LAST EDITED ON Sep-08-03 AT 11:16 AM (EDT)
Dear Invisible Family,The product, London Brighton Express, by Aerosoft was mentioned here as a dandy new route, and so, of course, yours truly immediately jumped on the bandwagon. At http://www.europeanbahn.co.uk/ , I found the product and read the full page of gushing syrupy praise from users which concluded with what, in hindsight could have been taken by me as a caveat from the company:“There have been 6 people so far who have expressed great disappointment in the product - which goes to show you can never please all of the people all of the time!” Why cite “6 people” with “Great disappointment?” If 6 people had great disappointment, did 46 have minor difficulties? Did 2 die of trauma? Significantly, the FAQ page is under construction. One can not log onto the forum page until the product, with registration number, is in hand. And about that registration number: Mine had 0s, or were they Os? It took three tries to hit the right combination.“What’s the matter jiva?” You may ask. Well, I’ll tell you. All these little things, coupled with the fact that I’ve paid almost $50 bucks and as your are about to read 6 1/2 hours untangling the mess I got myself into just take a chunk out of life.If I made $5.00 an hour, that would be more than I can afford, and of course, I don’t make $5.00/hour! Besides, if I’m paying to engage in problems ... well that’s another story ... one which includes knowing what you’re getting into in advance, and agreeing upon limits. I thought I saw somewhere that a P III is adequate to run this software, and I know this venerable machine, almost three years old now, will run even the detailed routes I’ve tried: Deep NEC 4, Inspiring D&H, beautiful Canton, etc.$48.23 later, I’d ordered the product. One can not download this item as with the Bridge Route, for instance. No problem ... I can wait. CDs are nice. A receipt came by e-mail, and I saw on line that my check card had been duly dunned. Next thing I knew, a message arrived by e-mail which was to me, kind of cryptic. Paraphrasing, the message said that I’d receive this product within a few days of its release. Many here know me! I can not figure out what that message meant: Was the LBE to be held up until more could be stamped or burned or whatever it is they do? (We’ve seen this before ... order ... pay ... then wait while essentially your payment is used to help make more.) If that was the case, still ... fine with me. Or ... did Aerosoft mean within a few days of LBE’s release from their stock room to the post office?I e-mailed back with just this question and here, several days later there has been no response to that e-mail.But better than a response, come Monday morning, there, by Royal Mail was the LBE sitting pretty in our mail box. I thought of the irony ... if you’ll allow a little hyperbole, the huge size of this new route could take some people with slower modems more time to down load than it took to arrive from England by Royal Mail. (About 3 days). I could not have received this product sooner if it had been chuted into the yard by Concorde. I was encouraged! This company apparently has its ear to the ground, (or sky, or wires) and they know and respect the concept that people like to have the product in their hand as soon as possible after doling out the cash.The package is nice, there is a great little booklet included which is actually not as chummy as it first seems; We’ve got three languages here, German, French and English. The manual is pretty verbose. Included are pages which detail and go on about the teamwork and the creation of their product plus the names of those who were responsible. There is a lot of talk about how good LBE is. Kevin Arceneaux, they ain’t! Kevin goes, “This is it ... here.” Then, after sometimes we users become co-workers, the Arceneaux product is absolutely worth it, many times over. Plus, Dr. K always responds helpfully (if briefly) when you ask.On the fourth page of the English manual a third of the way down, I see at last “System Requirements.” There it is written with the Aeorsoft aggrandizing flavor , “The development of London-Brighton Express has in many areas, pushed the specifications of the route to the limits of MSTS. In order to enjoy this product to its fullest, we suggest that your PC should have the following:” (I got the feeling Aerosoft could not speak without thumping themselves on the chest.)The very first bullet states: “minimum 1 gig processor, recommended 1,6 (sic) Ghz.” NOW they tell me!“Uh oh,” sez I. (We’re looking at about 800 MHz here.) What happened subsequently is therefore in my opinion, not the company’s fault. I installed it anyway. I saw “When using Windows XP or Windows 2000 as your operating system you will have to be registered as the system administrator in order to begin with the installation.” We’re on old Win 98 here. I felt secure in disregarding.I was pleased to see the Norton’s Clean Sweep pop up upon invoking the installation: “Want me to watch?” this system was asking. “Hell yes,” I thought and punched on through the installation process. I’d first Unstored everything 2X via Train Store. The installation took a good long time. After it was all done, I reopened Train Store, and I was pleased to see my new LBE sitting there just waiting for me in the Train Store directory. Eagerly, I stored all but the fresh LBE.By the way, a 10 minute movie is included with the CD. When I try to check it out, I get this kind of familiar (sometimes) error message: “The MP43 codec is required to play this file. To determine if this codec is available to download from the Web, click Web Help.”Click Web Help, and you are taken to a Windows Media 9 Series page, and the message: “The required codec cannot be found. Windows Media Player cannot play the file because the required codec cannot be found. To determine how to obtain the codec identified as MP43, contact the content provider.”A Google search brings up many hits, some of them are driver download sites some of them are from others looking for MP43. From experience I can attest that such an expedition calls for even more caution of a different kind: Spyware abounds in many on line driver libraries. When items simultaneously lurk and leap, it is time for me to carefully consider if I can afford the requisite care in such places.Drivers and codecs ... this is another time consuming place I can’t afford to go right now. What ever happened to Plug n Play? Or was that Kid n Play? The fact is, the movie would be a nice treat, but hey, the Real Player, Quck Time, and the Windows Media player work fine ... on streaming video and assorted other files. Someday soon I’ll address this issue.Anyway ... on to the troubles. First of all, I did not get the first time message “Building ...” you know what I mean ... the “building (something or other)” we often see when starting a route for the first time. It is perfectly normal and has to do with taking files from default routes ... I think.I imagine or (shudder) reason this does not happen with payware because those who sell stuff are not supposed to use MSTS stuff. The fact that this screen did not appear could well be part of the reason this route is so big, byte wise.I wonder if some critical (for my installation ... Xtracks? MSTS 2.1? Sky Conductor even?) MSTS or other files were overwritten?Now, what I am about to describe may be a function of my “slow” PC or not. I can’t be sure. Hey, let me tell you some of the good stuff: The cab view is nice as anything: wipers work. (From outside of course) The passenger view is standard fare ... (no pun intended). I may have been spoiled by so much other super excellent stuff here at Train-sim.com and others.The sound is great. I love that rumblin’ buildin’ electric and steel feeling! There is no head out view. As we know, this can be remedied easily, and also, just maybe this is a result of you know, the underspeed PC? The route, from what I was able to see looks nothing like the screen shots. This is almost certainly a consequence of the slow PC here. However, two things: Slow PC in my subjective experience with MSTS has so far meant stuttering frame rates, not missing or bland stuff. Since I have removed LBE from this system by now, I do not have my screen shots to post for you, but what I saw was frankly ... crude. Lots of tracks though. Please understand, I am NOT saying the route was crude ... this PC does not meet the suggested minimum standards.
I may be at the point where certain software just will not run here. If so, LBE is my first sample thereof.OK ... I tried to go for my first run. This PC has an idiosyncracy (don’t we all?) : Although I have the cable modem, when she’s about to call home, the old dial up modem starts clicking. And ... yep, there she was: “Call Home? I’m outta here.” And I was back at the desktop.So what! Might be just any old thing ... I’ll try again with a different activity. This time I took care to notice what I could ... I saw third rail / shoe flash, which was nice! I tried P for Pantograph but the doors did not open or close.I put her in forward, released the brakes and moved just a little ... again the great subway like sound ... but then quickly “I’m outta here, you really should be back at your Desktop shouldn’t you?” And there I was.Back at Train Store, I stored LBE and went for the NEC 4 and one of Mr. Arceneaux’s activities which I KNOW works great! (Understatement)This time, the machine here gave me a dose of chagrin. “Baby, you can’t go anywhere with MSTS, I’m calling home.” I got the feeling whatever was wrong might spread. I’ve seen it before. You get a few symptoms, you forge on, next thing you know you are lucky to be able to boot in SAFE mode.I ran Route Control for the report and clean up. Before this LBE, we were clean as the proverbial MSTS whistle. The report came back with pages of errors everywhere. And ... consists has been backed up.Once RC goes through its paces, we’re usually able to kick MSTS in again, but upon trying .... “Nope, I wanna call home.” I felt nervous. Many have stated that MSTS is just a game, but I submit that if one spends oh say ... an average of an hour a day with something, 7 days a week, 365 1/4 days a year, there is at least special significance and attachment! Recall the “You're on MSTS too much if you ...” thread here a while back? I’m telling you ... game or not ... I’m here and I love it ... love it more than a lot of other things I am compelled to take up which are not called games.Back at Train Store then, I again unstored everything and using Norton’s Clean sweep, uninstalled LBE. In their instructions, LBE advises to uninstall (they call it “de-install” (Tea anyone? ) via START / Control Panel / add remove ... you know. I reasoned therefore that the Norton’s Clean Sweep product, having monitored and being hand in glove with Microsoft would do the job very nicely.It took a long long time. But LBE was gone, if not forgotten. (Clean Sweep has the temerity to make backups of what it erases for you.) Whatever happened with the installation of LBE was not fixed by removing it. MSTS would no longer load at all.Then I took the tape back up I so very fortunately have and restored MSTS, with the overwrite everything option checked. This took many hours. There may have been only a couple of files I actually needed to recover but I did not know what they were ... maybe some global didldy or a *.dll. Also, having had RC back up so many consists, it seemed easier to just replop the consists huh? Otherwise I’d be consist by consist loading in Consist Builder and correcting etc. The tape back up restore seemed more viable for me here. This meant a long long time during which this machine was not available.In the end, (now) MSTS is back, and in fine fettle sans LBE. I see where there is a patch available on line (now that I have registered) but I don’t know how much more I want to dedicate to this process. The product probably is excellent for most. My troubles can not be said to be the fault of Aeorsoft. I wonder if selling LBE on Ebay would be a violation of copyright law. Probably. I bet it might not be illegal to send my copy of LBE to someone here for testing on their faster PC. (If you like that idea let me know).
I’ll get a newer faster computer one day ... but I can not help speculating that the difficulties I encountered were NOT due to the dottering old processor here. I have the FEELING that other key files were overwritten: Slow speed has in the past meant fumbling frame rates here. Desktop adhesion from MSTS seems to indicate some more fundamental problem.Well folks thanks for reading this jivajjiva quasi review. ‘Time to work here now.Respectullyjivajiva
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RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, Fodda, Sep-08-03, 11:57 AM, (1) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, JivaGoswami, Sep-08-03, 12:29 PM, (2) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, DTA, Sep-08-03, 03:28 PM, (3) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, JivaGoswami, Sep-08-03, 03:39 PM, (4) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, OTTODAD, Sep-08-03, 03:48 PM, (6) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, Paul_Boland, Sep-08-03, 03:39 PM, (5) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, JivaGoswami, Sep-08-03, 04:32 PM, (7) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, JivaGoswami, Sep-08-03, 05:10 PM, (8) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, DTA, Sep-08-03, 05:53 PM, (9) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, Kentucky86, Sep-08-03, 05:56 PM, (10) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, europeanBahn, Sep-08-03, 06:33 PM, (11) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, OTTODAD, Sep-09-03, 07:09 AM, (12) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, TomBeevers2000, Sep-09-03, 08:42 AM, (13) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, Fodda, Sep-09-03, 09:23 AM, (14) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, JivaGoswami, Sep-09-03, 10:29 AM, (15) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, OTTODAD, Sep-09-03, 05:56 PM, (16) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, OTTODAD, Sep-09-03, 06:58 PM, (17) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, JivaGoswami, Sep-10-03, 07:58 AM, (18) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, OTTODAD, Sep-10-03, 03:59 PM, (19) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, JivaGoswami, Sep-10-03, 05:38 PM, (20) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, TFormoso, Sep-11-03, 07:44 AM, (21) RE: London Brighton Express Quasi Review, JivaGoswami, Sep-11-03, 08:53 AM, (22)
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