OPen Rails & Run 8 - Pro's, Con's, Comments

[Bubbles]

Microsoft has always recognized the value of providing a SDK and allowing for third party and end-user generated content. For any sim to have a future, it will have to rely on a user community.

What about Microsoft Flight?

[seagoon]

What about Microsoft Flight?

That's why development has stopped - no ability for the user to create.

[neyland]

Some of us were around when MSTS was first released....

It came with six routes, and a fair amount of equipment -- steam, electric, and diesel; passenger and freight.

It also came with an editor and tech docs on how to build your own stuff.

Within six months, there were more than two dozen routes uploaded to TS.Com's file library, and hundreds of repaints and new models.

Microsoft has always recognized the value of providing a SDK and allowing for third party and end-user generated content. For any sim to have a future, it will have to rely on a user community.

Thank you, i couldn't be bothered to reply constructively.

[macmauro]

Hi Guys,

Interesting discussion for sure! First of all sorry for my English, I'm Portuguese not a native speaker.

First time I heard about Run8. I'm one that had one of the first MSTS editions, lived in Luxembourg at that time and had it pre-ordered from USA, what a disapointment it was, after all that I've readed in the press (sounds were just... bad). Was used to Mechanik(??), a Polish program I think, which I'd thought fantastic (specially the sounds), and BVE, which I still think, has the greastest physics of train simulations, you can really feel the bouncing in the cab (somewhat exacerbated), but nicelly transmited to our PC's. Also a flight simulator (fs9), truck simulations (waiting for the new Euro truck sim), and mainly a racing fan (LFS, Rfactor and the new Project C.A.R.S.), also a train modeller (N scale) and HO car collecter (51 years old, for the disgrace of my GF....). RW or Trainz, for some reasons, didn't hook me. So I still relly on my old baby MSTS, I'm a lover mainly of Italian routes, like to drive several hours through the nite (FS the same...), recreating my travels through Europe, as a kid, InterRail times (crying...). Long time reader of all this forums, but never a participating guy (shame on me!).

Now, sorry for the long introduction, after countless upgrades in computer, spending much more time installing and unninstalling MSTS than playing it, fed up with black, blue, MS pointless messages (and recently totally pi#### off with the stupid aministrator thing of windows 7 ), I'm really excited with OR! Could, and wished, to be a contributor (work for a Major gaming multinational, from a country where they love trains ), but unfortunatelly don't have the spare time to contribute (got to reinstal MSTS again...).

Please OR team, take your time, but give us some movement in the cab (or possibility in the program to do that), and also please please the new version verrry soon )

Thanx to all the OR team and to the main contributors of these boards (which, by now, I considere them almost my friends!).

Stay Well!

[westerngy]

Some of us were around when MSTS was first released....

It came with six routes, and a fair amount of equipment -- steam, electric, and diesel; passenger and freight.

It also came with an editor and tech docs on how to build your own stuff.

Within six months, there were more than two dozen routes uploaded to TS.Com's file library, and hundreds of repaints and new models.

Microsoft has always recognized the value of providing a SDK and allowing for third party and end-user generated content. For any sim to have a future, it will have to rely on a user community.

..............Ah yes the very early days the beginning of MSTS from that wonderful company Microsoft and KUJU who gave us a Train Simulator to have and awhile later an Update to cars and engines and then guess what nothing after that.

...............Yes it is possible to have more than one Simulator on your computer so why are some of you SO affraid of a new Simulator coming up the pike or is it you just want to hear yourselves rant about how great MSTS.Yes OR and their team has done some great things to prolong MSTS's life and that's good but as has been mentioned in a couple posts now you don't have Run8 and until you do your just speculating on something that you've seen in a video.IsRun 8 going to be perfect right out of the box maybe not but is 3Dtrainstuff who is doing Run8 going to release it then run like MS did NO.

[NorthernWarrior]

Just a couple of quick thoughts...

To many people, OR's reliance on MSTS is also its Achille's Heel. It's 7 years since I last picked up the MSTS RE in anger and there's no way I could go back to it having worked in both Trainz Surveyor and the admittedly imperfect Railworks editor. Besides, most of the utilities we used with MSTS such as Demex are pretty much gone or no longer supported and can't be installed on a 64 bit system.

To stand any chance of real success, OR needs to move from being a system to retain MSTS nostalgia to a sim going forward in its own right - which includes its own suite of editors. Until then it is I have to say of limited interest.

As regards Run8, yes it isn't out yet, but the more information which comes out the less enthusiastic I am about the whole thing. The almost complete reliance on multiplayer rather than starting with a good single player experience is the biggest turn-off. As others have commented, the sim will rapidly become the hangout of lonely old foamers who don't have a life/wife, or 10 year olds who want to crash a train. There appears to be no provision if real life intervenes in the middle of an operating session. Essentially it's a model railway clubhouse meet on the PC and you're kind of thee for the duration. Physics are more important to me than graphics (Zusi) but that's still no excuse for points without proper crossings or check-rails. As Bruce has commented, Tehachapi has been done to death and while it's always a good drive in whatever sim, doing it day in and day out as the only route available will get boring real quick, especially just sitting the throttle in Notch 6 or 7 and grinding uphill. The closed architecture is also a complete turn-off. Listening to the developer there also seems to be a certain amount of arrogance and unwillingness to acknowledge suggestions or ideas - it's "his" sim how he wants it and woe betide anyone who crosses that.

So in answer to the original question. If OR can overcome the reliance on MSTS and throw off the perception it is Open-MSTS, then of course I'm interested and it will hold far more for me than Run8, which at this stage I'm probably going to wait and see what the early adopters have to say before buying.

[OTTODAD]

Being 83 I could not be shackled to a set time multi-player session of anything, time zones playing a part, having to run whatever with others of varying experience where train and flight simulators are concerned.

Shoot-them-up and similar action games just require a Game Pad, nimble fingers and knowing how it works in a specific game, many I have seen my grandson play having different functions assigned to their buttons.

My MSTS, ORTS and TS-2012 are good enough for me to use and work with, but again require a certain expertise to get the best out of them !

O t t o

[eric]

D

why are some of you SO affraid of a new Simulator coming up the pike or is it you just want to hear yourselves rant about how great MSTS.Yes OR and their team has done some great things to prolong MSTS's life and that's good but as has been mentioned in a couple posts now you don't have Run8 and until you do your just speculating on something that you've seen in a video.IsRun 8 going to be perfect right out of the box maybe not but is 3Dtrainstuff who is doing Run8 going to release it then run like MS did NO.

It comes down to this for me ---- I am a admitted skeptic of introducing an all-new commercial product.

It's nice to get a check from just doing your hobby once in a while, but I'm not doing it for the money. I do what I like, and sharing it is the paycheck. That's why OR seems to work. Being open source, it can and likely will live on after the original team moves on. That's unlikely in a commercial venture, as we've seen with MSTS2 and Cascade.

Issuing a new sim is different from an engine or route. I've been managing programmers and IT since before MSTS came out. I don't care how good a programmer you think you are -- there will be support calls, patches, and ongoing bug fixes, and that going to eat into the enthusiasm pretty quickly..... Beta testers are a friendly audience. Paying customers aren't.

So.... back to your comment "is 3DTrainStuff (not 3DTS) going to release it and then run like MSTS did??"

I'd like to believe that they'll be around for a second or third release, but the odds are against it.

Face it -- this is a limited marketplace. There are around 2000 people who've posted here in the last year across all forums. 900 had 25 posts or more. 18 of those 900 were new accounts.

Let's be optimistic -- say 500 copies are sold at $40, that's a whopping $20000. Take out taxes and expenses? It now becomes barely break-even. Maybe $3 or $4 an hour for all the work. Is that something you're going to dive back into and do more work on?

For me to buy a new product, it would need to have some appeal. Right now, it doesn't. Judging from the comments here and on another forum, the interest doesn't seem to be there.

Sorry if that upsets the guys who are closely tied to it, but welcome to the cutting edge....

[westerngy]

D

It comes down to this for me ---- I am a admitted skeptic of introducing an all-new commercial product.

It's nice to get a check from just doing your hobby once in a while, but I'm not doing it for the money. I do what I like, and sharing it is the paycheck. That's why OR seems to work. Being open source, it can and likely will live on after the original team moves on. That's unlikely in a commercial venture, as we've seen with MSTS2 and Cascade.

Issuing a new sim is different from an engine or route. I've been managing programmers and IT since before MSTS came out. I don't care how good a programmer you think you are -- there will be support calls, patches, and ongoing bug fixes, and that going to eat into the enthusiasm pretty quickly..... Beta testers are a friendly audience. Paying customers aren't.

So.... back to your comment "is 3DTS going to release it and then run like MSTS did??"

I'd like to believe that they'll be around for a second or third release, but the odds are against it.

Face it -- this is a limited marketplace. There are around 2000 people who've posted here in the last year across all forums. 900 had 25 posts or more. 18 of those 900 were new accounts.

Let's be optimistic -- say 500 copies are sold at $40, that's a whopping $20000. Take out taxes and expenses? It now becomes barely break-even. Maybe $3 or $4 an hour for all the work. Is that something you're going to dive back into and do more work on?

For me to buy a new product, it would need to have some appeal. Right now, it doesn't. Judging from the comments here and on another forum, the interest doesn't seem to be there.

Sorry if that upsets the guys who are closely tied to it, but welcome to the cutting edge....

Oh and would this be OR being developed on an old platform


and it's NOT 3DTS( That's Marc Nelson ) ...it's 3Dtrainstuff

[eric]

Oh and would this be OR being developed on an old platform


and it's NOT 3DTS( That's Marc Nelson ) ...it's 3Dtrainstuff

What's old about the platform? Seems that the programming and graphics platforms are current state.

Content (file formats, structure) aren't the platform. OR is using the Kuju content formats as a starting point, much like a DVD player capable of playing both the "old" format and BluRay. But starting out with your own proprietary formats?

It's a mistake to think that OR is locked into ACE and .S for perpetuity. They can stay there if they want to, but other lines of business have proven it's much smarter to have your first production release being backward compatible with the most prolific content format available, and then expand from there, just like BIN added functionality. Or, adding in support for other file structures, e.g. An XML structure instead of the current Unicode. Maybe even breaking with XNA and making it runnable on other OS's?... That's the type of flexibilities you have with open source and open systems...

Something else that the developers figured out early on -- ask people what they want. It's been a very transparent development effort. They've asked what's important, and it shows up on a priority list. There's been lots of discussion with route builders on what features a nextGen editor should have.

I have no association to any of the products, so maybe it's easier for me to be unbiased. I'm simply supporting the option that best fits what I'm looking for, and which also appears to have a better chance of staying in it for the long term.

[Coonskin]

and it's NOT 3DTS( That's Marc Nelson ) ...it's 3Dtrainstuff

Nope... that ain't it either.

Marc Nelson is "3DTrains". Often abreviated as 3DT.

Brad Brown en company is "3D Train Stuff". Often abreviated 3DTS.

Confusing? Yes, sometimes... as we can see above.

[mdeming]

Were not 3dTrains and 3dTrainstuff one entity at one time? I seem to recall they were but not too sure about my memory on this.

[ckawahara]

They collaborated on a few projects.

[seagoon]

......Something else that the developers figured out early on -- ask people what they want. It's been a very transparent development effort. They've asked what's important, and it shows up on a priority list. There's been lots of discussion with route builders on what features a nextGen editor should have.....

That paragraph is the standout in what, in my humble opinion, is a very astute post.
It really puts in a nutshell the contrasting approach between those developing OR and those developing R8.

Vern also hit on it when he said

"....Listening to the developer there also seems to be a certain amount of arrogance and unwillingness to acknowledge suggestions or ideas - it's "his" sim how he wants it and woe betide anyone who crosses that.

OR might still be tied to MSTS as we approach the next beta release, but it still holds more interest for me than does a sim that promises high levels of realism yet appears to be (a) closed to third-party creativity, (b) set on one route that is almost as old as MSTS itself and (c) is aimed at online play at the expense of solo with AI.

Irrespective of the above, I would wager that curiosity alone will be the incentive for most of us to buy R8.

BK

[OTTODAD]

Irrespective of the above, I would wager that curiosity alone will be the incentive for us all to buy R8.

Not ALL OF US !

The once burned twice shy train simmers will wait to hear what those who have to buy everything new and can still afford to do so will have say about it in the forums.

O t t o