Atomic Systems

I'm not sure I could compare the 2 for atmosphere to be honest, they're such different experiences.
I've not yet played TS and sat for an hour in fear for my life, that the slightest sound could cause a watery death, that a chance depth charge could end it all. Maybe I'm not playing the right scenarios!

I have I think SH2. Loved trying to get through the Straits of Gibralter.

I'm not sure I could compare the 2 for atmosphere to be honest, they're such different experiences.
I've not yet played TS and sat for an hour in fear for my life, that the slightest sound could cause a watery death, that a chance depth charge could end it all. Maybe I'm not playing the right scenarios!

True, certainly hard to compare the two! Perhaps "imersion" might have been a better word than "atmosphere". TS is (necessarily) scripted, whereas SH3 (& SH4) are huge and open.

In that respect, in TS the atmosphere is the product of the route builder, loco builder and scenario builder. Obviously in SH3GWX it's still the product of talented dev teams, but it's the player choices that put you in the bits of the game with huge amounts of atmosphere - trundling along charging batteries, on a lazy rolling swell and under a huge full moon
or sneaking through a destroyer screen to line up a salvo on a capital ship

749006 wrote:

diagrams wrote:Gpyech

Isn't that one of the trains? Is this an intro type video, therefore not showing true graphics?

The Walkthru shows the trains in it to be absolute rubbish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... AZUt4A-5q4
No Signals - wrong road running and coaches with a 20ft gap and no doors at the ends

Lets hope TS 2017 is Nothing like this.

Looks quite good graphics wise, It would be great to have an Edwardian/Victorian era through the London suburbs in a future version of TS, Horse drawn traffic, Flickering gaslamps and all those boats belching out filthy smoke, Seeing how high you dare let the boiler pressure climb before releasing the safety valves, I can see the potential there for an alternative to todays railway

The point being, is that modern games have far superior graphics than TS15. I deliberately refrain from posting about TS15 due to my comments being very negative i.e. the appalling graphics. The sim seems to bring a lot of fun etc for users so I can't see the point of me coming on here to moan all the time.

Seeing how real the trains look on Assassins Creed Syndicate, you can't help but make the comparison with TS15.

Some have said ACS are not 'in game' shots, but even so! The game shots - when we see them -should still leave TS15 graphics looking woefully poor.

I downloaded TS15 yesterday, set graphics to max and still couldn't belive how bad the thing looks!

We have to wait till next year at the earliest for the new graphics engine, which isn't new at all!

What we should really do is obvious, to me at least ( and I should think a great many other UKTS members have had the same thought), but that would be a different thread which would require some thought before being posted due to the profound nature of the idea(s) involved.

diagrams wrote:The point being, is that modern games have far superior graphics than TS15. I deliberately refrain from posting about TS15 due to my comments being very negative i.e. the appalling graphics. The sim seems to bring a lot of fun etc for users so I can't see the point of me coming on here to moan all the time.

diagrams wrote:I downloaded TS15 yesterday, set graphics to max and still couldn't belive how bad the thing looks!

Your "deliberate refrain" appears to have run out of steam!

Ash

diagrams wrote:The point being, is that modern games have far superior graphics than TS15

diagrams wrote:I downloaded TS15 yesterday, set graphics to max and still couldn't belive how bad the thing looks!

There's certainly no argument with the first statement, but as you've only had TS2015 installed for a day and given no indication of the spec or settings (graphics to max is only a tiny part of it) you really aren't in a position to make such sweeping statements. The graphical 'niceness' also is affected by what assets you're viewing, under which lighting/weather scheme so obviously older assets on older routes in scenarios using older lighting patterns will look considerably worse than the latest offerings.

diagrams wrote: What we should really do is obvious, to me at least ( and I should think a great many other UKTS members have had the same thought), but that would be a different thread which would require some thought before being posted due to the profound nature of the idea(s) involved.

Post it then!!

TOMMO79 wrote:Looks quite good graphics wise, It would be great to have an Edwardian/Victorian era through the London suburbs in a future version of TS, Horse drawn traffic, Flickering gaslamps and all those boats belching out filthy smoke, Seeing how high you dare let the boiler pressure climb before releasing the safety valves, I can see the potential there for an alternative to todays railway

Oh, I would so much love to see that.

It could be so awesome, if done well.

--Tim

Yes Ash, after 10 years of reading, mostly, but with the odd post also, I thought I'd have a moan!

Gptech, I'll post it over the next few days. I don't think I'll be the first to express the idea. In relation to my future post, do you know how many members UKTS has?

diagrams wrote:do you know how many members UKTS has?

24,874 according to the "find a member" list when you compose a new PM, though I'd imagine the number of UKTS members who play TS to be a tiny proportion of that. The information at http://steamcharts.com/app/24010 only gives an indication of numbers playing on-line NOW (for any given moment) so I'm unable to relate that to how many TS2015 users there are in total.

The trouble is, you're comparing Apples and Oranges.
TS is running on a pretty old graphics engine now, with some propping up with new features over the years. AC isn't even out yet so it's engine is bound to be years ahead of the current TS's. I don't think anyone would deny that TS graphics engine is old in the tooth - and that's being kind

Then you have the scope and functionality.
ACS likely has a couple of square km you can mess about in with a pretty nice looking backdrop around it - imagine moving theatre scenery past the main actors.
TS has more than that in just basic viewing distance.. and those far off places I can see, I can go to them! Sometimes over 100 miles.

ACS is pre-built. It is how it is when you buy it and ever will be so. That has HUGE advantages in setting shadowing, lighting, only creating the bits the player can see - again think of fake fronts on a film set. Building very specific (and detailed) parts of buildings that can take large amounts of memory is fine when you have fewer of them, can enforce that they share texture memory and you limit the player on where they can go in relation to them.
Hit Ctrl-E in TS and you are in edit mode - immediately! No 5 minutes re-loading a special constructor. That in itself is a big overhead. And then you can add anything you like, anywhere, to be viewed from all sides, when stationary and at 120mph (or more!).

And the final part, budget.
DTG are an amazing success story. They've gone from 7 to over 100 employees, created a globally selling simulation that even caused Valve to sit up and re-consider how they dealt with DLC on Steam.
But they aren't Ubisoft.
"AC:Black Flag also cost an estimated $100 million and required a development team of 900 people" Source: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2 ... 14-bu.aspx
So to be honest, to expect even the next gen TS to look like the latest AAA title is rather naive. It will still be built by a much smaller team, on a much smaller budget than any AAA title.
But from what I know of a) Unreal Engine, and b) the people developing the next TS - I'm expecting it be an amazing train simulator and the best looking yet. And that's what we all want really.

You only have to see the response to the video here to see what people want in a train simulator. Great graphics are nice.. but wrong logo, wrong era, track too tight, no signals, etc.
AAA titles can't handle what we want!

Don't put him off Pete, I really want to know what the *obvious* is that many UKTS members will have thought of