Heh. I never realised how much hatred there was for Railworks until I tried to figure out some annoying bugs it had, which is when I started noticing all the stuff that ends up posted here.
At the risk of making things worse, I'll post my own thoughts on Trainz VS Railworks 2.
Keep in mind I don't have the latest version of Trainz, so I don't know how much better it has become compared to what I'm familiar with.
My experience of both Trainz and railworks came about from getting them cheaply. (for £5 each). Still, I do have quite an interest in trains, so as I started digging around, I came across some of the various downsides.
Now, this isn't a fair comparison at all (especially graphically), because I have Trainz 2006 (which I got some time last year, hence why it was only £5)
Having had trainz first, I have to say it looked relatively bad, but I was expecting that from a game that was quite old by now.
The content was inconsistent in quality, with some being very good, and some being... Less than brilliant. (In hindsight, given where the content came from that makes sense.)
The dynamic industries, and AI train drivers were a lot of fun, but I had major issues with anything complex because the switches had to be set manually for all the trains.
Some of the more 'realistic' routes it came with also did things with signalling that I knew were blatantly wrong, and the nature of the physics behind the simulation showed it was a little... Limited. (Treating all trains as if they have westinghouse vacuum brakes is hardly conducive to accuracy, especially when modern trains often have multiple brake systems that work quite differently.)
But, on the whole, it was a lot of fun to play with...
Until... I tried creating my own routes. Now, for everything people say about surveyor, I found it unusable.
That isn't about the tools though, I just couldn't get it to work. If it wasn't crashing outright, it had a framerate that was so low and choppy that doing anything at all was almost impossible.
So, saying if it's a good tool or not isn't really possible when it just doesn't work at all. (But... Old software + New computer can often be a challenge. I know it's not due to bad hardware performance, because my hardware is state of the art upper-midrange stuff. There's faster things around, but nothing much you can get for any reasonable price.)
It was also interesting to see content that was slightly unusual compared to standard railways - Like the Maglev track.
It's impressive that this is possible, which says good things about the flexibility of the game. And seeing a train of any kind do 650 km/h without the game engine choking on it is impressive in and of itself. (though realism rears it's head again with those damn brakes. No way is a maglev train going to have a braking system anything like that. Still. It's impressive nonetheless.
So... Well, that was fine. But being unable to really make my own routes because of technical problems, once I'd seen the main routes, I started looking for other things to do.
Eventually, I got the editor working well enough to change the trains running on existing routes (but anything more than that was pretty much unworkable)
However, while Trainz 2006 comes with quite a lot of content, my inclinations being what they are, I tried to find more. (specifically, ICE trainsets.)
And... There's plenty of it. In theory.
But that caused me to run head-on into Auran's download service. Which, sad to say is, despite my best efforts completely unusable. So, to date, I have never been able to get any content from Auran at all.
However, I soon found out there are other ways to get hold of content, which thankfully work just fine.
So... That pretty much sums up my experience with Trainz.
I have no idea if the newest version is substantially better, but based on that experience, and what's been said about it, I didn't feel like trying to upgrade. (Nor did I have the money to, to be perfectly honest.)
It's fun, and it clearly has potential, but it seemed to really be showing it's age, and a lot of the content included as standard is so unpredictable in content you never know what it's going to be like to use it.
Now then, Railworks... (Or more specifically Railworks 2).
This has had the hell promoted out of it on steam, and it always left me curious if it was any good... At some point, it was on sale for £5, so I thought 'what the hell'.
First impressions: It looks brilliant. Mostly.
However, it was immediately apparent how much less content it has, both in the box, and as downloadable content. And considering what I paid for it, it's painful to see the DLC prices.
Compared to what I'd read on the internet after the fact, Railworks 2 seems to actually have fixed certain issues (like the signalling, which superficially at least, seems about as good as you can expect from anything less than a very serious simulation.)
Train physics seemed alright, and no worse than what Trainz content seemed to display. It seems to be in a completely different league when it comes to crashes, speeding and so on though. Some of that is entirely superficial, since it just involves the way a train looks when it derails, but the conditions under which a train derails in pretty much all the Trainz scenarios I'd played were very arbitrary. Hit even 1 km/h over the speed limit in a bend, and you might derail.
In The Hagen-siegen route in railworks, I've gotten to 180 km/h without derailing when the speed limit is only 120... Yet also derailed in some cases at much slower speeds. Which seems to be far closer to what you'd expect, compared to what the behaviour of the included content in trs 2006 is in similar circumstances.
This collision physics is not always a good thing though; Sometimes you randomly hit obstacles or derail for no good reason... Or hit an oncoming train (presumably because a carriage is tilted). This shouldn't happen really, especially not on a straight segment of track - The whole concept of a loading gauge means this shouldn't happen; And I've had it happen randomly, with no apparent reason, while obeying all relevant speed and operational limits.
The included routes and rolling stock are far more limited, but far more consistent in terms of detail. (which again probably shouldn't be such a surprise).
All the standard trains have highly detailed cabs, although a lot of non-functioning secondary controls mar things slightly.
The level of detail even extends to the fact that the HST in British rail livery has completely different interior both in the passenger area and the control cab to the First Great Western livery.
What at first glance appears to be an external cosmetic reskin, turns out to extend to having radically different interiors. (one has modern digital displays and controls, the other much more old-fashioned 70's era controls).
The performance of the newer variant is also different, with more power available, in keeping with the engine upgrades done in the intervening time.
The interior of passenger wagons are less impressive; not all trains have them, and where they do, they're of relatively low quality.
In that regard, they really are an afterthought.
And, after playing the game extensively, I did start to notice the lack of options in AI. (and that's without reading any of the stuff said about how limited it actually turns out to be - I once crashed into the back of an invisible train, which made no sense to me at the time, but after what I've read is clearly a fault with the limited AI)
In Trainz, I could for instance be a passenger, letting the AI drive... Or issue instructions to other trains.
Not so with Railworks, where whatever AI trains there are don't seem to have much life to them.
The scenarios are fun to play, and the driving interface in Railworks 2 was easy to understand initially, though after a while I found myself going back to keyboard controls.
However, the driving guide does make life a lot easier when you can see what kind of things to expect on the line ahead.
Some might consider this cheating, but the reality (as far as I've been able to determine from my research) is that most train drivers in the real world would have had extensive training on the route they're driving, and, depending on the country, probably a booklet describing the trackside installations such as placement of signals, and speed limits.
And, if you're driving a particularly modern train, you might even have in cab displays showing this kind of information.
So, it isn't actually as much of a 'cheat' as it might at first seem, and it alleviates a lot of initial issues with needing to know a route layout off by heart.
(In trainz I've routinely faced the problem of having run a route a dozen times, yet still being caught out by hitting a speed limit unexpectedly... Especially bad with an over-zealous train protection system - Which german routes seem notorious for - You might say that's realistic, but as I've found out, few real train drivers drive with so little knowledge of their route available to them.)
Graphically, while it looks a lot better than other train simulators (with default content, anyway - Some people can do amazing work), there are a few graphical chinks.
In particular, lighting; Despite being 4 years older Trainz 2006 handles darkness better than Railworks 2 does.
...
Oh, you know what? I could go on forever, about what's good and bad about each, but apparently, I don't have enough space in a post to do so.
Long story short: Plenty of bad things about both, good things too.
But to be blunt, I'm still looking for something better than either.
