Probably hasn't got a PC with Hardware capable of running Trainz, given MSTS is of Win95 Vintage.
Quibbling about Sims
- Thread starter dangavel
- Start date
Probably hasn't got a PC with Hardware capable of running Trainz, given MSTS is of Win95 Vintage.
Wet fart intensifies
yes Trainz asks a hell of lot of oomph to get it working at its best. He also mentions TS2022 as being superior, so he must be dabbling with the Dovecote game as well, but its confusing as hes free associating between one and the other so I cant work out which he is using at the moment , he definitely did his big route in MSTS .
https://msts.steam4me.net/routes/sar_midnorth.html. I
It looks ok, but the graphics are pretty ordinary, looks about a decade old. https://msts.steam4me.net/routes/sar_midnorth.html#screen
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As they say, Vision is a naked Sword.
As a musician trying to promote your band, these days you almost have have a social media page to use for establishing a following and getting gigs.....and everything associated with it. For that, it's a very useful tool and might save you a trip to have to go somewhere, setup all your gear and play for a free audition. Now they can just check your FB page and see how many 'likes" you have.
I'm not in that situation so I have the luxury of not having to use it....but for those playing these days, it is great means of advertising and promotion for professional musician, along with You Tube.
My reason for avoiding FB, twitter and the rest is because it gives their owners way too much power to promote their own "p-word" agenda, their value system, and decide what "news" they want you to know and what values you should have. I don't want anything to do with it or be connected with them in any way.
For collaborating with others who have the same hobbies can be wonderful, but sometimes you come across people who just want to argue and no matter what you say..... facts are irrelevant...such as the cyber-conflict that this thread is about.
IMHO, it's just best not to engage with these annoying people unless you just want to blow off some UP Big Boy steam.
Instead of the "big tech" social media platforms, I choose to visit other forums........like THIS one that don't have .......the "p' word.......agendas. That's just what I do, and what other's do is their business. No reason to put anyone down over it.
The bottom line:
Who knows more about Trainz than people on this Trainz forum.? ..for Pete's sake.
As they say, Vision is a naked Sword.
As a musician trying to promote your band, these days you almost have have a social media page to use for establishing a following and getting gigs.....and everything associated with it. For that, it's a very useful tool and might save you a trip to have to go somewhere, setup all your gear and play for a free audition. Now they can just check your FB page and see how many 'likes" you have.
I'm not in that situation so I have the luxury of not having to use it....but for those playing these days, it is great means of advertising and promotion for professional musician, along with You Tube.
My reason for avoiding FB, twitter and the rest is because it gives their owners way too much power to promote their own "p-word" agenda, their value system, and decide what "news" they want you to know and what values you should have. I don't want anything to do with it or be connected with them in any way.
For collaborating with others who have the same hobbies can be wonderful, but sometimes you come across people who just want to argue and no matter what you say..... facts are irrelevant...such as the cyber-conflict that this thread is about.
IMHO, it's just best not to engage with these annoying people unless you just want to blow off some UP Big Boy steam.
Instead of the "big tech" social media platforms, I choose to visit other forums........like THIS one that don't have .......the "p' word.......agendas. That's just what I do, and what other's do is their business. No reason to put anyone down over it.
The bottom line:
Who knows more about Trainz than people on this Trainz forum.? ..for Pete's sake.
Re the morality of using big tech media, it is a dilemma, and I've considered leaving many times, but the advantages for me outweigh the disadvantages and , given I never buy anything from the FB ads , I'm contributing very little to their corporate funds . But I know where a lot of people are coming from and to a great extent I agree with you . I'd happily dance on MZ's grave .
But that is what I love about these forums. Start with an obscure question about a minor technical issue and end up solving the world's problems.
But back to the obscure subject.
A theory. Perhaps he only has an old computer with a 32bit CPU running Windows 98, very limited graphics capability and not much HDD space to spare. So MSTS could be the only viable solution that would not require a Ph.D in computer science (I exaggerate) to install on his system and therefore is the only option he has. In my past life, as the sole IT support person for around 60-70 employees and over 1,000 users, I came across many people like that, including in senior management positions.
Could be, but he's also mentioning Ts2022, anyway, since I said that if his sim is so great why doesn't he make the route and I'll do something else instead he's not said a word about sims. I put a link to his route in a post above , its very antiquated, very good for the time it was made and it's a shame that much of the rolling stock doesn't currently exist in trainz at 2019 levels , but there you go,
There are many people like this as you noticed. I was in the same position as you and ran into many upper management-types with PCs they wanted me to fix. Some of the systems were Pentium I units with a couple of Pentium II and Pentium IIIs just to spice up the works a bit. Now, this wasn't the early 2000s either and it's now the 2010s. The worst system I worked on ran Windows ME! The repairs were the usual, clean up the machines usually after the grandkids or teenage kids got ahold of the machines and installed stuff.
The 2d textures look pretty bad today, but that's all the hardware could handle back then. They were great for the ca. 2000 to 2005 period, but even Trainz early textures were far superior then the big texture map pasted over the whole map.
I look at it this way. If this guy is passionate about his old program and proud of the work he did in it, let him be happy. There's a lot worse that he could do in this world and being passionate over an antiquated train simulator let him.
The thing is John, hes NOT happy, in fact immediately started telling me what to do , how to go about route making, when he did it once, I had no problem, remarked all sims have their faults, that I had made a number of routes and folks make their choice as to what they use. The second time, I just went along with it, third time , when he started saying he could do everything much better, much faster denigrating the program I use, and telling me what to do again .....I very nicely told him to back off.
This was in a public forum where I'm asking people for help, if I have someone constantly saying what I'm doing is crap, undermining my status , then really I'm not likely to get much help from the members am I ? The annoying thing is hes been a member for ages and has never indicated he was going to make this as a route,or even posted any comments, or information but once someone said they were entering what he thought was his domain, he was all over me offering 'advice' and not in a very nice way either.
I had that happen to me on another forum where I was attacked by "radio pros" just for asking a question about starting a radio station. Some people were encouraging me sto start one, but most of the members were unhelpful and were attacking me. I got banned after that, even though the members that were attacking me should have been banned, or at least given a warning.
That's because his ego felt threatened. He became defensive as he raised his hackles because you asked for advice on a route that was his pride and joy even though you use a different program altogether and really don't care what he used to accomplish his task. With no recourse, people like him start pulling out ad homonym attacks which is to knock you down by attacking your methods and the program you use.
I ran into this on a piano and music-related forum. A junior member asked for advice on how to play something. Having taught music myself, and having studied with concert pianists, I took out my sage old advice of working on it slowly. When I meant slowly it was how my teachers used to write it in my lesson notebook S L O W L Y. This means so slow you only focus on one note at a time and the fingering using full concentration. Once that's done everything can be brought up to speed because you no longer have to focus on that level of detail and those motions become automated. The process is long and there's no way to shortcut them as much as we'd all love to. This is the same with many things we do whether it's music, building something, or working on a Trainz route.
Anyway, this younger member had none of that and insisted I didn't know what I was talking about and started the personal attacks. This went back and forth then a "friend" jumped in to attack me as well. I told them both to bugger off and said in so many words why did you ask for help in the first place? I've never bothered going back to the forum and the place has lost a lot of good members because of this.
Some of the MSTS Oz routes are very good - Coals To Newcastle which is huge for example, but even in Open Rails now looking rather dated. It's a shame the guy wasn't interested in helping.
I really don't know why we have these sim wars. I've been quiet of late but still trying out various model projects in TRS2019. It's still the best product for building. However driving wise, largely spent in TSW2 on the excellent German routes mainly Tharandter Ramp, but also Trans Pennine and Tees Valley from the UK. I had a brief dance with Run 8 V3 too, but sadly the graphics look worse than MSTS or the original Trainz.
I have noticed from discussions at Trainsim dot com the MSTS brigade tend to be rather insular then there's the infighting with the OR crowd who think all the old MSTS stuff should be left behind.
I really don't know why we have these sim wars. I've been quiet of late but still trying out various model projects in TRS2019. It's still the best product for building. However driving wise, largely spent in TSW2 on the excellent German routes mainly Tharandter Ramp, but also Trans Pennine and Tees Valley from the UK. I had a brief dance with Run 8 V3 too, but sadly the graphics look worse than MSTS or the original Trainz.
I have noticed from discussions at Trainsim dot com the MSTS brigade tend to be rather insular then there's the infighting with the OR crowd who think all the old MSTS stuff should be left behind.
You are too kind. If that's his evidence of superiority, then I think it's time for the folk in white coats to put in an appearance.....
Given the Era that looks real good. If you were more into operation than appearance it may be all you need. I keep a TANE copy on this PC but rarely reference it. May take a closer look, but it is difficult to set aside the visuals. If that was the the base for a new rail-sim focused on operations, would it sell?
Possibly, but I think that in the end it is both visuals and operations that most users want. We have always had complaints from users that Trainz lacks "visual realism" (especially collisions) almost as often as complaints about its lack of "operational realism" (e.g. the AI, no timetable feature, etc). While I am sure that some would be happy with improvements in the operations alone, its is the visuals that really sells the product (in my opinion) to new users.
What we "see with our own eyes" is a foundational phrase. Yes, visuals are the baseline for sales. I have commented that I often open the Trainz program in the morning and enjoy the "almost real" view of the railroad. It is a pleasant change from hate and war that envelopes us. It is very unfortunate that some publishers produce products that do the opposite. Their customers are bombarded with violence and horrid, high quality scenes, of dis-dismemberment. Violence sells. It is just another narcotic that modulates too many people's lives.
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What if you were to contact some local RR museum BY PHONE that's closest to the area you're researching ?
I did that in recent years, calling a RR museum about 20 miles away from the area of interest, and told whoever answered the phone, that I was looking to find the steepest grade on area known as "Remsen Hill" that old time engineers & their fireman used to dread having on the way up. What Google Earth was showing for one stretch seemed almost impossible for an engine of that era to tackle. I got an email back from one of their "historians" that helped me out.
( and btw, Beck mutually respected McLaughlin too and was greatly influence by him during the "Blow by Blow" era. They shared the stage together for their encores when on tour together
)Well they seem to have more information than the state library, local knowledge of whether roads were paved or dirt etc won't be found from the museum , although I'm sure I might find something on microfiche if I looked, I have a bad foot at present so the walk from station to library is beyond me , I have contacted the railway museum but have yet to hear back from them , might give them a ring today , but unless they have a more detailed track plan than the one I have they won't really be a lot of help .Flickr has been a huge help , I found a huge repository of images of SAR railways there, found 5000 + photos from a huge collection , only a few were of the actual line I'm building, but they were invaluable nevertheless, in my experience the US has much better resources online regarding old railways than we do in SA. But I've found around 700 items on the fb page regarding the old line , which is great.What if you were to contact some local RR museum BY PHONE that's closest to the area you're researching ?
I did that in recent years, calling a RR museum about 20 miles away from the area of interest, and told whoever answered the phone, that I was looking to find the steepest grade on area known as "Remsen Hill" that old time engineers & their fireman used to dread having on the way up. What Google Earth was showing for one stretch seemed almost impossible for an engine of that era to tackle. I got an email back from one of their "historians" that helped me out.
( and btw, Beck mutually respected McLaughlin too and was greatly influence by him during the "Blow by Blow" era. They shared the stage together for their encores when on tour together
yes it's mutual respect between Beck and McLaughlin , both recognise that they have something special going on......
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And not that great either
Those stretched textures look terrible. But my point was, for this person to argue that someone should develop a new route in a sim that ceased development about 12 years ago, which now has a very small userbase, is plainly ludicrous.