Atomic Systems

Physics have gotta be the top priority, good graphics should be pretty much expected, EA seem to pay quite a lot of attention to detail in their FIFA games so hopefully it should please those who care to pay attention to the finer points.

AI diesel engines to have exhaust would be good but it would be great if as mentioned earlier engines could have traction motor flashovers etc(maybe as a result of enthusiastic driving) and maybe even run them as in real life where they clock up engine hours so you could be driving a high on hours class 37 on a MGR hoping it will make it.

Switching to the cab at the rear of your loco/unit would be great

A good signalling engine is a must also.

It would be great if the game could have people in it to basically give that bit more atmosphere as MSTS feels like you are driving throgh the set of 28 days later sometimes.

It would be great if the Player engine could interact with AI trains, I.E. you could make up trains for an AI engine to take on a timetabled service. E.G. you could do an activity as Liverpool St station pilot taking empty coaches away, and assembling new rakes for later services.
Jim

Moving people who actually get on and off the trains, with opening and closing doors. Seeing the passengers on the trains.

Now that would make it very real.

My biggest grumble of MSTS that I'd like to see avoided in the new software:

The world is not Flat!

If they remember that, and importing DEM is as easy, if not more so, then I will be happy.

On top of that, a facility to merge routes is also extremely desirable.

Other stuff, such as super elevation and cab sway are just extremely nice eye candy.

3D cabs would be nice,though this could make building new ones a bit harder!

Super elevated track on corners ?

Terrain that has a mesh small enough to make decent cuttings and embankments as opposed to MSTS 2x2m terrain node spacing ( note in the screen shot is a very smooth elevation grade between the main track and the one slightly higher on the left )

Tsection that doesnt need updating, ie one that anyone can add to and not have to resort to keeping upto date with a new Tsection.dat.

Best regards

Michael

Locos/units that weatherd during use???
That would be a kewl effect

Heads up gradient profile.
T

morpethcurve wrote:Oh yeah, and some sort of backward compatibility with MSTS stock/routes would be nice, too, to save me re-working all my models and routes! :)

This is probably the most essential thing of all, by all means enhance the variety of features beyond what we have now, but do not make existing models unuseable for the benefit of adding extra details.

Build on and rebuild, yes, completly rework, no, this makes all the excellent work that has been done so far a waste of time.

The basic problem is there are two different sorts of users, the "players" and the "simulators", players may be more numerous, but simulators want to replicate what they now see and/or what they may have known in the past and may not even own another "game", but they will be around for a good simulator a lot longer.

supergoods wrote:

morpethcurve wrote:Oh yeah, and some sort of backward compatibility with MSTS stock/routes would be nice, too, to save me re-working all my models and routes!

This is probably the most essential thing of all, by all means enhance the variety of features beyond what we have now, but do not make existing models unuseable for the benefit of adding extra details.

Build on and rebuild, yes, completly rework, no, this makes all the excellent work that has been done so far a waste of time.

The basic problem is there are two different sorts of users, the "players" and the "simulators", players may be more numerous, but simulators want to replicate what they now see and/or what they may have known in the past and may not even own another "game", but they will be around for a good simulator a lot longer.

Hi
The possibility of conversion tools has already been mentioned in one of the other threads.
Cheers
Jon

Thanks for all your interest! We're keeping a close eye on all of your ideas and suggestions and they are being noted and will be fed back to the team. As I said previously, we can't be sure of getting everything in to Rail Simulator first time around, but it's really useful to us to know what your priorities are. Hopefully you're going to like what we have planned and we’ll pick up more things in version 2!

Cheers.

I don't really agree with this backwards compatibility business. It's not as though your MSTS discs will vapourise when you buy KRS/TMTS/TATS/whatever. We'll still be able to play the old games after the release of the new games. I think it's possible that any new sims will be hamstrung by the way it was done first time if they try to make it backwards compatible.

I'm sure that programs like GMAX etc will be capable of creating models for the new sims, so provided the author hasn't thrown away the source files, it should be very easy for them to re-export into the correct format (perhaps with a plugin for the 3D modelling program of their choice...)

Or am I looking at it too simplistically?

No you're completely right.

On top of that, a facility to merge routes is also extremely desirable.


Merging routes would be a good idea, that means that publishers can make one add-on or something but that would cover say, london-brighton aswell as west coastway and london and the south east.