Railworks or Trainz? Whats your opinion on both?? Since they have their disadvantages

[amigacooke]

If anyone was genuinely thinking of investing money in a company, they'd want to know more about it than what the accountants did ten years ago, but even that is quite telling. Several things listed on that resume are not exactly great adverts for success, i.e. one mentions a key staff member as as being involved in business development for GAME - this being a company which flopped on its arse in the retail market, closing 277 stores in the UK alone, an occurrence which led to well over two thousand job losses and massive financial losses for the company too, and all because they were slow to react to the shift from the high street retail to an online sales business model. Have you ever bought anything online from GAME? Did you even know that you could?

Nice technique, take a few examples and portray them as typical. Mind you that example only holds as valid if that particular person was responsible for the strategic decisions that GAME took.

Investors want to know what prospects there are for growth and future development of the product portfolio, and to know that, they would certainly want to know about the staff that actually work at the coal face making the product, since that is ultimately what makes the money. An investor would want to hear stuff such as 'the lead developer at our company worked on such and such a program and was instrumental in developing this and that, which was a massive success and sold 5 million copies because of that technological push, and he's about to do it again' etc. Reading that sort of thing would be the kind of thing that would get investors interested.

I suspect you're making quite a few assumption without experience in the field. I apologise if I'm incorrect. What the RailSimulator page seems to suggest is that the company employs people who do have experience in working in the software industry and are are likely to know what they're talking about.

Instead we get a press release which claims that adding the ability to use a PS3 controller is 'new technology'. Really? The Playstation was developed in 1988 and launched in 1991 for chrissakes, that's approaching a quarter of a century ago, so they're not exactly pushing the envelope NASA-style with that, are they?

Interesting information, but not relevent as it's the XBox 360 controller that's being added (introduced 2005).

Thus the only information someone would initially want if they did have such a business angel investment in mind, would be what are the prospects and what's the phone number or email address of the MD so that they could arrange a meeting; They surely would not base such a financial decision off what was on a web page, and if they did, they'd be crazy given some of that 'key personnel's' track record and their idea of what constitutes a technological advance.

That's probably why the contact details are on the right hand side of the page.

 

[geophil]

Perhaps you remember the old Kuju website. On their "investor relationship" page you could see references to past projects and a list of various fields of software development where they offered expertise, exactly what you would expect from a software company. Compared to that, Railsimulator.com looks quite different. Not a software company this one, I would think.

 

[AlanBradbury]

I suspect you're making quite a few assumption without experience in the field. I apologise if I'm incorrect.

No need to apologise, although you are indeed incorrect: When I used to write for the business pages of a daily UK newspaper, in order to become more informed about what I had to write about, I actually took the IFA exam. Not that the exam is desperately hard to be honest, it being multiple choice, but you do have to study quite a bit in order to pass it, and I seem to recall that it cost me about a hundred quid or so to actually take it so it wasn't just for a laugh, although it was a while ago so that figure might not be spot on. Anyway, that means that I am actually a qualified UK Independent Financial Advisor. Or at least I was, I've no idea if such a qualification lapses or whatever, not that it matters because I've never practiced as one and nor would I choose to do so, because it's not as if I'd claim to be some finance genius, but it does at least mean I know a little bit about investements and how they work, because for several years, it was part of my job to write about it.

Al

 

[amigacooke]

No need to apologise, although you are indeed incorrect

Ah, so you were a journalist. That explains getting the basic facts incorrect.

 

[wholbr]

Look at their website and you get the idea: http://www.railsimulator.com/corporate.php. Quite a few directors for such a small company. According to the webpage, they are responsible for finances, accounting, sales and marketing. No head of development, no QA, no key technical personnel mentioned at all. You can draw your conclusions.

Eh, I think the idea is that businesses are there to make money for their owners and investors and it just happens to be the way that the commercial world runs. As far as railworks is concerned from what I have read they do not seem to be doing too bad at all in the finance department by producing very much what the market wants.

Yes, I would agree that the trainz program excluding iPad and android is very much for the serious hobbyist. That said, there are many thousands like me who do not have the time to build routes or create other content and that is where railworks very much caters for us. It is very easy and quick in railworks to create scenarios (sessions in trainz) or just drive on the various routes with their excellent graphics.

If I had the time my rail simulator preference would definitely the trainz. However, with limited time I tend to use railworks or Vsteps ship simulator as you can achieve much more enjoyment in the limited time you have.

Bill

 

[AlanBradbury]

Ah, so you were a journalist. That explains getting the basic facts incorrect.

Nope, incorrect again, I was a features copywriter and a features sub editor and prior to that I was a graphic artist there. There are a lot of differences between a copywriter and journalist at a newspaper, generally speaking copywriters write commercial copy, but at newspapers they typically ghost write stuff which appears in the main paper and also write advertising features, so they rarely get bylines, although I did very occasionally get bylines when writing some features such as holiday stuff or supplements. Copywriters are typically in a different union to journalists too, most journalists are in the NUJ, whereas copywriters are invariably in the GMPU. Most copywriters can spell, understand correct grammar, know where apostrophes actually should go and actually bother to check facts. If you see a journalist who does all that, you are either in a movie or some other work of fiction LOL.

Al

 

[geophil]

Never mind the show Roland, we are clamouring for Zusi to actually get a public release date! Or has Carsten gone down the road of the Trainmaster people and focused on selling to prototype railways?

Well, not too encouraging for the retail product and us consumers, Carsten has updated the Zusi website. I think we should see it in the light of upcoming Innotrans: Zusi simulation and training (Unfortunately, German only). There is also a list of reference projects. Zusi 3 is definitely not vaporware but the majority of us still has to wait.

 

[sniper297]

Easy to get English with google translate;

http://translate.google.com/transla...e/pages/dehaupt/zusi-3/anwendungsbereiche.php

Hey wait this is supposed to be railworks VS trainz, how did zusi get in here? :hehe: