Question for anybody that attended E3

I have a few questions for anybody that tried the MSTSv2 demo. How's the stability? Did you see the dreaded Send/Don't send error? How about the front coupler bug? Has that been resolved? Did you get a look at the editors?Thanks
Joe

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RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, AlphaMaster, May-17-03, 07:27 AM, (1) RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, heffed, May-17-03, 02:37 PM, (3) RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, Hack, May-17-03, 01:21 PM, (2) RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, stationmaster, May-17-03, 04:45 PM, (4) RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, sniper297, May-17-03, 06:59 PM, (5) RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, chrisr01, May-17-03, 09:45 PM, (6) RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, heffed, May-18-03, 00:22 AM, (7) RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, Coonskin, May-18-03, 01:07 AM, (8) RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, heffed, May-18-03, 01:12 AM, (9) RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, sniper297, May-18-03, 01:42 AM, (10) RE: Question for anybody that attended E3, cityeast, May-18-03, 01:50 PM, (11)

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I highly doubt anyone here was at E3. IT is a trade show and it is NOT open to the public and such.
www.e3expo.com

Danny - Pittsburgh
Official YARD DUTY Junkie

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As I mentioned in another post where you stated this, It is amazingly easy to get into E3.All "not open to the public" means is that people can't just walk in off the streets. Now, if they want to pay the admission fees, they are more than welcome regardless of "industry" ties.I would have been there if my company decided they wanted to pay for the trip.-Jeff

Union Pacific is my drug.

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>I have a few questions for anybody that tried the MSTSv2 demo.
>How's the stability? Did you see the dreaded Send/Don't send error?Alpha build - Stability at this early stage isn't an issue.>How about the front coupler bug? Has that been resolved?Yes. >Did you get a look at the editors?No. Cheers!
Marc - 3DTrains
http://www.3dtrains.comPro Series SuperPacks

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I saw the Send/Don't Send pop up a few times, but it's really not fair to comment on the stability of a product this far from release.I asked about the front coupler problem. Apparently, they thought that the patch fixed it. Obviously, they need to spend more time here.Ron
http://www.railwaystation.com

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"Apparently, they thought that the patch fixed it."It did fix one thing, the brakes released. There was considerable discussion on the main train simulator forum about the problems when the patch first came out, unfortunately they were all lost in the server crashes. To me it pointed out the whole problem of the way beta testing is done, instead of paying salaries to dedicated bug hunters most software companies send betas out to all & sundry who get a free copy of the game and possibly a mention in the credits, and that's it. There were a few dozen of us trying to pinpoint what was still wrong, and several hundred passenger express train drivers chiming in with "works perfectly for me, why, was there something wrong with the fromnt coupler before? Hey, when I push the F9 button on my keyboard I get a funny looking window, what's that for?" And those are exactly the kind of beta testers they used for that patch, somebody made a consist with the engine reversed, uncoupled and recoupled, then drove with the engine backwards at 100 mph and announced that it works.Nobody noticed that the front and back couplers are still DIFFERENT, which they should not be, and on loose consists there is still a difference between the designated front and back ends of the cars. I finally gave up trying to fix the default US2chemicar, which randomly refuses to couple to anything when reversed, and uploaded a patch for the PO&N6 activities that replaces the US2chemicar with the other tanker, US2freaightcar3. That one still has the same problems as every other car, when it's reversed the wheels turn backwards and the trucks pivot the wrong direction on curves, but at least the couplers work on either end.The engines are a different story, crash/lockup/send - don't send when using the front coupler of the engine. It seems to be random, but the common denominators I've found are (1) coupling to a car on the path, and (2) coupling to something like the US2chemicar with faulty coupler box values. And the front coupler is most profanely different from the back coupler in terms of derail buffer force and coupling/uncoupling speed, most program lockups occur when hitting with the front coupler on an engine that has derail buffer force set to 200kN, which works fine for the back coupler but needs to be set to at least 800kN for the front coupler.The patch made the front coupler useable on hacked engines and cars, but just barely.One other thing caught my eye:
"The locomotives in the game, for instance, consist of up to 22,000 polygons in some cases"Swell. 3FPS on a P-4 3ghz.

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was it running on a normal computer, or on one of MS's many SUPERCOMPUTERS with 1 gig of RAM

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>And those are exactly the kind of beta testers they used for
>that patch, somebody made a consist with the engine
>reversed, uncoupled and recoupled, then drove with the
>engine backwards at 100 mph and announced that it works. You're assuming they had beta testers. >One other thing caught my eye:
>
>
>"The locomotives in the game, for instance, consist of up to
>22,000 polygons in some cases"
>
>Swell. 3FPS on a P-4 3ghz. I saw that too and was hoping to god it was a typo. Hmmm... an entire train worth of polygons, and only on the locomotive. Combine that and these moving 3D passengers that people are so excited about and we'll have big fun, yes?-Jeff

Union Pacific is my drug.

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Experience in the auto sim racing hobby for several years indicated a common pattern with gaming software releases: Each release needs more horsepower to run it. Sometimes MUCH more horsepower. MSTS 2 will likely be no different. No way to have highly detailed locos, more detail in the scenery/objects, animated people/wildlife, dynamic weather, and so forth, without it needing some serious horsepower. Figure the current top end machine will be needed to run it smooth enough to be satisfactory, perhaps even with detail reduction. Us mid-range guys will likely be able to run it, but with much less detail setting and with chop in places... and the low-end machine will scream and cry for mercy. Just a guess... but we'll see.Any hope for an upgrade I had, has now been placed on hold until MSTS 2 hits the shelves and I read feedback from some of the more objective end users.This is why I feel MSTS 1, warts and all, will be around for a while after MSTS 2 is released.Andre

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>This is why I feel MSTS 1, warts and all, will be around for
>a while after MSTS 2 is released. I personally don't see it going away at all.I own too many games that I still play the first version even after the second one comes out. No matter how great the second version is, there's almost always something I miss from the first one. -Jeff

Union Pacific is my drug.

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"No way to have highly detailed locos, more detail in the scenery/objects, animated people/wildlife, dynamic weather, and so forth, without it needing some serious horsepower." Yeah there is, send the whole project over to ID software so that guys who actually know how to write 3D game code can do it. MSTS 1's game engine is a lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, if trainsim was rewritten for the Quake 3 engine you could have twice the detail combined with double the framerates on half the machine.That's been the whole problem with MSTS to begin with, Klumsy KUJU Klown Koding, and the only reason it runs reasonably on the high horsepower systems is because we're overpowering the problems. It's kinda like building a race car out of lead, you need as really big engine to overcome the weight problem, and somebody building a similar car with aluminum and fiberglass runs a helluva lot faster with much less power.

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I think FS 2004 might be a good yardstick for the hardware requirements of MSTS2.I have to agree with sniper, there is no excuse in this day an age for such a poor game engine. I used to play Counter Strike also, and I got much better performance from that on a P3 800/128ram/32mbGrafix, than I do with MSTS1 on a P4 2000,512mb ddr/64mbGf4.

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