Hey everyone, I hope you're all okay.
Today we're in France. This is the LGV
Rhône-Alpes et Méditerranée Route
Extension add-on for Train Simulator.
This is an extension of the Marseille
to Avignon route add-on, so you need that
route as well for this one to work. I
really recommend getting this extension
route because it adds 200 kilometers to
the Marseille-Avignon route which is
very nice considering that you're
driving high speed trains here, so the
more kilometers (or miles) the better. And
in this video we'll drive the entire
route from Marseille to Lyon in the TGV
Duplex. Of course, as always this is not
going to be a long and boring 60 minute
gameplay video, so don't worry, I'll
reduce the recording to a video that's
only a fraction of the entire route
where I just show you some of the best
parts, so after watching this there will
still be plenty of stuff to explore for
those of you who are considering buying
this route. There are never too many
spoilers in any of my videos, it just
gives you a nice idea of what you're
buying here. Okay so here we go, I'll
start with a short introduction /
tutorial of this TGV Duplex. TVM is
already on, this is an in-cab signalling
system. We're also going to activate the
KVB system which is a safety system that
basically monitors the train speed and
it registers when you pass danger
signals. It can give you an alarm when
there's a danger or warning and if you
don't confirm these safety alarms within
five seconds by pressing Q this system
will activate the emergency brake. It's a
very advanced system with its own codes
so I recommend that you read the manual
if you want to know all the different
codes it can display. You activate
KVB with CTRL + Numpad Enter.
And over here we control the pantograph.
With this red switch you control which
pantograph is active, zero means none the
N means the rear pantograph and both S
and L mean the front pantograph. With
the black switch you can switch between
25 kiloVolts and 1500 Volts power mode.
When it's on LGV like now then it uses
25 kiloVolts and the M is also 25 kiloVolts but the pantograph is then raised
to a different height, and C is 1500
volts.
And of course you can turn on cab lights
and a desk light, and let's just turn on
the headlights as well by pressing H.
There is also a cruise control system
which you control with the Y and C
buttons on your keyboard.
Over here you can control the window
wipers which can also be very important
but I leave it up to you to figure out
how it works, it's very simple and we're
not gonna need it today because it's
very nice weather. Yeah, by the way
there is also a driver vigilance system
which you can activate by pressing
CTRL D. This system is called VACMA
and this system checks that the driver
is still present and if it doesn't
detect any activity from the driver it
will sound an alarm which you have to
acknowledge by pressing Numpad Enter.
Alright
that was the ultrashort TGV Duplex
tutorial, so let's go
We're now leaving Marseille and we're on
our way to Lyon.
I have to say, although I like this DLC,
it is not perfect, it has some flaws
which are not of the worst kind but it's
stuff you need to be aware of.
There was one strange thing I
noticed when I saved my game at one
point and continued a couple hours later
that I suddenly noticed that the
pantograph was down but the train was
still driving, and according to the
pantograph controls in the cab the
pantograph was still up, while it wasn't.
So that's kind of weird... when I
changed the pantograph settings to the
front pantograph it went up again, so
then it was kind of solved, but yeah it
was a weird glitch or whatever you want
to call that. And another not-so-good
thing with this route, which is probably
one of the bigger reasons that this
route is getting mixed reviews, is that
when I'm driving this train especially
in the Lyon area later on, and in one
very short portion of the Marseille area
there is a noticeable drop in frames per
second.
This doesn't last very long, maybe just a
few minutes at most, but it is very
strange,
especially because I'm playing this on
my new gaming PC which I
built to run Train Sim World on Ultra,
which of course is a much more
technically demanding simulator than
this, but in Train Sim World my fps is
always around 60 while recording, so yeah,
when a Train Simulator route suddenly
becomes more difficult for my PC than
running TSW an Ultra then there's
definitely something weird going on. But
luckily, like I said, this FPS drop
doesn't last very long, but it's not
pleasant to watch, and this is the only
route in Train Simulator that has
managed to cause a noticeable FPS drop
on this PC here so that's very
interesting, and annoying. And I'm not the
first one who is reporting this FPS
issue so it's definitely a problem with
this route. Several other people who
wrote a review for this route said that
the route doesn't load at all or that it
doesn't load properly: it starts with an
error or something. Well, that kind of
makes me wonder if those people maybe
forgot that this route needs
the original Marseille-Avignon route to
work, but of course I don't know if
that's the case, because the people who
reported this loading error barely gave
any more details, so I guess we'll
never know.
Besides these issues, I do like the route
and overall I definitely give it a
positive review. I also like the TGV
Duplex -  it has cool functions, nice
details.
Some people complain a bit about the
sound, but personally I think the sounds
are okay. DTG wrote in the manual
something like that they can't guarantee
lifelike sounds because they don't
always have access to that or something,
but I think the sounds here are really
okay, they don't bother me in any way. The scenery is
very nice as well along the entire route,
lots of details. And I happen to no this
part of France a little bit from
traveling around there in real life, and
yeah to me it looks like the correct type
of landscape and architecture and trees
and stuff, so yeah no
complaints there either. It's a very nice
looking route and it was quite a long
drive from Marseille to Lyon, but I
really enjoyed making this video, there
was plenty of cool stuff along the route
and the people who created this DLC
definitely did quite a bit of research.
So yeah overall this is a nice route but
it's not perfect.
Some people love this route so much that
they gave it a 9/10 score. Of course
scores like that are very personal and
it's not a thing I usually do in reviews
or my videos, but if I were to give this
route such a score then
I think a 6.5/10 would be
a very realistic score, yeah I think the
developers should be happy with that
because it's a nice route like I said
but especially that FPS drop, but also
the weird little glitch where the
pantograph suddenly was down after I
loaded the game, well that means that a
7/10 already sounds a bit
too positive. So yeah, nice route but they
can do better and they have done better
with other routes.. And we're now at the
end of this route as you can see and
with that we're at the end of this video
as well, so I hope this was helpful, thank
you for watching.
Take care.
