Dear Users!

With great pleasure, we'd like to present to you the new version of simulator - 2023.2.1 "Epoka". Please read this article thoroughly and to the very end, because the following information is extremely important for the gameplay, which will take place on the new version.

Several thousand work-hours have been put into the development of the 2023.2.1 version by the entire TD2 team. Even those of you, who follow our weekly magazine on a regular basis, could only see a fraction of what had been developed within the comfort of our homes, sometimes even for several years, to finally come to life in this version. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to this release!

UniStorm

Complete implementation of day and night cycle, as well as dynamic weather Lokol, Krzys292, _l0stfake7.

The system took 2 years to complete, during which we have:

• made or adapted hundreds of models, which emit the light or use the emission maps to generate static lightning,
• created the mechanism to download the weather forecast and adapt the weather settings to current weather conditions,
• created or modernized the shaders to simulate wet and snowy surfaces. The shaders automatically adapt to changes in precipitation intensity.

EP09


The first locomotive, which has been created from the very beginning by the current team of Developers. Marcin_S is the author of the model. Krzys292  is responsible for textures and physics of the vehicle. During the model development, the author used a part of chassis and cabin measurements, which have been provided by Coyotek and Grabek. Sounds of the engine have been provided by makaron1970, who works for the PTT project, the bogie is based on the model by Chrzan from Maszyna project. Some other important sounds have been provided to us by SZMIRA Rail from YouTube. Colleague Bogus_bp has done all of the necessary calculations of torque of traction motors depending on the position of the cut-off lever.

The locomotive was created in historical liveries based on the following numbers: 003, 010, 012, 013, 020, 023, 024, 030, 032, 034.

The 032 painting scheme is available only for the members of TD2 team. This is a symbolic way to say "thank you" to everyone who works for the simulator's development. The rest of liveries will only be available for the Sponsors until the end of November, to thank all of them for their financial support.

Warning: in the singleplayer mode, no restrictions apply, and all of the liveries are available.

Selected models

• New models of EHA and Ericsson signals in three levels of wear

• A new signal box model from Tomaszów Mazowiecki

• Covered wagon type 425S in two liveries

• Type 421S carbide transport wagon in version with clean and dirty containers

• Type 426Z flatcar with military vehicles as cargo

Limitations and known issues

The “Epoka” version introduces the two novelties, which in some cases might be a reason of problems during the gameplay.

Dynamic adjustment of the pantograph height to the overhead catenary.

In the default configuration, we have disabled the dynamic pantograph feature. During tests, we observed that many sceneries require adjustments to the catenary positioning, especially on curves, to ensure that the pantograph maintains contact with it. If you decide to enable this option, you must consider that while driving the EP09 locomotive, there may be voltage dropouts that trigger the Fast Cutout Switch (WS). This will require re-engaging the WS to continue the journey. All sceneries will need to undergo verification for drivability. We will provide the necessary communication in a separate thread.

New coupler models with animations and sounds.

The new models incorporate a sophisticated method of animating the individual elements of the coupler. Because of this, the initialization of the scenery on weaker PCs can take longer, in some cases even making it impossible to connect. The temporary solution is to decrease the amount of carriages on the scenery, especially those loaded from auto-exec file. The tests, which had been carried out, showed that the issue starts at approximately 150 carriages on the scenery. To mitigate the issue, we'll need to completely redevelop the way the objects are loaded, this will also help solve the issue with long loading times on the weaker PCs. Unfortunately, the ultimate solution will take a significant amount of time to implement, possibly resulting in delaying the release by several weeks, and that's why the temporary solution has been introduced.

The complete list of changes can be found in the changelog.