ICE3 comes to RW - opinion and first mods

The new ICE 3 addon for Railworks is out, in case you didn't notice! And while at first I was not so sure as why to buy it, first voices stating there is a lack of quality to this addon in the end I could not resist and buy it.

Having driven on it only once or twice the last couple of years and never having a 1st class seat behind the driver I can only speculate of how real cab and the seats behind it look, but I may say something about how it looks, sounds and feels in general if you allow.

To make things easier I list my point of view in bulletins:

contra

• cab textures are dull and low detail
• the labeling inside the cab does not look near realistic or in two cases is plainly wrong (AFB and speed or power lever)
• textures for the front lights are either flickering massively or just don't show at all while the light cone is present as it should be
• the door sounds are plain awful, much too loud, can be heard from everywhere, no matter if directly at the train or 500m away and they don't seem to fit onto the animation. The door closing "bang" is played good 2 seconds after door is already closed
• running sounds & motor: just boring. The ICE3 is a fast but silent train, but it does produce some noise even on the special built new tracks. Cologne-Düsseldorf don't have those, there is standard gear laid out so running sounds (clickety-clack) should be more viable and the motor sounds are louder in real too.
• no animation of the hidden couplings at the front of the trains, two trains just "warp" together
• default camera perspective is awful, I feel like sitting in a fish glass. Though the shape of the train supports this perspective, one could do better (see below)
• in the manual the part of the train destination list is missing
• even though a clearly "german" addon with a huge target audience in Germany, none of the scenarios and also the manual are only provided in english.

pro

• the outside model is top notch and everything important seems to be in place while nothing obvious is missing, also modeled with lots of detail and very good, sharp textures
• except for some LODs maybe, the shutters at the front only appear as black, undefined mass in lower detail settings
• passenger view is nice, though not modeled as thoroughly as the outside

In the end I would rate it 4 out of 10 for the model sold for 19,99€ on Steam. If it wouldn't be the ICE3 I could not advise to buy it in it's current state, but for realistic scenarios on Cologne-Düsseldorf it is one of the "must have" assets. Though the ICE1 by virtual Railroads would be a fair replacement.


Fortunately for us we have some dedicated fans among us, which already thought through some of my critics and improved the model a lot!
Step 1: get the sound update from Rail-Sim.de, put together by Spooner based on sounds of the ICE1 by vR (which is required to have therefor)
Step 2: get a fix for the cab view, which was first published by iceman also on Rail-Sim.de

for comparison screenshots of the two cab view positions, as you enter the cab with the "1" key and then switch onto the alternative position with right and left arrow keys.

original

pic 1

pic 2

ice

pic 1

pic 2

And while the update by ice is already really good and improves the view a lot, I was not completely content by it's outcome. Much better than the original, but I tweaked it a bit further more to my likings.

mine

pic 1

pic 2

The camera is just a bit lower as with ice, but you can still reach the levers by mouse. It may be hard to hit the right spots, but it's possible. And I changed the alternate position to somewhere just over the shoulder behind the seat. See it in action together with the soundfix in this short clip below or download directly. If you're interested for modifying the files yourself, have a look at my forum post on Rail-Sim.de with complete values for all three possibilities.

So now we have two (and a half soon) of the biggest issues of the model fixed and I may raise my final verdict to a 6/10. Enjoyable, but not really great yet.

Almost ready, though probably not so much in your interest, is the german translation for the scenarios. Also I'm having a look to at least fix the wrong descriptions in the cab and maybe use higher resolution pictures, yet I won't promise anything releaseable soon. My workshop won't grow smaller at the moment and I have little time to do anything RW related at the moment.