Train Sim World 5

Train Sim World 4 Roadmap: December 2023

News

Roadmap

PS4

Xbox

Steam

TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) Summary

Teasers for Upcoming 2024 Routes!
Cargo Line Vol. 1 - Petroleum Pack Out Today!
SimTrack Studios’ Centro Regional Railways BR Class 323 – Releasing this week!
Upcoming Route: Bernina Line: Ospizio Bernina – Tirano – developed by Rivet Games
Winter Core Update (Part 1) Patch Notes
Midland Main Line Improvements
Progress on TSW3 Improvements
West Somerset Railway – Remastered! – An upcoming free update to the route!
Community Corner & Festive Event Highlights
Community Talking Points

And just to cover the changes from the previous graphic:

Named announced content and removed released Add-ons.
Updated Winter Core Update into Part 1 and Part 2.

We’ve also moved content to fit into updated timeframes, including:

Köln-Aachen Timetable Update moved to 0-3 months.
UK Route moved to 0-3 months (previously from 4-6 months).
US Route moved to 6+ months (previously from 4-6 months).
Removed Austrian Loco in 6+ months
Remove Loco Pack - New Partner in 6+ months

The Train Sim World Roadmap

Who’s ready to do this one last time for 2023!

Welcome back to the TSW Roadmap for December, it’s been an incredible year for us, and we always want to thank all of your in our community for getting involved, especially with our festive challenges and Photo Mode competitions, but also across the year with important feedback on our releases, conversations and discussions on new tools and your continued support with our improvements.

In this Roadmap update, you can expect more information on recent and upcoming releases, additionally you’ll be treated whole range of teasers for content coming up in 2024 due to (most) of the community challenges being completed. We’ve also got a special announcement for the West Somerset Railway route, bringing a whole host of new features to the content for free, and we’ll be diving into the community’s world to talk more on hot topics and highlight incredible work you’ve been creating this month!

Of course, we’ll also be live tonight (Tuesday, December 12th at 19:00 UTC) to talk you through this full article, find a stream event link at the end.

One final note, we won’t be releasing a January 2024 Roadmap, due to the teams being out of office over the holiday season. We’ll update you with information for releases through articles and look to share more news for progress on improvements in early February.

Content Up Ahead

Just before we jump into the future, let’s showcase the add-ons we’ve previously announced and what we have coming out this week.

Out Today – Skyhook Games’ Cargo Line Vol. 1 - Petroleum!

Just releasing today, a brand-new pack from Skyhook Games! Discover different freight traffic, on the Midland Main Line and Great Western Express, with Skyhook Games’ Cargo Line for Train Sim World 4.

Read all the details in our Cargo Line Vol. 1 – Petroleum launch article

You can also recap from the Skyhook Games’ Cargo Line Vol. 1 - Petroleum announcement article.

This release follows an extensive update to Midland Main Line, bringing a large range of improvements and fixes to the route, which you can find detailed later in this article.

SimTrack Studios’ Centro Regional Railways BR Class 323

Releasing this week, Simtrack are bringing the Centro livery to the current Class 323, with new additional features (interactive Stabling tail lamp, TSW4 rain window effects as well as a toggleable cab Hunslet the Bear plush!) as well as 5 new scenarios across the Birmingham Cross City route, which feature some additions to the environment such as Flashing Emergency Indicators.

Rivet Games’ Bernina Line: Ospizio Bernina – Tirano

In case you’ve missed it from our last Roadmap, we announced the Bernina Line, a scenic alpine adventure across the peaks of Switzerland and dipping into the southern terminus of Tirano, Italy.

This truly is a magnificent line, with the world’s steepest gradients - up to 7% at some points! We’ll be sharing more details and news of the release when we’re closer to the time on the other side of the holidays, but for now we have a few screenshots from Jasper at Rivet Games to give you before we go.

Jasper: “Driving along Lago Bianco in winter, you'll notice that the lake is actually frozen. This is one of the places where we spent extra time to make sure the winter is as close as possible to the real world. Enjoy breathtaking alpine scenery from the comfort of your warm cab.”

“With two Allegra trains meeting at Cavaglia, there's a little bit of time to admire the fall season. And with the authentic, alpine style station building of Cavaglia, how could we resist taking a couple of photos.”

“The moon is watching over Alp Grüm station, one of the places you need to stop. Don't forget to walk round the station building and enjoy the view from the balcony. Oh, and there's a little hike starting here that you can make...”

Thank you, Jasper! Keep an eye on our news articles for more information on the Bernina Line coming soon.

A Glimpse of the Future…

Now, for those that got involved in our December festive community challenges, you did a magnificent job completing the timetables and driving over 3 billion km! However, for those that were completing as many scenarios as possible, we understand the bar was set a little high on this – check out our Special Community Update video for some fun behind the screen!

So, for all of you being so diligent on completing the challenges, we’re still giving you all the teasers – It’s the holiday season after all! Let’s gaze forward into the future and see what’s in store for you all in 2024…

Mystery Teaser 1

Let's launch our teasers up from the ground! Where could we be headed next?

Learn more through our crytic festive rhymes in our Mysterious Teaser 1 Poem!

Mystery Teaser 2

Let’s cross another teaser off our list, and we’re really pushing the border on this one!

Continue your poetry and see what you can discover in our Mysterious Teaser 2 Poem!

Mystery Teaser 3

And your final treat for peak-ing the limits on our community challenges...

One final poem to end the night! View our Mysterious Teaser 3 Poem!

We're being a little less secretive with this teaser, and introducing the BR Green Class 104, the 21T hopper and the Covhop wagon to Peak Forest, complete with a significant timetable overhaul improving the busyness and variety present on the route. From DMU shuttle services to shunting rakes of wagons up and down the route, this pack will have you covered.

Patches & Updates

Winter Core Update (Part 1) – Released Yesterday

Yesterday we put live the first part of our Winter Core Update, which included new features and improvements for the Minimal HUD, Core fixes and various improvements to East Coast Main Line, Vorarlberg, Birmingham Cross City and a huge list of changes from Skyhook Games coming to Midland Main Line (in more detail below) based on the community feedback submitted by all of you.

You can view a summary of the update below, and for those keen, we have a full list of changes on our Winter Core (Part 1) Patch Notes.

(HUD) Improvements to Minimal HUD, including a dynamically scaling Track Monitor and a traction lock indicator.
(Free Roam) Fixed traction issues preventing locomotives from moving.
(Free Roam) Fixed an issue preventing the Vorarlberg BR185 from moving in free roam
(Scenario Planner) AI portals can now be used by multiple services with different start times
(ECML - Azuma) AI trains will no longer have looping diesel engine audio.
(ECML - Flying Scotsman) Increased volume of AWS sounds
(Vorarlberg - ÖBB 4024) Increased visibility of cab indicator lights during the daytime.
(Vorarlberg - ÖBB 4024) Fixed an issue where acknowledging SIFA was inconsistent.
(BCC - WSR 323) Updated windows to use TSW4 rain weather effects.
(BCC - WSR 323) Added interactable Tail Lamps under the driver seats
(Core) Fixed an issue where rain could appear underground and inside tunnels.
(Core) Fixed an issue which limited substitutions for certain services and scenarios.
(Core) Added Holiday 2023 Mastery decals – Find out more on our Festive Overview article!

The second part to this Winter Core update will include the Formation Designer, Suspension features as well as additional core improvements. We don’t have an ETA on this, but you can expect us to talk more about the delivery for this update when we return in the new year.

As a sneak peak from our internal technical engineers who are working on the Suspension improvements coming in Part 2 of the Winter Core update, we have a couple videos that you can watch to see our progress so far.

Midland Main Line Improvements

As a part of this update, we also released the list of improvements that Skyhook Games have worked on for Midland Main Line, which you can view in full on their Midland Main Line update page. This included a wide range of changes, with some of the following key headliners:

Large range of improvements to scenery, textures, signage and vegetation across the route.
Implementation of dynamic snow feature from TSW3.
All collectibles can now be found and obtained. There are now correctly 25 of each set.
Fix for the inability to acknowledge safety systems using a controller
Fix to safety systems incorrectly triggering while driving
Fix for game crash on PlayStation while driving the Class 43 HST.
Fix to allow custom livery selection for the HST in the Timetable
Many fixes to issues on the route, Class 158 DMU and Class 43 HST. Additionally, for TSW4 versions only:
Implementation of TSW4 rain effects
Updated all scenarios to use TSW4 Platinum medals and Scoring 2.0 in the timetable.
Updated to allow use of Scenario Planner 2.0 features.

Skyhook have also put together a collection of screenshots comparing images before and after this update which you can view on their Midland Main Line Update comparison photo library.

These MML updates will have been made available from our yesterday for players on TSW4, alongside the Winter Core (Part 1) updates, and we will share more news when we can roll these out to TSW3 players.

Recent Patches

Here’s a summary of what we’ve updated this month:

November 27th Patch Highlights – TSW3

Starting off with players who own TSW3, we shared a batch of improvements to specific scenarios, tutorials and introductions which weren’t able to be completed.

November 27th Patch Highlights – TSW4

We also brought a small range of improvements to Blackpool Branches, including rail driver support, scenery tweaks, various fixes and allowing the Mastery Tile to be enabled.

Fixed Rail driver functionality for all stock.
Fixed an issue where the guard buzzer would get stuck when closing the doors
Increased performance around the graveyard near Blackpool.
Improvements to foliage performance across the route.
Added 30mph turnout sign at Blackpool North.
Added Lightfoot Lane Bridge.
Fixed the appearance of metallic materials at Preston Station.
Fixed various texture issues at St Annes Station.

November 13th Patch Highlights

(Core) Improvements to players experiencing long loading times on PS4
(Vorarlberg) Fixed blank station name boards and platform numbers across the route
(Vorarlberg) Fixed incorrect action point values displayed for ÖBB 4024 services on the menu.

Progress on Train Sim World 3 Improvements

A couple weeks ago we released our first set of improvements to TSW, which you can read in our TSW3 November 27th Patch Notes and includes a range of fixes for introductions and scenarios across various routes.

Remaining future TSW3 updates to come will include additional improvements, including to Peninsula Corridor Baby Bullet services, Horseshoe Curve scenarios, Norfolk Southern Heritage Pack fixes, as well as Improvements to the New York-Trenton timetable.

As an update on our list of TSW3 improvements we mentioned back in the TSW4 August Roadmap, here’s where we’re up to on the improvements:

[Done!] Various Tutorial & Introduction Fixes – Released on Nov 27th Patch
[Coming Soon] Midland Main Line Route Improvement Patch
[In Progress] Peninsula Corridor Baby Bullet Services
[In Progress] Scenario Fixes:
DRA - Chemical Plant Zone
HSC - Altoona Alignment
HSC - Portage Process
ARL - Tis the Season
[In Progress] Norfolk Southern Heritage Pack Post-release Improvements
[In Progress] New York-Trenton New Timetable

The Midland Main Line improvements, detailed more in depth above, will also be coming to TSW3 where applicable, and we will share news when we’re ready to get these out.

West Somerset Railway – Remastered

We’re not done giving just yet! Today we have another exciting announcement in the form of an upcoming free update to the West Somerset Railway Add-on, which brings a huge range of new service layers, a new timetable, brand new features across the route, an extension to the track at Norton Fitzwarren, updating the route to the TSW4 feature set, including ToD4 lighting and weather system, rain window effects on all WSR stock, an update to the MK1’s interior lighting and so much more!

Wow - we hope you’re excited! Let’s hand over to our Game Designer Liam who has been closely working on the changes for a breakdown of what you can expect:

A New Timetable

Alongside updates to the existing Diesel Gala timetable, we've added a brand-new timetable for the West Somerset Railway all about steam power!

Liam: “This new timetable is based on a steam gala day, players that own relating Add-ons (listed below) will be able to drive all of TSW’s steam trains on a variety of services, including shunting, stock moves, goods demonstrations, full route services, part route services and semi-fast services, along with a few other specials."

“The Flying Scotsman makes an appearance as part of the gala, adding multiple runs of the full line as a semi-stopping service. There's also a winter special based on a real West Somerset Railway winter service running through December. Players can drive a Jubilee Festive pulling a rake colourfully lit Mk1s and a Class 47 on the rear from Bishops Lydeard to Crowcombe Heathfield and back.”

“The Taunton Shuttle is also playable throughout the day. Players can drive the Class 150 from Norton Fitzwarren to Bishops Lydeard and back, with the AI taking over the mainline parts of the shuttles route."

“Mainline traffic has also been added as part of this update to both the original diesel timetable and the new steam gala timetable. Both timetables include HST traffic with the steam gala timetable including even more mainline freight and passenger services.”

“In total, with all the relevant Add-ons listed below installed, the new Steam Gala timetable includes 384 services, with 107 of those being playable services. Peak Forest will be required to run the main services along the railway, with extra services for those who own the Flying Scotsman, West Cornwall Local pack and West Cornwall Steam Railtour pack. See the list below for a full breakdown of all the layers and their required packs.”

Playable Layers:

WSR
Flying Scotsman
Peak Forest (4F, 8F, 6P)
West Cornwall Local (Class 150)
West Cornwall Steam Railtour (Christmas 6P)

AI Layers:

BR Heavy Freight Pack
Darlington Saltburn
DSN Class 20
Great Western Express
Leeds Manchester
Rail Operations Group BR Class 37/7
RHTT
Southeastern High Speed
WSR Class 33
WSR Class 52

A special thanks to the West Somerset Railway who provided details on the services and timings of one of their steam gala days. Because of their help the timetable in-game shares almost identical moves and timings of the real-life timetable, with a few exceptions made for gameplay reasons.

New Route Features

Liam: “As the new timetable is full of steam trains it felt natural to add working water towers and coal loaders to the route. A working water crane can now be found Bishops Lydeard along with 2 water towers at Minehead which are now functional.”

“There’s also a working coal loader at Minehead just outside the sheds. Parking the tender of a steam train over the dust patch on the ground will trigger the coal loading process. “

“Another route feature which isn’t steam train specific is the addition of working whistle boards for AI trains. Whenever an AI train passes one of these boards, the whistle will blow, adding that extra level of immersion. This feature will only work for trains with the whistle board feature added to them. As part of this update all Peak Forest steam locomotives (4F, 8F & 6P), and all West Somerset Railway locomotives, including the Class 33 and Class 52, have had this feature added. As for Flying Scotsman, this feature was included as part of the Winter Core Update for supported routes.”

Finally, as a brand-new feature to TSW, we’ve implemented new tidal effects to the sea. Get a short preview of this effect in a [Tidal Wave Effect clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etqAGdvgnf4)

New Scenery

Liam: “Probably the biggest part of this update to West Somerset Railway is the addition of the ToD 4 system along with an entire route overhaul to bring it to TSW4 standards. This includes new and updated foliage, new landscape material, new water and new snow.“

There’s also been a route wide scenery pass, from extra details being added to entire sections being rebuilt. These changes will make the route feel more alive while also being a closer match to the real-life railway. The era remains the same, depicting the line and region from around 2017 / 2018.

The areas around the stations have seen some of the biggest changes. Minehead town has been almost completely rebuilt to match closer to the real town. Some of the changes include new buildings around the town, a remodelled beach front and bike lanes that run alongside the track to the level crossing. Speaking of level crossings, all crossings on the route are now functional with working road traffic.

The harbour at Watchet has seen a massive overhaul with new sea walls, boats and a sea front walk which is accessible by the player. Be sure to take a seat on some of the benches added around the route.

Another big change is the station of Bishops Lydeard and the area around it. The surrounding industrial estate has been rebuilt along with the car park alongside the station. But perhaps the biggest addition is the shed south of the platforms. This was missing from the original route which was built just before this shed was installed on the real railway. But now with steam trains being added it felt like the perfect opportunity to add the shed as a place to store locomotives.

"It’s not just the route itself getting an update. All WSR stock, including the Class 33 and Class 52, have had the TSW 4 rain effects added along with the MK1’s getting updated interior lighting."

"That’s all the big points from this update to WSR. There’s plenty more about the route I’ve missed out but that’s up to the players to discover. I would like to thank everyone who has tested and helped get this update out"

Thank you, Liam, for all the information! We'll be back in the new year covering further details of this remastered route Add-on, including our plans for release, which will be free for Train Sim World 4 players with the West Somerset Railway route Add-on.

Community Corner

Festive Holiday Event 2023

Through December so far, we’ve been running festive events to celebrate the end of the year, notably our in-game Community Challenges that revealed the mystery teasers above, as well as our “12 Days of Trains-mas” Photo Mode competition which has so far seen over 800 submitted screenshots!

Here’s just some of the incredible submissions so far:

These aren’t confirmed winners, just a selection of images we wanted to showcase for this segment. Winners will be revealed on December 14th. Thank you to W4Peckett, Trainiac, Arturoo2001 and Gae14 for these images!

Today (December 12th) is the final day you can enter our 12-Days of Trains-mas Photo mode competition, and it will close tomorrow, December 13th at 15:00 UTC.

If you want to get involved, today’s theme is Wildcard, giving you the chance to submit screenshots of anything you like, and be sure to bring the "wild" part of that into question!

Check out our Festive Event forums thread for all the information, and for those of you who have been submitting images, we will be revealing the winners on our Community Festive Stream coming up this on Thursday, December 14th.

We will also be revealing the contents of our special holiday giveaway bundle on the December 14th livestream too! We’re really chuffed about this one, it's-cot to be a great bundle…

Lastly, don't forget we have our Mastery challenge going live on December 18th, which will be open all the way through until later in January, giving you the chance to earn all new Decals, as well as previous years rewards too!

Community Talking Points

Frequency of Updates

After the release period of Train Sim World 4, we were shipping frequent patches, roughly every 1-2 weeks, that targeted key issues that came about with the release. These updates varied in size, from small changelogs up to large updates which included a wide range of improvements.

Our plan going forward from the start of the new year is to ship larger, more impactful patches that target a big suite of changes all at once, and cover range of content and core improvements, but at a slightly lower frequency than what we’ve had from release until now. The amount of time we put towards working on fixes and improvements won’t change, they will be bundled up into single updates, and so we’re not constantly requiring an update to TSW4, and we can focus on making sure each release is as stable as possible.

If we need to address anything urgently, we will still intend to do so at the earliest opportunity. As always, keep your feedback coming in, and we’ll continue the conversation of our progress across important community issues.

As a note, we will still need to release Pre-requisite patches for upcoming add-ons throughout the month, however we will make it clear in the patch notes that these will be supporting updates and not to be confused with our regular patches that focus on delivering fixes and improvements.

Free Roam Spawning Issues

We are aware of the various spawning issues with Free Roam where trains are not materialising in a valid state. One example of this is the BNSF SD70-ACe spawning with the screens turned off. Included in the first part of our Winter Core Update, which went live yesterday, were some initial improvements to address spawning issues regarding the Vorarlberg BR 185, and we have been taking note of the various affected locos raised by the community as well as our beta teams. One solution that may be able to help is using the “I Am Stuck” option in the menu, we’ve seen this be helpful in some situations, but it won’t fix all cases. Our teams are working on addressing these spawning issues, as well as additional improvements to Free Roam, and we will keep you updated on any changes we make.

Glossop Services

We’ve heard the discussions and reports that many services on Glossop Line being unable to be completed due to objective instructions not appearing soon after starting. We understand that for playing wishing to complete these affected journeys, this is frustrating, and we appreciate your patience while we investigate this issue and work towards a resolution.

Substitution Issues

Additionally included in the first part of our Winter Core Update was a change that should help substitutions appearing where intended, with relevant routes and content installed.

This is our first improvement to help solve the issues with substitution, we will be continuing to take on your feedback and reviewing how we can further address substitution issue with later updates.

PC Editor

We want to share again that our ambassador Matin, Aka TrainSimPlay has created a public TSW Editor Documentation spreadsheet, which has links to all of our official resources, a huge range of community resources, and plenty of tutorials/guides all in one place! They’ve labelled each section into different topics (Route building, Scenarios, Timetables etc) and so far have over 76 pages worth of documentation / support!

We are still working towards improvements for the Editor, and continuing to learn from the community and our third-party developers for what they need most. As mentioned in our last roadmap, the changes we currently we have a focus on will be:

Ability to package files for distribution (.pak files)
Landscape material usage
Rediscovery of files when re-loading the Editor

Continuing our trend of highlighting a selection of community projects we’ve seen on our PC Editor forums, check out these fantastic projects and their progress:

Stuttgart-Wuerzburg (Frankenbahn) Route by ‘BlackPulsar’
A full route plan, with generated terrain and WIP screenshots of custom scenery assets!
New Timetable for the Tees Valley Line by ‘Fawx’
A new TVL timetable, with an initial version available to download and try out, including 154 total playable services and content from Blackpool Branches!
Oberwesterwaldbahn Route by ‘RobertSchulz’
An ambitious route project, spanning up to 78km with the potential for 28 stations! Robert has implemented terrain data and begun laying track – check out this project!

It is incredible to see so many projects beginning to really take off so quickly and seeing the praise & support from many members helping each other out. Whether you’re diving into the Editor yourself, or want to have a keen watchful eye over the community creations, be sure to head over to our PC Editor Discussion forum and find updates on more community projects, share your support / feedback, discover helpful Editor guides, FAQs and a growing list of shared resources!

Player Mods

We wanted to share that we’re still working on improvements to mod functionality in TSW4. As we mentioned in our previous update back in October, core mods seem to be in reasonable state, but mods for content add-ons need additional work. We’ve been using a selection of mods in our testing process to better understand how our updates may impact mods, and we’re still trying to understand how we can repair the affected mods when players moved from TSW3 to TSW4.

We continue to recommend that players who do mod content to be cautious for any non-core related mods as there is a risk of work going to waste if we need to update anything to implement longer term support for modding.

We’re working directly with active modders in our beta community, and we’ll keep you all informed on our progress when we have more.

Roadmap Livestream

Exec Producer Matt, and Community Manager Alex, will be talking about all the things we’ve featured above, and answering your submitted questions in the final Roadmap Live Stream of 2023! Get ready to be festive, the stream will begin from 19:00 UTC on our YouTube and Twitch channels.

Set your notifications on our December Roadmap Stream Event page

Have a question for us? Put it in our December Roadmap Q&A thread and we’ll answer as many as we can live tonight!

Wrap Up

So that’s the final Roadmap for 2023!

But it’s not all over just yet, our offices will be closed over the Christmas break, but we have a couple pieces of content for you to get stuck into before we hide away until January 2024!

Do not miss our upcoming Community Festive Stream Event on Thursday, December 14th, where we will be showcasing the winners of our 12 Days of Trains-mas Competition, hosting festive TSW gameplay, challenging you all to a Christmas quiz and finally revealing a special giveaway for over the holiday!

On top of this, later in the month we will be premiering a special 4UP relay-race challenge video and sharing our Train Sim World Tracked 2023 stats.

Aside from those bits, we wish you all a wonderful festive period with your loved ones, and we will be back in the New Year!

Train Sim World 5

12 Dec

Train Sim World 4 Roadmap: December 2023