Stuttering and other issues (and my first thoughts)

[47712]

Hi

Being a railworks user from when it was first released, i can relate to the frustration of users and new users alike. A game that has been out for almost two years and has had no significant changes to the actual core, such as sorting out the stuttering/elastic banding and physics etc is a bit suprising.

I will say however that atleast railworks is in the ownership of enthusiasts and people who seem to have alot more passion for this game then say kuju did. I just hope that we will hear some significant fixes to the core in the near future because im starting to get very tired of its limitations, especialy the lack of elevation and proper physics, as mentioned above, because you can only take DLC so far as to enhancing the game until the core limitations halt further progress which i think is happening at the moment. Yes, ok, the class 57 from oovee is an exception but surely this cannot get better with the current state of the game engine?

The talk about railworks being left behind is something that i can't imagine happening soon. Mainly because it has some great advantages, mainly the graphical sides of things aswell as a great fan base, but i think the only way this is going to become the best train simulator, which i think it has the potential to be, is if more time is devoted to developing the actual game engine itself.

Come on RSC, we no you can do it

Thanks

Tom

[gypbrc]

Yes, ok, the class 57 from oovee is an exception but surely this cannot get better with the current state of the game engine?

I don't know if you saw the live broadcasts by the Oovee team last week, where they demonstrated the new features for the Class 57 upgrade? There are start-up procedures including turning the AWS on and priming the engine. The exhaust changes colour dynamically as the engine warms up. There is simulation of wheel slip and of engine overheat. And as accurate physics as currently allowable in RW. I was rather impressed they'd managed to get it all working!

[47712]

Yes, ok, the class 57 from oovee is an exception but surely this cannot get better with the current state of the game engine?

I don't know if you saw the live broadcasts by the Oovee team last week, where they demonstrated the new features for the Class 57 upgrade? There are start-up procedures including turning the AWS on and priming the engine. The exhaust changes colour dynamically as the engine warms up. There is simulation of wheel slip and of engine overheat. And as accurate physics as currently allowable in RW. I was rather impressed they'd managed to get it all working!

Hi

Sorry, should have mentioned that i was refering to the latest upcoming update to the 57. I will say very well done to oovee on the advances and i was very impressed with the detail in which they have reached. I am pleased they are including a shunt notch aswell as i find getting the right power for shunting is difficult at times. It really does show what level can be reached in DLC, but i agree that this is surely as realistic as railworks can get in its present state?

Thanks

Tom

[jimmyshand]

Good point to not lose sight of how good the game is but Railworks is essentially just a moderately revamped version of the original Railsimulator which must be pushing 4 years old now at least? In video game circles it's a dinosaur, even best sellers of other genres such as Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, racing games etc only have a shelf life of max 2 years before they have to be majorly overhauled and brought up to date. We are all massive fans of the genre and of the game but really it is due a serious refit. The fact that rail simulation is a niche market and that there is little competition probably also keep life in the old girl for a little longer but the uptake of new users can't be that high and sooner or later the veteran users are going to get bored especially when there are dry spells with months and months of no new UK content like there has been since Christmas. To be honest I'm surprised that no software company or budding innovator has jumped on the wagon to give RS.com a run for their money. The market for train sims is globally massive and the marketing is all here on these forums to show what the next gen sim has to do. Without a serious competitor there is no pressure on RS.com to rush to improve anything, they have the whole market feeding out of their hands so to speak, eagerly waiting the next dlc. I think to advance this genre a serious competitor is needed, then we will see a surge of improvements and innovation

[jimmyshand]

Yes, ok, the class 57 from oovee is an exception but surely this cannot get better with the current state of the game engine?

I don't know if you saw the live broadcasts by the Oovee team last week, where they demonstrated the new features for the Class 57 upgrade? There are start-up procedures including turning the AWS on and priming the engine. The exhaust changes colour dynamically as the engine warms up. There is simulation of wheel slip and of engine overheat. And as accurate physics as currently allowable in RW. I was rather impressed they'd managed to get it all working!

That is most interesting and definitely a step in the right direction. This would mirror what happens in flight simulation. The default aircraft don't do much more than the defaut locos in railworks! Switch them on and push th throttle! Where flight sims have led the way is in 3rd parties creating massively complex recreations of the real thing with almost everything replicated and operable by the pilot. Good on Oovee, maybe this will up the standard and put pressure on commercial loco builders to build models that are actually operated and run like the real thing rather than just looking nice. With RS.com chanelling all that effort into the dumbed down HUD then I fear their priority lies in making the sim easier rather than more complex. Less game and more simulation please from me.

[47712]

Good point to not lose sight of how good the game is but Railworks is essentially just a moderately revamped version of the original Railsimulator which must be pushing 4 years old now at least? In video game circles it's a dinosaur, even best sellers of other genres such as Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, racing games etc only have a shelf life of max 2 years before they have to be majorly overhauled and brought up to date. We are all massive fans of the genre and of the game but really it is due a serious refit. The fact that rail simulation is a niche market and that there is little competition probably also keep life in the old girl for a little longer but the uptake of new users can't be that high and sooner or later the veteran users are going to get bored especially when there are dry spells with months and months of no new UK content like there has been since Christmas. To be honest I'm surprised that no software company or budding innovator has jumped on the wagon to give RS.com a run for their money. The market for train sims is globally massive and the marketing is all here on these forums to show what the next gen sim has to do. Without a serious competitor there is no pressure on RS.com to rush to improve anything, they have the whole market feeding out of their hands so to speak, eagerly waiting the next dlc. I think to advance this genre a serious competitor is needed, then we will see a surge of improvements and innovation

Very good points. To be honest, railworks should never have been released when it was. I do not know what thier budget was like at the time when they acquired what was then railsimulator but really, they should have developed it first then released it in a more finished state. I sort of feel like this game is an 'in testing' version rather then a proper published release. Probably sounds a bit harsh but there are so many niggles and problems it's starting to get very frustrating.

Thanks

Tom

[vlado960]

What happening from yesterday. Are you tired? Probably yes. All will be OK, I hope. I don't know how it was with MSTS, but I think that we still have very good support from the RSC team.

Regards
Vlado

[maxtedrw]

How long a Sim has been out really isn't the issue I think. I am still developing content for and flying Flight Sim 2004. What keeps that package alive is it's ability for amatuer and semi proffesional content development.
Constantly refreshing the game content ( via DLC) is a very important feature of a sim to my mind. Certainly the major game play glitches like rubber banding and the sound management / playback do detract from the enjoyment but I can't see how ( for a commercial product ) solving these issues for "hardcore" play and play again simmers as free patches stacks up against the commercial imperatives to keep shifting the basic product to new audiances by finding the particular train that make them want to buy the sim in the first place.
Its the same story with FSim. There are loads of things that ( as a pilot ) flying the sim is really rubbish at but these are "patches" and so not commercial. But to fix them would have involved a substantial rewrite that simply wasn't commercially viable. So I (as with Railworks) have to learn to live with the product as is. Take my enjoyment from what I am given or move on.

[styckx]

Very very very well written post.

[djt01]

Its the same story with FSim. There are loads of things that ( as a pilot ) flying the sim is really rubbish at but these are "patches" and so not commercial. But to fix them would have involved a substantial rewrite that simply wasn't commercially viable. So I (as with Railworks) have to learn to live with the product as is. Take my enjoyment from what I am given or move on.

Yes and even the developers of flight sims have acknowledged performance issues with past releases and are concentrating on performance improvements with upcoming releases -

http://polypoke.wordpress.com/2011/01/0 ... ormance-2/



“4 October 2010”, “Object-Oriented Programming and X-Plane 10” -

http://www.x-plane.com/pg_news_older.html#4October2010

[karma99]

Yes and even the developers of flight sims have acknowledged performance issues with past releases and are concentrating on performance improvements with upcoming releases -

http://polypoke.wordpress.com/2011/01/0 ... ormance-2/

That article - incidentally with 2 year old content which can hardly be taken as gospel for the current development - basically states that the new flight sim won't run any of the old addons as it's too restrictive to allow any level of backwards compatibility.
So unless you're happy with a totally new train sim release where nothing that we currently have works with it, effectively a completely new sim that just happens to be about trains as well - then as stated very well by maxtedrw, "to fix them would have involved a substantial rewrite that simply wasn't commercially viable".
Using that document as your stance, you're pretty much out of luck. The only train sim being developed from scratch at the moment to my knowledge is OR, and as stated in the document above that would effectively be restricted by it's initial reliance on MSTS anyway.
What you want is a brand new train sim.. MSTS 2 perhaps?

[djt01]

That article - incidentally with 2 year old content which can hardly be taken as gospel for the current development - basically states that the new flight sim won't run any of the old addons as it's too restrictive to allow any level of backwards compatibility.

Here’s a forum that will provide you with more up to date info on the upcoming “Flight” although I as far as taking advantage of up to date hardware (addressing performance) goes, I have more hope in X-Plane 10.

http://forum.avsim.net/forum/365-the-mi ... ght-forum/

So unless you're happy with a totally new train sim release where nothing that we currently have works with it

Yes I would be since none of them at this time can be considered a true train simulator anyway.

[bigvern]

Interesting analogy with the flight sims, however I would have to assert that even the much maligned default equipment in FS2004 and FSX starts from a much higher base level than that in Railworks. If you fly the default 737 or 747 and throttled back to 20%, it will fall out of the sky. Fly at 85 - 90% as it should be and your passengers arrive safe and sound. The ATC, while again basic is still capable of calculating vectors and separations for multiple aircraft in (virtual) 3D space. The AI in Railworks is incapable of changing its pathing decisions once the scenario is started. Get the basics right and it is much easier for those who follow whether freeware or payware to build on that accuracy. Hence the high end add-ons from the likes of Level D or PMDG (admittedly too expensive for my tastes) or ATC add-ons such as Radar Contact.

It remains to be seen what Flight will have to offer, but I have a gut feeling that, like the dreadful Hawx2, it will be aimed at those who think a plane stays in the air by keeping the "A" button pushed down on their XBox 360 controller...

[Merlin75]

MSTS2 hmm I wonder what Microsoft will make next once they have made that new flight sim with the new game engine. So maybe MSTS2 may not be asfar away as we think.

[vlado960]

RailSimulator.com Technical Update:

The first step towards this has been the reworking of the terrain system. This is required because illumination of the terrain has always been done using the CPU. This works in RailWorks2 because the lighting is not changing every frame and so this can be calculated infrequently. The development work done so far allows this to be moved to the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) so that lighting can be updated in real time. This is what can be seen in our speeded-up demo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBF0pnookwk) .It also allows the lighting to update ‘on the fly’ when using the terrain editor, and this also improves the response to changes in the weather in-game. Additionally with the terrain GPU lit we are improving the shadowing.

What do you think (you who have experience with the GPU) will this increase or decrease the number of fps and will the stuttering go to history? I hope we wont have to buy more powered VGA cards. I'm not sure that my GF8800GT is fully used.

Regards
Vlado