In recent years there are two railroad simulators of consequence, RailSimulator.com’s Railworks and N3V’s (formerly Auran) Trainz. Trainz has the longer history. It has been around since 2001 and has run through quite a few different incarnations. One thing that has been constant is the frequent release and re-release of the various versions over the years. The most current edition is Trainz 12. You’ll frequently see people refer to it as TRS (short for Trainz Railroad Simulator).
Railworks is in it’s third incarnation now. The original version was released in 2009 and met somewhat lackluster reviews. Railworks 2, released in 2010, was a huge improvement over the original and received a number of awards as a great simulator. In 2011, Railworks 3: Train Simulator 2012, was released. Version 3 included a number of improvements in contents and features, most notably a new graphics engine. Another notable feature of Railworks 3 was that it was a FREE upgrade for owners of Railworks 2. That’s right: FREE. F – R – E – E. Tell me what software publisher does that for a significant update?
I’m a big fan of both, but for different reasons for each. There are still quite a few fans of Microsoft Train Simulator, but with no new updates in years, it has long since lost it’s luster.
So what are the strengths and weaknesses of each?
I’ll start with graphics. I should note first that the machine I’m running is a 6 core AMD Phenom, 8 GB of ram and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 graphics card running Windows 7 64.
Now in it’s third major version and called Train Simulator 2012, by far the biggest advantage of TS2012 is the graphics engine. The hands down winner, the TS2012 graphics are more detailed and run far more smoothly at the same resolution levels. And it really shines in the detail level of some the add-ons available. Spend some time running the Northeast Corridor or the HorseShoe Curve routes and you will be truly amazed at the visuals.
Train Simulator 2012 - Horseshoe Curve - Shot 1
Train Simulator 2012 - Horseshoe Curve - Shot 2
Trying to run Trainz 12 at as nearly identical graphics levels as I could set and I ran into frequent freezes, rendering issues with models not completely rendering, and detail levels that don’t offer the same clarity and crispness to my eye. Frame rates also suffered greatly with Trainz 12 lucky to reach frame rates of 30-40% that of what I was getting with Train Simulator 12.
Trainz12 - Southern China - Shot 1
Trainz12 - Southern China - Shot 2
This really shouldn’t be all that surprising, however. With Train Simulator 2012, Railworks has introduced a new graphics engine, dubbed TSX. While N3V’s Trainz 12 is still using the same basic engine, named Jet, they’ve been using for several versions now, just adding incremental updates with each iteration. It’s really showing it’s age now and it’s inability to keep up with the detail level being shoe-horned into the newest versions of Trainz.
Winner: Train Simulator 2012
On sound, from my perspective, it’s fairly even. Trainz 12 introduced Doppler effect sound as a train passes you, but overall I’ve noticed it really didn’t sound quite right to me a lot of the time. Trainz, for several versions, also has had some weird intermittent issues with being able to hear the engine(s) you’re driving from certain angles on the exterior view, which is where I like to drive my trains from. But all that aside, I feel that the sound is fairly equal between both simulators.
Winner: Tie
For Third Party Support, it’s a mixed bag. Trainz has a long history now of fan support and there is a massive array of fan created content available in their Download Station. You could literally spend weeks downloading it all if you wanted to. While Download Station is great for collecting all this fan content together, it does have a couple of caveats.
For one, if you don’t buy a “First Class Ticket” subscription to the Download Station, you are limited in the amount of content you can download to 100MB a day. And a “day” to them appears to be defined as a 24 hour period, not by calendar. For example, if you hit your 100MB limit at 8PM, you can’t start downloading more until 8PM the next day. Now this is based on my observations and the way it appeared to me in my experiences when I didn’t have a First Class Ticket and not based on any published policy that I could find.
On the other hand, I don’t have a problem with this policy. They are providing massive amounts of data and bandwidth to their users to upload and download custom content. Charging a fee to maintain this service is completely reasonable. Currently the fee is AUD$119.99 (roughly USD$123 in current exchange rates) for a lifetime subscription or AUD$24.99 (roughly USD$26) for an annual subscription. More than reasonable for what you’re getting.
Searching for content on Download Station is made difficult by the sheer volume of available content and the poor search tools available on the web interface. Trainz includes the Content Manager utility which you can use to search for content on Download Station as well. But regardless if you find your Download Station content via the web interface or Content Manager, the Content Manager utility is what is used to download that content. The plus side of this is that Content Manager installs the content for you once it’s downloaded.
Train Simulator 2012 has a moderate amount of fan created content out there, but it comes nowhere near the same level as Trainz. And with Railworks, you have to go out and find that content yourself from the various fans producing it. And once you have downloaded it, you have to install the files yourself using the Package Manager.
As far as Pay/DLC content goes, the opposite seems to be true. While Payware is widely available for both, the content I’ve found for Railworks appears to be generally of higher quality than that which I have found for Trainz. That’s not just speaking of the graphics, for which TS2012 wins hands down, but for the overall quality. And Steam frequently runs sales on DLC for Train Simulator 2012, so you can often get that DLC for half price.
Winner: Trainz 12 for user content, Train Simulator 2012 for Payware
What about building routes and content? Both simulators have a wide variety of user created utilities available to help you to build your own content. It’s not quick and easy to build your own route or engine or building, but without these utilities it would be a far more difficult task.
In looking at the built in route building tool for each, there are a lot of similarities in each. In both cases, it takes quite a bit of practice to figure out all the various quirks and gotchas in each. Make no mistake: If you want to build anything other than a small, flat route, it’s going to take quite a bit of effort and practice. Thankfully there are a wide variety of tutorials out there, both vendor and user created, to help you get started and to help you learn all the various things that you need to know to build your own route. Railsimulator.com, the home of Railworks, provides links to a wide variety of video tutorials on YouTube that will help you learn all the ins and outs. And they are constantly adding more. N3V doesn’t have the same level of vendor created video tutorials, but if you buy the boxed version Railroad Simulator from JustTrains (which is essentially a rebranded Trainz 12), you get an excellent 240 page printed manual to get you started, something almost unheard of in software nowadays.
Overall, for me, for building routes it came down to two things. First, how easy is it to lay and link track? The clear winner for me was Trainz. It was very easy to lay track, link sections together, mold it to the terrain, create junctions and make changes to track after it had been laid down. Railworks takes second place in all of those categories. While it was relatively easy to lay track initially, once you get beyond the basic laying track on a flat surface, it quickly fell behind Trainz in terms of ease of use. The one area it didn’t struggle with in comparison to Trainz was in laying track for “realism”. As you lay track, you define what kind of track it is (mainline, yard, etc) and you define speed limits for that track. The higher the speed limit you set, the less curvature it will let you put into the track.
The second thing was the question of how easy is it to add working industries such as passenger stations, coal mines, warehouses, etc. Again, the clear winner for me is Trainz. Trainz has a huge variety of pre-built industries that you can simply drop onto your route and it just works. Drop in a coal mine, and all you need to do is connect the tracks to your route, drive up some empty coal cars, and they will get filled up. Take those loaded coal cars down the route to a power station and you can unload them just as easily. Drop in a passenger station and you can just drive up passenger cars, stop, then load and unload. Very easy to set up and do. And there is a huge variety of industries out there that you can add.
Winner: Trainz
What about other features? One major addition for Trainz 12 is the addition of multiplayer. For the first time you can join together with other people in the same session, each of you driving your train on the same map together. I haven’t tried this yet myself, but look forward to it when I can find the time. Trainz is also available in a wide variety of versions. Windows, Mac, iPad and Android versions are all available. Another version, named My First Trainz Set, available for iOS, let’s kids build and drive trains on trainsets around a virtual house. They also have a train racing game for Wii, called Turbo Trainz.
Railworks doesn’t even come close to this level of wide support and features.
Winner: Trainz
So what about realism? When you put it all together, just how realistic does the whole thing feel? When you’re running Train Simulator 2012, you definitely get the feel of operating in a real world environment. When you’re running Trainz 12, it has more the feel of running your dad’s model railroad in the basement. It was something I really couldn’t quite put my finger on. I think it was a combination of everything put together, really, but I think the feeling was at least somewhat influenced by the disparity in graphics quality.
Winner: Railworks
When I put it all together? The final thing I would say is that I love both of these simulations, each for it’s own reasons. When I sit down to drive a train, I could easily pick either one and I often go back and forth. When I’m in the mood to build, however, I will always pick Trainz. It’s the hands down winner there in the current generation. I recently started to build my first major route. I’m thinking about sharing some posts as I go along about my experiences, but I haven’t decided for sure yet. We’ll see how it goes.
