Here is a golden example of why nothing will change with this mentality unless forced to. It's great that you are having fun, but you can have fun while others also enjoy a standard at least.
Nice little personal snarky attack there bud. I play this because I enjoy Model RR, and I also play games as a gamer since 1999. What's wrong with having best of both, especially when we are a fantastic time to be a PC 'user'. Dare I use 'gamer' around you. We have more tools and resources in 2019, and so accessible to anyone with a computer that it's insane to not get up to the times. With the latest and greatest engines, modeling tools, gfx design, and unlimited amount of how-to tutorials scattered across YouTube and the internet. There is 0 reason to still live in the year 2004. Which by the way, was a fantastic year for 'gaming'.
This is why nothing will go anywhere because of the attitude right here proven by you. Thankfully there is people who actually know the times are changing, and freeware community members are starting to realize a box for a cab stand is not acceptable anymore in 2019. Those who are not afraid to innovate and change, and try new things, get a +1 in my book. Those who want to be left behind and live in 2004, hey, whatever floats your boat. But don't bring the boat down with everyone else to sub-par quality.
When I was about to upload a bunch of new content to the DLS last year, I decided that I needed to finally go with LOD with the new assets and also update the old stuff I'd made to include LOD. After numerous months (and several hundred hours) of effort and hundreds of new 3D models for LOD, I uploaded the new assets and updates to the older ones. I have two "routes" to show off the assets and how to use them; one for TS12 and one for T:ANE. Interestingly, the downloads for the latest updates of the "routes" between the TS12 and T:ANE versions have been almost equal with a (admittedly modest) 214 and 217 downloads respectively.
I'm not disappointed by the numbers as a lot of the assets I have uploaded are for a very specific situations; modern facility vessels and equipment and piperacks don't really fit into a 1800's era route. When I started route building, the content for oil refineries or other oil and gas facilities were, well, not quite what I was looking for nor very appropriate for what I was trying to model. It was that apparent lack, or at least my percieved lack, of suitable content which lead me down the content creation path. I was able to use my career experience to good effect with my modeling to know when increased detail was desirable and when it wasn't. For example, my piperack splines have about 20% of the required bracing for real world stability. A real live earthquake would bring them down like a house of cards. However, since the piperacks are built for a simulator, I decided earthquakes be damned and went with the stripped down models and less polys. 99% of the users of my assets would never know the difference nor, probably, care.
My assets are for, mostly, the background although a few, the NGL loading rack for one, could well be front and center for part of a route session. For that reason, I tried to put quite a few of "extras" into that assets: electrical and control conduit for the equipment, numbers for the ESD valves and junction box, a load control panel with start/stop switches for the load pumps, a reset button for the load amouints, etc. Will 90% of the users of the asset know or care that I've done that level of detail for their enjoyment? No, probably not. Am I offended with that? Nope.
Do the asset users know that all my equipment, tanks, vessels, and pump skid assets have individual unique identification numbers? I seriously doubt it but in real life, just as each locomotive and railcar has a unique identifier given to it by the owner, so does each vessel, tank, pump, electrical motor, etc, have a unique ID given to it by the owner. In fact each vessel, etc., will have a unique manufactures ID also as part of it's "birth certificate" (as do the locomotive and railcars) but these ID's are not, generally, used in the owners numbering scheme. Now, I backed off giving each motor and pump on a "skid" unique numbers but instead gave the combination a unique number instead; the effort at detail wasn't worth the additional time, file size, etc. The ID's shown on the assets are usually nothing more than a plane with a simple jpg texture with text on it so it doesn't really add that much to the whole model as far as polys so I went for that iittle bit of detail.
Ok, why did I even write this reply? Well, I guess as a partial explanation of why some of us create content, how we go about it and the compromises we go through in the creation process. Admittedly, I'm pretty much an amateur in regards to content creation but I am going to jump from gMax to Blender 2.80. With that jump, I'll get into the new materials, textures, etc. for TS19 and beyond with all the frustrations that will bring.
Whatever.
I am kind of curious when looking at the 2000+ downloads of my Oil Storage Tank, KUID2:417385:101784:1 The downloads have been popping and all I can think is that it's in some new route that I'm unaware of. If someone has an idea, let me know. Thanks.
Oh, yeah, Kilrbe3, I was going to thank you for your content but I'm above that sort of snarky comment. Ok, ok! No offense. Or as we said in Vietnam, "Peace, chou hoi !"
Take care,