The idea this thread and many others brings up is a load of dung. The community is wide range of people, not just the old farts with the get off my lawn mentality. Listening to only the old farts who generally don’t want to buy anything new and have a harder time learning isn’t the way for a business to survive. I say that as someone who is part of the over the hill club. 16 bit graphics isn’t going to sell.
There is a large gap between what people think is easy to program and how programming actually is. Improvements take time and money. The resources aren’t there to all the tutorials and documentation. The community demanded the graphics improvements. The community demanded higher resolution terrain. The community demanded the windows 12 graphics compatibility. The community demanded Mac improvements. The community demands 4k resolution and at some point likely 8k. The community demands better AI and they are working on TLR.
Every bit of these improvements requires time and money. There is no studio that is going to throw thousands of programmers at trains games. Every improvement changes file format or something and can always create a problem. They probably have millions of lines of code and much of it is old.
Trainz can import standard graphics file formats and what you can do is vast. How can one possibly make that easier? I keep thinking we could have more utilities if they would work with 3rd party software and released file formats. But they will not do that. The complexity with assets is there because of how the graphics formats are.
I'm sort of in the middle with this issue, I don't automatically decry any improvements to graphics if they are part of a well thought out plan to ensure the game exists into the future. It cant stand still , however, I do think that NV3 aren't the best at communicating with their base and they often do not consider the affect that their changes have on the asset and route creators, of which I am one .
However i do not remember the list being dominated by discussions where many users have demanded high density terrain, i think you are exaggerating the list of " community demands", I'd say a lot more people have demanded that they sort out the DLS and payware packaging and that hasn't happened at all and it shows no sign of being solved. How many new users have we had recently frustrated and confused because they cant work out how to get the game installed and to play with their purchased payware routes ? I can see why NV3 ignore this , new users have no idea what a mess the DLS is and once NV3 has their money, they will have to navigate the DLS/DLC mess like the rest of us, or not, and I suspect quite a few don't persist .
Now I may be wrong ( and i apologize if this is incorrect ) but as far as I know you have never made routes or assets that appear on the DLS, if you had done so, you might think differently about changes that have been made in the past year or so and their affect on assets , many of which need to be repaired in order for them to function. These aren't easy repairs as many involve scripting changes , its complex and beyond my ability to cope with , but its just one area in which NV3 really haven't considered how these items are going to be made usable for their newer versions of the game.
Anyone who hasn't had to try to make routes for the DLS and keep them usable for more then one version of the game really has no idea how hard and frustrating it is to make this happen , my main gripe with NV3 is that they really don't seem all that concerned about that situation.
I don't think they do this deliberately, they have limited resources, but given I make routes that use rock formations almost extensively and thus , would be the perfect person to make use of their new terrain abilities, I won't be using this in the near future, apart from the fact it can only be used by route makers who have a subscription , if a 50 mile route with 10m boards is already 150mb or so, what sort of size is it going to be using the new terrain and how many users are going to be able to take advantage of this new feature?
I don't know what the percentage of users who have 4k or 8k screens to take advantage of these graphic possibilities actually is , I certainly don't have them, and don't intend to do so , because all too many assets would look really ordinary with such high resolution screens . We do not have much vegetation that has been updated to take advantage of these developments and NV3 have no plans to create any.
I think that we are gradually moving towards the demise of freeware routes due to the difficulties that are presented to creators ( which only appear to be multiplying and which often can only be accessed if one has purchased the most expensive sub ) and the lack of support from NV3 . We appear to be in a transition period where many older users are dying, ceasing to participate and younger users have different priorities, it would be interesting to see what the age demographics are for users of particular types of routes, I'm sure for instance mine are used by mostly older users as they are steam and early 20th late 19th century , whilst the desire for the present scene is high in many younger users as that is their own particular railroad experience..
I'm one of those who wish to make ultra realistic looking routes, but I cant support moves that would cost me thousands in upgrades , especially when I know that none of the eye candy ( and I don't include S2 in this ) will make creating assets and routes any simpler or long term once the end product is placed on the DLS.
I was creating a new section of the timber ridge last week and my wife came into the room, " that looks like carpet squares " she said. Guess what she was looking at ? The default grass texture that now graces new boards in 2022, and she was right ,it looked like the green carpet squares we had in our old rumpus room. Some new developments aren't really all that successful unless you know how to apply them correctly and NV3 certainly didn't when they introduced green carpet squares to the game as the default , how does a new user work out how to replace the default and why in merry hell was the grass the default and not the grid ? its just one example of poor decision making , i can think of many, many more that needlessly spoil the game for me a great deal.
Yeah I'm a grumbling old fart, the sad thing is , although in many ways a great program, Trainz does give me a lot to grumble about.
I must be luckier than others because none of the objects I have picked so far have shown any reluctance to work as expected.
