Train Simulator 2013 - Railsim.

[Robert2d6]

Does it really matter? It's not a multi-million Dollar train simulator. It's a computer game running on a personal computer. The fact that it runs at all on a home system, as well as it does, is something to be marveled at. Imagine where we've come from over the past decades in the personal computer world. I came from a world of Z-80 based computers running CP/M-Plus. These machines were running at 2.5 Mhz max! Wow! They were fast in their day. The computer systems also cost close to $3,000 back then, and came with 2 floppy drives and maybe 128K of bankswitched RAM. And even better... There was very little off-the-shelf software to boot. Heck I actually learned some programming back then.

So fast forward to today. We have a different world where the machines are what? 1000 times faster now? We have machines on our desktops that only the generations before dreamt about. What we do on our desktops today is far greater and faster than the biggest computer systems used by the universities and government labs back then. Our graphics capabilities too are a farcry from 30 years ago. Imagine my world coming from green-screen video terminals where the biggest graphics were pictures made from letters. Oh the Visual V-1050 which I had was a bit better because came with a 6502 cpu that was dedicated for graphics. This portion of the system had a whopping 32K of dedicated RAM. The V-1050 could also draw primatives too such as circles, squares, and piechart pieces. Wow! that was something back then. Here today we have Gigabytes of RAM, dedicated to GPU's running in the Ghz range and faster capable of immersive 3d-graphics, lighting effects, etc.

Granted the physics aren't quite there yet. Over time this area will get better and better as more and more companies write software for it. Just remember too that the graphics and cpu development is something that has been ongoing for the past 30-plus years. The physics emulation is only what 5 years old at the max. We have to remember that physics capabilities is also expensive, and there are a lot of trade-offs while implementing it into a program. By expense, I don't mean monetarily, I mean CPU cycles. There are a lot of calculations that go into physics, much more than the lighting effects and other things that the CPU does with the programs. Companies such as NVidia have made strides with the hardware, which takes the load off of the CPU, but the programs have to be written for it.

The physics being real? Who cares. As I said, it's not necessary to enjoy the program for what it is.

As far as the Jet-engine goes. It's paid for and being leveraged for what it does. Game developers do not go out and purchase the latest and greatest game engine every year. They're very, very expensive, and many of the them have royalty payments on top of that plus support costs. We're talking about a developer environment where the company may pay $200,000 just for the product, plus the licensing fees, plus support costs. I know this because my brother worked with Berl systems on a flight simulator. N3V is lucky. They already have the game engine. It's bought, paid for, and in use. I agree Jet could use a little tweaking under the hood here and there, but that's not my area of expertise, and it's up to N3V/Auran to do. Remember too that it's usually the newest of the game engines that make use of the latest graphics and physics. These additional add-ons too are also expensive and many companies will not implement them anyway unless they're coming out with a new product. RW does make use of the newer lighting engines, but this comes at a cost somewhere else. Again this has to do with CPU and GPU capabilities. This may, however, have something to do with what can be implemeneted int he code space too, which can cause trade-offs. This again is an area which is totally unknown to many of us here unless we're in the industry.

"Just as Clancy mentioned earlier in this thread when he referenced the level ignorance here it goes back to actually knowing what else is out there and actually having real experience with the subject. Let’s face it most here obviously don’t get out much, from the looks of things you could blind fold them with dental floss."
This is downright rude. Many of us know what's out there, and choose not to bother with it. We've made up our mind what we want to drive. For you, or he to say this, is like someone coming in with a Nissan into a Toyota dealership and then saying look what I've got. It's better. You're not going to get the empathy, or the throngs of people going to the other product, because you're in the homebase of the competitor. The people in the Toyota dealership are going to point out the faults, shortcomings, and other not-so-nice things the other product has. They're in many ways similar, but in many ways not.

In reality there really isn't any alternative train simulator that has everything going for it that Trainz TS12 does. This may not be perfect, it may not have the physics as you seem to be all about and all over and under, but it's still playable. It's easy to use, to create in, to modify, and do whatever we want with. This is quite unlike the other products you mention because they're locked down and everything is a deep dark difficult nut to crack when it comes to devlopment. I came from the MSTS world. This was the most frustrating thing to create in. The world creator was difficult, awkward, and would crash. The Activity editor was better, but it would crash randomly. Who wants that crap? I've used Trainz, most versions, for hours, upon hours, and never had a crash unless I installed something crappy. But to have this out of the box, this is pure garbage! I remember TrainMaster. I tried the demo and almost bought it 12 years ago. It was great in its day and was the seed, in my opinion, that grew what we have today. The other sims, well, they'll get here eventually, maybe. I looked at RW. It's just like MSTS, and worse it requires Steam to use it and like everything else MSTS it's all about the payware model.

I've been pretty quiet on this thread. I felt now was the time to throw in my 1/2 pence into the bucket.

John

I have to laugh when these self appointed experts tell us all how things should be, and they have no idea who they are talking down to. I have been involved with simulation since the late 80's, with companies that design software and hardware for the government, airlines, and the military. Everything from Flight sims, to ship simulators, to Tank sims, and because someone has a $45 train sim on his $1300 computer, he thinks he is an expert in all things sim related. I have replaced component parts in some of the digital equipment that I have worked on, that cost five times more than that.

A company designs a simulation game for the public, with the average computer that their customer base will probably have in mind. If you design something that is too advance, then people can't run it properly and will complain about how poorly it performs on their system. Read some of the threads on the latest release of RW to hear the whining about their latest release. http://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?312773-More-Graphics-Glitches
http://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?312539-Need-Better-Performance-on-RW3

In addition, legacy content would become obsolete with major changes in the engine, and we can all imagine the hysteria on this forum, if N3V did something to make 75% or more of our current content ready for the dumpster.

It is so easy to get on a forum, and bash the program that the forum members are using, but in my opinion, it is just annoying and nothing more. If you don't like a program , then pack up your stuff and move on and don't let the door hit you in the butt on your way out. Before I decided to invest my time and money in Trainz, I read up on all the other options available. This is mainly due to my experience in PC flight sims, that started with the first release of MSFS. I could see, that for a small investment versus the quoted "well over $1,000" that is needed for RW, that Trainz seemed to be the way to go. Then reading about the frequent crashes to desktop ( I think they call it something else in RW), that made the decision really easy. I didn't want to go retro back to a software that was designed over a decade ago. In the digital world, that is like going back generations, so MSTS was out of the question. Didn't want to have the decade old software that some group is trying to rewrite to get it to work a bit better, so that eliminated OR. Not buying a sim that I need to be on Multiplayer, with no scenery, no weather, no steam engines, no AI, and one route that is about 150 miles long in the desert, so one more choice was eliminated. So out of everything I looked at, Trainz was the best thing I could find. Here it is 6 months later, and I have so many routes, I forget to run some of them. They all look great, the physics, to me are pretty realistic, I met an engineer at a local Railroad Museum who drives both their Steam Engines and Diesels, who used to work for CSX, and he owns Trainz and thinks it is the best of the sims that are currently available. Tons of routes, sessions, rolling stock, locos, and most of it is free. Help always available on this forum, which I experienced right from the start.

I ended my search, by visiting a friend just to try Railworks on his gaming computer last summer. He bought the computer for flight simming mainly, and got RW on sale for $4. He said it was the biggest PIA to get to run properly, and crashed, and stuttered to the point where he finally just uninstalled it. I have never had that happen with Trainz in the 6 months I have been using it.

 

[cascaderailroad]

In short: Trainz has the best to offer ... and all other Rail Sims fall short ?

 

[djt]

I have to laugh when these self appointed experts tell us all how things should be, and they have no idea who they are talking down to. I have been involved with simulation since the late 80's, with companies that design software and hardware for the government, airlines, and the military. Everything from Flight sims, to ship simulators, to Tank sims, and because someone has a $45 train sim on his $1300 computer, he thinks he is an expert in all things sim related. I have replaced component parts in some of the digital equipment that I have worked on, that cost five times more than that.

Bob, Clancy already called you out on your expertise earlier; you didn’t wake up with the bag on your head again did you?

 

[Robert2d6]

Bob, Clancy already called you out on your expertise earlier; you didn’t wake up with the bag on your head again did you?

Why don't you fight your own battles, Mr Expert of all things. Clancy is busy trying to get the airlines to higher pilots that have trained on MSFS... What a joke....:wave: You and Clancy make a good pair.

 

[djt]

Why don't you fight your own battles, Mr Expert of all things. Clancy is busy trying to get the airlines to higher pilots that have trained on MSFS... What a joke....:wave: You and Clancy make a good pair.

I didn’t look at it as a battle, just stating the obvious.

 

[Robert2d6]

I didn’t look at it as a battle, just stating the obvious.

 

[djt]

Sorry Bob, we must have burst your bubble, quick pull the dental floss back over your eyes, lol.

 

[JCitron]

Bob,

You've summed this up nicely.

John

 

[djt]

Bob,

You've summed this up nicely.

John

I thought Clancy did earlier by hinting that it was pretty much a lost cause.

By the way could you tell us why in this day and age we would marvel over a game that performs the way Trainz does when you take in consideration how dated the graphics are? Could you tell us what other sims/games you have experience using that you can compare to Trainz (performance/graphics wise)?

 

[sparky15]

I marvel at the game because it gives me what none of the others do. An easy to use route editor, good AI and thousands of assets to build a plausible route to enjoy. Show me another train simulator that can do that. I care less about what is out there, my primary interest is trains. I have three games installed, Trainz Mac, TRS2006 on an XP install through bootcamp and Mac Falcon on a 12 year old iMac G3 who's sole purpose in life is to run Falcon. Sorry if it makes you blow your top because I don't chase the latest and greatest just to run a pass time.*
I use TRS2006 the most because it gives me the performance I want along with the older trees I prefer. You can run around in circles chasing the ultimate experience, I'm quite happy where I am. It's a video game to kill some time, not a life altering event.*
As for comparing to other games, I don't care. I don't play video games all day. I have the few that interest me and that is all I need.

 

[Cratey]

Hi Everyone,

I'm closing this thread, as It appears everyone has had their say on the matter, and all that is left is for name calling and sour remarks.

However, this thread has shown me that there is some misinformation about N3V Games and the Trainz brand floating around. In fact, N3V has just had its most successful year ever with Trainz now on 4 platforms (PC, Mac, iOS, Android), available from a dozen different online stores and with a variety of product offerings (Trainz Driver, My First Trainz Set and Trainz Simulator). Plus of course we launched our new online store at SimulatorCentral as well.

Keep your eyes open, in the next few days there will be an announcement on the forums for our community. Letting you all know about the initiatives that we're undertaking, and what you can expect to see from us in the future. We'll be making some new announcement's and also revisiting some old topics.

Regards,
Charles