Train Sim World

Hauling Train-Riding Realism Plus A Bit of Extra Baggage
I am new to Train Sim World in any iteration. So, this is my first experience with anything that resembles the reality of riding trains in online gaming. I went through several games trying to find something fun with trains: Railway Empire, and even Tabletop Sims like Ticket to Ride. Then I discovered Train Sim World 2020, and it was everything I'd hoped for in a simulator... I just hadn't known what I wanted.
In this game you actually get to drive and ride the trains yourself. So, it's not a railway builder or manager. It is pure simulation. Of course, I've never driven a real train before... or even ridden in one for that matter since I live in the rural South. But, here I get to feel the power of moving these locomotives for myself. You move the levers and switches. You actually operate the train. Or even to just hop a train and ride along for the scenery by following the timetable. It is a mesmerizing experience if you love trains, like just about everyone.
There are issues with the game... baggage if you will. I joke sometimes about it being an 'autism simulator.' And, I have loved ones with Aspergers Syndrome and I say that without being critical. The game allows you to fixate on a repetitive fascination without really elaborating on any of the extras that most people expect in a finished polished game. What's more it has a number of persistent 'bugs.' I don't think the devs see or care about them. It looks like the community has mentioned them a few times or more. but, they just keep churning out the dlc without regard to problems in existing content. They do seem to make each dlc better than the last and learn from their past mistakes. Dovetail accomplishes much in the world of real time simulation. That is their biggest success. If you've played their fishing simulator then you know what I mean. In no other fishing game can I look as stupid as I feel when I'm tying myself up in fishing line. I actually simulate a person who does not know what I am doing.
They seem to have the attitude that this is their game and you have to love it as it has been created or leave it. Fine. I'm onboard. And, if you love trains you will be as well. That is because the simulation provides something that anyone with a train fixation will crave.
The content is extensive... I've already mentioned that. The different routes re-create many historic and modern train lines around the UK, Germany, and the US. I have seen nothing from France yet. But, if you look back at the past iteration, which is named oddly Train Simulator 2020, then you will see literally hundreds of lines were eventually developed, including French lines. It looks so interesting that I am hoping for a major sale this Winter on the old game that will allow me to purchase much of the dlc with it. Did I mention I love trains?
There are other issues with the pricing, and I admit the pricing model gave me great pause before initially buying into the game. I could see up front that it was going to be a money sinkhole. But, I can also see where the devs are coming from with that. In the world of model trains people spend a lot of money on each train set they build. They are approaching this from a history of train collecting. And, the game does allow you to do that.
Gamers, however, are preconditioned to expect to be able to purchase 'all the things.' That probably won't be a possibility for most people here, and you are most likely forced to pick and choose between lines and locomotives that best suit your wishes, at least until you have more money to throw under the train.
I don't have a problem with that model, as long as I know what I am getting into up front. I think it possibly adds to the collection feel of the old-school train builder. Either way, it is a nice feel seeing all the locomotives lined up on my profile for the routes I have collected. And, I love driving the trains and seeing the history.
My biggest issue is with the flaws. That is not really such a big thing as we pretend, I guess if you really love trains. Most every game has some minor bugs. And the bugs don't seem to be game breaking here. And, some of the AI people are funny when they do buggy things. But, most of the time they sit there looking like autistic young adults... not speaking and moving away if you invade their personal space. But, I have to say I love to see devs who care about perfecting their game. It really does matter when people care about the finished product as much as they do about making money. And, who are we kidding? We all like to make money. A game is worth about as much as you are willing and able to pay.
The big point for me is that Train Sim World 2020 has succeeded in simulating the whole experience of trains in such a way that exceeds anything I'd ever imagined. What they've done with the AI passengers for example is a great leap beyond most other games. If you played Uncharted on Playstation (hasn't everybody?) then you will know these AI passengers aren't cool like Sully and Drake. But, they do more. They accomplish much more in the world of AI development. The process has come a long way.
Of course, the game won't be for everyone. But, if you love trains, it may be the thing you are looking for, and I do recommend it above all other train games I have tried. I am also enjoying the new community challenges they recently added. It is great to have the devs adding new content all the time.

This is going to be a very cautious but none the less enthusiastic recommend from me. I bought the 2020 edition because of course I did, and the first thing I can safely say is that this is, by and far, the *most* interactive train sim money can buy. And people complain about shorter routes, very much so, and that's a valid complaint: but *if* you take this to be the tradeoff for a complex system simulation then it's really, truly worth the money.
Out of all three of the routes on offer here, the LIRR is by far the most buggy and unpolished, but I expect we'll get the fixes for it when we get the fixes for the NEC (in fact, ATC isn't even toggleable in the cab presumably because it's being reworked) - *if* we ever get it. That's the big one here, really, the DTG "If" which hangs over everything like a big smelly fart. GWR is short, sure, but it's a good route IF we get the Passenger Information System implemented. CSX Heavy Haul is a good route IF they fix the EOTD bugs which the game has had since release. This is something I want to touch on just briefly because everyone else had already mentioned DTG's frankly awful business model, and I am by no means a fangirl - but I can recognise something with potential when I play it.
The *if* continues elsewhere, however. This is a game for the patient, like someone else said - for the patient and for those who love technology designed to go at speed even when it's standing perfectly still. If you're at all like me, and you like to spend your evenings with a hot mug of tea in passenger mode, watching the rain and being comfy, then this is also the sim for you. If you're like me, and you like absurd levels of functionality with ultimately no purpose, then this is the sim for you. If you just like to plug a loco into a route, kick it on, not give a shit, and enjoy the wonder and majesty of trains as they are, without a trillion sub-systems to flick on and off and demister switches to twiddle like errant nipples, then do yourself a favour and pass on this in favour of Train Simulator or some other simulation platform.
For the sake of clarification, when I say "complex systems simulation", this is what I mean: there's a scenario on CSX called "Clear Cut" and it involves moving anywhere between one and three locos to where they need to go. I spent two and a half hours walking from one loco to the other, and if I was moving the forward locomotive, I'd switch off the back, play with the settings, adjust the headlight switch from trail to hood, and do all kinds of fun things - and the game kept giving me points for it! The entire thing made the actual driving feel like a moment where you can sit down, look around, and go "Right, that's everything sorted for the journey ahead, then." You'll know what every valve does and how it works, and when something goes wrong (something I actually enjoy in this game despite it being bugs about 50% of the time), you're stuck sitting there with a manual, rifling through switches like a magnificent Rube Goldberg machine. And you can do this in Service Mode with a timetable open on your phone/screen/kindle/microwave until your family comes to check on you to see if you're still alive. It's tremendous. The only other sim I've experienced this in is DCS and I have to say, for me to be able to compare a game to a literal military study sim is pretty dang impressive, especially given the price!
If any of the above tickles your gender-non-specific groinal regions, then check your PC specs and buy it if you can run it. Do yourself a favour, and buy it. My apologies for the meandering review and I hope this helps!

This is going to be a very cautious but none the less enthusiastic recommend from me. I bought the 2020 edition because of course I did, and the first thing I can safely say is that this is, by and far, the *most* interactive train sim money can buy. And people complain about shorter routes, very much so, and that's a valid complaint: but *if* you take this to be the tradeoff for a complex system simulation then it's really, truly worth the money.
Out of all three of the routes on offer here, the LIRR is by far the most buggy and unpolished, but I expect we'll get the fixes for it when we get the fixes for the NEC (in fact, ATC isn't even toggleable in the cab presumably because it's being reworked) - *if* we ever get it. GWR is short, sure, but it's a good route IF we get the Passenger Information System implemented. CSX Heavy Haul is a good route IF they fix the EOTD bugs which the game has had since release. This is something I want to touch on just briefly because everyone else had already mentioned DTG's frankly awful business model, and I am by no means a fangirl - but I can recognise something with potential when I play it.
The *if* continues elsewhere, however. This is a game for the patient, like someone else said - for the patient and for those who love technology designed to go at speed even when it's standing perfectly still. If you're at all like me, and you like to spend your evenings with a hot mug of tea in passenger mode, watching the rain and being comfy, then this is also the sim for you. If you're like me, and you like absurd levels of functionality with ultimately no purpose, then this is the sim for you. If you just like to plug a loco into a route, kick it on, not give a ♥♥♥♥, and enjoy the wonder and majesty of trains as they are, without a trillion sub-systems to flick on and off and demister switches to twiddle like errant nipples, then do yourself a favour and pass on this in favour of Train Simulator or some other simulation platform.
For the sake of clarification, when I say "complex systems simulation", this is what I mean: there's a scenario on CSX called "Clear Cut" and it involves moving anywhere between one and three locos to where they need to go. I spent two and a half hours walking from one loco to the other, and if I was moving the forward locomotive, I'd switch off the back, play with the settings, adjust the headlight switch from trail to hood, and do all kinds of fun things - and the game kept giving me points for it! The entire thing made the actual driving feel like a moment where you can sit down, look around, and go "Right, that's everything sorted for the journey ahead, then." You'll know what every valve does and how it works, and when something goes wrong (something I actually enjoy in this game despite it being bugs about 50% of the time), you're stuck sitting there with a manual, rifling through switches like a magnificent Rube Goldberg machine. And you can do this in Service Mode with a timetable open on your phone/screen/kindle/microwave until your family comes to check on you to see if you're still alive. It's tremendous. The only other sim I've experienced this in is DCS and I have to say, for me to be able to compare a game to a literal military study sim is pretty dang impressive, especially given the price!
If any of the above tickles your gender-non-specific groinal regions, then check your PC specs and buy it if you can run it. Do yourself a favour, and buy it. My apologies for the meandering review and I hope this helps!

☐ I will not advise this game even to my worst enemy
☐ The children
☑ Fans of Trains
☐ casual gamers
☐ Everyone
☐ hardcore gamers
☐ South Korean GMPs
☼ Graphics:
☐ To vomit on the floor
☐ Very bad
☐ Bad
☐ Correct
☐ Good
☐ Very good
☑ Fine to whine (When everything is in Ultra)
$ Quality / price:
☐ Free
☐I would have to pay to play
☑ Wait a promo
☐ Affordable
☐ Cheap
☐ At this price, it's a gift
€ PC configuration recommended:
☐ My grand mother's computer
Entry level
☐ Mid-range (Bof)
☑ High end
☐ At NASA PC
☼ Getting started
☐ Innate
☐ Easy
☑ Requires a few hours
☐ Difficulty
☐ Requires the implantation of a new arm
€ Lifetime
☐ Less time than a fly
☐ Brief
☐ Several hours
☑ Dozens of hours
☐ Infinite
@ Level of translation
☐ Not translated
☐ Translator bei Uno Russkie
☐ Many mistakes
☑ Nickel
☐ Translated into all languages
§ Bug recurrence
☐ The game is a kind of big bug in the terminal phase
☐ The bugs gene the gameplay
☐ The bugs do not disturb the gameplay but are present
☑ Some bugs
☐ The game is coded to perfection
% Optimization
☐ Really bad
☐ Bad
☐ Acceptable
☑ Correct
☐ Optimus Perfectus
* General opinion
☐ Do not play it
☑ At your own risk
☐ to try
☐ Do not waste more time and play it!
☐ A must!
✮✮✮✮✮✮✮/10

A very nice and detailed game. Liked some of the routes I tried so far and the routes are very detailed. Frame rates are very smooth with the occasional dip in frames in some places which can be noticeable at times. I liked how you could get up and move around the train or even walk around the yard or even stand at the front of the train while its moving (lol) instead of being restricted to the engineers seat.
Only negative is the costs of the additional DLC which I think is ridiculous. But Dovetail games is known as a pay to play developer and they are still charging high prices for the DLC content as they have done with train simulator in the past which is sad and outrageous.

Train Sim World was a product I came into with a few reservations. I didn't know if it would run well on my pitiful R9 380 with 2GB of VRAM. I didn't know whether the relative lack of content compared to its predecessor, Train Simulator, would make it boring. I didn't know whether the shorter route lengths would make it boring quickly. But most of all, I was worried that it just wouldn't live up to my hopes.
It did, mostly. It's the best game Dovetail has ever made. But like everything from Dovetail, nothing is perfect.
Graphics and Physics
One thing that Train Sim World gets right is physics. Trains have a pretty accurate weight to them, and while they do accelerate a bit fast when driven by AI in service mode (more on that later), they're just fine when you're driving them. The graphics also look positively stunning compared to the aging PhysX-based aesthetic of Train Simulator, with Unreal Engine 4's lighting effects clearly shining through. did you get it did you did you did you please i'm begging you laugh at my joke Sometimes, the controls get a bit weird, as the game was intended to run on consoles as well as PCs, but at least using an Xbox controller isn't painful now. However, you might want to read on a bit if you want to use custom controllers.
Realism
Every Train Sim World route has a set of scenarios with realistic timings and service patterns, along with a Service Mode that provides a 24-hour timetable. You can either ride trains, drive any service in the timetable, or do both - riding trains a bit and then commandeering a service of your own. Simulation of the train itself is very good, too - some of the more useful isolation switches (and in some trains, a lot more) are simulated, and TSW's rendition of the PZB90 system is very, very close to the real thing, with a train type selector, automatically enforced oversight limits and the correct braking requirements for signals. AWS and TPWS on UK railways are also pretty good, but they're relatively easy to implement in comparison to systems like PZB. Train physics don't leave much to be desired, either - acceleration and deceleration are surprisingly smooth and realistic. Definitely an improvement over the DB BR 423 in Train Simulator that accelerated so hard that using more than 50% throttle would cause you to start dropping points for passenger discomfort.
Not-so-good stuff
Alas, Train Sim World isn't the all-you-can-drive rail simulation system it purports to be. My first issue with it is the occasional graphical anomaly. For example, train wheel motion blur often blurs parts of the bogies too, which is ugly, but I didn't really notice it for the most part. Some of Train Simulator's camera modes are missing too - the above-cab view is gone, as is the above-track view. Thankfully, Dovetail accounted for this somewhat by adding an adjustable camera mode that's fixed to the train, accessible with the 3 key, but the above-track view is gone completely. Free cam is still around though, and you can walk through the train, around the cab and throughout stations, so it's not all bad.
There is one thing that is going to leave a lot of railfans foaming at the mouth. Aside from the Xbox controller, Train Sim World does not support external controllers like the Raildriver. They didn't even add a custom controller mapping system like, I don't know, EVERY RACING SIM EVER. What's worse is that Dovetail have been promising Raildriver support for more than a year, and we still don't have it. Now for me, this might not be an issue - I don't have a Raildriver - but there are MSTS and Train Simulator veterans who will point-blank refuse to even consider this game without support from the most renowned rail simulation controllers. I would very much want a Raildriver if it actually bloody worked with this game.
Here's the thing - the fact that Dovetail wants to push into the console gaming market is evident throughout the game. There's large UI elements, a cleaned-up driving GUI, a UE4 graphical base, etc, so they might not listen to the railfans desperately crying out for Raildriver support because they're too focused on expanding their presence on the Xbox. It's clear that while TSW is a successor, it's meant to be a step back in some areas for the sake of console compatibility - even though Dovetail have said that Raildriver support is on their roadmap, and even though Raildriver have already said that they are raring to go for that operation, it might not happen, ever. So look elsewhere if your Raildriver is dear to you,
Oh, yeah. And there's quite a lot of bugs, so your mileage may literally vary.
Conclusion
Train Simulator was a mixed bag, but it was all a lot of railfans had. If you're not a Raildriver user and you drive by keyboard like I do, Train Sim World will be a breath of fresh air into Dovetail's train sim portfolio. If you swear by your 30-something macro keys and built-in speedometer, then Train Sim World isn't for you just yet. There's a sense of incompleteness here, so if you want a game that feels like a finished product for (quite a lot of) your money, just deal with Train Simulator's aging graphics and stack up on Armstrong Powerhouse DLCs.
Update: I have since upgraded to an RX 580 with 8GB of VRAM. The stuttering issues have gone down markedly, but it still won't run at 60fps maxed out 100% of the time.

If you enjoy(ed) Train Simulator, then this is the next logical progressive step. The graphical improvements make for beautiful environments and lighting effects. The sounds don't appear to be looped in the same way they generally were in Train Sim, so the sound effects seem to be much more dynamic.
However...
If you've read through the discussions pages, you'll already know that TSW 2020 isn't without its share of bugs and glitches. I haven't yet experienced either of those things which breaks immersion or gameplay, but they're definitely there. You'll be awarded achievements at random, without actually reaching the goal of said achievement. At the same time, you'll be penalised for events beyond your control, although according to my real life train driving friend, that's pretty accurate.
There are also issues which really shouldn't exist in a present-day game/simulator. The tutorials are very limited in teaching you what to do or how to respond in any given situation. It's pretty much a case of "This is how you climb aboard; this is where you sit; this is how you start the engine; this is how you make it move." There's nothing (that i've seen yet anyway) showing you what to do if the emergency brakes are activated; how to couple/uncouple trains; what the signals and lights mean to name but a few. This information requires you to read the manual. That's fine if thumbing through pages of text is your thing. Personally, I believe stuff like this should be incorporated into the tutorials.
Anyone using TrackIR in Train Simulator will be disappointed with TSW 2020. At present, there is NO support for head tracking devices.
The key bindings are permanent and cannot be edited. You can use an Xbox 360 controller if you wish, but you will need to refer to the controls menu or the aforementioned manual to find out which key/button does what. Either way, you are forced to use the pre-mapped control inputs. You cannot use other input devices. Seriously, this should be a basic feature of any game with 2020 in its title.
Many of the locomotive cabins appear to have been rendered using a potato. Pixelated textures and sharp, jagged edges are hard to miss in first person view in some cabs.
I could go on, but while DTG really needs to address some of these points, I do have to recommend the game because of the positive side. There is a good mixture of scenarios to test and develop your skills. Some are unbelievably easy, others are insanely difficult. It would be nice to have a scenario editor, but I don't see that happening any time soon. There are plenty of timetable activities too, allowing you to take your chosen train and run the real route with it at various times of the day. You can even select a particular season, and fine tune the time and weather settings.
If you select the timetable menu and click the picture of your driver character, you get the option to "spawn walking", which is essentially a free roam mode. This is useful for hunting down the various hidden jobs across your network, such as repairing holes in fences, or refilling fire buckets. There's plenty to keep you occupied if you don't feel like doing a driving task.
In summary, I enjoy the actual process of running a passenger route and trying to keep to schedule, or hauling long trains of heavy freight wagons up and down the network. The level of immersion and the variation of tasks are the two main reasons I recommend this title to anyone looking for a decent simulator. But be aware of potential glitches and/or bugs from time to time. Oh, and wait for a sale if you want to buy DLCs!