Bouquets & Brickbats...

[ka959]

As the subject says, the purpose of this brief message is to say what I think of KRS after having it almost since it's release last year. I used my credit card to order my copy of KRS, and sat & waited for it to arrive, hoping for something markedly better than MSTS. I wasn't disapointed, to be honest, but, like all new things you're not familar with, it had it's learning curve to be sure !

The first thing I tried, was the 'Swift and Delightful' scenario. Finding the keyboard controls to be amazingly similar to MSTS, apart from the reversal of the throttle keys, it was quite comfortable to use. Then it hit me - the problem with the British Keyboard - it made me have to use the A & D keys for both throttle and brakes, rather than the
"; & ' '' keys for the brakes separately as I preferred, although the German locos, and the 165 & 166 Classes seem to use this single set of keys for both powering and braking, which does make sense, but I don't prefer it with all locos, for some reason.

Some "bugs" seemed apparent when I tried to lower and raise my outside views of the trains I was driving, but this was rectified by the Mk1 update, along with many other things I hadn't yet found out about, but appreciated the difference, once I read about the various 'fixes'. While I found the movement around the screen in the World Editor not quite so fast and accurate as I do with TRS 2004/2006, using the mouse itself, which is quite excellend, and the arrow/CTRL/Shift keys do seem rather cumbersome compared to the mouse controls, but overall, using the World Editor is simple enough, and definately easier to get into from the game itself, which I appreciate.

There does seem a rather limited number of World Placement objects to choose from when creating your own route, but there's enough to not be wanting - although a bit more variety would have been good, but the models themselves are so much more detailed than those in MSTS are, and therefore more realistic. The weather variety is great, but I seem to get more snow and fog than I do rain, but it's still much improved over MSTS, in my opinion.

I've managed to work out quite a few things, and had help with some of them, through asking in the forums, which helps tremendously, and help itself has been fairly quick in coming, as well. I do know that many of you out there, are just like me... with questions to be answered. Strangely enough, I just seem to think that, reading in the Forums here, I don't seem to see as many "whinges" as I recall seeing in the TRS2004/2006 Forums, about many things in general, anywhere - or is it my imagination ? The one thing I really didn't like seeing in the Forums, was someone saying he's had it with this or that rail simulator, and removing it from his computer... it's way too hard to figure out. Something like that.

In my honest opinion, KRS is just great, despite the early days, some bugs still apparent, and crashes/ lockups still occasionally happening, I'm quite happy about the amount of money I paid for it. I'm learning the World Editor, finding it much easier to lay tracks now as well, tunnels are a little sticky, seeing how difficult is still is to mould the hillsides around the entrances to tunnels, and keeping the tops of tunnel portals covered with 'earth' and getting it to look as I want it to be, but it's getting there slowly. Cuttings, I've managed, as well as gradients. There's still a fair bit I want to learn, but all-in-all, it's been fun learning what I've learnt so far.

I'd say there's more about KRS that's good, than what I don't like. It gets hard trying to create a world with fog swirling around you, and having so limited visibility, but I can manage it. The steam locos are neat, and sound far better than those in MSTS, even though I do have a hearing deficiency of some degree, and have a Cochlear Implant fitted, I'm getting a huge amount of pleasure out of KRS to date.

Some of the things I don't feel too happy about with KRS, include the lack of a properly-working level crossing, where road vehicles actually stop for the lowered booms / closed gates, and flashing warning lights that all work in harmony. Perhaps a variety of crossings to suit European / British / Australian & New Zealand tastes, would be excellent. I prefer the American style crossing lights and booms, as they use here in New Zealand. I loved the crossings that someone built for TRS2004, modelling the Queensland and Western Australian style crossings. They were for me, the most perfect crossings I'd yet seen so far, then TRS2006 came along, with it's improvements. And these excellent crossings wouldn't work properly with TRS2006. Script problems it seems. When they should have been open, and no trains approaching, they were doing the opposite. Someone offered a fix, but it wasn't something where others who wanted these working in TRS2006, could just download them and put them where they needed them to be. As far as I'm concerned, this problem is still not fixed properly, and it's a crying shame. If I'm wrong, someone please prove me so.

To cap it all, once they give us working level crossings, and more clear documentation on the little niggly things like speed discs, station setups, particularly how to get the next stations to show up in the Driver Aid window, and lots of other things, like the exact setup of all different signals, and where to place/use them, that seem simple enough in themselves, but tend to drive me round the twist, then I'll REALLY, REALLY begin to take a shine to an otherwise excellent rail simulator !

Regards...

Jim McDermott

[sniper297]

When you first start railsim, below the "ROUTES" selection is an "OPTIONS" link, click on that. Next screen has Graphical Detail, Sound Options, Advanced, and Gameplay. Click on the Gameplay, set CONTROL MODEL to "Expert". The DB BR294 has a combined throttle and brake in real life, meaning A and D are all you get for throttle and brake for that engine. Most of the other engines, however, DO have apostrophe bracket semicolon whatever, independently controlled train, loco, and dynamic brakes, provided the CONTROL MODEL is not set to "Simple".

[Ghostcav]

I find it funny that the throttle is A & D & the brakes ; & ' , mainly due to driving 150's, 153's & 158's most days where brakes are left hand & power notches with the right hand.

But as said RS is a brilliant follow on to MSTS, it's early days & sure there are some bugs (I had MSTS in 2001 & that had plenty of bugs as well). But from a sim kind of view there is so much more realism & realistic railway operations available with RS.