INTRODUCTION

I think two words can sum up my initial thoughts on Rail Simulator (RS) - rather disappointed. The game has been in the making for two and a half years by a developer who has previous experience of working on train sims, the availability of a large community who would have been willing to provide support and feedback and the existing train sims on which to draw for ideas and inspiration. While the final boxed release does have some good points, these are overwhelmed by a series of bugs, flaws and missing/non-implemented features. RS really looks as if it was rushed out to meet a deadline and it's a bit of a mess as a result. In fact, at present, only the UK/Europe boxed edition has been released, the North American version has yet to be announced.

Anyhow, down to business and putting my very mixed thoughts on RS into a coherent review. First thing I must point out by way of disclosure is that you will see my name in the game credits. In truth my involvement with the sim was limited to sitting in on some early conceptual meetings at the Kuju offices and a very small role on an "advisory forum" (although it turned out this never actually "advised" on very much at all). I must categorically state I was not involved in beta or play testing nor did I give any sort of approval to RS as released.

Looking at computer specifications first, well RS is a new game so your PC that ran MSTS in 2002 is probably not going to cut it. The recommended minimum processer speed is 1.7Ghz, 512Mb of RAM, graphics card needs to be a Nvidia Geforce FX5200/ATI Radeon 9500 Pro or higher with at least 64Mb of RAM. A dedicated sound card (Soundblaster XFi) is recommended.

Laptop support comes with the rather large caveat that the game may work but are not supported. Cheers, then. Rail Simulator will also devour 6Gb of your hard drive space and a DVD-ROM drive is required to install and keep the disc in when running the game. Windows XP and Vista are supported though early reports on the forums are that RS seems more stable under XP.

RS is supplied in the standard DVD style case. First thing I spotted is that the description on the back claims, "travel over 1900km of track on faithfully reproduced UK and Continental routes." This is somewhat erroneous as the total distance of the four routes supplied with RS is around 400km, or 250 miles. If they are referring to the total length of individual rail sections laid within the default routes that may be true but it's rather misleading people into thinking they may be getting rather more than is actually the case. There's a fold-out keycard which is reasonably useful and a manual that can politely be described as rather scant. It's more of a quickstart guide and doesn't really go into any real depth at all. Two further pdf documents are installed to your hard drive - one describes the routes, rolling stock and scenarios the other a basic guide to using the editing tools. As both documents come to a grand total of 54 pages, given RS is a full price game this information should have been included in the manual.

Anyone who has played an EA sports game will probably be expecting the rather flamboyant "It's in the Game" logo and an introductory video clip. RS starts in a much low key manner with a couple of splash screens outlining the publisher and sponsers leading into a very simple menu screen (illustrated). From here you can tweak several in game options, access scenarios and any routes you may be working on.

ROUTES AND TRAINS

RS includes four default routes - three from the UK and one from Germany. Each is supplied with a selection of appropriate motive power and rolling stock. :

• Bath Green Park to Templecombe, approx 40 miles of the former Somerset & Dorset line - Black Five and 7F Steam locomotives, Mark One passenger rolling stock and steam era feight wagons.
  
• London Paddington to Oxford, approx 60 miles of Great Western main line - HST and Class 166 "Turbo" DMU in First Great Western livery. Class 47 Diesel loco in generic Railfreight livery. Modern hopper, container and tank wagon.
  
• York to Newcastle, 80 miles of the famous ECML "racetrack" - HST in original BR livery, Class 55 Deltic and Class 47 diesel locomotives. Mark Two passenger coaches in Blue/Grey livery and two types of freight wagon.
  
• Hagen to Siegen, approx 50 miles of line in the South Ruhr area of Germany - Class 101 Electric and Class 294 Diesel locomotives, regional passenger stock and some freight cars.

In general aesthetic terms the routes look better than the default ones that MSTS shipped with - for example the UK routes are for the most part fenced. I'll deal with graphics in general a bit later but a couple of things to point out. One or two of the routes look as if they have been put together in haste and certainly don't appear to have been beta or play tested (or if they were, the problems not fixed). Paddington to Oxford, for example, has a number of locations where the track floats above the terrain as though the builder has forgotten to "conform" the ground to the trackbed.

There are several locations along the route where trees are overhanging the line to a far greater extent than is the case in real life and the Didcot Avoiding Line has a serious issue with bushes and trees placed full square on the trackbed, so your train runs through them. This route also has some major signalling and speed restriction issues (the rest do too, but the problems seem to manifest themselves here more so as it's a multiple track main line, I guess). Prior to release, many people were expecting RS would implement some form of superelevation (cant) for curved sections but this is not evident on any of the routes. In the strictest sense a train sim doesn't need this as the trains will go round the curve according to whatever maximum speed is defined, but it's an essential feature of the real world railway where trains run at any sort of reasonable speed. It's presence may be largely cosmetic but any product which has pretensions of being a prototype simulator should incorporate the feature for curved sections.

None of the routes are 100% accurate - no one expects every minute detail to be included but a few items are particularly noticeable by their absence. To take Paddington to Oxford again as an example, the station at Paddington has been modified and cut down. The third (and fourth, for LUL) conductor rail is missing on those sections of line where it should be present. The spur towards Heathrow is missing at Airport Junction. In reality Slough into Central London is pretty much all built up but in RS you could be forgiven for thinking you are still in rural England.

Out the box the motive power and rolling stock gives a reasonable collection with which to start - again I'll cover the individual aspects in more detail below. Overall score for routes/trains I would give 7/10.

GRAPHICS

The core graphics in Rail Simulator are certainly an improvement on previous train sims, though perhaps not quite in the same league as the most recent non-railway titles such as Oblivion or Test Drive Unlimited. It's also apparent the final graphics bear little resemblance to the early mock-up imagery that Kuju posted on their site. Nevertheless, the routes come alive with swaying grass, trees which do not look like cruciform 2D models, flying birds and passengers walking around on the station platforms. Some of the 3D modelling is quite superb - the large mainline stations at Paddington, York and Newcastle must have taken months to recreate and are certainly a centrepiece of the game.

However I have noticed a tendency in some lighting conditions the overall effect is a bit garish. This is most noticeable on the Paddington to Oxford run. Sitting in the HST cab at Paddington looking towards Ranelagh Bridge the look is almost photo-realistic. However an hour later, arriving at Oxford in the twilight everything looks over-saturated and most un-lifelike, more like GTA than a train sim! As a contrast back in the country on the S&D the rolling hills and fields of rural England have a very convincing look.

The supplied trains and rolling stock are also modelled to a reasonably high standard. The Class 47 used on the York to Newcastle route is a particularly good example of a weathered and faded machine relegated to slogging its guts out on heavy freight trains until it can slog no more. By way of contrast you can retire to the opulence of the latest FGW refurbished Mark 3 interior and recline in leather comfort. RS makes use of full 3D cabs and again the detail has really been brought to life and must represent many hours of work by the artists and modellers.

So far generally so good. However where things start to unravel a little is when the sim goes into motion. The first (and most obvious) problem to my eyes is the way in which cab "sway" has been implemented. From inside the cab, the track appears to be zig-zagging towards the train at any sort of speed above 40 MPH. This would be correct for overhead catenary (to average pantograph wear) but not for the track. In external view, this is manifested as a lateral motion (aka hunting) where the train is oscillating from side to side over the track graphic even to the extent where the wheel no longer appears to be riding on the railhead. It may just be my perception but when this motion is observed at certain angles with the loco and several vehicles in view, the whole formation seems to move as one giving the train a kind of dynamic sprite appearance on top of the route graphic rather than a seamlessly integrated unit.

It's nice to see steam locos leaking steam from the various glands and valves especially when stationary but this is offset by the fact that operating the cylinder cocks, whistle or the safety valve blowing off does not exhibit a visible plume of vapour. The exhaust effects both on diesel and steam locos seem to be fairly static and the Thames Turbo DMU has no visible diesel smoke at all.

Overall I'll give the graphics 6/10 - good but not state of the art given the hardware needed to run them and the (IMHO) rather serious glitches with the cab motion and in exterior view.

SOUND

I'm not overly impressed by the sound implementation in RS. Much is made of the enhanced effects and the requirement for a decent sound card that supports EAX (reverb effects) but it's not that good. Traction sounds range from reasonable (the Class 47) to average (the HST which lacks the Paxman Turbo scream) to dire (the Class 166 DMU which sounds like it was sampled from a diesel Transit van). There is no variation in how the sound plays whether inside the cab or from exterior view. Now for diesel locos this is a fair compromise as most sims pander to the enthusiasts' desire to hear the "thrash" while driving along, albeit there should be some difference. This is also a common issue in many aircraft add-ons for Flight Sim, with the melodious burble and occasional rumble heard from the jet engines in the cabin replaced by the exterior thrust and scream. While the Turbo DMU sounds nothing like the real thing it should sound different again in the cab or saloon. It should also have the engine revs drop @50 MPH as the transmission shifts into direct drive, then slowly build up again.

The track sound is awful. If MSTS track sounded like it was sampled on an anvil, RS sounds like it was done on a xylophone or running a OO gauge model. Yes there is now track noise going through points, but it's more of a clitter than a clatter, very little roar or whoosh as you proceed at speed - even though passing trains do make an audible "swish swish" as they go past.

There are a few ambient sounds, though you shouldn't really hear birdsong in the cab at 90 MPH...

I can't really give the sound more than 4/10, let's leave it at that.

PHYSICS

Now here's an area where the RS researchers and programmers seem to have got it partly right. The first train I drove was the HST from Paddington and I was very impressed at the steady, smooth acceleration with gradual tailing off at the top end of the power curve. Braking is also much improved at least over default MSTS with trains taking a realistic distance and time to stop - though ironically this creates a trap when encountering some of the sims idiosyncracies. The only loco I found that seemed to be a bit overpowered was the Deltic though this may have been the case in real life. One (slight) irritation is that Kuju have retained the percentage system they used for power and braking effort in MSTS. The majority of diesel traction employs a series of set notches each representing a stepped increase in power. As regards braking, to apply traditional vacuum brakes in RS one needs to hold the key command until the HUD display goes through running, lap and finally apply, then depress again to bring back into the lap position once the desired pressure reduction is achieved. Release requires you to hold the key down until "release" appears on the HUD then put back into the running position. This can lead to delay in applying or releasing the brakes and should be much quicker and cleaner with simple key presses. Modern traction uses simple stepped braking and in all instances it appears partial release of brakes is not supported.

Steam physics have always been a grey area in train simulation due to the wide number of variables and the individual, tempremental nature of these snorting old beasts. RS takes a decent stab at it though driving the 7F up the bank out of Bath pressure seemed to tail off rather rapidly with no loss of power. However shutting off steam, pressure seemed to re-generate just as quickly. Water level in the boiler does not appear to change according to the gradient which could be a factor if firing manually.

Coupling physics are a bit brutal. In the S&D freight scenario I buffered the loco up to the train doing 3 - 4 MPH and the leading wagon jumped up in the air! When I used the couple command the whole train gave a sort of nervous twitch. By far the funniest (unintentionally I'm sure) moment was later in the same activity when I missed an action point at Radstock (largely because the blooming game doesn't make it clear what you have to do). Proceeded on into the platform with a passenger train on the adjacent line. At this point RS spat out its dummy and I got a message that two AI trains had crashed whereupon the adjacent train veritably threw itself into mid-air, scattering rolling stock all over the place. Well if I hadn't laughed I would have cried, at yet more silly bugs.

One thing I couldn't do though was induce any form of whheelslip or generator overload (diesel locos) despite throwing the regulator or power handle wide open to 100%.

Physics is probably the strongest point of RS and gets 7/10.

OPERATIONS

This section covers a number of features largely in conjunction with actually running the sim.

Each of the four routes is supplied with a small number of activities, known in the game as "scenarios" and the ability to drive a train in free roam. These range from relatively easy - drive a train from A to C calling at B, to complex activities requiring the operator to stop en route and do shunting or service the loco before setting out. These can best be described as "MSTS Activities meet Trainz Sessions". Unfortunately only a handful for each route does not give much to do out the box and one thing which has emerged since release of the game is that supplied tools are very limited in scope as regards the activities a user can create.

Essentially these are limited to setting up the "free roam" type scenario and not more in depth activities. It appears RS "out the box" is not even capable of operating trains to a fixed timetable, on the passenger runs your arrival time at the next station dynamically changes depending how you are driving. Maybe there was a misconception pre-release but the idea of "scenarios" (and a train hopping feature) pre-release was that RS would feature a Zusi style timetable for the route over a period of several hours, allowing the user to switch between trains and the effect of any late running etc. to react on later services. Unfortunately the end product seems far more simplistic and unprototypical. You can save a run in progress but only one save slot per scenario is available.

It appears the basic signalling logic of RS is that signals are always "clear" unless an approaching train locks the particular section. In real life the opposite is the case unless dealing with automatic signals on clear line. The signal function in game (whether as a result of poor scripting or inaccurate placement on the routes) is seriously flawed. Two specific examples...

By far the worst I've encountered is in the Paddington to Oxford route approaching Didcot East on the Down Main. This is a high speed crossover (70 MPH) which takes you on to the Down Relief line, then across to the Didcot Avoiding Line. What should happen is known as approach release. Under four aspect signalling, with the route set, the third signal from the junction will display a double yellow flashing aspect and the second signal from the junction will display a flashing single yellow. Once the system detects speed has been reduced the junction signal will clear with the route feather indicator and aspect depending on the state of the next signal ahead and . However RS simply gives you a series of green signals down onto the junction signal which is already green with the feather. In addition there would normally be an advance warning of the reduction in speed a suitable distance from the restriction, which is absent.

In fact this sporadic approach to signage is common through most of the routes. On York to Newcastle I saw an advance warning for an increase in permissible speed which you don't get in real life.

Back to signalling there are some serious errors in how signalling has been placed in the Paddington area. Depending on the era these should either be three or four aspect colour lights (with two aspect capable of displaying only yellow/red on the final approach) or single aspect searchlight signals. The route builder has used two aspect green/red signals to control several sections which has resulted in the potentially dangerous and wholly inaccurate state of a train going from a green proceed aspect straight on to a red stop signal. It may only be a game, but this has the unfortunate byproduct in one of the scenarios to make it very easy for either the player or AI trains to emulate a serious rail incident which occurred near this location a few years ago. There's also a curious green light mounted on the approach to the platform ends at Paddington. If this is intended to indicate the platform is occupied the feature is entirely fictional. In reality, the last signal approaching the buffer stops is fitted with a subsidiary or "calling on" aspect which is lit (main aspect red) when a train is signalled into an occupied line or platform.

I had another signalling oddity on the S&D this time in semaphore territory approaching Midford from the Bath direction. I don't recall seeing a distant signal but had the sequence Home signal clear, Home signal Danger (which I passed but the game didn't register a SPAD), and Home signal clear. Very strange.

It remains to be seen whether the developer has implemented a truly dynamic signalling system which can manage late running or even throw in random events such as a line closure, failed train etc. Early indications are that it hasn't and, akin to MSTS, the pathing of trains is dictated by events set up in the scenario.

Looking very briefly at a few other issues.

No "Right Away" for the driver. When you stop at a station and open the doors there is no whistle, buzzer or "right away" message to indicate station duties are complete.

There is a track monitor (MSTS style) with four sections indicating the route ahead, the next objective in the scenario, gradient profile and the train formation. Unfortunately the route section only reads about 800m ahead so is pretty useless for showing upcoming signals etc. Confusion reigns in some scenarios where part of the route is set by the programme but for some parts you are expected to do so yourself. There's a useful view where you can detach yourself from the train to do this as a type of virtual shunter but the need to do so needs to be made clear in the scenario instructions.

The overall feel and experience of operating a railway I can only really give 4/10. There are just too many fundamental errors and a lack of vision compared even to what MSTS offered.

TOOLS AND EDITORS

As it happens, RS shipped with a very basic version of the World and Scenario editors. Those wishing to delve fully into route building or scenario creation will need to download a seperate set of tools (when available) from the Rail Simulator Developments website. These may possibly be subject to some sort of licensing agreement (though are understood to be cost free to freeware developers). I may revisit this section once the tools are available for general use (always assuming I haven't put my copy on Ebay by then).

CONCLUSIONS

In writing this review I have been aware of some of views and opinions already being expressed about RS on the various forums, so rather than replicate the bug lists appearing everywhere I've tried to list the good and bad points as I see them. I'm also very conscious that commercial train sims live on a knife edge so far as viability is concerned and thinking back to @ 1999 we would have been rolling around in glee had a programme such as RS been released alongside the text or crude video clip based sims of the day. Nevertheless things have moved on since then and two very good commercial sims MSTS and Trainz have dominated the scene for many years now. Both programmes (along with the smaller more specialised offerings such as Zusi and BVE) retain a very strong following and third party creation base which is a very strong legacy to follow.

RS was always going to have to deliver something really special out the box to tempt users away (in particular content developers) from the existing sims.

On current standing that does not seem to be the case.

It may have some good points but better graphics do not compensate for the inability to run trains to a fixed timetable or poor signalling which results in trains crashing into each other.

With a full price RRP of £34.99 I expected better and frankly for what's on offer out the box I seriously question that it's worth the money.

The train simmer looking for a "pure" driving experience will be frustrated by the lack of proper timetabled runs and the ability of the game to randomise these - a simple platform alteration at Reading for example. Those seeking a network style experience will be frustrated by the lack of tools included to produce their own scenarios. The promised "developer tools" in November may lead me to revise this opinion but in my view the game should have shipped with these in the first place. With only a handful of scenarios replay value as it stands is low. Not everyone buying RS may have access to the Internet or the knowledge that these additional tools exist. There's no doubt that RS has potential but as it stands out the box it has some serious issues. RSDL need to be addressing these and getting the necessary fixes and patches out as soon as possible. I acknowledge the community already set to work trying to amend and update many aspects of the sim such as physics and how the signalling works. However this review has to deal with what users find when they open the box - rather than what might or might not be fixed, officially or unofficially.

The biggest problem RS has at the moment is that by the time (and always assuming if) the problems are sorted out, the potential user base may well either have slipped away back to the familiar and reliable or decided to give RS a miss and await the next development in train simming. I hope the developer and publisher can find the path to make RS a success but as things stand with the boxed product the best score I can award is:

56% --- 5.6/10