Railfan Technology > Train Sim with best physics?

Time to take a look at train sims again, to see how good they have gotten.

Anyone (preferably a real locomotive engineer) have an opinion on the best sim for PHYSICS?

I don't care much about graphics or anything else... I want slack action, busted knuckles and other train handling realism.

Thanks in Advance...

Run8

I second the RUN8 response. I'm not a railroader but much has been said by engineers about how realistic the sim is.

Microsoft Train Simulator, although dated, is probably up there too as a good one for physics. I've played it the most and it also has tons of content and upgrades to improve the experience.

Railworks (Train Simulator 2014) sucks as far as I am concerned. It looks very nice but physics are way off in the default content. Braking is unrealistic, acceleration is not accurate, and the developers spend too much time on making it look good and not enough time in the physics.

Haven't used any of the other sims so I can't attest to their accuracy.

Nick

Posted from iPhone

One more vote for Run 8 for the most realistic physics. A couple of professional railroaders whom I know have spoken well of its relatively high level of train-handling realism.

As a non-rail who has copies of all of the major sims (and operates in them all regularly), I can tell you that Run 8 easily took the most time to get used to, and induced more pit-of-the-stomach feelings than any of the others, especially in its original route, Tehachapi. Everything I had ever observed through the years or had read about train handling from outside the craft was called into full use very quickly, and constantly called upon thereafter. I haven't had a knuckle in quite a while, but I had plenty of them in my early days in the sim. It took a LOT of practice to be able to start a train on a grade in the mountains without taking a knuckle. By contrast, I don't think I've ever had a knuckle or other such event in the other sims. And I have run mountain routes (including Tehachapi) in them, too.

There's a lot more than makes Run 8 so appealing. For example, DPU's function basically as they do in real-life, with the ability to fence them in operation. The displays in the cab are quite realistic (and have won praise from a GE engineering staff employee), and display, for example, the status of the DPU's independent of the lead units, and EOT data if you have one of those affixed (and you actually do that when starting a run if you don't have DPU's).

The multi-player (MP) feature is terrific, and works extremely well. I have been in MP sessions with a dozen or more other participants, each of us running our own trains independently, but in response to signal indication and dispatcher actions. You can easily host your own MP session for a few friends, or join the almost constantly-available pick-up sessions on one of several public servers. One of them that I use, Diverging Approach Multiplayer Server (DAMS), almost always has someone on there to run with or perhaps act as dispatcher for (and they're from around the globe, too -- there are quite a few non-Americans who enjoy running our railroads in the sim, including professional railroaders). Such servers also host scheduled larger-scale MP sessions with many participants; bid boards and assignments; road and yard jobs; and assigned dispatchers, yardmasters, trainmasters, crew callers and MOW supervisors all interacting in the sim.

Dispatching is its own function, with a native CTC board that's an interesting hybrid of the old electro-mechanical etched-panel displays, combined with modern mouse-click functions on a screen. There is also available for free download another non-native dispatching application that's entirely computer-based, and that has some excellent functionality, including route lineup and sequencing functions. Another dispatching app is in development and looks very interesting and professional. Radio communication functionality is available through an interface with the popular, free Teamspeak voice communications app, and radio comms in MP sessions can be set up for dispatching purposes to be location-related. Thus the DS can answer a tone-up to a specific radio tower. There are talking detectors, and they do randomly sound off with defects for which you must take action. Some of these functions (eg, independent operation of the DPU's and detectors) don't exist in the other sims; and others, such as multi-player, dispatching and Teamspeak integration are either very slim, or non-existent in the other sims.

And if you care about scenery at all (and I do, a lot), it is quite good in Run 8, and often even spectacular. A sunset or sunrise running in the Tehachapis, for example, can be stunning. The sky and atmospheric effects are excellent, too.

Run 8 is new and growing (about a year and a half old). Overall, it's excellent. But to be fair, it has some limitations, too.

The downloadable content (or DLC -- locomotives and cars) is all relatively contemporary (recently released SD-40's are as old as you'll get for motive power), so don't expect steam or older-era equipment. The DLC is mostly payware, with a few nice freebies if you've bought at least one route. Updates and scenery and functionality upgrades are regular and free, and have added a lot to the sim at no additional cost. The DLC is quite reasonably, even inexpensively priced, and of very good quality. But it's all through them only -- no other providers or websites currently. Don't expect the vast amount of DLC available for MSTS, both free and payware (and I have plenty of both), particularly historical equipment. Or even that of Train Simulator 2014 / Railworks, which is fairly extensive, particularly for European content (which I happen to enjoy, even as American in perspective as I am).

The developer's kit for Run 8 for those of us who want to create new routes is way overdue, and promised, and promised...but nothing yet. Mention of it on their website has disappeared; it previously was listed for a long time as 40% complete. On the other hand, there's lots of development ongoing in both MSTS and TS 2014 / Railworks, and there's always new DLC coming out, both free and payware. Yes, the Run 8 guys have a business model to follow for this new sim to meet their targets. But I for one am beginning to feel that the developers are exercising perhaps too tight a level of control, and perhaps have a too-Southwestern focus. Let's face it, developing desert scenery with towns far and few between is a lot easier than forests and fields and mixed urban area and suburban areas (an area in which Train Simulator 2014 / Railworks excels superbly, and in which MSTS can also be excellent). They've admitted online that they're California guys and don't have much experience with railroading elsewhere in the nation. That has led thus far to two excellent routes in the territory they know, namely for the Mojave Sub (Tehachapi route) and Needles Sub, and with Cajon-San Bernardino on the way. Other Southwestern routes are listed as planned (BNSF ex-Santa Fe Seligman Sub and UP ex-SP Yuma Sub). But as iconic as all of those routes are and challenging to run, some of us are starting to have a serious hankering for railroading elsewhere as well, particularly with the excellent physics, dispatching, multiplayer and other features in the Run 8 sim.

Which makes the ever-so-slow rollout of the developer's kit all the more frustrating. There is one route in development by a third party (the CSX A-Line in Florida). And the Run 8 guys appear to have finally seen the light and announced a future route based on (quite interestingly) CSX's ex-NYC Selkirk Yard in New York (which is moving along well, and now about 60% complete). My guess is that will be a centerpiece or anchor for other routes, which is the way that de facto Barstow Yard turned out to be for the existing routes out West. I, for one, am looking forward to an eastern route, as much as I enjoy and value the high desert railroading of California. Worth noting is that they did pick a sweet spot for an eastern route, though. Amazingly, I know of no publicly-available ex-NYC Water Level Route (there are a couple of small segments), or for the B&A. The Pennsy and the NEC has been extensively modeled in MSTS from Pittsburgh all the way to New York and Washington (along with some related lines, like the CNJ), and it is superb, and a tremendous achievement in scope and detail. But the NYC Water Level Route, one of the East's other big, iconic routes has never been done with a public offering. If Run 8 does it, it will probably be excellent.

Finally, a mention of OpenRails (OR). It is not a free-standing sim, but rather a new open-source interface for MSTS. It is free for download, and a very commendable, all-volunteer effort in the MSTS community which is highly worthy of support. It has thus slowly developed, release-by-release. Although it has some issues and is not yet perfected, I use it to run all of my considerable body of MSTS routes and content almost exclusively these days. The graphics engine is hugely improved over the much older, almost primitive rendering engine technology in MSTS. It also incorporates natively in one code-base the many fixes to MSTS which came along through the years (and they are legion -- MSTS was from the get-go extraordinarily and shamefully buggy and half-baked). Train handling can be more realistic, but sometimes very balky, too. This is quite different from Run 8, which seems pretty spot-on, and is always very smoothly consistent in its train-handling behavior. Overall, while OR improves MSTS considerably, and allows one to use the vast amount of DLC that's out there (especially the huge amount of historical content) with much improved graphics, it is still a work in progress.

Regrettably, the train sim side of the hobby doesn't get much attention here on TO these days. Perhaps that's because the sims all have their own boards, and they are quite extensive. But the sims keep getting better, and more worthy of attention by those of us here on TO. Some don't care for them and have said so here. That's their privilege, and I respect that. But for some of us, rail sims can allow us to enjoy railroading in some surprisingly diverse and increasingly realistic ways -- ways that we who are not professional railroaders would likely never come close to otherwise experiencing. A good friend here on TO who is a retired rail once asked me, "Why, when I can run the real thing?". Perfectly correct. But for those of us who never could or did do so, it can be another dimension to experience the industry we care about.

Works for me.

MC
Columbia, Missouri



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/14 20:34 by ironmtn.

ironmtn:
Thanks for the commentary on the various train simulators out there. I haven't run train sim software in a few years and have been looking to start doing so again, but have been overwhelmed by the number of products out there.

==jofegan

I bought--regrettably--TS2014. IMO it leaves ALOT to be desired. The Northeast Corridor, running between NYP and PHL is missing loads--and I mean loads of scenery. One example: the Trenton station consists of two platforms, and that's it. No buildings anywhere! Lots of signals and other objects are suspended in midair! Overhead road bridges are incomplete. Catenary gantries disappear for miles on end, then reappear.

On the Marias pass route, I've run thru a stop signal twice because the train refuses to stop--even after dumping the air at 25 MPH at least 1/2 mile in advance of the signal.

sums007 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I bought--regrettably--TS2014. IMO it leaves ALOT
> to be desired. The Northeast Corridor, running
> between NYP and PHL is missing loads--and I mean
> loads of scenery. One example: the Trenton
> station consists of two platforms, and that's it.
> No buildings anywhere! Lots of signals and other
> objects are suspended in midair! Overhead road
> bridges are incomplete. Catenary gantries
> disappear for miles on end, then reappear.
>
> On the Marias pass route, I've run thru a stop
> signal twice because the train refuses to
> stop--even after dumping the air at 25 MPH at
> least 1/2 mile in advance of the signal.

I have TS 2014 as well, and I have not experienced any of those things. I do not, however, have those routes, so those may be conditions specific to those routes.

One US route which I do have, Sherman Hill, runs extremely well, and the scenery is near perfect to my judgment and satisfaction, so far as I can tell from my many trips to accessible areas on Sherman during my years living in Colorado. About the only outright error I've noticed is that the three-track signal bridge at the Hermosa Road grade crossing on the west side of the hill (a familiar railfan photo location for many of us, with numerous images from the location here on TO) is placed in the sim to the east of the grade crossing rather than just to the west, its actual location. On the other hand, coming into or leaving either Cheyenne or Laramie are both quite accurate overall in terms of scenery and layout.

It's important to remember with all of these sims is that the routes can exist independent of the base simulation software package. They often have external third-party authors for routes, cars, locomotives and operating scenarios beyond those packaged with the base simulation. In fact, right now only Run 8 has no external third-party routes, cars, and locomotives, although one route is in development (the CSX A-Line in Florida), and there are downloadable train consists using Run 8's own proprietary cars and locos, along with a just a few external third-party applications (for dispatching, signal visibility enhancement, car control and one piece of equipment, a hy-rail vehicle). All of the other sims have more extensive external third-party downloadable content (or DLC -- routes, cars, locomotives, scenarios, utilities etc.) to some degree or another, often quite extensively.

Although I am not a physical scale modeler, I think there is an important parallel here to note relative to physical scale model railroading, in whatever scale you prefer. And that is that the quality of the model (be it a physical scale model, or a virtual model in a computer simulation) can vary hugely depending on the skills, technical ability and desire of the modeler for faithfulness to the prototype, and the work effort given to assure completeness, and smoothness and accuracy of operation. I have found a wide variance in quality for all kinds of DLC for MSTS, Train Simulator/Railworks, and Auran Trainz (not mentioned previously in this thread), just as there is a wide variance out there for models and layouts in the physical scale model railroading environment.

MSTS having by far the largest pool of available DLC, both free and payware, also has (as you might expect) the widest range of quality as well. There are MSTS routes and other DLC that are just OK, and some that are downright lousy and frustratingly buggy, or of poor quality visually. Then there others which are superb, both in operational quality and visual detailing. And it's not necessarily a divide between free and payware that determines that, although the payware tends to be the better-quality stuff (as you might expect). On the other hand, I have a number of free routes that are terrific, a pleasure to operate, and as good or better than some payware, even with occasional small gaps and bugs.

When it comes to scenery there is another important parallel to physical scale model railroading: a choice as to how greatly to detail, and where you want your scenery to fall on a scale between literal and replicative, or more suggestive or even impressionistic. I have watched this battle fought almost endlessly among my physical scale modeler friends through the years, and it now bubbles to the surface in the sim world, too.

In the train sim world, there appears to be a first dividing point (again, as in physical scale model railroading) between modeling an actual route, or modeling a fictional route. The strong emphasis in the early years of virtual train simming was on modeling actual routes, cars, locomotives and operations. As that content has grown and created a fairly large pool of available DLC, there has gradually been growth in interest in modeling fictional routes and other content. You can see this reflected in discussion on various sim-related sites, particularly train-sim.com.

Once the actual vs. fictional decision has been made, then the question of scenery detail and degree of literalness comes into play. In both physical scale model railroading and the rail sim world, you can find examples at almost any point on that scale, and of varying degrees of quality at a given point on that scale. Just as in physical scale model railroading, there are routes which are beautifully and richly detailed in terms of scenery, and others which are pretty minimalist by design, or just more simply, or even incompletely done. That variance can reflect a whole variety of factors, from skill, on to time and depth of interest, and much more.

In both, the availability of models becomes a factor, too. Creating quality virtual models of buildings and other scenery, and cars, locos and other operational features is just as demanding and time consuming in its own way in the sim world as in the physical scale model world. And there are always choices to be made, because any modelled world never will have the near infinite variety of structures and scenic details that the real world has. So, one makes deliberate choices and substitutions based upon availability, perhaps using available generic features for many if not most scenic elements, and then creating high-quality custom models for certain scenic elements of emphasis, such as a particular depot, roundhouse, or other notable structure or scenic features.

This mix of generic vs. custom content varies by the designer's desires, plans and work effort. I've seen considerable generic scenic content used beautifully in a route which is richly detailed and enjoyable and accurate to operate, an example being the MSTS Springfield Switch route for MSTS, which covers the Springfield, Ill. area, centered on the ex-GM&O route (used by Amtrak) through the heart of town. I have ridden through Springfield on the ex-GM&O route more times that I would care to count, and know the community well. Yet the route is so well done scenery-wise, with much generic content intermixed with custom models (such as the Springfield depot), that it was not until I had run the route many times that I realized that most of the houses in town were European structures, so skillfully are they intermixed into the overall scenery. That probably reflects what was available in DLC at the the time the route was built. Only fairly recently have home types typical to the US been modeled in MSTS and available as free DLC. In the early days of the sim, many structure modelers were European, and their output reflected that. Was this intermix of generic, European houses a problem? Not for me. The route is still one of my favorites in MSTS, in large measure because of the depth and richness of its scenic detail.

Much more could be said, but I'll leave it there for now. If you're considering getting into (or back into) the train-sim world, a good overall comparative guide to the route content is Nick Ozorak's site, At the Railyard (attherailyard.com). His review videos not only get into nitty-gritty comparisons of routes for various sims (mostly MSTS), but are entertaining to view. The video format lets you see the elements in the various sims comparatively with some excellent screen captures of actual operation, and allow you to decide what's best for your own personal preferences. As I've indicated, I have multiple sims, and enjoy each of them in their own way, and for various reasons. In a free, competitive economy (even in the simulation world), that's alright with me. And even with multiple sim software packages, and quite a bit of payware DLC, the cost is a mere fraction of physical scale model railroading, aside from computing resources (which generally should be fine for any hardware which is about five years old or newer).

Final bottom line: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, and don't throw the basic simulation product out with the content. The parallels between physical scale model railroading and virtual railroad computerized simulations are more numerous than you might realize before you get into rail sims, and many of the same overall principles and caveats apply. I've found it very helpful to keep that firmly in mind.

MC
Columbia, Missouri

MC-
Interesting stuff.

Is the Springfield switching route you refer to above the Springfield Terminal Railway route by Paul Charland in www.trainsim.com's download section?

Thanks,
Jeff

jridge Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Is the Springfield switching route you refer to
> above the Springfield Terminal Railway route by
> Paul Charland in www.trainsim.com's download
> section?
>
> Thanks,
> Jeff

No, that is not the route. The route I am referring to is the GM&OSS [GM&O Springfield Switch] route by Paul Fowler. It is not on the train-sim.com site. The only site on which I have found it is the Mophouse site, http://frankoburns.proboards.com/. This is a registration-required site, but worth the effort to register. Lots of good free content and sharing by simulation modelers in addition to the excellent GM&OSS route. Despite the site name, it is not just MoPac content, although it is perhaps the best site around for MP content for MSTS/OpenRails.

Get to the file for download of the GM&OSS route via: Mophouse File Stash --> Mophouse File Library --> Mophouse Routes section.

Sorry for the delayed response.

MC
Columbia, Missouri

Thank you all for your input... RUN 8 it is!

I actually bought that one a year or so ago, I remember running the MODGAL or MODSEL out of Bakersfield, set out a unit at Caliente to make the climb up to Tehachapi more interesting...

I'll have to see about an upgrade to Run 8 to get the latest bits and jump back on it.

I worked for BNSF for two years as a conductor, really enjoyed it. I remember hearing a story about an eastbound manifest out of Barstow that had a block of loads on the rear. Apparently the slack action from these loads running in made this train impossible to get over the road up around Maine and a number of different engineers tried unsuccessfully, apparently. I'd love to try to reconstruct this kind of scenario in the simulator and study it. Incidentally, this is the answer to the question from professional railroaders as to why you'd want to use a simulator: to practice different extreme scenarios that only come along every few years.

IronMtn, thanks for all the good info... I'm really interested in the MultiPlayer sessions... it must be a blast being on Tehachapi with a ton of trains and the dispatcher trying to keep it all fluid... I'll have to jump on one of those MP sessions, hope to see you there!

Update: I upgraded my Run 8 Mojave Sub... having all kinds of fun with it.

For example, I set out the read DPU on the H-PASBAR and put those units up front... CANNOT get up the hill without busting a knuckle. Sure had a lot of fun trying, though!

Will be buying all the upgrades here soon; want to encourage the Run8 guys to keep up the great work!

- Adam
Park City, UT.