Hi all,

Railway generation rework:

We've completely reworked the way tracks are generated and rendered. They are now generated in real-time, in-game.

This brings many improvements such as significantly smaller build size (60% reduction), much faster build-making process and notable optimizations with all railways further than 350m being drawn with a simpler model, as well as GPU instanced rendering.

In future this change will allow us to further improve performance, dynamically change tracks in real-time and eventually make world mod support, if we reach that goal.

Improved job taking:

We streamlined many job-related issues with a very simple improvement that involves how players take jobs - by adding Job Overviews.

When you go to a station office, on a desk you'll find Job Overviews. Rather than this paper being the job, it only serves as an overview. Insert it to a job validator to accept it and only then it will print out a full-detailed Job Booklet. You can then validate this booklet afterwards, to print out a Job Report, like before.

This change eliminates numerous sources of confusion among new players, such as not knowing how to take a job, whether Job Report is a main booklet to take, or being unaware of when job timer begins ticking (now it starts when you explicitly accept the job). Job Overview system also prevents cheating (placing cars where they should be before accepting job), and might fix stuttering when nearing stations, due to having less pages to render.

Other changes:

There are a few more notable changes:

• NonVR teleport console command

• Selecting Seated VR mode now automatically recenters play area

• Further improved WMR controls

• Saving locomotion type in VR (e.g. smooth)*

*Warning: VR users who play using smooth locomotion - note that due to a bug, loading the game with smooth locomotion setting saved will spawn you under the world in this build. You will need to respawn if this happens. Until we fix this in tomorrow's update, it's best if you don't leave the game with smoothing locomotion turned on, to avoid this problem.

Video updates will become weekly:

We decided we'll be moving video updates to weekly instead of per build, so that we can be more agile with major updates. You can expect this week's updates to be covered next Saturday. This way weekly video updates will be able to include more stuff in the future, such as development shots, community highlights, etc. They will also provide update information to players who weren't able to follow updates during workdays.

Full changelog:

Railway rework:

• Railway is now generated in real-time, as you move around the game world
• Greatly optimized railway meshes outside of 350m radius from the player
• Optimized generation & rendering (Unity Job System; GPU instancing)
• Reduced build size 60% (from 10.6GB to 4.25GB)
• Allows major future improvements (reduced stuttering, in-game changing, better world-editing)

Job system:

• Reworked job taking
  \ Stations now spawn Job Overviews
  \ Job Overview is a single-page item, describing job essentials
  \ Insert Job Overview in Job Validator to accept job
  \ Job Validator will then print out an actual Job Booklet
  \ Last page/step of Job Booklet says to validate job to complete it
  \ Possible stutter improvement when nearing stations, for some players

Controls:

• Locomotion type setting for VR users now gets saved
• Changing VR mode to Seated now automatically recenters play area
• WMR improvements:
  \ Fixed the WMR controllers sometimes having unusual interactions with items
  • Added pointer spheres to WMR controllers to always know where you are pointing
  • Fixed occasional bug with controller being black and unresponsive

Item storage:

• Decreased range for item respawn to L&F shed to 200m

Misc:

• Added teleport console commands (nonVR ONLY):
  \ Debug.TeleportToPoint; takes desired x and z world coords (0-16384)
  \ Debug.TeleportToPointNormalized; takes normalized x and z world coords (0-1)
• Updated to Unity 2018.2.21f1

That's it for today, see you soon with another update!