My Impressions of RW3

[spec5sx]

First of all I would like to thank RSC for their continuing development of Railworks and all the hard work they have put in to keep this game evolving.
This is not a complaint thread, just an opinion of some of the issues that I think, need to be addressed.

I like the new Railworks for the most part but, I have to say though, that I'm a bit underwhelmed. The new lighting and the new dynamic shadows seem to drag down game performance. The AA implementation is not very good. Even at maximum everything has jagged edges.

To me, It doesn't seem they have worked on any of the core issues that cause this game to crash on me at least 4 times a day (sometimes a lot more) when building my route.
For instance: The route I've been working on lately has A LOT of track, lofts and roads. Having a lot of these things in a route makes this game seriously unstable, resulting in continual crashing, whenever I try to edit these things.

Copy/Paste Loft Section = Crash.
Gradient points that magically disappear.
Gradient points that are superimposed on one another.
Selecting a gradient point to adjust causes the ENTIRE track ribbon from beginning to end to flatten to 0 elevation, climb, or shoot straight up in the air.
Selecting the Gradient tool = Crash.
A heavy amount of gradient points slows my fps to 5 or less when editing them and sometimes the game just crashes.
Joining Lofted sections = Crash.
Joining track= Crash (sometimes).
Using the offset tool to lay track and them joining it to the original track with a turnout = Crash ( occationally)

That's just for starters.
I'm going to have to abandon this particular route project because it has simply become to unstable for me to work on it.
I was hoping that they would address some of these instability issues but, I guess I'll have to wait.

[barnez]

I've had all of these things happening to me in RW2. I spent almost 2 weeks resetting track elevations & gradient points when I switched to ScaleRail because of the way the editor handles gradient points on previously laid track.

I'm not implying these aren't problems - they definitely are - I'm just not sure that they are new to RW3 ...

though I have had the editor crash while laying Multiple Assets Boxes (and noticed that trees inside the box magically vanish at certain angles - though that may be just my old card)

-barnez

[spec5sx]

I wasn't implying that these problems are new. I was saying that these issues get carried over from one iteration to the next without being addressed. I can't even use ScaleRail in this route because RW simply can't handle all of the 3D track. It crashes as soon as I move the camera.

Surely, RSC knows that the problems listed above exist. Iv'e emailed them just about every dump file I've ever had yet, they never seem to be fixed. All I'm saying is that I wish they would concentrate more on core stability and less on bling.

[barnez]

I wasn't implying that these problems are new. I was saying that these issues get carried over from one iteration to the next without being addressed. I can't even use ScaleRail in this route because RW simply can't handle all of the 3D track. It crashes as soon as I move the camera.

Surely, RSC knows that the problems listed above exist. Iv'e emailed them just about every dump file I've ever had yet, they never seem to be fixed. All I'm saying is that I wish they would concentrate more on core stability and less on bling.

Ah - well - with that clarification. Agreed! 100%

-barnez

[SMMDigital]

I'm still walking the AND route (when i'm home) trying to address the issues from the "update earthquake". So far, nothing major to report, save that ScaleRoad bridge abutments are bright as the sun when they are showing in the shade, and colors are washed out on assets that were colored in the building program instead of with a texture.

[Bananarama]

I'm going to have to abandon this particular route project because it has simply become to unstable for me to work on it.

Do you have a copy of Rail Simulator? I still use it to place sensitive material such as roads and track, plus I get triple-digit fps. Here I don't need any of the fluff - just a means to quickly survey what's done and needs to be done with less overhead. It's far from pretty, but I still consider RS an essential element in my tool box.

[Bananarama]

I'm still walking the AND route (when i'm home) trying to address the issues from the "update earthquake". So far, nothing major to report, save that ScaleRoad bridge abutments are bright as the sun when they are showing in the shade, and colors are washed out on assets that were colored in the building program instead of with a texture.

Adjustments to the environment files are needed to smooth out the colors. I had similar issues when I first loaded my WIP projects, but a few tweaks to the TimeOfDay files appears to have brought things under control. FWIW, the values listed for the Horseshoe Curve are a great place to start.