Quite nice looking screenshots and I'm wondering if it's mostly a case of having a smaller radius to display that affords that level of detail, or the graphics engine is more efficient. Probably both! Intuitively, I think it must be more the latter, since trains can move quite relatively fast on the ground and so to have that level of detail function smoothly must require some better programming. Noel

Not exactly FSX or flight sim related, there is a Train Simulator sub-forum in the Miscellaneous forum at the bottom of the forum list, where you can ask about rail sims. A better idea, would be to ask your question over at a forum like train-sim.com, as Rail sims are not a primary focus here. Or are you comparing to FSX? If the latter, it's probably because most rail scenery is manually created, so there more artistic characteristics. Where the main GS scenery is developed from a database. of land class, mesh, coastlines autogen and scenery objects. User created scenery such as airports, always look better, and rival many other programs. That's because you now add the developers artistic impressions and talents to it.

Quite nice looking screenshots and I'm wondering if it's mostly a case of having a smaller radius to display that affords that level of detail, or the graphics engine is more efficient. Probably both! Intuitively, I think it must be more the latter, since trains can move quite relatively fast on the ground and so to have that level of detail function smoothly must require some better programming.

Whilst the train's ground speed can be much higher than an aircraft's normal ground speed, they are limited in the path they can take, so the scenery can be tailored to suit. If you could roam freely as you can in FS you'd see that not much detail exists in the world very far from the immediate surrounds of the tracks. And of course, the sim knows exactly where you are going (you don't have many choices) so can pre-fetch exactly what is needed for what you are about to see.RegardsPete

Not exactly FSX or flight sim related, there is a Train Simulator sub-forum in the Miscellaneous forum at the bottom of the forum list, where you can ask about rail sims. A better idea, would be to ask your question over at a forum like train-sim.com, as Rail sims are not a primary focus here. Or are you comparing to FSX? If the latter, it's probably because most rail scenery is manually created, so there more artistic characteristics. Where the main GS scenery is developed from a database. of land class, mesh, coastlines autogen and scenery objects. User created scenery such as airports, always look better, and rival many other programs. That's because you now add the developers artistic impressions and talents to it.

Bonus points for forum policing, except as you realized I was comparing visual detail in the two simulations. Thanks for sharing your insights.

Bonus points for forum policing, except as you realized I was comparing visual detail in the two simulations. Thanks for sharing your insights.

I looked at those screenshots, and quite frankly I don't think they look as good as some user created scenery in FSX. In fact I think scenery in MSTS looks better, in addition to it's rolling stock. I think right now FSX has the capability (Not necessarily used) to produce superior graphics then a lot of programs. It can handle scenery down to 7cm resolution, Mesh to 1M. It's just that those features to date are not fully utilized.