Surveyor 2.0 - Discussion Thread

From the latest Trainz Newsletter on Surveyor 2.0


  • "Unlimited" brush size
  • Multi-selection allowing you to move, rotate, raise/lower the selected group of assets
  • A powerful new Scrapbook tool that will let you save, copy and paste whole "scenes" from one area to another or even a new route
  • Mass-addition/deletion of baseboards
  • Powerful filtering capabilities to drill down to just the content you want to use
  • So much more

All of which will make my route creation and updating so much easier, especially the "unlimited" brush size and mass baseboard addition/deletion features - even if they still have their limits.
 
pware said:
From the latest Trainz Newsletter on Surveyor 2.0


Unlimited" brush size
This is great, even better if one could use brush shapes :Y:


Multi-selection allowing you to move, rotate, raise/lower the selected group of assets
Also great, but, will we be able to rotate on all 3 axis? Will there by fine alignment tools as well? Align edges, align axis, align height etc etc? 🤔


A powerful new Scrapbook tool that will let you save, copy and paste whole "scenes" from one area to another or even a new route
Killer idea, I would use this feature all the time!


Mass-addition/deletion of baseboards
Cool, but not for me as I really only build MRR layouts


Powerful filtering capabilities to drill down to just the content you want to use
Yes, excellent. One of the most needed for me, I have so much pick list content already, that I forget which list, has which asset sometimes, LOL. :eek:


So much more - Which is?




Rico
Click to expand...
 
Just wondering if there was ever a plan to be able to move whole baseboards up or down, would greatly assist in making different levels of route. I currently use the up or down function and then plateau to raise levels up or down. Time consuming and not user friendly over large areas.
 
Will there be a way to join different items together? Attach a flagman to the end of a freight train or a person on a deck of a building etc. Will you be able to see the carriage and wheels of the locomotive in cab camera mode?
 
I don't know if you have included this in the new version but I would like to be able to create titles and sub titles in pick lists. It would make the lists much smaller and easer to use.
 
Sean_lee said:
Just wondering if there was ever a plan to be able to move whole baseboards up or down, would greatly assist in making different levels of route. I currently use the up or down function and then plateau to raise levels up or down. Time consuming and not user friendly over large areas.
Click to expand...

With the unlimited brush size, it seems to me this makes changing the height of an entire baseboard(s) much easier using the current set of terrain tools.
 
Also protect the primary picklist by allowing it to be backed up.
That is my go-to despite that it cannot be backed up.
Live dangerously
 
coop2 said:
Will there be a way to join different items together? Attach a flagman to the end of a freight train or a person on a deck of a building etc. Will you be able to see the carriage and wheels of the locomotive in cab camera mode?
Click to expand...
I think these should be directed at the object creators. They can decide to add the required attachment points and visible objects in their cab views.
 
boleyd said:
Also protect the primary picklist by allowing it to be backed up.
That is my go-to despite that it cannot be backed up.
Live dangerously
Click to expand...

I have a total of 46 picklists saved (backed up) as .txt files but not all are installed in Surveyor at the same time. Some I bring in only as needed for specific tasks. I do not use the Default list as the name "default" is far too vague.

Each picklist is named according to the types of assets it contains - e.g. "Derelict Stuff", "Lineside Grasses", "Industrial Clutter", etc, etc.
 
Been playing around with the DTG editor the last couple of days and one really useful tool we could do with in Surveyor is the “align” function. Makes it dead easy to place objects parallel in relation to another whether spline or normal asset, no twiddling of the mouse and Ctrl key required.
 
I would also appreciate if in the configuration file for fixed objects such as buildings. There was a flash corona, or an improved night mode with street lighting effects, so that the measured light rendered shadows, as in other simulators. It would also be good to improve the sound range. Otherwise, enlarging the brush after twenty years is a good idea.
 
I am looking forward the Trainz guys to compete with SimRail.
Here is a recent screenshot shared by SimRail in their discord channel -
183c0e291f7e4836cba76481eb4c4c8461e64325d53538ee71c0e04600ed9f1f_0.png
 
RailRoadEngineer said:
I am looking forward the Trainz guys to compete with SimRail.
Here is a recent screenshot shared by SimRail in their discord channel -
Click to expand...

All that shows me is that SimRail is a "pretty screenshot generator" - for all I know it may be terrible at railroad operations, layout construction, driving experience, etc.
 
This is what the description says about it:
"Join the journey and explore approximately 500 km of real routes, recreated in full detail. Choose modern European high-speed..."

This doesn't look modding friendly. It appears to be another TSW, with pre-built routes, and immersive experience, but with very poor to no modding and route-creation capabilities. :(
Trainz is still unmatched in that realm.
 
From what I have managed to figure out about SimRail is, that the game is developed by previous Trainz content creators from Poland. People who know how to create models and have taken look at their content will tell you that it is extremely unoptimised for the little amount of detail it provides. Furthermore, in some of their screenshots you can see publically available objects for Trainz from these creators and their websites, most notably station buildings. Going off the nature of some of their creators, I wouldn´t be surprised if they used someone elses content in SimRail too, but this might be a bit too much of a stretch and even they may have realised it would only bring problems. The game runs on Unity game engine, literally pushing it to the limit.

There was a recent tech demo at some convention and people said the game runs terribly and is really unoptimised.

As for operations available in the game, I am guessing they are aiming at the same level as an older Polish Train simulator game called "Maszyna". Singleplayer, multiplayer and signalbox dispatching for both SP and MP should be present. The 500km of tracks in-game are one big map which they want to expand afaik, so loading time (depending on how they decided to implement this) could be terrible and perhaps longer than it ever was in Trainz (depending on your system).

So some people are not exactly expecting a lot from this game, just like TSW and TS. I also think this game will initially flop due to poor optimisation, and I have hard time believing it could recover from it. SimRail is not "something new" and is competing the same level as TRS19 and TSW.
 
Last edited:
Using the Unity engine is the reason for the screenshot looking the way it does, Unity along with Unreal 5 are capable of creating amazing graphics but are anything but easy to learn and use. They are definitely not something that will ever be built in to a train sim designed for an average end user to access the power of the engines.
 
Tony,
Here is another nice idea for Surveyor 2. We have random rotate when placing objects, can we have random rotate when placing ground textures?
 
That is not a nice idea.... It is a great idea. It is one of those obvious needs, but was lost in the frenzy of more dramatic evolutions. Thanks for bringing it up.
 
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