Atomic Systems

It's a shame that there are still hardly any TS UK routes set explicitly in the pre-1948 era let alone pre-1923. I'd love to see something in TS that matched the scope of the S&C 1920s route for MSTS.

From what I've seen of industry training simulators their graphics are quite rudimentary since the focus there is on obviously on accuracy. TS is no doubt far more on the gaming side of things but it is still nonetheless a simulator and pretty graphics aren't the No. 1 priority. Saying that, the trains look fine IMO - it's the scenery that shows the age of the core engine.

I'm sure that when the revamped TS comes out the overall experience will improve but in a way I hope it doesn't get too fancy: the more complicated things get the less scope there'll be for 3rd party modification.

Pete,

Thanks for writing that up - it's been on my mind to reply with something similar but you have done it much better than I could, with more knowledge, more complete and more concise than I could have!

They're points often forgotten when comparing TS with the latest AAA titles with a budget way over 100 million dollars and a 1.000 people working on them.

--Tim

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.

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.

Agree completely about the graphics, they look utter rubbish compared to all the other games I have installed, even old games like race driver grid, which looks absolutely awesome btw and even that's an old title (2008 I think), train simulator visuals look almost cartoonish in comparison. One can only hope that when they finally transfer over to the unreal engine that the visuals get a huge makeover, they need to include dx11+ features at the very least.

smartie38 wrote:Agree completely about the graphics, they look utter rubbish compared to all the other games I have installed, even old games like race driver grid...........................train simulator visuals look almost cartoonish in comparison.

Serious question, why bother with TS then if it is, in your opinion so bad?

smartie38 wrote:

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.

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.

Agree completely about the graphics, they look utter rubbish compared to all the other games I have installed, even old games like race driver grid, which looks absolutely awesome btw and even that's an old title (2008 I think), train simulator visuals look almost cartoonish in comparison. One can only hope that when they finally transfer over to the unreal engine that the visuals get a huge makeover, they need to include dx11+ features at the very least.

I must have a different sim to you!! Sure it is not a sharp as current games but they are far from rubbish. Some screenshots look like photo's!

If it is that bad presumably you can't even bring yourself to click on the TS2015 icon, I certainly couldn't use it if I thought it was rubbish!

Peter

apolagies for the long delay in my posts actually getting put up. The reason why I do not post often over the years.
Now i'm not a creator of any kind of addons for TS but, and it's a big but. lol.
But, having been an avid train simmer since 2003 using Trainz up until Trainz12.
I have to ask why our content cannot use the same photo jibby stuff (note the complete lack of any understanding in content creation) that Trainz uses to make it's content look so realistic. Even the reskins of stock use photo thingys to make them look so realistic.
I do realise that those same reskins use a heck of a lot of memmory and cpu stuff (such a novice it gets embaressing) and can slow the poorer comps down a lot, but
I was just wondering why these same photo type skins can't be used by RW?

As we've all more or less agreed, modern games have more realistic images as you'd expect, but lets not forget that TS probably has more 'backwards compatibility'.
We can still use assets from the original Rail Simulator which dates back almost a decade, can the same be said for any other game series?

Any *great* improvement/change in the underlying graphics engine would be liable to *break* those assets---would those complaining that the game looks rubbish be prepared to accept that, and accept the need to buy newer versions if they were available?

You're quite right, theorganist, I don't use TS15

diagrams wrote:You're quite right, theorganist, I don't use TS15

If you're still on TS2014 are you really complaining about the glitches in the graphics, particularly the white hills, rather than the overall quality of the images you see?

If so that isn't because the graphics engine is particularly poor but because after the upgrade the 'backwards compatibility' with the older lighting/weather was *broken* but is supposedly shortly to be the subject of an official fix. The overall 'look' of the graphics hasn't changed much between the last 2 versions, it's only the effects and routines we can use that have.

It would help if you detailed exactly just what your issue is and posted the specs of your PC, though just the CPU and GPU would probably do, along with whatever settings you have applied both in-game and in the GPU's Control Panel applet--a screen shot would be handy too

Deano55 wrote:Even the reskins of stock use photo thingys to make them look so realistic.

I think Pete may not have been able to use photos of the GT3.....

You can use photos if you want, as far as a graphics program is concerned it's just a bunch of pixels to manipulate but as a photo captures that moment any reflections/shadows are there no matter what the ambient conditions are in-game. Not as easy as just pointing your phone at a train y'see.
I'm sure there was a class 47 reskinned from photos in the library, and whilst it looked good from the *right* angle it looked bloody awful if you moved.
I don't know how Trainz works (never seen it) but if it has more of a 'flat' lighting rather than the dynamic stuff we have in TS then it would work, and work rather well but do you get nicely changing shadows (for example) as time passes in Trainz?

Agree with that. There is a place for photos in detail textures for often quite small objects but even then I have never really been happy with my attempts and often end up either redoing them by hand or heavily modifying them often to get rid of high shine white out. It is one of the many areas where the obvious answer often doesn't work in a computer sim because the objects are artificially lit 3D objects that you are rarely seeing from the usual eye point you see from in the real world.

The sort of high quality art work that goes into some of these arcade games is hugely complex and actually if not following the "path" of the story rapidly falls of in quality. Such stories also often have very spatially confined views - it is rare that such games have the broad vistas and wide uncluttered spaces of the railway carriage view.

gptech wrote:As we've all more or less agreed, modern games have more realistic images as you'd expect, but lets not forget that TS probably has more 'backwards compatibility'.
We can still use assets from the original Rail Simulator which dates back almost a decade, can the same be said for any other game series?

Any *great* improvement/change in the underlying graphics engine would be liable to *break* those assets---would those complaining that the game looks rubbish be prepared to accept that, and accept the need to buy newer versions if they were available?

Good point - probably the most important in fact. There's already been some consternation over the fact that our stock libraries will essentially be made obsolete on the revamped TS - that's understandable but by then it will have taken 10 years to get to that point. Imagine what it would have been like if we had had that every 2 years or so? Then there would have been some serious moaning!

Deano55 wrote:But, having been an avid train simmer since 2003 using Trainz up until Trainz12.
I have to ask why our content cannot use the same photo jibby stuff (note the complete lack of any understanding in content creation) that Trainz uses to make it's content look so realistic. Even the reskins of stock use photo thingys to make them look so realistic.

As a RW/TS user who's dabbled a little with Trainz 12 but not really 'got on' with it, I haven't personally seen such a difference.

For me, the images here for instance:
http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 5#p1753205
(such as this one:)


have a slight edge (although perhaps not as much compared to my default Trainz experience) over the ones here:
http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthre ... 022574b507
(such as this:)

Gptech

I don't use TSxx at all (or any other train sim) for the reason I've given.

Having viewed many YouTube videos of TS15 - some of which must have been done on high end pc's - I can't say my opinion of the graphics has been altered in any way. The graphics are, in comparison with other games, rubbish.

The odd screenshot can look half real, but, as I say, it's impossible not to make comparisons with other games, which are evidently, the industry standard.

I'll agree that games of completely different genres can look much prettier than TS - Tomb Raider 2013 looked amazing and ran fluidly (over 60 fps much of the time) even before my recent system upgrade; and Project C.A.R.S. is visually stunning too (although I played that on a friend's system with a much better GPU than mine).

However, there's been discussion previously about why it's arguably more difficult to achieve that level in a train sim compared to a first- (or third-) person shooter - perhaps someone else can dig up the thread? As far as I know, TS is as pretty as any other train sim currently available.

Personally, my big hope (although not expectation!) for TS:UE is that the traction & braking physics gets a major rewrite.