Mar 26
I appreciate that some of you have been waiting (patiently) for the promised announcements concerning Rail Simulator. This brief note outlines the key points of our strategy - we’ll be elaborating this in the coming weeks.

Over the past few months, we have been planning the future direction of Rail Simulator and as part of that process, we have analysed your feedback and assessed our position in the competitive marketplace. Based on this analysis, I am pleased to announce that we will be releasing Rail Simulator 2: RailWorks (working title!) in June 2009.

RailWorks will represent a new approach to simulation. Instead of providing a product, we are attempting to provide you with a platform on which you can build and operate virtual railways. We will continue to support and develop this platform over the coming months and years, adding new features to make the simulated environment ever more compelling. We will also be focusing on a number of facilities to allow you to share and even trade elements of your virtual world with other users.

Unlike Rail Simulator, RailWorks will include all the tools that were previously downloaded separately. In addition, for those of you who are online, we also plan to make use of Valve’s ‘Steam’ technology to simplify the process of supporting and upgrading the product. Don’t worry, we’ve worked hard to ensure compatibility with content created with Rail Simulator and will continue to make backward compatibility a key priority.

There will be one world-wide version of RailWorks that will include improved versions of all the routes currently in the European and North American version of Rail Simulator. In addition, we will have new routes and new locomotives along with new scenarios and significant graphical advancements. I don’t want to say too much about the new routes now, other than that one is North American, one European and one UK based. These are in the later stages of development and all are looking very impressive. I’m confident that you are going to enjoy them all.

With the launch of the RailWorks platform, we continue to demonstrate our long-term commitment to the rail simulation community. We have listened to your feedback and created RailWorks to better meet your needs.

So, to summarise: I appreciate that we’ve been quiet (thanks for your patience!), we’ve spent the last couple of months restructuring the business, realigning our product releases to meet the changed competitive environment and establishing new ways of distributing the product. Rail Simulator 2: RailWorks will provide a single platform for all of our customers with an exciting set of new content and features.

Everyone at RSDL remains committed to this hobby and going forward we want to work with as many of you as possible to make an even better product. In the coming weeks we’ll tell you more about:

The new routes
The new locomotives
The new distribution channels
The reorganized company (but don’t worry, Derek and the boys will still need biscuits, so keep the supplies coming!)
The improvements we’ve made
The New features for sharing content
Tim Gatland

Bab skrev: Jeg har skrevet det før. Hvis man vil følge lidt med, så er det forumet på Uktrainsim, man skal læse. Der er både RSAdam og RSDerek. Selvom de har været tavse på det seneste. Dog mere aktiv end på deres eget forum.

Bab skrev: (K)RS går en god fremtid i møde, tror jeg.

Apr 03
Following from the announcement of Rail Simulator 2: RailWorks last week, Tim Gatland answers some of the questions you have raised in the following interview and includes some of the first screenshots!


What are the key reasons for releasing Rail Simulator 2:RailWorks?
The key reasons for releasing RailWorks now include:

Providing a single common platform for users across the globe
To better control the distribution of the product
To provide a more powerful system for upgrades, maintenance and additional features in the future.
Which routes and trains will be offered in RailWorks?
The existing five routes: Bath–Templecombe, Oxford –Paddington, York-Newcastle, Hagen-Siegen and Barstow-San Bernardino. The Hagen-Siegen route has been significantly revised and you’ll find noticeable improvements in the other routes.

New routes are based in Europe, UK and North America. We’ve taken a different approach with these routes and really focused on creating environments that provide fun operations to demonstrate what is possible within Rail Simulator. We think you’re really going to like them.

Rolling stock will include:

ES44AC
SD40-2
Black 5 4-6-0
SDJR 7F 2-8-0
IC125 High Speed Train
Class 166 DMU
Class 47
Class 55 Deltic
DB BR101
DB BR294
NEW Class 37
NEW European locomotive
NEW North American locomotive
There will also be a host of new scenarios for all included routes.

Will add-ons for Rail Simulator be compatible with Rail Simulator 2: RailWorks?
Given how many assets RSDL have built for Rail Simulator, we’d be crazy not to have compatibility at the top of our agenda. So, while it is always hard to guarantee that there will be no compatibility issues, we have worked very hard to reduce any potential problems.

I can’t find Rail Simulator in the shops, will I be able to get RailWorks?
We understand these frustrations and this has been one of our major motivators in changing the distribution strategy for RailWorks. We have already announced our intention to distribute digitally via Steam and we will soon be announcing our physical media distribution partners.

Will EA still be the publisher?
We are in the final stages of selecting publishing partners. It is possible that they may distribute in some specific territories, but unlikely that they will distribute worldwide in the way that they did for the existing version of Rail Simulator.

I can’t afford 3D Studio Max. Will this be fixed in RailWorks?
We recognize that the tools we use at RSDL, such as 3D Studio Max, are very expensive and complex for non-professional users.

We are working closely with other parties to improve support for integration with other tool sets which are more accessible and also less expensive; more in depth information on this will be available soon. We have also commissioned additional work to improve the interaction with 3DSM and this will deliver better visual effects in RailWorks

However, the increased graphical realism available in Rail Simulator does mean that greater expertise is required to create content, so we continue to look for ways of making this process easier through tutorials and documentation.

Will I have to spend £30.00 buying a new copy of RailWorks?
Although we are still finalizing the pricing structure for RailWorks, we will offer existing users of Rail Simulator the opportunity to upgrade for a very modest price.

Will RSDL continue to provide patches and upgrades to Rail Simulator after RailWorks has been released?
We are confident that the committed users of Rail Simulator will migrate to RailWorks and therefore avoid the need for further patches to the old product. We do not want to divide our effort between supporting RailWorks and Rail Simulator.

I don’t want to use Steam. Is this mandatory with RailWorks?
Steam is becoming widely used and accepted by a huge number of PC users. However, if you do not want to use Steam, it will be possible to use the product without this facility. It will be harder for us to make corrections available and so you will probably lag in receiving fixes and upgrades, but we will provide an alternate way of doing this if demand necessitates.

What are RSDL doing after RailWorks?
We see the release of RailWorks as providing a springboard for further development of the Rail Simulator product range. Obviously we want more and better content for regions not yet covered, also we want to take advantage of some of the technical features now available in PCs and networks to provide new gameplay and collaboration features. We have a whole host of new ideas for the product – RailWorks gives us the environment to achieve these goals in an incremental way.

bl skrev:

Og så synes jeg da, at ideen med at lade brugerne lave det meste af arbejdet er helt i top!

Bjarne

I can’t afford 3D Studio Max. Will this be fixed in RailWorks?
We recognize that the tools we use at RSDL, such as 3D Studio Max, are very expensive and complex for non-professional users.

We are working closely with other parties to improve support for integration with other tool sets which are more accessible and also less expensive; more in depth information on this will be available soon. We have also commissioned additional work to improve the interaction with 3DSM and this will deliver better visual effects in RailWorks

Bab skrev: Der bliver udviklet 3D objekter i andre programmer end Gmax. Det er standarden inden for MSTS, men skal spil udviklere nødvendigvis understøtte alle gratis/billige 3D udviklingsprogrammer?
Bab