Train Sim World 4 released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, the Epic Games Store, Steam, and the Microsoft Store (PC) on the 26th of September 2023 after a 5-day early access period for people who pre-ordered either the Deluxe or Special edition. The release date is notable, as this was only around a year after Train Sim World 3's release.
¶ New features
¶ Photo Mode
Freeze the game and adjust the camera angle and settings until you get that perfect shot. Tweak color settings to get the right look. Adjust the depth of field to capture the sharp lines of your locomotive and soften the background. When you are done, save it to your in-game photo gallery and share it via Dovetail Live. See photo mode in action here: Train Sim World 4 Photo Mode
¶ Free Roam
Free roam mode gives you a blank canvas to get creative with. It’s just you and any route to explore without interruptions. Build your train by placing or removing locomotives, cars, and wagons at any time. No need to worry about signals, the path is dynamically set depending on where you want to go.
¶ Livery Designer 2.0
Unleash your inner artist with up to 1000 layers to design with. Made a mistake? The improved user interface now allows you to undo/redo individual changes. Make it authentic by using our new selection of operator logos and fonts. Want to create your own operator or a literary masterpiece? Now it’s easier than ever with manual text entry.
¶ Scenario Planner 2.0
Iterating on the popular scenario designer you can now chain multiple paths into a single service. The path selection will be increased, giving you more options to play with. Tell a story with introductory text at the start of a scenario. Set the scene by choosing the exact weather you want players to see when driving your scenario. Get immersed by adding AI driven services that spawn from off-world portals to create a sense of an interconnected network. All of this is easy than ever thanks to a reworked user interface for a more intuitive experience.
¶ New Scoring System
The new scoring system encourages skilful driving, rewards players for using safety systems and penalises unprofessional driving. The whole system has been balanced to ensure that players feel adequately rewarded but encouraged to aim higher. To showcase the best of the best we have introduced a new Platinum tier medal that can only be achieved by using safety systems.
¶ Volumetric Fog
Volumetric fog adds an increased sense of depth and immersion to visuals by allowing you to see light beams and the headlights projected out in front of you. This is available on all routes that launced since Train Sim World 3. However, this feature is only be available on current generation consoles and PC. An increased sense of realism now makes driving in dense fog with bright headlights an atmospheric and challenging experience.
¶ Cinematic Moments in Scenarios
Cinematics Moments are designed to give players a sense of accomplishment and wonder in select new scenarios. Cinematic camera angles and a sweeping score highlight these moments, giving you time to appreciate these magnificent machines.
¶ UI & HUD
There are now three HUD types (Normal, Simple & Mini) to best suit your gameplay style and additional options to show/hide information. Furthermore, all HUDs now benefit from a new track monitor which shows you upcoming signals and speed limits in a look-ahead window, adjusting the monitored distance based on speed.
The well recieved menu user interface from Train Sim World 3 has also been iterated with small tweaks to improve the user experience.
¶ Haptics
For users playing with a controller, a new haptic experience is available when interacting with virtual levers and buttons and while driving. Additonally the light bar of the DualShock controller is now used by Train Sim World 4.
¶ New Windshield Rain Effects
The new high fidelity windshield rain effects add a sense of realism to adverse driving conditions. These effects are exclusive to new content.
¶ OHLE Rendering
New rendering technology enhances the clarity of OHLE (Over Head Line Equipment) by drastically reducing flickering and dissapearing OHLE at a distance. This is acheived by dynamically adjusting the thickness of the wire based on distance from the camera. All new routes will benifit from improved OHLE as well as Nahverkehr Dresden and Kassel – Würzburg.
¶ New Player Assists
Players assists not only help new players get to grips with trains faster, but they also provide quality of life improvements for players who want an easier experience. You can now automatically couple to anything without any manual interaction. Uncoupling is as simple as a one button prompt. Manual junctions will be automatically set, depending on your destination. However, if you want a more authentic experience, you can disable player assists in the settings menu. If you are not sure which assists will be right for you, choose from 3 preset difficulty levels.
¶ PC Editor (beta)
The PC Editor is Dovetail Games' version of the Unreal Engine 4 toolset, the very same one their developers use. However, due to the complexity of this tool, it is best suited for advanced PC users only. An existing knowledge of Unreal Engine 4 development would be recommended. Functionality will be limited at first, but we hope to build upon it with player feedback. The PC Editor will be available at launch and distributed via the Epic Games Store but can be used with the Steam or EGS version of Train Sim World 4.
The Train Sim World 4 PC Editor (beta) can now be downloaded here from the Epic Games Store.
¶ Addon-Manager
After multiple years of development this system has made it onto all platforms with Train Sim World 4. This system loads and unloads pak-files as requested by the game in an attempt to free up memory, especially on consoles where this is a valuable system resource.
¶ Keyboard Mapping
There are many more re-bindable keyboard mappings for core functions. This means they can used with accessible controllers that replace keyboard input.