Open Rails VS Other Rail Simulators

[BrandonS261]

Hey everyone,

You are probably thinking what is this Open Rails Vs Other Rail Simulators? Well I came to thinking of how far has Open Rails really came since the MSTS days? Being that MSTS came out 25 years ago this year and Open Rails started 17 years ago this year it got me to thinking What are some of the differences between the two and what does MSTS have that Open Rails still does not and vise versa? Do we still want to try and make MSTS content compatible with or do we want to take Open Rails in a new direction?

Now I do understand that it was the original intent of Open Rails to be compatible with MSTS but we have kind of come to a crossroads I feel because we have so much great content just for Open Rails now that is not backwards compatible to MSTS. As we get farther and farther away from the MSTS I feel like we all need to stop and think is it worth holding Open Rails back for MSTS content or do we move forward for a new generation of Rail Simulation?

Yes we have some fantastic content including locomotives, cars and even routes from the MSTS days that can never be replaced but that being said could they be upgraded to Open Rails standards of today?

These are some of the questions I had and was curious what others thought as well. I do NOT want this to become a bashing of the Open Rails team because they have done some incredible work over the last 17 years or a bash to MSTS because it was a fantastic game for its time but holding back for a now 25 year old game is only holding Open Rails back when other rail simulators surge forward into the modern era of gaming.

There are still some features that MSTS has that Open Rails has not been able to replicate or even come close to reproduce and it is frustrating to me as a gamer that some of these things have not been looked at further because if MSTS had the capability 25 years ago why doesn't Open Rails? This can also be said for other rail simulators Vs Open Rails. The technology and computer capabilities are out there but some stuff just seems to be put on the back burner.

I do understand that this is a game and the whole Open Rails team is doing this on there free time and I am truly grateful for all of the hard work that has been put into it over the last 17 years. I know coding is not an easy thing to do and Open Rails has come a very long ways since MSTS so I am very thankful for what we have so far but feel the game could go so much farther in the future if we truly wanted it to.

I would love to see what others think about some of the questions I have posed

Brandon

[CSRX]

I want multiple light cones or sources, in ORTS, that you see in others like Run8 and TSW/TSC.

Honestly.. that's my only issue.

[ossie]

These are always interesting discussions as long as they don't turn into a bash-fest as Brandon has requested. Shawn's point about light cones is one on my "want list" and I would also like to see more "eye candy" features but what I always come back to is that a comparison between ORTS and the other sims is a bit of apples & oranges. On one hand we've got a team of volunteers who have freely provided us with a program that has been a great upgrade to MSTS. If ORTS and its expansion of MSTS features hadn't come along I'm sure I'd have long since moved onto one of the more "modern looking" sims. If I'm correct, the other sims all come at a cost and that in turn provides a budget for programmers, graphic artists etc and (theoretically at least) the improvements continue to flow as a result.

People come and go in the sim and I'm sure it's the same for the development team. If they had the people, the time and the money, chances are we might have had a brand new game engine by now, a new shape file system, lighting etc but as far as a volunteer based free product goes, while there are things I'd like to see added, I'm also very content and grateful for what I have now compared to what I had with MSTS.

[agentatascadero]

Being a fan of vintage operations, MSTS has a ton of content, rolling stock and routes, that probably will never appear in Open Rails, or any other simulator. For me, that will always connect MSTS to OR.

[oper190]

MSTS has a ton of content, rolling stock and routes,

That is my big concern. I am not giving up my tons of rolling stock and routes, ( my MSTS install is over 140gb ), for a mere handful, in comparison. I run OR v1.4 because the MSTS rolling stock works. So my question would be, why cannot V1.4 be kept active, as an MSTS compatible OR, with minimal updates such as Auto Saves, while OR Ver 2...3..etc continues on as it own system.
I feel though the advances are good, it's a simple cart before the horse situation, there just isn't much available yet that is OR only compatible that can use all this good stuff, and most of that is payware, or modeled needing payware to make work. Therefore OR isn't free.

Having been downloading here since circa 2003 there were always new downloads daily. Go away for a week or two, before WiFi and laptops at reasonable cost, you'd come home with pages of new downloads to go through. Now we seem lucky to see more than one or two a week. So I fee I'll never see a program with anything close to what I have for MSTS in content.
Same reason I never dived into any of the other Rail Sims.

I enjoy running trains in MSTS and enjoy them more in OR, but want to run what I already have.

[pwillard]

The only thing I really want is realistic lighting options... I'm sure that by the time it happens, I'll be 6 feet under.

[scfe_fan]

Well here are my thoughts from just sitting back and watching, and reading, and running Open Rails as well as other train simulators.. Is Open Rails perfect? No.. Not by a long shot. Will it ever be? Also no. BUT then again, NO simulator ever will. Has the Open Rails team done a terrific job over the past 17 years improving on the old MSTS platform? That is most assuredly YES. That all being said, PLEASE don't anyone take my next comments as being ungrateful, condescending, or as a "lets bash Open Rails" type tirade.

The famous Spanish Philosopher George Santayana once said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Do I think the Open Rails team has forgotten the past? In a certain sense, no they haven't. In fact, it is their desire to cling too much to the past that brings us to this post today. BUTTT, what they DO fail to remember from the past is that those who fail to innovate, or remain competitive, slowly die off. Lets be real. Train Simulators have NEVER been overly popular when compared to games like Call of Duty or Fallout. Even if you compare them to other simulators, there are a plethora of reasons why the Flight Simulator franchise has been around for literal DECADES. The areas I think Open Rails could learn a few lessons from the past are as follows:

The most notable of which that I think applies here is that Microsoft has consistently released new and improved versions of it. They didn't let the software stagnate. I remember seeing somewhere on the forums that the Open Rails team wants to keep Open Rails compatible with older, slower, systems. While on the surface, that is a mightily admirable mindset. I myself remember the days before I could afford my own gaming rig and wasn't able to enjoy my favorite simulators to their full potential. To an extent, I still can't so I can truly see the heartfelt mindset behind that train of thought (no pun intended). The problem with that train of thought lies thus: If you cater to the lowest end systems (e.g. the ones that were considered low end even in the early days of MSTS) you will NEVER attract the newer generation that drools over the realism and graphics of Train Sim World. (what are they on now? TSW 4? 5?) I'm NOT saying totally revamp the software so that it has graphics and realism so amazing that only a $10k will run it effectively. What I AM saying is who HONESTLY remembers BVE? Or better yet, who remembers playing it? Or even the last time a payware company created something for it?

That in and of itself brings me to my next point. At the end of the day, this software is STILL the intellectual property of the Open Rails team so they are hence allowed to do with and improve it as they please. But what I WILL say to that is, there are COUNTLESS pages and pages and hundreds if not thousands of posts from Open Rails core user base, those of us that have been there and been loyal since the beginning, that have been BEGGING FOR YEARS for (insert improvement/feature here). But what I have found is that it ALWAYS tends to fall on deaf ears. Yes I know they have to prioritize improvements. But you know one of the BIGGEST issues I see with Open Rails is the environment. No matter how many times Open Rails tweaks the design of the skydome for instance, it is STILL just the inside of a textured sphere with painted on weather effects. And after 25 years, the water, is STILL that 3 layer painted on MSTS water that looks less realistic than textured wallpaper on a smooth wall. I'm attaching a screenshot from one of my route projects. Yes it is barebones right now. But thats not the focus. The image on the left is Open Rails with a 3rd party skydome TEXTURE.. The image on the right is after I had to run it through Google Gemini a couple times. While neither image is a model of realism, you can't deny that the image on the right would be absolutely achievable in a video game of 2026. The sky doesn't have to be perfect. But make it an actual sky. With real clouds. and real shifts in weather. The water doesn't have to be perfect. But make it something that ACTUALLY resembles water and the way a body of liquid bigger than a goldfish bowl actually moves. Also.. This IS in fact 2026. Tree's shouldn't still be textured panels with an alpha channel.

comparison1.jpg

90% of the problems I see with Open Rails can be boiled down to two main categories. A development team that does not show ANY interest in giving the people what they want, (and after all, who are you creating it for if not the train simulator community?) And number 2, a world environment where the ONLY moving objects are some road vehicles and the trains themselves. If someone gave you a category to name the most popular products offered, what would come to mind? In fast food McDonald's and Burger King would probably be near the top even though there are DOZENS of fast food places around the world. In train sim, where do you think Open Rails would be in its current state? Where do you think they'll rank in a year? 3 years? 5?

This is just my food for thought. Do with it as you will.

[eric]

Here's my very jaundiced take....

There is nobody is directing the roadmap. You have a couple people administering things like architecture standards and Trello card management, but that's not leadership. It's management...

What we need is leadership. Someone stepping up to say "this is the quantum leap we need to make, this is how we think we can get there"

Instead, what we have is developers working on what's important to them, and not necessarily what's important to drive the product to the next level.

[superheatedsteam]

The glTF feature supports more than a single light source.

Those who want better graphics need to pay more attention to what is happening with the glTF/glb support in OR. This was pulled (again!) from the unstable version in January due to impact on FPS but I still have that version for testing my models.

I would suggest reading up on glTF/glb and find out if the software tools you currently use are capable of creating glTF/glb models. Then start posting in the new shape format thread at Elvas Tower (https://www.elvastower.com/forums/in.../page__st__375) to demonstrate to the OR management team that this squeaky wheel requires more oil.

[baldwin]

There is one very big item that keeps Open Rails in the toy train category. The fact that smoke and steam continue to pass through supposedly solid objects.

[haverfordwest]

I like OR and use it off and on. But TRS 22 is my main train game of choice.

Mike.

[pwillard]

This was pulled (again!) from the unstable version in January

Not trying to be too bitchy about it, but this means it's still just an idea to normal people.

[BrandonS261]

Now I never meant for this forum to bash the Open Rails team but I do feel we could use some new coders who actually play the game and listen to the audience who plays the Simulator on a regular basis.
I feel the Open Rails team however much they do coding only does it for what THEY see fits and not what members who play the simulator wants.

Yes I think it is great that MSTS content can still be used however Open Rails is showing its age already with the newer Simulators out there.

I do however give the Open Rails team credit for all of the advances they have already done and it does not go unnoticed.

The physics are amazing, more animations are avalible, signaling is much more advanced and many more updates have been avalible over the years.

However we are still missing many features that are key to a simulator and one main one I can think of is a Activities Editor along with many features that are missing for steam locomotives, sky and water textures also need a makeover.

I would like to see the Open Rails team be more organized with more of a positive outlook on the future of the Simulator. Working together as a team and making sure the general public who use the Sim are satisfied before releasing it for use for everyone.

There have been some features I have not been happy with that the Open Rails team has done and released without any notification first of it happening and it seems to be happening more and more.

The Open Rails team needs to work more with the ones who run the Simulation in what they want to see for the Sim.

Yes Open Rails is very diverse but it also has so much potential that has not even been scratched at yet.

Again it is 2026 NOT 2001 so just a few things to think about.

I still like Open Rails for what it is and I don't see myself leaving any time soon but we have to look at the future and where the Simulator will be in the next 5 to 10 years.

I wish we could have an open discussion between the coders and main ones that use the Simulator on a regular bases so we can all see eye to eye but I highly doubt that will ever happen.

Brandon

[CSRX]

.....but I do feel we could use some new coders who actually play the game and listen to the audience who plays the Simulator on a regular basis.
I feel the Open Rails team however much they do coding only does it for what THEY see fits and not what members who play the simulator wants.

This, exactly this one hundred percent. That's why I have drifted off to other sims.

You got a few guys, doing all this coding, for what THEY want, but they ignore most of the things we want. Like, I'm sorry, stop fiddling with the physics time and time again, which breaks everything up to this point with every release, forcing the end users to yet again to through and redo everything to match the new data sets.

Then there are some that branch off and do their own stuff for the sim to create good weather environments, or other details, and guess what, it's a separate installment, so it may have features from a dated installment and not the current one, and guess what, your files for the sim are broken yet again. Rinse and repeat.

I'm not saying this to be a complete asshole, however, as someone who has been wanting to keep it alive for the future, as someone who was heavy into developing for the game, I'd love to finally see them actually work on what we want as a community.

Yes, I know, we wanted realistic physics and sounds, we have gotten those. However, we still want more, such as the light codes, and many other things. As I said, a good example for night time running, is Run8. Everything is lite up as it should be at night, train headlights, street lights, car headlights, windows, and they all shine and beam off the world objects. We have needed that for MSTS/ORTS for a long time now...

[dcarleton]

But hey - We've got Superelevation...! 😏
(which I never use)