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709 days ago
In the past sprint I worked on investigating what it would take to use the existing animation tech for signals. I was primarily focused on signal lights, how to deal with blinking lights, etc. If you don’t care about the details, the result is that the existing tech will allow us to implement signal lights using effects. There were two approaches that I considered, colored texture and effects. Using effects is the preferred approach since that is how lights work in the existing system. Here are some of the issues with each approach. Colored Texture This is what was done for the test signal in the Big demo last month. The colored texture is on a multi-faceted piece of geometry which is rotated to change the aspect of the signal. This is simple a texture, so it is very static. Issues · No way to turn off the signal. o One workaround is to create a dark texture for one of ...
985 days ago
A little backstory The last Game Developers Conference I attended was in 1996. Back then I was working at Apple and leading the development team for the Game Technology Group. Some of you may not remember the Apple of the ‘90s. Imagine John Hodgman (aka PC Guy) trying to play the role of the Mac in the PC vs. Mac commercials. Decidedly not cool. We were making an effort to get games on the Mac (cool). Apple funded the Game Technology Group whose charter was to produce a Mac game platform (Game Sprockets) and help developers port their games using it. The trouble was the ROI didn't make sense for developers (not cool). A publisher could make more money on less investment by localizing a game to FIGS or Japanese than doing a Mac port. It didn't help that Microsoft was doing a great job evangelizing DirectX, a Windows-only platform. Apple imploded in '97 and the Game Technology Group was no more (not cool). EXT. SAN FRANCISCO - PRESENT DAY I went to GDC '07 ...
1029 days ago
I decided to put up a TS-related "photo of the week." This one is from a little railroad they have at Remlinger Farms in Carnation, WA, near the Microsoft campus. I rode this with my son a few months ago. It's real steam as you can probably tell, and the guy thought I was a bit odd when I asked him if we wasn't running the boiler pressure a little close to the redline considering all the kids on board. :-)
1030 days ago
From our January 19 announcement: ...this version will be an all-new product built on the Flight Simulator X platform, the culmination of 25 years of product development and technology. Sounds great, but what does it mean? "all-new" By "all-new" we mean that we've started from scratch with our Train Sim development. We're not using any code, art, route data, world data, textures, cabs, rolling stock, etc. from Train Simulator 1. It's not that we don't love TS1 or think that it's a great product. We do love it and it is a great product. Just look at the passionate community still active these many years later. It's a testament to the great team that built TS1 (not to mention the great customers who bought it!). But the computer gaming world has changed a lot since then. For a little perspective, at the time TS1 launched: The Pentium 4 was the newest advance in processor technology. Forget Hyper-threading, let alone Dual Core. Windows ...
1037 days ago
We're doing what?? Yes, you read it right. Train Sim is back and badder than ever. Did you notice the little part that read: this version will be an all-new product built on the Flight Simulator X platform, the culmination of 25 years of product development and technology That's where we come in. The TSEngineers. Stay tuned to this blog and you'll learn what exactly this "platform" is, and how you're going to be able to use it to do some mighty cool stuff. If you haven't done so already, check out the Flight Sim X website. Pretty much everything you see in FSX comes over to the trains product. You should also check out Microsoft's free software development kit. It's an awesome way to familiarize yourself with some of the tools we use to build Train Sim. Meantime, enjoy a few snapshots from one of our research trips...
