None of the three commuter railroads which run over parts of the modeled line - Metro-North, Long Island Rail Road, or New Jersey Transit - are included, nor is the Acela Express, although Peddlesden said they photographed and recorded other trains during their research visit for future release.īesides the Northeast Corridor, Train Sim World includes two other routes, both set in the present day: the Great Western Railway between London Paddington and Reading, England, and the S-Bahn Mitteldeutschland in Leipzig, Germany.Train Sim World (abbreviated to TSW) is a train simulation game series developed by Dovetail Games. Besides Amtrak trains, players can also work CSX switch jobs out of Oak Point Yard to Hunts Point Terminal, Fresh Pond Junction, or Harlem Terminal. The modeled world is just a short 32-mile slice of the Northeast Corridor: from Newark International Airport to New Rochelle, N.Y., via New York Penn Station. They can move the controls modeled in the cab or use buttons and joysticks on their controller like hotkeys for the main controls. To operate a train, a player sits down in an engineer’s seat. Instead of controlling a train viewed from a disembodied camera that can float in the air near a moving train or sit inside its cab, the player drops into the body of a railroad worker and can explore the world on foot. The second notable difference is the player’s perspective. Of those gamers, 49 percent prefer to play on a console while 21 percent prefer a computer. Matt Peddlesden, a senior producer at Dovetail Games, wrote in an email that “Console gamers are traditionally interested primarily in raw gameplay, where the usual PC player is more looking for the depth of simulation.” He said that Train Sim World aims to deliver both.Īccording to the 2018 Nielsen Games 360 report, 66 percent of the United States population over the age of 13 plays video games for an average of 11 percent of their leisure time. Train simulators are rarely released on consoles, which are less powerful than gaming computers and are considered to be for more casual games. Train Sim World is not the only train simulator available, but it has two notable differences from a traditional train sim.įirst, it’s available on Xbox One and Playstation 4 consoles in addition to Windows PC. This can mean some tricky troubleshooting for a player who tests the Emergency Fuel Shut Off button of a CSX GP38-2, discovers it works as intended, and must then figure out how to re-start the engine. Nearly all the modeled switches, buttons, and levers work, although a Dovetail spokesperson said they took some artistic licenses for safety and security reasons. Locomotive cabs in the game are modeled with near-obsessive detail. This adds considerable challenge to the game since any overspeeding will set off a penalty brake application. Players looking for a challenge can enable positive train control in the form of Amtrak’s Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System and pulse-code cab signal automatic train control, plus an alerter. They talked with engineers and shot hundreds of photos, then mounted microphones on trains and rode up and down the Northeast Corridor.Īmtrak announced the game’s release in a statement to media on July 24. To model them correctly, Dovetail developers spent a week at Amtrak facilities in New York and Washington learning about the locomotives and trains and their operation. It’s not the track arrangements and lineside scenery that they needed information about - that can all be seen on Google Maps - but rather the inner workings of the locomotives.Īmtrak trains in Train Sim World are pulled by Siemens ACS-64 locomotives. Amtrak wants you to run a train across the Northeast Corridor with an Xbox controller.īritish video game company Dovetail Games went to the railroad for help creating the route in their game Train Sim World, available on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |