Railworks America

And here it is, our most looked forward to summer announcement.

http://www.engine-driver.com/article/sh ... ember-2014

To summarize, the new TS2015 base product will contain the following three routes:
New York to New Haven
London to Peterborough
Munich to Garmisch-Partenkirchen

New Locomotives included in base product. Acela Express, ICE-T, and Hitachi Class 801 HST.

Core update free to all owners.

New "Academy" concept. Basically, new training scenarios on a special route.

"Rolling Starts" for scenarios.

Hiding instructions in scenarios.

Ability to remove passengers from rolling stock as part of a task.

Route building enhancements including expanded "Snap To" functionality, bulk asset tool to allow irregular and custom shapes, on the fly asset scale adjustments, and new shortcut keys for tools and tasks.

New routes build for TS2015 to utilize new 3D cloud system from SilverLining.

I'm more excited for the route building tools than anything. Just being able to hide instructions will be a big improvement; you can't really throw a surprise in there when it just shows up on the HUD.

I'm most looking forward to the UE4 game, that will be a huge step forward. DTG made a good decision going with Unreal.

NY-NH is a great route, so glad to see it's getting included. I'm going to pretend I have hope that this means we'll see the Acela get updated to take advantage of the route in-cab signaling, but that's beyond doubtful.

The scenario tools all sound great - hidden surprises and rolling starts are two great ways to mix things up and add a bit of variety to scenario running.

That "rolling starts" concept is scarcely new, having been available for some time by means of Timetabled Scenarios (from which the Timetable Editor presumably takes its name). In such scenarios, all engines were designated as AI, with one being given the instructions for the seemingly missing player engine. An opening instruction told the player to wait for his engine to arrive and then click on it, thus gaining control over it. A while ago, a rumor circulated to the effect that RSC had eliminated or at least intended to eliminate the Timetabled scenario marker, but that never actually happened. At one time, Timetabled scenarios were banned from Steam Workshop, but I've recently downloaded and played a scenario in which the player train is already rolling at the start; the player has to click on it and then quickly take off the brakes and increase acceleration. I'm delighted to know that RSC is now promoting the use of this feature.

EDIT: Just looked up the name of that workshop scenario with a rolling start: it's called "Unos! Dos!! Tres!!! 1500!!!!". It's a freight scenario for the Pacific Surfliner route and it's a gem.

Hopefully everything will be better documented this year. I still have no clue what 90% of the things they introduced for content creators in TS2014 do. Documentation by trial and error can be sketchy.

dfcfu342 wrote:I'm more excited for the route building tools than anything. Just being able to hide instructions will be a big improvement; you can't really throw a surprise in there when it just shows up on the HUD.

I'm most looking forward to the UE4 game, that will be a huge step forward. DTG made a good decision going with Unreal.

Since writing instructions is a function of scenario editing, hiding them (an intriguing possibility) will also, surely, apply to the scenario level, not to route making. For the present, UE4 is quite a ways down the track as far as I can see.

CrimsonKing wrote:Hopefully everything will be better documented this year. I still have no clue what 90% of the things they introduced for content creators in TS2014 do. Documentation by trial and error can be sketchy.

Unfortunately, the same goes for scenario writing, since the users' manual hasn't been updated for years even though many new possibilities have been introduced.

SilverLining weather effects:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L0-ZqLNZzk

Looks like they heard Ottos cries for multiple bulk assets! Lol. Otherwise I'm excited sounds like some fun things to look into. I like the scaling idea for diversity of vegetation.

jp4712 wrote:SilverLining weather effects:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L0-ZqLNZzk

Now we just need ambient occulusion for those clouds so you can see the shadows/highlights between the clouds!
EDIT: I just finished watching it, it does have it, hopefully TS will have that too. It'll make the game 100% better.

BNSFDude
Will ambient occlusion work in DirectX 9.0c?
pH

peterhayes wrote:BNSFDude
Will ambient occlusion work in DirectX 9.0c?
pH

It *should?* there's games from the past that even had the fog and light occlusion.

BNSFDude
Thanks
I only asked because Lockheed updated P3D to DirectX 11.0 and also introduced volumetric clouds (the same?)
Regards
pH

Nice video, but I personally would much rather see proper volumetric steam and loco exhaust than fancy 3d clouds. It is not as though train-Sim is like a flight sim, that takes place in the clouds, it is on the ground, under the clouds. Mike's mighty 800's and the slew if BIG US steam are severely lacking in the steam / exhaust stack emissions and do look silly and yet they are all excited for spoofy clouds. Does TS really need real time weather? To my mind, it is a waste of resources...

+1.