This is the best TRS2019 has to offer?

Lord_Beelzebub

New member
The last time I played a Trainz game was TRS2006. That game had some issues but I loved playing it. Let's fast forward 15 YEARS later to TRS2019 where I decide to purchase this game again and put it on an amazing PC that can play this game no sweat, with everything on Ultra display settings. The game looks amazing, with one major issue. 90% of the assets in this game look HORRIBLE! It's the same old pixelated content that I played with 15 years ago. Are you kidding me? I go into Surveyor Mode on a blank map, lay down a section of track and start placing locomotives and rolling stock and most of it is still the same horrible looking assets from TRS2006 and older. I played one of the tutortials and the logging camp is the same crappy low res asset that was back in 2006.

I figured I go to the Download Station to see if there are any high quality created assets. What do I find? An endless list of completely disorganized, badly named, poor description, poor thumbnail image assets created by users where you have absolutely no idea when it was created, what version of this game is was created for, if it's even compatible, etc. You can't even use the search filters to find content that was specifically made/updated for the version of the game you bought. There is probably thousands upon thousands of assets in the Download Station where assets for every version of this game ever created is just thrown in a huge pile and I'm supposed to spend endless hours searching through it all to maybe find a small portion of quality made - high res assets to use in this game? That Download Station is completely unacceptable, that after all these years, it's just a cluster F of assets all thrown together.

I am highly disappointed that I bought this game. If I disabled all of the low res 15+ year old content, there wouldn't hardly be anything left in the game to play with. This is NOT what I expect to get for my $50, assets 15+ years old that look like garbage. Before someone replies saying, "build your own content", 1. I don't know how, 2. I didn't buy this game to spend endless hours creating content, I bought it to play it.

I would love to play this game, and I'm hoping someone can reply to inform me (with links) where I can acquire quality high res assets for this game please. Buildings, interactive industries, locomotives, rolling stock, scenery, etc. I would be much appreciated.

Note to devs: Stop releasing a new game every year charging $50 where 90% of the assets are still from the games you made 15-20 years ago. Completely unacceptable!
 
First of all, in your CM, add the column for version, then list by version Number and stick with version 4.5 and 4.6 routes and assets. That may help some. They don't remove old assets just because newer users might not like them. But even then, be careful of simple items that are tens of megabytes in size, as they could affect performance. Also, for reasons known only to N3V, they decided to make the default lighting what someone on these forums termed "the sun gone nova", so you might look up some of the threads for the best environmental settings for various times of day. It is my understanding that routes and assets for TS19 were at least updated from earlier versions with newer textures and meshes. To what degree this was done I do not know. Having said this, I have seen phenomenally lifelike screenshots posted from both T:ANE and TS2019. Have I been able to recreate this realism? No. There is a lot of visual evidence this is possible, but I am left thinking it will not happen with default settings, and no suggestions I have received have given me any satisfactory results as yet. It remains arcane knowledge. Best of luck.
 
@LB,

I have two suggestions:

1) I don't know how you looked through the Download Station, but I would suggest if you didn't, that go into the Content Manager, open the Download station there, and set your build number to a minimum of 4.5. This will pull only TANE and above. I don't have TRS2019-Platinum, so I'm not sure of the build number for it, but you could set that as a minimum. However, that will pull EVERYTHING, so you might want to set an additional filter to layouts or sessions or locomotives.... You get the idea.

2) I would recommend that you look at the layouts and sessions of Philskene. Some are TRS2019 and some are TANE, but all are well constructed.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Bob Morrison
 
thanks

I thank you both for your replies and your help. The Download Stationhas always been confusing to me and hard to find assets as many creators don't properly title or put proper descriptions with their assets. I didn't realize you could search with version numbers that way.

Sorry for sounding b!tchy. I found myself a bit disappointed when the majority of the content in the game was old and then couldn't find anything in the Download Station and obviously didn't know how to properly search for it.
 
Searching for decent content has always been difficult IMHO. I rarely use the DLS website and just use Content Manager. The Trainz Builds (TB) for TANE are 4.0 to 4.5 and TRS19 is 4.6.

In defence of content creators, I'd like to say that making assets for Trainz (TANE and TRS19) is almost exponentially more difficult than the halcyon days of TS04 and TS06. Many creators have dropped out or lost interest. There are models I have seen in the Trainz Discord content dev channels that are simply amazing but I cannot say if they will make it to the DLS, be payware or hosted on other sites.

There are some creators updating their content for TRS19 but it takes time.
 
I thank you both for your replies and your help. The Download Stationhas always been confusing to me and hard to find assets as many creators don't properly title or put proper descriptions with their assets. I didn't realize you could search with version numbers that way.

Sorry for sounding b!tchy. I found myself a bit disappointed when the majority of the content in the game was old and then couldn't find anything in the Download Station and obviously didn't know how to properly search for it.


its a minefield. the problem is , if you are making specific routes , such as historical ones, you are very limited as to the items you can use , if you make them, then you haven't much time to construct the route. if you are lucky you can find someone who can make great models, but otherwise, one has to make do.
However at least its free , whereas you have to buy most assets with other simulators.
Don't expect every route made for 2019 to look great ,one of the built ins is populated by very very old vegetation splines that look awful, however there are other free routes that are really top notch, such as Horace Fithers Bear Creek and Jackson,Dve Snows Alma Valley and the UK route Dearnby and District. Durango and Silverton 1895 also looks very nice in 2019.
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if you buy jointed rail routes they also look great. Also, go for anything made by Jango . Trainz italia has some very nice free routes , but not all are updated to 2019 standards. .
 
Trainzitalia has several US routes being updated to trs19, but they work very well even without updating.
I advise you to be patient to follow the work that I and many other route creators are doing.

These are some freeware routes that are being updated:

- Sherman Hill 4.0
- Rollins Pass 2010 winter, seasonal version.
- White pass & Yukon RR, seasonal version.
- Sebino Lake - Paratico branch.(built-in in TRS19)
- Gilpin Tram. New route. International collaboration.

payware (WIP):
- Donner Pass
- West from Denver Moffat Line -

You can follow us here:

https://www.trainzitalia.it/forum/index.php?/topic/610-donner-pass-2019-wip/
https://www.trainzitalia.it/forum/index.php?/topic/618-white-pass-is-back/

or download here:

http://www.trainzitalia.com/forum/index.php?/files/

Sorry, but the tranzitalia.it website is undergoing a restructuring.
The old site (tranzitalia.com) still allows free downloads of routes.

Jango
 
Beelzebub --

If I was a new comer to the game I too would be bitterly disappointed by the quality of some (most?) of the built-in and Download Station content. But amongst all the chaff there are some real gems. It just takes a while to find them and to identify those content creators who always produce high quality work.

I see that my name has been mentioned above. I'm not a content creator. I have to rely on others. To me they are the real heroes of this simulation. I'm the journeyman who stitches together what is available. I try to take advantage of the latest TRS19 features -- the new TRS19 tracks, the 3D PBR textures and the TurfFX grasses. This is one of my later creations, "The Rivercide Railroad":

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?157492-Newish-TRS19-route-The-Rivercide-Railroad-Co

Try it. You might change your mind about the game.

Phil
 
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Nothing like some statistics to put an issue into perspective.

I just did a quick survey using CM of all available content - that is built-in, DLS, DLC (installed on my system) and some of my own content not yet released.

All content of all versions of Trainz = 511,706 items
TRS19 content (minimun build 4.6) = 10,907 items

That means that just a fraction over 2% of all available content for TRS19 is specifically designed for TRS19.

As posters above have pointed out, route and session creators will select assets that best fit the look and feel of their creations - be it based on time period, location, aesthetics, etc. This means that choices made for TRS19 will usually involve using poorer quality assets. Add to that the increasing difficulty of creating assets that meet the ever increasing quality requirements of Trainz means that the development time is becoming longer.

It will take time for the Trainz freeware creators to develop the same number of quality assets for TRS19 that existed for TRS2006.
 
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Bit unfair to criticise N3V when creators make 99.9% of the content and now have a massive learning curve just to create a simple building.... with all this incomprehensible pbr stuff which is more suited to professional modellers and not us mere hobbyists, yes there is a load of junk on the DLS but you will get this with any game or simulator where the users can create content, bearing in mind that the are lot of kids uploading stuff probably done on an Android or Ipad which may be of a very poor standard to adult users, mostly they all seem to be build 3.8 so I avoid that one. However everyone has to start somewhere, some of the creators who uploaded poor stuff when they started are now producing decent stuff, just have to find it!

Why is the old stuff still available? Simple the majority of users asked for it so they can run this prehistoric stuff on the latest version, personally I think they should have cut it off at TANE.

If you add the column headers in Manage Content such as Date Uploaded and Build Version, you can see when it was uploaded and what version of Trainz it was for, list of Build Versions and which Trainz version they apply to here. http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/Trainz_build_versions.
 
I appreciate all authors of whatever version they created it in. They say what is junk to someone, is treasure to someone else.

BTW I have no intentions of purchasing past 2019 (at least at this point) as it's very satisfying to me. If it wasn't why would I waste money on anything else. If it is, of course I can support them more, but personally I have no incentive at this point. What got me back in was the 15 dollar North America price tag. Other than a $600 upgrade on my system I'm currently undergoing I haven't spend anything else. I'll wait to see what kind of changes in graphics await once I get it back from the shop.

Thanks

Sean
 
Why is the old stuff still available? Simple the majority of users asked for it so they can run this prehistoric stuff on the latest version, personally I think they should have cut it off at TANE.

The difficulty with the 'prehistoric stuff' Malc is that in many cases there isn't anything that can be substituted for it. If everything before TS12 3.7 was suddenly cut off by N3V a high percentage of TANE and TS2019 layouts and routes would be looking very bare indeed. If TANE was the cut off point the situation would be even worse.
The skill set requirement for creators making assets for TS2019 is now far too high and is the big reason why many creators are sticking with 3.5 or 3.7, - or at least that's what I'm seeing when I open the 'Today' tab in CM when I start up TS2012 each morning. Even if my brain worked properly so I could learn how to use Blender I wouldn't consider for a moment making anything for TS2019.
 
ECML and other large routes can take years to perfect. The builders of these large routes can not keep checking and replacing content that fits with the latest build or the route would never get done. This is after all a hobby not a job to most builders and creators and do so in their spare time.
 
When I load the BC&SJ route, and any number of others, it looks like a picture or movie to me, it is so good.

If the original poster thinks otherwise, either your setup is at fault, or your eyesight. (Be sure your display is set to native mode, by the way).
 
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Regarding the OP's original statement I find nothing wrong with it and agree. The only way this game will get better is for people to share their opinion? Not to get shut down by someone who disagrees with them, and might be totally happy with their experience. If you look at screenshots on this forum you can see what people enjoy or consider important to them is all over the map.
Dean
 
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