RW2 What should really be in it.

[transadelaide]

The missing Class 86 run down notch??

Regards
Erik

I don't think DLC fixes should be mixed up with a core release. The Class 143 braking problems are a different story though.

[47522]

I have dreamed about a totally new simulator, built from the ground up. I'm actually scared/dreading the time my model hits the 'import to rw' stage.
Give me a .s, .sd and .eng file any day! Even I could work those out!

[kirkheath]

I still notice that default UK turntables won't turn a loco that overhangs the edges. Other than that it seems a nice upgrade

[bigvern]

Back on the subject of things it would have been *nice* to see RW2 offer... (and these are indeed more on the entertainment side).

Interior view for more than just one vehicle in the consist. i.e. if you scroll back through the coaches, you get maybe a TSO, then the BFK and perhaps the buffet car. Also allows viewing from the train in different positions.

And, while we're on that topic, the ability if you want to let the AI drive while you sit back and enjoy the route. MSTS had it albeit undocumented, Trainz, OpenBVE and indeed Zusi have it. Heck even RRT3 you could attach to the side of your loco and be driven through the landscape. If we are looking at these programmes than being more than just scowling with furrowed brow out the fixed forward view then that would be towards the top of the list and something to proclaim for the next podcast!

[Wikkus]

Of course toughness is a very relative notion

<snip>

What makes me insist on superelevation is that the French community of active railsimmers stick to MSTS because many of them don't see any key feature in RW that isn't available in MSTS or OpenRails. Like it or not, superelevation is the kind of key feature that's mentioned VERY often. Not that superelevation would be enough to make a majority of my fellow simmers take the plunge, though. The graphical improvements of RW vs MSTS alone decided me to buy and play RS/RW, but that's just me.

Good post, +1

Rik.

[sanyix]

What makes me insist on superelevation is that the French community of active railsimmers stick to MSTS because many of them don't see any key feature in RW that isn't available in MSTS or OpenRails. Like it or not, superelevation is the kind of key feature that's mentioned VERY often. Not that superelevation would be enough to make a majority of my fellow simmers take the plunge, though. The graphical improvements of RW vs MSTS alone decided me to buy and play RS/RW, but that's just me.

Same in Hungary. LOTS of simmers stick to msts, because they don't see real improvement exept the graphics. They wait for working headlights, superelevation, and realistic engine physics... i do too, but i see i must wait for a lifetime(or until openrails final version released ) , since it seems rsc don't care about these. They lose a few thousands of potential buyers...

[msmith4000]

I think Railsimulator.com dont follow the "normal" games development lifecycle, which is:

Instead of saving up all the improvements & changes up and releasing a whole new version of the game with some new content, RSC constantly improve the simulator and implement fixes on a monthly basis, so they are maintaining the old Railworks whilst slowly improving it graudually and together. This way the customer gets the benefits of these improvements straight away and dont have to wait until Version 2 of the game is released. So we get regular fixes and upgrades to the engine essentially for free after our initial investment of buying the game. The new extra content we pay for in the form of DLC.

So this release was all about the updating of the user interface and the games menu system / scenario selection system, which, lets face it was well in need of a facelift. The results is Railworks is much better than before. Since the UI has changed , even though it may not all be that much work to the developers compared to say, re-writing the whole game engine to be multithreaded, from a end-users perspective RW2 looks very different to the previous version. An upgrade to multithreaded engine alone the end user would see no difference whatsoever (except the game would be smoother), so I can understand why RSC waited until this particulat update, which is essentially just another one of their incremental monthly Railworks updates, to decide to change up to Railworks 2.


So, now that RSC have got the UI interface milestone ticked off their project plan, lets hope that some general bug fixing and some further RW core improvements are next on their project plan list so that they can now get on with superelevation, distant mountains and performance improvements.

I noticed for one that they mentioned on their facebook technical page that they mentioned they are working on changing Railworks so that it runs using the newest version of PhysX. Hopefully this is next on their to-do-list to allow us to run WCML and more complex scenario's.

[adam3544]

As i see in rail videos there is are plenty of british locos that have real headlights, not just markers... but at other parts of the world , the most of rail vehicles have strong headlights.

Yep ... real world experience tells me that the headlights in RS , RW and now RW2 are a poor subsitute for the real thing . Might look fine for some UK locomotives , but for the rest of the world >> not even close

Hope that's good enough Easilyconfused

I hope that I'm wrong, but I've a bad feeling that front light illumination is beyond the capability of the existing graphics engine, otherwise, I don't understand why the developers didn't added this important feature yet.
Easyconfused: We were in this discussion before and I proved you with attached YouTube video that BR motive power is equipped with rather strong headlights. Even DB and Swiss locomotives were retrofitted with Mercedes Benz manufactured headlight combos which are strong enough.

Adam

[Wikkus]

since it seems rsc don't care about these. They lose a few thousands of potential buyers...

{sigh}

Here we go again...

R.

[Wikkus]

I hope I'm wrong, but I've a bad feeling that front light illumination is beyond the capability of the existing graphics engine, otherwise, I don't understand why the developers didn't added the important feature yet.

I'm pretty sure that we already have it on record that the current game engine can't do it...

R.

[FoggyMorning]

As i see in rail videos there is are plenty of british locos that have real headlights, not just markers... but at other parts of the world , the most of rail vehicles have strong headlights.

Yep ... real world experience tells me that the headlights in RS , RW and now RW2 are a poor subsitute for the real thing . Might look fine for some UK locomotives , but for the rest of the world >> not even close

Hope that's good enough Easilyconfused

I hope that I'm wrong, but I've a bad feeling that front light illumination is beyond the capability of the existing graphics engine, otherwise, I don't understand why the developers didn't added this important feature yet.
Easyconfused: We were in this discussion before and I proved you with attached YouTube video that BR motive power is equipped with rather strong headlights. Even DB and Swiss locomotives were retrofitted with Mercedes Benz manufactured headlight combos which are strong enough.

Adam

EDIT: sorry, my misunderstanding

[CaptScarlet]

I hope I'm wrong, but I've a bad feeling that front light illumination is beyond the capability of the existing graphics engine, otherwise, I don't understand why the developers didn't added the important feature yet.

I'm pretty sure that we already have it on record that the current game engine can't do it...

R.

Not quite, Derek has said before that the problem is related to Alpha sorting ( or something like that ) not working the way they wanted and as such it was disabled until they can get it working correctly while fitting into the grand scheme of things they also want to implement, contrary to what a lot here seem to think.

John

[msmith4000]

I'm still very confused by this whole "issue". As far as I've noticed, all diesel and electric locomotives are fitted with headlights that can be turned on or off using the H key

The main complaint about the lights is that there is no beam of light projecting from the train onto the track when you are in the cab view and additionally, when viewing your locomotive externally their is no light shafts / glare from the light. So the lights work but the lighting effects are not up to scratch

[FoggyMorning]

[

Hiya, if you'll pardon the pun, the lightbulb has just gone on that this is what people are talking about here, my mistake

[sanyix]

Instead of saving up all the improvements & changes up and releasing a whole new version of the game with some new content, RSC constantly improve the simulator and implement fixes on a monthly basis, so they are maintaining the old Railworks whilst slowly improving it graudually and together. This way the customer gets the benefits of these improvements straight away and dont have to wait until Version 2 of the game is released. So we get regular fixes and upgrades to the engine essentially for free after our initial investment of buying the game. The new extra content we pay for in the form of DLC.

Since 3 years they improving gradually just the eye candy, and not core improvements or core fixes. Do you think it will change now? I don't think so.

I noticed for one that they mentioned on their facebook technical page that they mentioned they are working on changing Railworks so that it runs using the newest version of PhysX. Hopefully this is next on their to-do-list to allow us to run WCML and more complex scenario's.

Yeah and it will be faster for ONLY nvidia users(no, wont be multi core support even if rs.com wants, since nvidia forbidden it because without these artifical inoptimizations for cpu runtime, the gpu physics wouldn't be better than cpu physics, so the users wouldn't buy these "fantastic" grillforce cards) ... instead of replacing the physics engine with another engine what isn't so big pile of .... like the nvidia's physix.
For example even a 4 years old havok phyisics engine version would be better, since it used multi core at that times, and made better, much more noticeable (not just eyecandy) effects than physix do now on gpu-s.....
Where do you see that gpu physics used in games for things that actually affect the game? I only see games that use it for eye candy, which is understandable, since a lot of users haven't got grillforce, and because the gpu is only good for particle physics, and not for such complex physics like a vehicle, and can't be used for AI since it's it contains a lots of sequential "if" statements which is the monster for gpu, because it's a completely different purpose for what the gpu's made for(highly paralleled simple mathematical problems what contains mostly things that relies on multiplying).
By the way it won't be huge improvement if they use gpu physix since the main performance bottleneck is the rendering engine.