Rail Simulator
Preview
Railroaders, toot your own horn!
by Marcus Mulkins
previewed on PC
This choo-choo train is NOT Railroad Tycoon
What is it about trains? They are like the background noise of life. Though restricted to specific paths, it seems that you cannot go anywhere without encountering them. Train lines come and go, but when business entropy catches up with one and it goes out of business, the bones - the rails, crossing guards, caution signs, et al - remain. In the county where I live in California, there hasn't been an operating train line since the 1950's, over a half-century ago. Yet, I can still see the leftover train trestles, crossing flashers, track beds, etc. And every time I encounter them, I wonder, "Where do those tracks go? What kind of engines ran these tracks? What was life like for the passengers back then, the ones that didn't simply jump into their cars and go anywhere they liked, untethered by the steel ribbons between Point A and Point B?" Ever been stopped at a rail crossing, your life involuntarily put on hold, watching car after car roll by, and comment, "What a way to run a railroad!"?
What is it like to run a railroad locomotive?
Back in 2001, Microsoft gave us the opportunity to find out with Microsoft Train Simulator. Many gamers snatched it up, thinking that maybe it was another take on the famous Railroad Tycoon. NOT. Whereas Microprose had built the empires of railroad moguls, Microsoft gave you the opportunity to see that empire up close and personal, through the eyes of the engineer. In short, Microsoft Train Simulator, developed by UK-based Kuju Entertainment, provided an environment meant to make the mouths of railroad train-modelers water. And (to me) it seemed that the game did surprisingly well. So well, imitators appeared in short order, in particular, Auran's Trainz series. The fact that Trainz generated enough interest to warrant a series of games demonstrated that there were enough wannabe choo-choo drivers willing to plop down $20-$50 to make it worthwhile to produce an encore performance.
So, all this time, Kuju has been plugging away at a new-and-improved simulator called Rail Simulator. They've sold this version to Electronic Arts, which in turn gave them a respectable budget to play with. Perhaps play -too much- as the game was originally scheduled for a September European release, followed by an American release by the end of 2007. Didn't happen. Last I heard, Europe didn't release until October and the American release was pushed back to January 16, 2008. That's starting to crowd up against Microsoft's 2008 release of Microsoft Train Simulator 2 which has been designed to specifically work for the new Vista PC environment, taking full advantage of the bells and whistles built into that software. Kuju is aiming a little lower than that and Rail Simulator will run on both Windows XP and Vista.
What's the ‘new’ in ‘new-and-improved’?
The player will be able to jump to any passing train and gain knowledge of the various trains on the route as well. Once you have jumped trains you are in full control of your new engine. Passengers that are ready to board will no longer bump into obstacles such as benches and lampposts on the platforms. When the train arrives the doors can be opened and passengers will walk off the train while those on the platform walk towards the doors. The game also sports fully functioning turntables, allowing engines to be turned 180-degrees and traversers that shift trains from one track to another, sidewise. Other new features include cargo loading and dynamic weather that changes as you go chugging along.
The most interesting addition however is the introduction of the PhysX engine. This engine is capable of handling all the train physics, particle effects, collision detection etc. There is no special card required as the actual physics processing is done by the CPU, using the engine’s runtime library routines.
