Question and Answer session with RailSimulator.com

[theokus]

An "asset viewer" would be great.
(without this takes a lot of time )

Will there be additional terrain textures?

Stop the "stutter". And I don't know if this is a graphics matter.

Stop the "jaggies" in the terrain = horrible

Make the brush shape '(size) smaller and finer > more options.

Anything else is welcome to ease the work of route builders

[TheTazman]

Would it be possible to get AI engines to couple/Pick up/Depart with rolling stock?

Is Super Elevation still on the ideas list?

[SaMa1]

I would like to know if immersion of being locomotive driver is enhanced in future by allowing players to conduct prototypical startup procedures of locomotives eg. doing visual inspection around locomotive and going to locomotive maintenance area for additional knobs and dials needed to start the locomotive. Why I am asking this is because many flight sim addon products have this implemented and it builds up player anticipation to actually drive the vehicle after he/she has just done so much effort for it. (In steam engines it could take hours to heat the boiler)

I also would like to know if track superelevation is being planned.

[Squatch]

A nice idea and hope it provides some good answers. My questions.

1) Is there anything in the upcoming updates that means route building should stop/be put off/etc? I (like a lot of people) am part way through building a route and intend to start another project in the summer. Am I safe to do so in the knowledge that any updates will only enhance the experience, not destroy it?!

2) Do you intend to include an asset viewer? I know there are community based versions, but it would be good to have something in game (the april fool video looked great!)

3) Can you reduce the terrain mesh in order to make cuttings and embankments easier to build? Even reducing it in user-selectable areas would be great.

4) Will AI locos be able to collect loose wagons/coaches to make scenarios more realistic/enjoyable?

Cheers, Matt

[nsupersonic]

A few from me

A need for light from engine headlights and steam engine fireboxes (when open) to become more life like.
Existing Weather patterns to be more realistic .. ie thunderstorms, ground getting wet (puddles appearing on platforms) , sun coming out from behind a cloud in real time..etc..
As mentioned before, will the update/upgrade remain free and backwards compatibilty with routes being built
The ability to join routes in a new file
Could we have 3rd party sound files protected from being updated (HST sounds in particular)



Regards
Charles

[TheTazman]

Just to tack on to the back of this. Is there a limit to the amount of keys that can be assigned to utilize features within a train. You have the keyboard layout card... but what if a developer wanted to create a feature that needed a new key to be allocated to work that feature. Can the developer activate a key thats not already being used? Hope you understand what i mean.

I would like to know if immersion of being locomotive driver is enhanced in future by allowing players to conduct prototypical startup procedures of locomotives eg. doing visual inspection around locomotive and going to locomotive maintenance area for additional knobs and dials needed to start the locomotive. Why I am asking this is because many flight sim addon products have this implemented and it builds up player anticipation to actually drive the vehicle after he/she has just done so much effort for it. (In steam engines it could take hours to heat the boiler)

I also would like to know if track superelevation is being planned.

[TheTazman]

Dont for get about the rain hitting the windows.

A few from me

A need for light from engine headlights and steam engine fireboxes (when open) to become more life like.
Existing Weather patterns to be more realistic .. ie thunderstorms, ground getting wet (puddles appearing on platforms) , sun coming out from behind a cloud in real time..etc..
As mentioned before, will the update/upgrade remain free and backwards compatibilty with routes being built
The ability to join routes in a new file
Could we have 3rd party sound files protected from being updated (HST sounds in particular)



Regards
Charles

[smarty2]

Another one from me.

Are there any plans to address the performance of loading both RailWorks itself and Routes? - Specifically, currently when the launcher starts it goes through a labour intensive process of scanning and cross checking all the items you have installed against the .pi files so that it can build up the relevant information for the "packager" and "package manager" tabs. Until this is done (and it can take minutes) loading RailWorks is very slow because the launcher is hammering the disk - most users won't care about this as they just want to get in to RailWorks, so its wasted effort. Once in RailWorks, loading some routes can take 10 or 20 minutes which seems excessive, again are there any plans to optimise this?

You can already minimise this by closing the launcher directly after starting RW's. And clearing the cache each time seriously reduces route loading times.
I too would like to know if Superelevation will be implemented as well as realistic cab sway and bounce, not a fixed point as is now the case? Oh yes more road vehicles, and people with cases rucksacks camera's and clothes that change for the season/weather?

[Kariban]

Will there eventually be an ability to 'hump' railroad cars. (I think that's fly switching to the UK folks.)

Nah, we used to hump-shunt too; the UK only runs block freight trains now though. Fly shunting would be doing the hump shunt without the hump.

Having said that, I agree; are wagons going to get their own basic physics simulation, so we can adjust the brakes independently of there being an engine attached? you mentioned loading/unloading on the move already so I do rather hope there's room for something like this.

* How about refuelling on the move? steam engines have a long history of refuelling while moving ( water, at least ). Battery engines do this also.
* Access to every variable in the F5 hud from script level? so many possibilities for detail interaction there.

* Wheelslip and inertia physics; are these going to be rewritten properly? coupled with say, a diesel engine throttle controlling fuel flow instead of directly controlling RPM, you could model the effects of load.
* Dynamic effects like heat in brake blocks affecting braking, or wind, any of those being looked at?
* Transmission modelling; slightly tricky because there are quite a few types of transmission with wildly different behaviour, especially combinations of hydraulic and mechanical. Will we have something along the lines of a transmission construction kit? that is just more complicated rather than more difficult, given it's just an expanded set of behaviour rules.

* Superelevation, just like everyone else I would like to know if this is going to appear.

* User defineable cameras; I would like an engineroom camera but you don't need that with a steamer. It would be great if you could add camera viewpoints to existing cameras, so you could slide across to the 2ndmans position, and then keep going to the engine room. As that's still in the cab view, you can then poke around equipment cabinets in there. Equally some sort of orbit/helicopter cam with scriptable behavior would be fantastic. Anything like this being considered?

* Here's a bit of a wild one: has there been any thought about integrating assets into the terrain automatically? you plop a house or a platform or something down on the terrain, and it just intersects with it, there's no melding of the two. Would be nice if you could tell an asset how to blend itself with the terrain, so if you laid a platform down where it intersected would be this buildup of grunge.

Tazman: I think you could do rain on the windscreen now, if you were clever

[TheTazman]

There is a Water Trough key in the keyboard list but its never been used in RW.

How about refuelling on the move? steam engines have a long history of refuelling while moving ( water, at least ). Battery engines do this also.

[NeutronIC]

Just watching Cameron running RailWorks and was reminded of another one...

Are there plans to review the HUD, both in terms of moving forwards with enhancements but also in terms of improving what's there currently?

Specifically, there are two aspects of the current HUD that render it far from ideal - the first is the large performance impact caused by using it, on my machine it's on average a 50% drop in frame rate. The second is more custom HUD panels per locomotive so that we can use the HUD properly on loco's such as the Class 86. My son tells me you can't release the brakes on the Class 156 currently via the HUD either though I haven't tested that myself yet. Given that most of the new and highly detailed (physics etc as much as graphics) locos are tending to come with fancy new control mechanisms (Class 86, Class 317 - Dave Brindley you know who you are ) it seems this could become a bigger problem. Perhaps a lesson could be taken out of Ship Simulator where ships are wildly different and yet they all have their own hud-style view that works exceptionally well.

Matt.

[Kariban]

There is a Water Trough key in the keyboard list but its never been used in RW.

Yeah, there's a steam-heating control that doesn't do anything either . Already worked out the mechanics of making water-trough effects, but none of us could work out a way of actually refilling the water tank.

You can use the F4 hud with scripted controls somewhat, just takes an unusual control setup.

[NeutronIC]

Another one...

One of the most key aspects of any "game" are the game play elements. Nintendo have proven that releasing the absolute bottom of the line console (i.e. the Wii) technically doesn't mean anything to bottom line sales because they excel at game play. What are the anticipated substantial improvements or alterations to Game Play that we can look forward to? By game play i'm referring to more advanced types of scenarios with more types of operations, increased immersion by having the player interact with AI services more and so forth.

[gavo01]

I'd love to see the update include the option to rename objects, ie platform signs and lamps. Any chance of this being included in the update?

[styckx]

Second question

Core performance at the most basic level, will it be improved? On a meaty install (tons of dlc, community addons, scenarios etc) the game upon the first load after a computer start up/reboot is a good 5 minute wait before the game is "ready" to do much. Currently if you launch the frontend loader, click the package manager you'll be waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting while your hard drive spins away non stop until about 4-5 minutes later your packages finally populate.

Let's skip the package manager.. Load the frontend loader, click start and you will be waiting and waiting (hard drive churning away non-stop) and waiting and waiting (2nd load screen appears) and waiting and waiting and if you're lucky that the game didn't freeze at the second loading screen you can finally navigate the game in 4-5 minutes.

Also, the lag populating scenarios when clicking routes filled with a lot of scenarios is becoming rather bad also. Oxford To Paddington is a good 5-6 second pause now for the scenario list to populate.

Bill