Will you buy MSTS 2 the day it comes out?

I'll wait and find out if there are any bugs first.-------------My favourite LUL train-------------

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

I'm with Stooopid. Seriously, it really depends on what they do to it. I can't really see it getting any worse, but you never know ...Most likely I'll purchase it within the first month.Ray

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Without a doubt,The day it hits the shelves it is going to be installed on my PCbugs or not !!Tim Kent

"Power for You"

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Whithout a doubt
as an engeener myself, I will test as soon as possible !
please Mr Microsoft, try to ask professionnals before take it into stores... try to limit bugs!

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

And hopefully they'll make the tools and editors a bit more user friendly perhaps. John

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

I will be there unless the Locos suck and my computer wikll not be able to hold it.The arrow and bars shall return!Firm beleaver in Ceo David Gunn (Amtrak)

Watch out world we have a Texan in the White House, go W!

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Well , Just like last time. I'll be waiting at the door with Cash in hand. Yeah, it had bugs but it had so much right as well. The open code is what makes it as we can really change so much when you think about it.

Dokkensound
Train Artisan
Lighting & Sound

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

No point really, as my existing computer won't even run MSTS1 properly without shadows, spec lighting, etc turned off My P600E 256MB ram GeForce2 32MB graphics card has some routes juddering by at about 5fps at 1024x768 resolution with all the above turned off.I would imagine MSTS2 would probably need something like a 2.6Ghz Pentium 4 with 1024MB memory and super-dooper top of the range graphics card to even consider buying it.

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Maybe that's not enough. You'll need 5Ghz quad processors. 2048MB RAM and 512MB Graphics card and your monitor has to handle 2048x1536 due to the new Activity editor which was once 1024x768 And system resources must be 99% free to get at least 1fps, with all the details turned off and the slider at best performance, in the tunnels.-------------My favourite LUL train-------------

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Hey you're not Bill Gates traveling the forum incognito are you?( I got a good laugh on that one)

I can see it now, the next version designed to ride the edge of the high end systems available at release time. John

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Not only that, I'll wait for at least the first price drop. MSTS hit the streets around here (Seattle) at $49 and change. I sat on my hands until to dropped below $25 (IIRC mine was $22.50). While I will confess that MSTS and Links use up virtually all my recreational computing time, I'll find a way to get along without the "latest and greatest" for 6 or 8 months..Brad Meyer

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

LAST EDITED ON Oct-16-02 AT 06:34 AM (EDT)

For those of you familiar with the Flight Simulator series, you'll remember how many versions came out before FS2002, and a program that would run on a smaller system. My computer is a dinosaur, and would barely handle FS2000, and only in reduced realism and graphics modes. FS2002 was a blessing! Smooth and realistic, even at all the highest settings. The same thing is true of Train Simulator. My frame rates are hilarious, and I don't run the busier activities because they just don't work well below 5 FPS. I can dial the settings way down and get some improvement, but that's pretty far from "as real as it gets". I am hopefull (naive?) that Microsoft can do the same thing with Train Simulator.Happy Training,

Kevin

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

I probably will, and I'll determine for myself if they fixed all the things that really get on my nerves... KingJPW

Yard Duty, The National Freight Yard Simulation - http://groups.msn.com/YardDuty

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Aww..It didn't count my vote again! (And yes, I kept refreshing)

"Be Excellent To Each Other."

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Then vote again!-------------My favourite LUL train-------------

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

>Then vote again! Spoken like a Chicago native! <vbg>Brad "grew up there" Meyer

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

>For those of you familiar with the Flight Simulator series,
>you'll remember how many versions came out before FS2002,
>and a program that would run on a smaller system. My
>computer is a dinosaur, and would barely handle FS2000, and
>only in reduced realism and graphics modes. FS2002 was a
>blessing! Smooth and realistic, even at all the highest
>settings. What's your comp specs?I have FS2000 and it runs rather good with 75% graphics. I have never even considered buying FS2k2 because of what I thought it would do to my "dinosaur". lolMy specs are:566mhz Intel Celeron
191 mb RAM
10GB HD 5400 rpm
A barely noticeable graphics card
------------------------------------------------------------I'll never let go of the railroad that inspired me to be involved with trains, the Union Pacific!John Ekhoff
14 yr. old Train Sim Reskinner from Abilene, Texas.A member of the Yonder Locomotive Works.

AOL IM - FlightSimPilot02
E-mail - FlightSimPilot02@aol.com

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

I really think I'd wait a month or so for the reviews pro and con to come to light! Hey I didn't rush out a get Viagra when it first came out either. I have a question for you all: Suppose MSTS2 comes out and it will not accept the old routes, the old rolling stock, the old engines that we have come to love. Would you still rush out and buy it and start all over from square one?I have seen the above happen with various new versions of flight sim where to old scenery and planes were incompatible.I really hope (are you reading this Microsoft) that compatibility with most MSTS 1 stuff is built into version 2!Rich

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Amen to that, Rich. Would be h#%* to start all over and I know a lot
of our machines wouldn't handle both.Bill

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

> I really hope (are you reading this Microsoft) that compatibility
> with most MSTS 1 stuff is built into version 2!Would you give that up for better development tools? I suspect that is the tradeoff they are looking at.The Kuju engine is actually not that bad; it is comparable in performance to other "virtual reality" platforms out there on general-purpose PCs. The dedicated game boxes like Playstation are better, but they are using DVD video and special-purpose processors to do the magic.If we throw enough hardware at the Kuju engine, it will continue to get faster. So one way to go is to stay with the Kuju engine and assume that ever-faster Intel chips and ever-more-expensive graphics cards will save the day. If we go that way, we can probably save the add-ons.If I were Microsoft, though, I would not care very much about those add-ons. We saw in another post here that they have sold almost a million units of this game. How many of those people have even one of the add-ons that we here all salivate over? My hunch is that the vast majority of Train Sim buyers never come here and never download an add-on. Why? Because it's too difficult. Almost every time somebody around here uploads a new route or activity, or even a new locomotive, it's followed by a week of forum traffic as people try to figure out how to install it properly. It's the same issue people crab about with linux: if you're Computerman, you love it, but others are just baffled.The other thing that's happening off to the side is the X-Box activity. Here is Microsoft trying to compete with Sony and Nintendo to sell high-end virtual reality to the serious gamers. A hit game in that market can make tens of millions of dollars, so the X-Box division is always going to get more money and more resources than the guys doing MSTS.What seems to make sense to me is to piggyback an MSTS 2 on the gooodies developed for the X-Box. We can be sure that the game developers for X-Box have much better tools than the sorry ones that come with the Kuju platform. From all accounts, it's a wonder that anyone ever finishes a route. That could change dramatically in an MSTS 2 if it is based on the X-Box software platform.If I'm running the MSTS 2 program, I would much rather take the tools developed by the X-Box guys, use their platform, and spend my money on a subsystem that makes the management of add-ons bulletproof and transparent. Imagine aiming your MSTS 2 at a web site, clicking the route you want, and having all the activities and rolling stock automatically added to your collection. If the users had that, and the developers had the ready-for-prime-time tools that the X-box game developers are working with, this would be a much more active and vibrant community. Right now you pretty much have to be a computer geek just to download and install a boxcar; as far as I can tell people like sniper and Rich Gardner are Olympian gods, far beyond what most mortals could ever hope to aspire to.Microsoft is a mass-market company. They're not into niche products for geeks. If they are working on an MSTS 2 at all, I would bet that a big part of it is finding a way to make what happened here at train-sim.com happen on a much wider scale.

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

>Would you give that up for better development tools? I
>suspect that is the tradeoff they are looking at.I doubt it. The product is, IMO, to modularized (objectized?) for that to be an issue. I could see them adding/removing attributes from existing objects, but not "reinventing the wheel" by designing new objects from scratch. Changing how the objects interact (for instance the "coupler problem" that seems to involve how the sim calcs position between nodes) does not change the objects themselves. Almost any change in the objects themselves can be handled by a conversion. This is what they did with Links, for instance, when the newer versions switched to a new course file format. They provided a tool to convert all the old .crx's to .crz's. Further, MS knows where the profit is, and I and sure they are aware that sites like this (and especially libraries like this one) help sell their software bigtime and I doubt if they are willing to dump on such a sales aid that costs them nothing to maintain. (I have two friends who have bought MSTS over the last two months based on nothing more then coming over one afternoon to "play trains" one afternoon and getting a look at train-sim.com while I looked for some sentimental favorite livery for them to run. One of them is a confirmed Mac user -- he probably couldn't spell PC if you spotted him the P -- who bought a 2800 dollar system for no other purpose then to run MSTS. Nels ought to get a damn comission from Microsoft!)>The Kuju engine is actually not that bad . . .Agreed

>If we throw enough hardware at the Kuju engine, it will
>continue to get faster. So one way to go is to stay with the
>Kuju engine and assume that ever-faster Intel chips and
>ever-more-expensive graphics cards will save the day. I think the ever-more-expensive part is overblown. The most expensive video card I ever bought for home use was the original IBM 8 color card back in 1980. For that matter, the original one floppy, no hard drive, 16k ram, mono video card PC listed for $2300 and change back in 1980. If not bleeding edge, you can still get a damn fine system for that kind of money today.>If I were Microsoft, though, I would not care very much
>about those add-ons. We saw in another post here that they
>have sold almost a million units of this game. How many of
>those people have even one of the add-ons that we here all
>salivate over? My hunch is that the vast majority of Train
>Sim buyers never come here and never download an add-on. My hunch is that of the million sets, about two thirds of them are in actual use. Of those, I'd wager fully half are using some sort of addon, either free-ware/share-ware or or something like an Abacus product.>Why? Because it's too difficult. If you can install MSTS, you can install Abacus Roundhouse or American Classics. >Almost every time somebody
>around here uploads a new route or activity, or even a new
>locomotive, it's followed by a week of forum traffic as
>people try to figure out how to install it properly. Is that a function of difficulty or a function of the fact that there is no (and I mean none whatsoever) consistancy to the install procedures -- especially for cars and engines? This one creates a folder, that one lets you create and name your old folder, another comes with an installer, and some tohers require files from a different d/l or an existing "stock" piece of equipment -- sheesh!>It's
>the same issue people crab about with linux: if you're
>Computerman, you love it, but others are just baffled.I think those are the one third whose copies of MSTS are gathering dust on the shelf.

>The other thing that's happening off to the side is the
>X-Box activity. Here is Microsoft trying to compete with
>Sony and Nintendo to sell high-end virtual reality to the
>serious gamers. A hit game in that market can make tens of
>millions of dollars, so the X-Box division is always going
>to get more money and more resources than the guys doing
>MSTS. What's the X-Box install base compared to the PC install base? I suspect they can make just as much (or even more) from a successful PC game. For that matter, how many XB's can you connect together for something like group flight or a Links tournement? IMO, unless they do something about internet connectivity, the XB will, in another decade, be every bit as ubiquitous as the 8 track tape player.>What seems to make sense to me is to piggyback an MSTS 2 on
>the gooodies developed for the X-Box. We can be sure that
>the game developers for X-Box have much better tools than
>the sorry ones that come with the Kuju platform. From all
>accounts, it's a wonder that anyone ever finishes a route.
>That could change dramatically in an MSTS 2 if it is based
>on the X-Box software platform. I doubt that many people will run out to buy X-Box just to run MSTS.>If I'm running the MSTS 2 program, I would much rather take
>the tools developed by the X-Box guys, use their platform,
>and spend my money on a subsystem that makes the management
>of add-ons bulletproof and transparent. Imagine aiming your
>MSTS 2 at a web site, clicking the route you want, and
>having all the activities and rolling stock automatically
>added to your collection. The only reason one cannot do that now is bandwidth limitations. When DSL and cable modem become more common, that is exatly what will happen. In fact, that's pretty much how I installed the 1.2 upgrade. I ran it from their site rather then downloading it. Their installer handled everything except finding the the path to my MSTS install. Same same for all my Win2K and Office2K upgrades. In fact, every year it seems I buy more and more s/w directly of the 'net and less from stores or by ordering via the net to be shipped.>If the users had that, and the
>developers had the ready-for-prime-time tools that the X-box
>game developers are working with, this would be a much more
>active and vibrant community. I doubt it. There might be more people downloading, but not more people producing. I suspect the people who are truly not producing because they are foxed by the tools (as opposed to those who find that a good excuse) could be counted on the thumbs of one hand (possibly with a thumb left over. If someone has the creative bug, they will find a way to create. Also, IMO a LARGE part of the problem is lack of documentation, both of the product itself and the tools that come with it.>Right now you pretty much have
>to be a computer geek just to download and install a boxcar . . .I think that depends on the definition of "geek". Does knowing where (and how to use) the break, accelerator, steering wheel, wipers, lights, etc., qualify one as a "car geek"? To load a boxcar requires the use of winzip and explorer. IMO, that is no more complex (OK, little more complex) then knowing where the gas cap is and what grade of gas to fill the tank with.> . . . as far as I can tell people like sniper and Rich Gardner are
>Olympian gods, far beyond what most mortals could ever hope
>to aspire to.I think they are worthy of the highest respect, because they have nuked it out for themselves and have not only shared the knowledge, but made exquisite creations which they have shared as well. OTOH, its like old Tom Edison said, its one per cent inspiration and ninety nine per cent perspiration. They are the ones who lit off the sweat pumps and did it. Better tools would no doubt help the likes of those people, but they won't help those who don't want to sweat out the knowledge in the first place. There are much better tools today for (to mention three examples) painting, woodworking, and photography, yet in general paintings, furniture and photos are not better today then what was done by the masters with much more primative tools. >Microsoft is a mass-market company. They're not into niche
>products for geeks. The X-Box is a niche market product for game geeks.
Brad "gets down from his soapbox" Meyer

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Thoughtful reply. Thank you.My thinking on the development tools is that competitive pressures in the game market will drive Microsoft to produce much better tools for the X-Box platform than they ever will for a single game like MSTS. Part of getting the third-party guys like EA to develop for your box instead the other guy's box is to provide better tools that make the games faster and cheaper to produce.From what I can tell, Microsoft's X-Box is basically a Wintel PC in a plastic container, which means that these tools ought to be portable to the general-purpose PC platform.If as the MSTS product manager, your choice was to spend several hundred thousand dollars improving the tools for the Kuju platform, or ride along for free on the X-Box spending, which way would you go? Which way do you think your bosses would be telling you to go? I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect the pressures to go that way might be enormous. The train sim guys get better tools, and Microsoft gets another release they can put out on the X-Box platform as well as for the PC market. Technical considerations aside, there are always bean-counter types looking at stuff like that.I suspect you're right that most of the rolling stock and scenery objects would be convertable. Most of the 3-D modelling packages already read each others' formats and convert them, so that does not seem to be too big a deal. The basic paradigm of painting textures on polygons seems to be pretty much universal, it's just a matter of how those things are represented in a file.The routes, on the other hand, could be a much bigger pain moving to a different movement engine. Maybe they can find a way to save them, but it wouldn't surprise me if they re-did theirs from the ground up, and expected others to do the same... if they change platforms.My comment on the ever-more-expensive graphics card was admittedly flip. The reason I think the tools are so critical is that the natural long-term constituency for Train Simulator is the huge base of people who get into model railroading. This has been a huge hobby for a long time for a lot of people, which is why I suspect Microsoft is interested at all. The trouble is, for all such people know about trains and modeling, they are not necessarily computer mavens. We know that model railroaders will spend many, many hours getting the trees placed just right, but to date that has been a completely different skill set than the one needed to operate Kuju's Route Editor.You are right that the truly dedicated creators will overcome almost any obstacle to create their masterpieces, but my impression is that so far, all of our successful "route artists" also have a strong long-time background in computers. When things go wrong, they can guess why, and they can guess how to improvise. Someone whose expertise is laying out routes in plywood, and who just expects the computer to work, will get frustrated pretty rapidly by the random crashing behavior we see today. I think we would see more and better stuff -- from a highly skilled but less computer-savvy crowd -- if the tools were more reliable and easier to use.I think moving the importation of add-ons into MSTS itself is critical to increasing the size of the market for add-ons. So long as adding goodies is a matter of changing files when MSTS isn't looking, there will always be installation gotchas. We would all be better off if Microsoft published a spec and said, "Here's what a wagon file has to look like for MSTS 2 to import it," and so on for engines, routes, etc.That way, anybody who can point and click could add to their hobby without worrying about folders and WinZIP and WinRAR and all these other toys that we have come to know and love, but which just look like hassles to the newbies. I don't think we would see any more "labors of love" when we get this, but for sure we would see more commercial entities jumping into the fray.

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

>Thoughtful reply. Thank you.
>
>My thinking on the development tools is that competitive
>pressures in the game market will drive Microsoft to produce
>much better tools for the X-Box platform than they ever will
>for a single game like MSTS. I would agree with this except that I don't see Microsoft looking at this as a single game exercise. My guess is that over the next several years they will integrate the tools for MSTS, MSFS, and Links so that all three will use a common set of tools for object and scenery (terrain) design. I predict that before its over MS will either buy out or rip off Kuju for the tools it wishes to use from them. At least that has been their pattern with nearly every undertaking since Gates bought Seattle Computer to get what became the original IBM PCDOS.>Part of getting the third-party
>guys like EA to develop for your box instead the other guy's
>box is to provide better tools that make the games faster
>and cheaper to produce. Also provides a big competative advantage. That's why MS wants exclusive agreements with such outfits.
>
>From what I can tell, Microsoft's X-Box is basically a
>Wintel PC in a plastic container, which means that these
>tools ought to be portable to the general-purpose PC
>platform.
>
>If as the MSTS product manager, your choice was to spend
>several hundred thousand dollars improving the tools for the
>Kuju platform, or ride along for free on the X-Box spending,
>which way would you go? OTOH, if you are the PC entertainment SW manager, and the goal is to integrate a common set of tools for all three of your big install base sims (and possibly use the tools to build other sims) would you not get everything you can from Kuju?Re the money issue, if you are posting record profits in a flat economy, ISTM you would want to get two (or more) teams working on the problem, especially if the "winner" saw a big paycheck at the end of the road. Again, this is classic MS operting practice.>Which way do you think your bosses
>would be telling you to go? I don't know this for a fact,
>but I suspect the pressures to go that way might be
>enormous. The train sim guys get better tools, and Microsoft
>gets another release they can put out on the X-Box platform
>as well as for the PC market. Technical considerations
>aside, there are always bean-counter types looking at stuff
>like that. I wonder if simming (as opposed to video game playing) is really a hot issue for the buyers/users of X-Box. Could be I suppose.>I suspect you're right that most of the rolling stock and
>scenery objects would be convertable. Most of the 3-D
>modelling packages already read each others' formats and
>convert them, so that does not seem to be too big a deal.
>The basic paradigm of painting textures on polygons seems to
>be pretty much universal, it's just a matter of how those
>things are represented in a file.
>
>The routes, on the other hand, could be a much bigger pain
>moving to a different movement engine. Maybe they can find a
>way to save them, but it wouldn't surprise me if they re-did
>theirs from the ground up, and expected others to do the
>same... if they change platforms.I don't think it would be a much bigger pain then it was writing a program to convert the old Links courses to play under the new version. Jack Niclaus Golf essentially put themselves out of business by putting out a new version that would not accept the old courses when there had grown up a large community of JNG course designers and literally thousands of home developed courses. That sort of marketing lesson is unlikely to be missed my Microsoft. So far as I can tell, a route consists of terrain and objects. If one can import DEM data to a piece of terrain, it ought to be no sweat to export the elevation data from an existing route and put it back into a new one. The objects are objects. At worst, some new attributes may need to be assigned as they are transfered across>My comment on the ever-more-expensive graphics card was
>admittedly flip. And I had kind of gotten on my soapbox by that point.
>
>The reason I think the tools are so critical is that the
>natural long-term constituency for Train Simulator is the
>huge base of people who get into model railroading. This has
>been a huge hobby for a long time for a lot of people, which
>is why I suspect Microsoft is interested at all. Agreed. In addition I would add the "common tools" issue. MSFS is also huge, without the equivilent on a model railroading community. >The trouble
>is, for all such people know about trains and modeling, they
>are not necessarily computer mavens. We know that model
>railroaders will spend many, many hours getting the trees
>placed just right, but to date that has been a completely
>different skill set than the one needed to operate Kuju's
>Route Editor. Agreed. I would add that there are model railroaders of several types. Some (I suspect the largest group) that just want to run trains. Some that are especially interested in track work. (I was one of those. Could really care less what the layout as a whole looked like so long as I was able to cut my own ties, spike my own rails, scratch build my own switches, etc., etc.) Some folks were OK with "bought" scenery, while other would spend hours (days) building a single structure, or tree, or waterfall, and see the layout as essentially an excuse to build a diorama. I think we see the same sorts of divisions with MSTS. Some just run trains. Some run specific activities. Some build activites. Some build cars and engines. Some build entire routes. Catering to all those groups rather then just the train operators will require a high degree of commonality across any upgrade path.I don't know the time line involved with the introduction of Trainz, but it would not surprise me to find out that Trainz was first, and MSTS was booted out the door early in order to establish market share before the Trainz community gott too big. That would also be vintage Microsoft (Win 95 being perhaps the prime example). So long as there is a competitor out there, they would be most unlikely to risk their market share not allowing for the (relatively) easy upgrade of the existing libraries of routes, stock, and activites.>You are right that the truly dedicated creators will
>overcome almost any obstacle to create their masterpieces,
>but my impression is that so far, all of our successful
>"route artists" also have a strong long-time background in
>computers. That could well be true, although I think there are some pretty young re-skinners out there. I agree the tools will have to get better (much better) in order to draw in more creators. OTOH, I had to learn airbrush, brazing, and several other skills in the course of my HO and N scale days. I could have said the heck with it and bought Atlas track, prebuilt and pre-painted cars and engines, and still had a good time. Lots of folks do. I have friends who can create courses in Links but can't make a new folder without coaching. I think that within a year or two we will see peole building great routes/objects/whatever who are equally clueless about the PC itself.>When things go wrong, they can guess why, and
>they can guess how to improvise. Someone whose expertise is
>laying out routes in plywood, and who just expects the
>computer to work, will get frustrated pretty rapidly by the
>random crashing behavior we see today. I think we would see
>more and better stuff -- from a highly skilled but less
>computer-savvy crowd -- if the tools were more reliable and
>easier to use. Absolutely! The tools will get better (I believe), not because MS cares for us, but because they see an opportunity to make money from us. If the upgrade path is broken, they will likely see far less money from us. I am counting more on their greed more then their altruism.>I think moving the importation of add-ons into MSTS itself
>is critical to increasing the size of the market for
>add-ons. So long as adding goodies is a matter of changing
>files when MSTS isn't looking, there will always be
>installation gotchas. We would all be better off if
>Microsoft published a spec and said, "Here's what a wagon
>file has to look like for MSTS 2 to import it," and so on
>for engines, routes, etc. Very true. I think the key point here is having the spec., rather then having a sw tool to do the import (although that would be nice). IMO the overall lack of documentation is damn near criminal. I shouldn't have had to spend an evening learning the relationship between switches and reverse points, or 20 some odd man hours learning the relationship between signals and reverse points. Those items ought to have been documented somewhere. And that's a piddlin' example. I have still yet to see a table of relationships among the files that go into making up a piece of rolling stock. I know there is a .wag file that describes the physics, and an .s (sound?) and an .sms (shape?) file, and an .ace file (paint/texture?), but have almost no idea how they inter-relate.>That way, anybody who can point and click could add to their
>hobby without worrying about folders and WinZIP and WinRAR
>and all these other toys that we have come to know and love,
>but which just look like hassles to the newbies. This is what I can the Atlas snap track crowd. I don't disparage them and agree they have to be catered to as well if MS expects to make the max $$ possible off the product.>I don't
>think we would see any more "labors of love" when we get
>this, but for sure we would see more commercial entities
>jumping into the fray. Good point. OTOH, many of the "labors of love" will still get built, for no other reason then that the folks who are pushing the envelope now will continue to do so no matter what the envelope is, because that who they are. They are the same sorts who would be spiking their own track and kit-bashing their own stock, even though there are simpler ways of doing it.Brad "good thread" Meyer

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

>Imagine aiming your
>MSTS 2 at a web site, clicking the route you want, and
>having all the activities and rolling stock automatically
>added to your collection.Definitely possible to do. The latest version of Trainz does this. It's still not perfect but when it works right it is awesome!I think I would wait on MSTS 2. It would have to be almost perfect right out of the box because I wouldn't expect any more support for v2 than v1 got. If it made all the v1 stuff obsolete then I probably wouldn't buy it. Don't know if I could handle another do-over of Marias Pass. It would probably kill poor old Bob! Paul

Alert | IP

[ Home | MSTS Forum | MSTS FAQ | File Library ] Copyright © 2002 by Nels Anderson. All Rights Reserved.