European Market

[david1]

Just wondering is it only England and United States that like RW? Its just that us and USA seem to dominate traction for RW, it has been mentioned before that most traction that is released by RSC is for these two. But then we seem to be the ones that are buying the products, as well as RSC we have several freeware classes of British traction as well as an unnamed payware producer that has produced a lot of traction. Having looked on the Internet there does not seem to be the same for other countries there are a number of freeware items for Germany, Italy & France, but the most popular or versitile engines have not been made either freeware or payware the Rail Simulator/RW has been around for nearly 5 years now and 2 for the most widespread engines have not been made DB Class 218 & SNCF 26000 both of which can be seen all over the respective countries. most other countries dont seem to have anything other than re-paints of the default stock. I may be wrong but this makes me think that outside the US & England that RW is not very popular and they still us MSTS.

Just wondering how popular RW is with are European neighbours?

[TransportSteve]

Hmmmm, are you an MSTS user by any chance, the Railworks head office may be in England, and they first started creating products for the 2 main customer markets which were Britain and the USA, however, we also have German routes included in the core game, and I can assure you that Railworks is becoming stronger in Germany and throughout Europe as a whole, as well as Russia and China who have already created their own routes, locomotives and rolling stock as authentic and realistic as you could wish for.
May I politely suggest you do some Google searching, you can find Railworks websites in quite a lot of countries, and they are generally in their own languages of course, which generally stops Railworks head office from creating much from abroad, as many of them have different signalling structures, guages, language barriers, etc, they also had a legal marketing agreement with a German company that let them supply the German speaking countries with Payware content, so, you wouldn't have seen much available German content on the Steam website anyway.
There are quite a number of freeware and Payware routes, locomotives, coaches, wagons, scenery items, from so many locations it would be too time consuming listing everywhere for you to look. Europe and Scandinavia is alive with Railworks fans, just because you don't see many on this forum, or, on Facebook, doesn't mean they don't exist, it's quite the contrary, you have a lot of reading and websites to visit in the next few weeks to catch up on all you've missed out on so far.

I'm unsure about the French locomotive, but, regarding the DB Class 218, see here - http://uktrainsimlive.com/viewtopic.php ... &p=1469820

Cheerz. Transport Steve.

[smarty2]

You could also try obo's rw's catalogue? Also VitualRailroads are producing a lot of German motive/rolling stock, there is the Koln Dusseldorf route as well as the Swiss route, tons of stuff from the Italians, it is growing in popularity since the new TSX upgrade and software developers are taking the sim more seriously now it seems.

[bigvern]

There is a thread here http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 4&t=121756 about a new Swiss route but at the asking price they won't be selling many copies, kill the potential market before it starts.

[erikkr]

Its a lot , but there is rolling stock included . The price is also influenced by the extremely high value of the swiss franc .
What has killed the potential market , not only in Switserland , but all over the world ( less in GB ) is well known here .
Its also the reason that , after 5 years , there is only 1/10 - 1/100 ( if counting the whole world ) produced of what was available for trainz after 5 years.

[david1]

Thanks for you comments Steve, just not seeing much in the forums a lot less for RW than we used to see for MSTS i thought i would ask the question as i was wondering if this was as big in Europe as in the UK. Not that i am looking for a huge content from around Europe i would need a massive HDD if i collected as much content for RW as i do for MSTS. more after information really.

[bigvern]

Even with the rolling stock, it's still way over-priced. I know direct comparisons to MSTS payware are frowned upon by some, but just because RW is a "newer" sim does not mean it should command such a high price. The route itself does not appear particularly iconic - the Gotthard or Lotchsberg might have been more tempting. Times may be hard and people are looking to earn a buck (or Euro) but there's little point in putting something out at nearly £50 if only a handful of people buy it. Try £20 and they may be pleasantly surprised.

At that price also really have to beware of burned fingers, if it does a Woodhead and can't run without spending £150 - £450 on PC upgrades.

[jimmyshand]

Another perspective to take on this is that MSTS was not developed by it's creators, Microsoft. All future development of that was down to 3rd party companies and private individuals around the world picking up the baton and running with it. Do RSC really have the obligation or the expertise to create routes around the globe? I don't think so. They target the UK obviously because they are a UK company and that's where their expertise lies and they no doubt have an army of contacts in this country and easy access to research material as well as actual locomotives. The USA is another obvious choice of area to work on because the US and UK have close ties and a common language. Can you imagine the size (and cost) of the problem for RSC to obtain accurate research and field trips to Japan, China or even closer to home in Europe with non-English speaking countries? Where would they begin? Can you imagine phoning up the French director of operations at SNCF and asking him for a cabride on the TGV in order to get accurate data for Railworks?!!

"Bonjour, Je m'apelle Derek, j'ai want a go on t'TGV pour le reason de making a game de computer silvousplait garcon"!!

Perhaps the question should not be "why are RSC only making DLC for UK & US?" and instead should be "why are no other companies in other countries picking up the baton and making DLC for their residents?" but then it seems they probably are as matey pointed out above, it just doesn't make it onto the forum here.

[oldgreyowl]

you may find some of the variety that you seek here

railworksamerica.com

keith

[erikkr]

"why are no other companies in other countries picking up the baton and making DLC for their residents?"
that one is easy to answer : because there is no interest ; there is no community as such ; nobody , apart from a few individuals , is making content . There are RW sites set up in different countries , but those sites are,for years, more dead than alive: few visitors to the forums , nothing uploaded apart from some reskins .
As long as 3 fundamental things ( physics, AI and the engine itself ) are not cleared out , i dont see the interest increasing .

[LundeSDK]

The Köln-Düsseldorf route looks very impressive I must say. At Aerosoft it's priced at 29,99€.

http://en.shop.aerosoft.com/eshop.php?a ... ge=english

[USRailFan]

I doubt it helped that German Railroads folded and withdrew their stuff from Steam... Maybe RS.com should get permission to distribute stuff such as Köln - Düsseldorf and SAD's route via Steam...

[bigvern]

In the case of Germany, many "hardcore" simmers stick with Zusi, despite its dated appearance it is second to none in terms of physics and operational realism. With Zusi 3 at least a possibility this year (we finally got to see a demo late in 2011), that may be where the focus is concentrated. Apart from buying the core programme, Zusi third party content is almost entirely freeware - so not only do you get a good train simming experience, the cost after initial purchase is neligible.

[erikkr]

I had never looked into Zusi because i found the graphics of Zusi 2 not good enough . But now i have tried the Zusi 3 demo , and that looks rather good ; the catenary looks even far better than in RW. And then all the trackside objects ; i am wondering how much of those ,that you can see there, will be present in the new Koln-Dusseldorf RW route .

[bigvern]

I think Zusi proves that looks aren't everything.

However at this stage I'm honestly not sure whether I would put it back on the refurbished PC, the thought of applying all the sequential individual updates - probably over 100 of them - is too daunting. In that respect, Steam does make it easy when re-installing Railworks!