Main-Spessart Bahn Features
Now the festivities of Christmas are over and we’re well into February and 2019, I tracked Matt down to see how things have been going and discuss some interesting things they’ve been working on.
This is also a great time to just make it really clear that what we’re showing and discussing current projects that are deep in development and will almost certainly have areas that don’t meet the quality levels we’re all expecting from final releases. We’re always happy to receive your feedback of course but do keep this in mind when reading on!
Hi Matt, can you believe we’re into February already? Our players would love to know what’s exciting in Train Sim World development right now?
The major project underway at the moment is our next route, Main-Spessart Bahn, and in response to lots of feedback we’ve received about telling you all more about what goes in behind the scenes, I’m going to sneak an opportunity here to actually tell you a bit about it.
The team have been working on the Main-Spessart Bahn, a really interesting railway line between Aschaffenburg and Gemünden. I want to specifically focus on a few key aspects of this project:
One of the key features of this route is a very steep, in rail terms, 2.1% (1:48) grade that runs continuously for about 4.5 miles in the Eastbound direction. Trains on this route operate generally with a single locomotive at the front and often have very heavy consists behind them that they’re unable to pull on their own. The run up the grade is achieved through the use of “Banking” locomotives and the team have been working hard to make sure this all works and is featured in Scenarios and Service Mode. It’s great fun to run up this grade from either the freight driver’s, or the Banking Loco driver’s, perspective.
Jargon Buster: Banking Locos are normal locomotives that are often used either on their own or in multiples, often on the rear of heavy trains, to provide additional power or braking effort when climbing or descending steep hills.
One area of our routes that we get lots of feedback on is wishing to see improvement relating to the general feeling of life on a route, specifically about traffic on the roads. We’ve been spending quite a bit of time investigating various techniques for this because, while it may appear fairly straightforward to make a car move along a road, doing it efficiently while having a reasonable number of cars on a reasonable number of roads and not impacting frame rate for anyone is really very difficult. However, I’m happy to report the team have had some great success with this and we’re targeting having moving traffic on roads for the Main-Spessart Bahn.
That sounds awesome and from the early prototypes I’ve seen, it really does help bring the Main-Spessart Bahn to life. Will this be going on any of our earlier routes?
It’s too early to confirm at the moment but there is a strong desire to do this. We are already starting to at how we can get the traffic system on to Long Island Rail Road as a starting point.
What else are we doing to bring life to the routes?
Another really unique area to this route is the dockyard at Aschaffenburg which features some huge machinery for moving cargo and freight around. We’ve made sure these are animating and have great sounds so, when you’re in these areas, the docks will feel alive and operational.
The Main-Spessart Bahn route features the Doppelstockwagen (Dostos) vehicles along with the DB BR 146.2, which reminds me of some common feedback we regularly get asked about destination displays on trains. We featured them in the BR Class 101 in Northern Trans-Pennine route, will we see them working in Main-Spessart Bahn too?
Absolutely, now that we’ve moved the bar along and got them in, we’re trying hard to keep pushing things forward and maintain the standard that has been set. The loco and the Dostos have all been upgraded to support destination boards which you can set in the cab using the FT95 control unit. We have an abbreviated set of controls on the FT95 but it will let you set the destinations throughout the displays on the train. We’ve also augmented our service mode so that a service definition in the timetable can now specify which destination is the correct one so that AI trains can set themselves up correctly.
Thanks for that glimpse into some of the work that’s been going on behind the scenes for the last couple of months, and thanks again for your time, Matt.
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