• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

train sim recommendation query

Status
Not open for further replies.

2lamp2room

New Member
Joined
27 Feb 2015
Messages
4
having just renewed my aged desktop, i would like to restart my train sim activities. i used to run a 2002 version of trainz on which i particularly enjoyed building my own tracks based on OS maps of W, Yorks. i want to avoid being tied to the "steam" setup. can anybody recommend a train sim that has good route building facilities and has the ability to take 3rd party content, freeware or payware?
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

Wim G.P.R

Member
Joined
7 Aug 2006
Messages
65
Location
CARDIFF
To me it seems to be that you are still looking at Trainz.

But if you are looking for more realistic cab views and sounds Open Bve is worth a look.

All content is basically freeware in Open Bve and you can make what you like.

So long as what you make does not infringe anyone.

It's a bit lacking in routes but not trains these days.

But I would say that as I've made quite a few of them!
 

2lamp2room

New Member
Joined
27 Feb 2015
Messages
4
Wim.G.P.R

thank you for responding to my query. My computer literacy leaves a lot to be desired and although i did download OpenBVE/BVE4 i was unable to get round the un-zipping procedure!

however i will have another go at it as the illustrations of the various rollingstock and scenes look really good.

by the way, my desktop runs on windows 7, will this be a problem?

once again many thanks.

2lamp2room
 

glbotu

Member
Joined
8 Apr 2012
Messages
644
Location
Oxford
Route building + lots of payware/freeware, you really want Trainz. If you wait around a few months, rather than getting Trainz 2012, you should be able to get your hands on Trainz: A New Era, that's basically revamped the engine to work on higher spec machines. They've released a "community edition" that's basically a public beta, but I wouldn't go for that unless you want to be frustrated by beta testing issues.

Windows 7 should be fine.
 

2lamp2room

New Member
Joined
27 Feb 2015
Messages
4
Hi Glbotu

I think I'll be taking your advice but like you said will wait for the finished version to come out. Trainz sim 12 seemed to have good overall reviews but looks to have been pulled, none available from amazon anyway.

Thanks for responding.

2lamp2room
 

jp4712

Member
Joined
1 May 2009
Messages
469
I'm surprised that you won't consider anything on the Steam platform. It does ensure that what you have works, and can be installed on more than one PC (most of us don't have more than one PC, but in practice it means that if you buy a new PC or you have a hard drive crash there's no 'proving' that you had it). TS2015 is definitely worth a look and cost-effective so long as you pick stuff up in the frequent sales.

BVE is great in physics but the graphics are very dated and availability of routes other than fictional ones is thin. Trainz was once easily the best but it hasn't kept up and its graphics engine is now painfully dated - Trainz:ANE promises to be better but early screenshots have disappointed many, me included.

I recommend that before you choose, look for YouTube videos to compare what you'll get.
 

2lamp2room

New Member
Joined
27 Feb 2015
Messages
4
Hi jp4712

Thanks for your response.
Am keeping an open mind and must confess that having browsed lots of the available reviews on both TS and Trainz, so far they are disappointing. Will consider your advice.

Thanks again

2lamp2room
 

HSTfan!!!

Established Member
Joined
11 Jun 2005
Messages
1,967
I'll be honest I found TS2015 to be a terrible piece of software and it doesn't "just work"
 

dgl

Established Member
Joined
5 Oct 2014
Messages
2,392
Yeah TS2015 on mw win8 machine crashes after about 30-40 mins and doesn't work at all on my similarly specced laptop (going by passmark ratings for cpu/graphics)



OpenBVE is ok on the win8 desktop (3.2 ghz Pentium Dual Core, Radeon 6450, 2gb ram Win8 32bit) but will only run in windowed mode (not full screen) on the laptop (2.2 ghz i3, 8gb ram, Intel HD3000 graphics win8.1 64 bit) but is otherwise ok.



My advice is try openbve first, if it doesn't work on your computer then the others probably won't work either.
 
Last edited:

Sacro

Member
Joined
20 Jan 2010
Messages
383
Yeah TS2015 on mw win8 machine crashes after about 30-40 mins and doesn't work at all on my similarly specced laptop (going by passmark ratings for cpu/graphics)



OpenBVE is ok on the win8 desktop (3.2 ghz Pentium Dual Core, Radeon 6450, 2gb ram Win8 32bit) but will only run in windowed mode (not full screen) on the laptop (2.2 ghz i3, 8gb ram, Intel HD3000 graphics win8.1 64 bit) but is otherwise ok.



My advice is try openbve first, if it doesn't work on your computer then the others probably won't work either.

Apologies for bluntness, but you're pretty much on the minimum specifications for TS2015. Laptop has more RAM and CPU power but the HD3000 isn't a good choice for anything other than basic desktop use.
 

SpacePhoenix

Established Member
Joined
18 Mar 2014
Messages
5,492
Unless you use it try disabling "windows media player network sharing service" for a performance boost.
 

Crossover

Established Member
Joined
4 Jun 2009
Messages
9,247
Location
Yorkshire
Windows 8 on 2GB RAM :shock:

I won't run Windows 7 on less than 4GB if I can at all help it!
 

Darandio

Established Member
Joined
24 Feb 2007
Messages
10,674
Location
Redcar
I'll be honest I found TS2015 to be a terrible piece of software and it doesn't "just work"

Providing you have adequate equipment and haven't installed a ton of content with no clue what you are doing (which is the downfall for many), I think you will find it does 'just work'.
 

dgl

Established Member
Joined
5 Oct 2014
Messages
2,392
Admittedly the graphics card is overclocked and the graphics smoothness at 720p medium settings is fine. The graphics card and processor will be upgraded at some point (on medium settings ETS2 is a bit jumpy) but I am limited to lga775 processors as I don't want to replace the motherboard.

My soundcard is decent at least, and as for 2gb, windows 8 32bit runs fine even with 1 gb of ram and seems to run much better on lower spec hardware than win 7.

As an addendum openBVE would run happily on a my old win xp centrino duo t2050 laptop.
 

jp4712

Member
Joined
1 May 2009
Messages
469
As others have said, I think you'll find that TS2015 does 'just work'. Otherwise I wouldn't have 2,500 hours played so far. The thing with modern, immersive games is that you can't expect to get decent results from a laptop that was built for office stuff and surfing the internet. TS2015 is the best graphically of all the sims, so it needs some graphical 'grunt' in your PC. I have a desktop PC with a GTX680 graphics card, Windows 8.1 64-bit and 16GB RAM; and this enables me to run at max settings across three monitors, 5760 x 1080 resolution. When the missus is out shopping I turn up the speakers, open the throttle on that Class 40 and we ROAR our way over Shap! :dribble:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top