Quote
tenjeangosi - 2006-04-05 1:04 AM
Microsoft makes many simulation games, including Flight Simulator, Train Simulator, and Combat Flight Simulator... Does anyone play these? I have FS (Flight Simulator) 2002 and 2004 and I have ordered Combat Flight Simulator and Train Simualtor off of amazon...
Yes, I have a copy of Train simulator, it was great at the time, better support for steam engines and I loved the KIHA
(?
) DMU with gear changing!
(Ohhhh... fun!
)
Some of the British Rail Class 101 to Class 131 had manual gear changing too, funny enough, many creators had added the cab to their BR DMUs. If you have MSTS, try the Class 105, from www.uktrainsim.com . it was great at the time, it even had a passanger view, now looks dated.
Of all the addons, I also have one that recreates
(not very accurately I must add, I thought it was crap!
) my local line, published by European Bahn, its called "West Coastway Express". The West Coastway is ofcourse the line I live by. My local station is ofcourse, Fishbourne. It is also my local commuting line. It is set around 2003, GoVia only just took over the line from Connex South Central, so there was a lot of Connex units running around
(UGH!!! Milk and Cheese livery!
) and the Electrostars were only just entering service on a select few services.
The other onle I also tried, was "London to Brighton Express", another line not too far from me, but I don't use it often. Like West Coastway, it starts from Brighton again. Unlike West Coastway, it follows the line north to London. Including Britians Busiest station, Clapham Junction.
Shame it didn't have all the Southern stock, the Slams
(Slam door trains
) were absent from the route, to which, they formed a majour part of the route, because they worked that line
(London to Brighton
), some for about 41 years.
As for route creation and asset creation? It was..... well, difficault is an understatement! Hence why there are a lot of freeware creators, because some of us just run a mile when we see the tools!
On the otherhand, may I recommend Trainz for a train simlator? Far better than MSTS now, it is maturing a hell of a lot in recent times and will hit a mac near you soon
(tm
).
(Thats why I have a mac, because, officlly, I am a Mac Trainz beta tester and I am under an NDA, so I can't talk much about it!
) Asset creation is easy, route creation using Surveyor is... a blast!
30 minutes it took to set up that junction,
(or less
) and I didn't need a snipet of code. All of the stuff there, was made by other creators
(third party work
), unlike Microsoft, Auran got this one right. If you are going allow people to make additions, then you have to do it properly, Auran created a central downloading point, known as the Download station, now, there is over 7,000+ items on the DLS, and growing daily! Consisting of Locomotives, train cars, buildings, tracks, scripts, you name it! Now imagine the possiblities. I can't remember how many assets in the main program itself, but I think it is around the 3,500 mark.
Now looking at Trainz, it is easy to see why MSTS failed. As a community, we don't know how many users there are for Trainz, some aren't regiestered, some don' t have a vaild serial number
(so they can't regiester the S/N, in other words, Warezies
), but there are well over 150,000 regiestered users, the trouble is, compared to MSTS, Trainz is not well marketed.
Auran don't go to major retailers and sign contracts, most of their product is sold by regiestered customers from their website, as a community however, we have branched out and helped to sell the product at various shows and trade stands at our own expense. Basically, Auran have created a free standing community, which is pretty intelligent and creative. Auran often interacts with their community members and listen. Microsoft provided us with Train Sim, but did they create a community to begin with? No, thats where MSTS failed!
... I believe that it came out in 2000 or 2001..
... I also bought FS98 and FS2000 off ebay.. 