So the last post here was in February about an upcoming update. It’s now practically September. Sorry about that! Was it some kind of ground breaking or technologically advanced feature being worked on behind the scene that’s holding up the update?
Not really.
Well, we over here did add one more human being to the family roster this summer. I’ve been busy developing his independence and behavior and that’s taking a lot of time!
Truthfully, other than the OSX version, there really isn’t anything new or exciting that will completely change the sim. If you have the sim now, you’ll hardly notice a difference with the update.
Well, except for a few of my favorite features:
- Glowing/dimming lamps. The electrical lamps will glow and dim as the generator kicks in when the train is in motion or slows down. It’s pretty!
- Keyboard control: additional keyboard control has been added to the throttle and the Johnson Bar, if you get tired of moving the mouse around (even though that’s like one of the main “feature” (uhh… goal) of the sim—to show the fatigue from operating the controls all day long!)
- Dynamic fireman. In the current version if you select “auto firing” your fireman Otto will always do a very good job of holding about 130 psi. In the update, you can select the “experience level” of your fireman from novice to pro. If you select novice, expect to see the pressure gauge swinging and a lot of “hunting” for the pressure. If you select “expert” of course you can expect a rock solid pressure! This can make your pulling experience quite interesting when you have a novice fireman in the left seat.
And that’s about it… not much to it if you’ve been waiting this long. Like I said, you can basically enjoy the sim as it is now and you’re not missing much from this update.
But there is a not-so-secret secret about the sim that’s to be revealed much later also!