My visit to RSC today

[jp4712]

Well, today I, Matt from UKTrainsim.com and a couple more leading users went to Chatham and we met Paul Jackson and some of his team and had a preview of what we’re in for when Railworks 3: Train Simulator 2012 hits our screens later this year. I’m not employed by RSC, I’m not affiliated with them in any way, I am a moderator at UKTS and a member here and I was honored to be invited.

What I’d like to do is to share with you some impressions of what I saw. I’m focusing mainly on what I think matters most to North American simming, Matt is looking over at UKTS at some of the parts that they’ll be more interested in over in the old country. So if you want to get the full picture, you have to visit BOTH forums.

Firstly, let’s just get some ground rules out of the way. The deal was that we could talk freely about anything we saw. Did we talk about other stuff? Yes. Am I going to talk about that? No. If Paul or Derek mention it, fine and then I’ll chime in: but in terms of the stuff where we were shootin’ the breeze, what was in the room stays in the room.

Was I told what the new route is, and the new UK default locomotive? Yes. But please don’t ask what they are, don’t even get into a silly ‘just say yes or no’ guessing game. It is what it is, I’m sure the RSC guys will tell you when they’re ready and when they do I can say more.

At the outset it’s important to say that what we saw was a work-in-progress: in fact the Development build that we were shown was a hybrid, with a RW2 GUI and editor and RW3 in-game experience. In other words it’s a development lash-up and the guys were clear that a lot of coding and optimisation still has to happen before release date.

Okay, first up – the game engine and lighting. Wow. Oh wow. I mean, wow. What was stunning was the fact that because we saw a lashed-up Dev build with the game in the new engine and the World Editor in the old, you could snap from one to the other just by pressing Ctrl-E. (by the way don’t assume that the World Editor will always use the older game engine, it was ONLY because it was a prototype set-up to demo to us). The quick switch from existing to new game engine showed just how dramatic the contrast is. I never really thought of the landscape in RW2 looking all cartoony and flat, but frankly I know – having seen what we’re going to get – that the next time I fire up RW2 I’ll be disappointed because I know what’s coming up later this year. Now it’s not photo-real, of course, but the colors are waaaay ahead of now and they are a distinct and immediately visible improvement.

Distant mountains? Check. No blue haze, but no ridiculously clear FSX-style either – in fact a compromise, but a good one in my book. Oh, and there’s a tool called ‘block asset’ – that’s going to transform populating large scenic areas. From what I saw, what you do first is to create a generic ‘block asset’ and you drag edges or corners just like the existing water tool. Then, when you are happy with its size and orientation, you choose from a library of objects – trees, groups of barrels, I’m sure houses would be possible too. Then hey presto! Big filed of trees. Or, by changing a box for density, anything from a randomly-populated sparse parkland with trees dotted about right up to ‘Amazon rain forest’ thickness. Derek and Adam suggested that for a nice mixed forest, you can overlay a few of these block assets – each one with a fairly sparse density but if you put three of four in the same space and each one with a different tree type, you get a very realistic effect. Oh, and you can take a block asset area of trees and then give them some limited (or if you choose, unlimited) height factor: click, and some trees are now only three-quarters as tall and others are a quarter taller (just chossing 25% variation as an example) so even if you have a block asset with one species of tree, they're not all the same height.

Then we were shown a neat trick: Adam created a little group of hills, then dragged a block asset of trees over them: and the tress draped themselves over the mountain and they all hugged the mountain surface like pulling a blanket over a pile of clothes. In other words, the trees (or whatever) automatically adjusted their height to the terrain. Awesome, it will make a huge difference to creating woodland or scenic areas.

Okay, what’s next, shall we say projecting lights? Yep, RW3 has them and Derek said that he was sorry that the sample screenshots didn’t show them better. Let’s put it this way: we took a loco that had its headlight switched on, in daylight, and you could j-u-u-u-s-t see the light projected on the track in the daylight. Then we went into a valley, in shadow, on a curve: and you saw the light being projected on the rock side of the cutting, a lot more strongly.

We created and drove a very long train – I didn’t count but it was extremely long with several units for power. Paul explained (you can call it ‘admitted’ if you like) that this would have been a real issue in RW previously: not now, it worked like a dream (and with a frame rate that was just fine). And here’s something new: before, if you put five locos along the consist then the simulation properties would be taken from the lead loco. So if you put an SD-70 on the front and an SW1500 on the back, it would behave as if it was two SD-70s. Not any more: the power is what you’ve put there.

Superelevation? Check. Not too much, not too little. If anything the screenshot of the NS on a curve is a bt overdone, what we saw today seemed about right. It was explained to us how this will work etc etc but as that was something we discussed as opposed to something we saw, I won’t go further unless Paul says it’s okay to.

Cab sway? Check. In fact we went over a particular rough spot, and wow that kink in the track gave a helluva kick! I think the RSC guys said that this is still a work-in-progress, I don’t have BVE but Matt – who does – says it’s already on a par with that. And looking back over that long consist seeing the trucks swaying very slightly as you trundle along was quite exceptional.

That’s it from me: some more details are going to be published over at UKTS so if you’re interested head on over there as well. I’ll be glad to take any questions but please bear with me if I have to say ‘we didn’t see that’ or ‘yes it was discussed but I don’t wish to talk about it’.

Lastly I'd like to say a big thank-you to Paul Jackson, Derek Siddle, Adam Lucas and Adam Rose for their kind hospitality today. These guys have vision - it's a product that's going places.

Paul

[Trainguy76]

A very nice read Paul. You're going to make us all start drooling.

[TDHenderson]

Thanks for that report Paul. Good things are in our future!

Regards,
Trevor

[Samwolf]

Thanks for the report, it's making me drool even more!

[styckx]

How were the biscuits?

[LoneWolfDon]

A nice read.
I'm a bit envious of your experience visiting the RSC guys and seeing first-hand a sneak-peek of what RailWorks3 may have in store for us.
Looking forward to seeing the improvements and additions myself when it finally gets released.
Thanks for sharing.

[jp4712]

@Bill: aha, the first question about my visit.








We were never offered any!


@Don: we talked about more than we were shown, but the rule was that we could talk outside only about what we actually saw. Matt is intending to post some more snippets at UKTS, but suffice it to say that there are more improvements in the pipeline than those I've described. But not everything that everyone wants will arrive on September 23 so I hope people understand . But Paul is already thinking beyond RW3, these guys have a vision and they're on a roll.

If Paul announces the new default route we can talk about it because we saw it, and some other things came up that I'd like to share: but if I want to be invited again by the guys....

Paul

[Samwolf]

Did they happen to mention if Rail Driver would be supported?

[jp4712]

I don't recall this being discussed.

[Trainguy76]

Coming from left field...

Were there different smoke effects than the current ones?

[jp4712]

We only took a VERY brief look at the default 7F. I didn't see enough to answer one way or the other.

[Trainguy76]

Heh, I bet one of the others were thinking "I hope they don't spot..."

[artimrj]

What is the power of their computor they are buidling with? Got any specs of it?

[bpetit]

jp, how realistic is the cab sway?

[jp4712]

Computer specs: it's too early to say - the RSC guys said that a lot of code optimisation has to be done before it's nailed down. But multi-core will enable the processing load to be spread, so multi-core is the way to go if you want the best performance.

Cab sway: was it totally, utterly 100% real-life realistic? No. Was it the silly side-to-side seasicknss of RS in the early days? No. Are they still working on it? Yes. I'd give it 8/10 at this stage. What is really cool is that unlike BVE, it isn't random and hard-coded into the core. Cab sway is driven by two factors: the track rules, and the characteristics of the train's suspension - both configurable by the content creator. So if you take a train with stiff suspension over a really well-maintained piece of track (eg HST out of Paddington), then cab sway is hardly noticeable. If you take a Geep over a yard that hasn't seen maintenance in years, then it bucks and sways. And now there's a real reason to comply with speed limits: if you go too fast for the condition of the track, you'll derail even on straight, plain line.

Paul