blackpool tramway in Railworks Vern is the best news of the weekend.

The Blackpool tramway is my favorite transit system over the many I have traveled on in Britain. I have spent many a great few days in Blackpool on various conferences followed by many a good evening traveling up and down the seafront visiting various bars and hotels using the tramway.

Sadly Blackpool has been surpassed by Manchester as the main conference venue in northern England and although the relatively new Manchester tramway system is great, it does not have the many memories of those great nights out that the Blackpool system has for me and many others who attended those conferences with me

So, get Back to the work on the Blackpool tramway as soon as the update situation becomes clear. I for one would be happy to have it as payware just to re-create those memories and nights out.

Some conferences they were, they don't do them like that anymore
Bill
NB:- I do not know if anybody has done Blackpool tramway in Trainz if they have please post.

 

[lackoo11111]

Now i'm confused . Which simulator worth : Trainz 2010 , Trainz 12 or Railworks 2 ?
According to this thread , Railworks 2 has freeware custom content as well . But i don't know , if they are just reskinned version of the payware content.

 

[Vern]

Hi Vern and everybody.


To hear that you are creating the Blackpool tramway in Railworks Vern is the best news of the weekend.

The Blackpool tramway is my favorite transit system over the many I have traveled on in Britain. I have spent many a great few days in Blackpool on various conferences followed by many a good evening traveling up and down the seafront visiting various bars and hotels using the tramway.

Sadly Blackpool has been surpassed by Manchester as the main conference venue in northern England and although the relatively new Manchester tramway system is great, it does not have the many memories of those great nights out that the Blackpool system has for me and many others who attended those conferences with me

So, get Back to the work on the Blackpool tramway as soon as the update situation becomes clear. I for one would be happy to have it as payware just to re-create those memories and nights out.

Some conferences they were, they don't do them like that anymore
Bill
NB:- I do not know if anybody has done Blackpool tramway in Trainz if they have please post.

Blackpool should be up on UKTS in the next couple of weeks. It's just waiting for the scenarios to be done and the documentation etc. The guy who is doing the trams is on holiday at the moment so waiting for him to return and put the project through its paces.

The release will be freeware.

Not aware of an actual Blackpool route in Trainz, would be nice but doing all that urban scenery is a real burn out - one of the reasons why I'm looking forward to tackling a Yugoslavian ng route in trains - nought but trees, rocks, rivers and the occasional mountain hut or donkey as far as the eye can see!

 

[geophil]

I'm quite interested in this cant/superelevation thingy RSC has announced. Having implemented it myself ten years ago, Real Ale style, straight, circular arc, spiral easement and nothing else - I know it's a challenge, for both the software developer and the user, and am naturally curious here. RSC say they use the easements. It would be prototypical, sure enough, but I guess route builders won't enjoy it, the way it has been implemented until now. I'd expect some changes here.

 

[sniper297]

"Now i'm confused . Which simulator worth : Trainz 2010 , Trainz 12 or Railworks 2 ?
According to this thread , Railworks 2 has freeware custom content as well . But i don't know , if they are just reskinned version of the payware content"

Some of it is reskins of payware that require you to buy the payware to make the free reskin work, some freeware routes require you to buy payware routes to get the assets the freeware route needs. There are some free routes and skins that don't require the end user to spend any money except for the base game. Some payware developers also offer free stuff as a kind of advertising for the payware packages;

http://www.dickyjim.com/railworks.html

This guy is a Brit, but he has the best US railworks stuff as far as I'm concerned. In general tho, there isn't nearly as much free US stuff for railworks as there is for Trainz.

 

[Davie_UCF]

Railworks for me is not as a good as Trainz as an overall package, however some things it excels at...

With Trainz I can let my creativity loose and do nearly whatever I please with many options thanks to the masses of free content.

Railworks however, for me is something I can just pick up to run an already made activity then not touch it again until I find something else interesting to do.. which is difficult because all of the good stuff seems to be payware which compared to Trainz is quite pricey.

I have no desire to create in Railworks, it just feels bad.. I know its possibly a learning curve but then again I don't feel it would be worth creating a route as the options afterwards would be not as good as Trainz.. not being able to run many trainz and hop between or just go for a quick drive. Not to mention I wouldn't want to create the route as I dont' think theres enough options or content that would let my creativity really free.

However the competition I feel is a great thing...
The new features do make me interested and somewhat excited to see, the track causing trains to wobble for example.. I'm all for immersion and thats one of the things I feel Trainz lacks and Railworks has a head start in.

David

 

[sparky15]

I would give anything for RailSimulator's track laying tools in Trainz
Actual turnouts on the fly and the ability to select and lay 20 track yards with proper spacing in one go. No templates to lay a proper curve, no holding the shift key to keep it all from sticking together at the wrong moment.
Trainz is a railroad simulator after all, why does the track work look so bad still.

Dave.......

 

[Vern]

I'm quite interested in this cant/superelevation thingy RSC has announced. Having implemented it myself ten years ago, Real Ale style, straight, circular arc, spiral easement and nothing else - I know it's a challenge, for both the software developer and the user, and am naturally curious here. RSC say they use the easements. It would be prototypical, sure enough, but I guess route builders won't enjoy it, the way it has been implemented until now. I'd expect some changes here.

I share your concern Roland, I have tried a couple of times to use the easement tool to create transition curves in RW and always ended up with it either not working or going too far off the marked out route. In the end I gave up, though for sharp curves I generally try and lay a couple of sections gradually decreasing the radius going into the main arc of the curve.

I know that Zusi does superelevation but I never got that far with the route editor to figure out how!

 

[jeffmorris]

Since the first version of Trainz, you can't lay perfectly curved tracks and you can't have splines with more than 5 tracks on them. I found out that Trainz 2012 allowed me to have splines with more than 5 tracks on them but a very serious "Insert Spline Point" bug screwed up the tracks. I would like Auran/N3V Team to add a new track system similar to that in Railworks to the next version of Trainz. Existing routes will keep the old track system. When creating new routes, you will have the option of using the old or new track system.

 

[geophil]

...and always ended up with it either not working or going too far off the marked out route.

I am afraid, part of this behaviour is a feature and not a bug, due to the math of the spiral easement. (BTW, what is proper British railway lingo here, superelevation or cant, easement or transition curve?)

In the end I gave up, though for sharp curves I generally try and lay a couple of sections gradually decreasing the radius going into the main arc of the curve.

Others will do the same I presume.

If we see - from the construction point of view- superlevation as a byproduct of easements, workability and usability for the not-so-professional route builder seem essential, particularly as the makers of Railworks claim to have the leading consumer product here.

I know that Zusi does superelevation but I never got that far with the route editor to figure out how!

In Zusi, superelevation is on by default, closely coupled to easements. The Zusi2 route editor has a built-in easement/superelevation function which is similar to the one in RS/RW (not so shiny though). Problem is, you never know where you end up, just as in RS/RW, unless you have a detailed track plan with all the geometry parameters at hand. Most often you don't. That was the reason for creating "Absteckrechner" which takes tangents and points from the origin and the destination as constraints of the planned curve. The algorithm tries to fit in that curve, hereby observing the rules, in our case the DB rule book. You can set a number of parameters, some per curve, some for the session, like track speed vs. train speed profiles, which in conjunction with the radius determine equilibrium cant and cant deficiency. An iterative process.

In Zusi2 horizontal and vertical alignment are intertwined which makes it more complex - no change of gradient within an easement, otherwise derailment.

In Zusi3 the core of Absteckrechner became a DLL and is now integrated into the track editor. Carsten has also separated horizontal and vertical alignment, which simplifies track design. The entire tool looks and feels quite usable, but probably not for the casual gamer.



With all the challenges of superelevation and spiral easements done properly, I still think that the spline approach in Trainz is the better choice for a consumer product. If at one day N3V decide to add superelevation to Trainz track, they will find it relatively easy to compute change of superlevation as a function of change in (differential) radius, thanks to the math of the spline.

 

[stovepipe]

The British term cant means the slope across the track pependicular to the rails, used to oppose cornering forces. This is the same as superelevation in US parlance I think.

I've always thought of transition curves, which are mostly horizontal but can be vertical too, as a curve where the radius goes from infinity to a circular curve radius. To my British ears, an easement is the working width required to build a linear structure, such a pipeline, road or railway, but not part of the permament works.

 

[geophil]

Thanks. Confirming my understanding of British railway terminology. But why are the British producers of RS/RW using American terms?

If I remember correctly, in MSTS, which British Kuju developed for American Microsoft, there were quite a few very British railway terms.

 

[Red_Rattler]

That title is decieving, when you first see the title, you think it means this company's TS12.

From the picture(s) it seems to look like a mix of Trainz & MSTS.

 

[Vern]

Browsing the now 30 odd pages at UKTS on the topic, it seems to be emerging this is going to be primarily a graphics/appearance update. It's a bit unfortunate that the people who were invited to RSC (didn't include me, I'd probably have been invited to pick my fourth floor window...) can only discuss what they saw and not what has talked about.

However reading between the lines it doesn't look as if sound is getting much attention, so still stuck with the "tinkly clunk" as I call it track sound. The default TS2010 track effects are actually better than those in RW. Some brief discussion about train performance physics but it doesn't look as though that has been put high up the list either.

 

[Davie_UCF]

One of the sound problems I have with Railworks (not sure if this is one of the issues or my own issue due to hardware or something) is its just too quiet, a train has to be very near before you hear it.. Thats quite bothered me a lot.

 

[rjhowie]

This sems an odd place for this thread being Prototype? Must be the sixth time we have had RW on the Trainz forums. No great harm in a way I suppose nut it is the same comparison every time it is raised here. Does RW not have a Forum?

 

[H222]

This sems an odd place for this thread being Prototype? Must be the sixth time we have had RW on the Trainz forums. No great harm in a way I suppose nut it is the same comparison every time it is raised here. Does RW not have a Forum?

It doesn't have an official forum, but many others, but they do like stirring things up, especially BNSF650, who only comes to these threads

Jamie

 

[teddytoot]

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"

 

[airtime]

One of the sound problems I have with Railworks (not sure if this is one of the issues or my own issue due to hardware or something) is its just too quiet, a train has to be very near before you hear it.. Thats quite bothered me a lot.

Your absolutly right Davie UCF, I have noticed that the trains in Railworks are near silent when passing, especially the HST 125, you hear a bit of the engine, a very small roar, then as the coaches go by, it is like a low sssshhh, followed by the tail engine which makes a bit of a small roar again.

I too thought it might have been my sound card, but you can hear the birds singing in the route, in fact the birds are a little bit louder than the train, which is a first, I don't think your pc is at fault, i think it is a design fault within the game, it's good to know, that I am not the only one experiencing loss of sound from trains in Railworks.

Hope this helps

Joe Airtime

 

[Vern]

This sems an odd place for this thread being Prototype? Must be the sixth time we have had RW on the Trainz forums. No great harm in a way I suppose nut it is the same comparison every time it is raised here. Does RW not have a Forum?

RW does get discussed at UKTS and T-S.com, also Railworks America but the odd topic does crop up here. Prototype seems the most appropriate place given N3V won't allow an off topic forum, basically model railways, other sims etc. all end up in here!

The good thing about the occasional RW discussion on here is that it's possible to have a reasoned debate without the "boot-boy" faction found at some of the other boards kicking down any effort to have a pragmatic discussion.