EA Games, known for games like NHL 2K8 and Madden NFL games, has quietly released a new game for the PC.
Its Called "Rail Simulator. The game had a quiet release on January 16th. It was released in Europe first before being released here. So far, there is only 2 American Locomotives and one American Railroad…
Union Pacific Railroad and ES44DC and SD40-2. Not many choices, huh? Looks pretty good tho.
Hope it runs on XP, unlike Microsoft’s future release of MSTS 2.0, which will only run on Vista.
I dont know now… Vista aint happening for a very long time. Ive readied a new build based on new hard drives this year. It will be XP or forget it.
Oh one other thing. That game needs to have good USA Steam from the the 1880’s to the end of steam.
If someone has played the game, can you tell me if the sounds of steam are tied to the load on the engine? For example when you are at speed and close the regulator, your chuffs ought to decrease greatly unless you apply power again.
Believe it or not, I actually came across this just a while ago and downloaded the demo. And I got back on here to post about the game, but it looks like you beat me ot it bnsfkline. The demo is just a run with a 4-6-0 through Somerset in England. It seems to be a little less in depth as MSTS, but it is easier to control. Now I really cant vouch for the graphics, becasue to get any game to run i have to turn down the graphics on this thing. So you might want to try the demo first. It was partly developed bu Kuju, which also had a hand in the latter bit of MSTS. So your controls, views, and even the driving aids are quite similar. I guess you could call it a toned down version of MSTS. I enjoyed it just on the basis that it is a pretty good time killer. (Bored out here on night shift) I think with this just being a demo, it was pretty good, the real thing might actually be worth it.
Here is the website for it, http://www.ea.com/railsim/
Oh, and I am running Vista, and I had an issue with the display freezing, this was solved by hitting the windows key and then getting back into the game by clickng on the program on the start bar. It is probably an issue related to the crappy graphics on my laptop here.
I had the pleasure of downloading and installing the demo to my Raid set and playing it at high quality video and sound without any issues.
The engine operated very well, demo controls were simple (To start off, gotta crawl, walk before getting up and running)
I did not complete the mission in the 20 minutes allowed but am pleased that when provided with gradient information I was able to keep the “Weight” moving well enough.
It is a little more basic but much better.
I will be buying this product but expect to see transition era steam in the USA at some point in future in this product.
I found myself keeping a constant eye on the water gauge, boiler pressure to maintain the fire for the next hill even though the fireman was automatic.
I have played ea products in the past and at times they were lacking in quality. I think this product will be a good one.
My verdict. 5 anvils of 5.
Glad you liked it. I am going to bring it over to my PC and give it a try later today (whil watchig the Packers beat the Giants) Hopefully it will work better for me here. I may get it, because somebody will figure out how to make add ons for it, so people will come out with 3rd party things for it.
Hi,
How does this compare to other train simulators, such as Microsoft Train Simulator and Trainz (and any others)?
I’ve been playing with the demo (on Win XP) and its a huge improvement over the old Microsoft simulator that I’ve been using, but I haven’t tried many.
I’d like to buy the complete simulator, but I’m curious about how it compares to the rest.
Thanks.
dl
Way back when, about 1982, I worked for the company that built the original engineer training simulator for AT&SF. It was a real cab of an SD45 complete with all controls, etc.
Our company and Santa Fe worked together and Santa Fe had a special unit lead on many trains to take moving pictures of most of their main lines so they could use the video footage in the simulator. It gave engineer trainees a really good simulation of the trackage they would be working on.
I just bought a copy. Hopefully, I get it at by Friday. I will let you know the status… I previous had the Trains Simulator from Microsoft. [%-)]
Thanks, I’d appreciate any reviews.
The reviewer on Amazon.com gave it 2 out of 5 stars, looking forward to reading more reviews.
Not all of us are lucky enough to own a PC:-)
Some of us have Macs. Any Mac compatable train simulation games?
I was able to finish uploading a capture of part of the game.
http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/5185/combedownpulljp8.flv
Keep in mind that the resolution is a hell of alot lower than originally, the sounds may have a stutter in the first 5 seconds as the computer balances the load of the video capture program against the game load, the details were set on medium and I chose a part of the route in the demo with the least amount of visual markers.
The engine was driven with simple controls, I dont know yet if they have the cutoff controls in the expert mode but coming off the grade was convincing enough for me. The Fireman was set to Auto. He was shovelling and the rate of steam use was temporarily greater than the steam generation, You can see the pressure loss above the engineer window dropping from 240 to about 190 or so.
The train had about 5 coaches on the tender. The grade was 1 in 50.
The braking was UK Style with a apparent reliance on vacumn rather than USA train air.
No, but I would like one for my Mac.
It can say “Wooo Pig Sooie, Razorbacks”
Oooh gosh, lots of things to reply to here.
It was only a quiet release if you weren’t paying attention [;)]
It reminds me of MSTS 1 with better graphics, and sound, and it runs nearly exactly the same, except without the messages on the screen when you change throttle position, etc. I’m more looking forward to MSTS 2.
Falls Valley RR: The sound of steam are tied to throttle position, and are (finally) synched to the driver rotation! Edit: I see you already downloaded the demo…I can run it with full graphics at ~25FPS, go macs with intel chips…
MSTS 2: It is going to be released compatable with Vista, and this comes directly from the developing team.
Train sims for mac: If you have an intel chip, get paralells and run a windows installation. It’s the only way to go if you want to run a train. (I’m running boot camp, but would have preferred paralells, but it came out after I had my drive all partitioned and happy…)
I just tried (again, after a long time) the Trainz 2006 demo. So far I prefer the EA games simulator, but that may just be the demo.
There’s one thing I’m curious about. The Trainz demo shows a list of features of the full simulator. One of the features is iTrains online. Any idea what that is?
Trainz aka Auran has a (or is supposed to have …) a online server that holds content created by the people. This content is supposed to be downloadable by buyers of Trainz products within the game itself. There is also a online web site that is really a Auran Trainz product store.
If I wanted a … B&O Tom Thumb to drive on the Trainz game I could go download that engine and install it. Having tom thumb attempt to pull a hopper car of coal is a bit much.
In gaming we would download mods or other content that may or may not be supported by the publisher of the original game.
MSTS and other train games in the past have made availible this content very effectively through third party webhosting that anyone could download. The content may or may not need additional files or updating to perfection.
Inside Auran’s rules you are allowed 100 megabytes of download space per day at a rate of 4 kilobytes. That is about the same as Dailup.
In a world where big filesharing sites serve gigabyte per hour I find it really unworkable.
That sounds quite ridiculous, to say the least!
This is another reason why I don’t touch Trainz in any incarnation.
Thanks for the responses. I think I’m going to download the EA simulator.
dl