The latest expansion for OMSI 2 offers the rare opportunity to ride the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn, a suspended monorail hanging over the river and streets of the German city Wuppertal. This bus-driving simulator is a bit too serious for my tastes, as I’m more of a happy-go-bumpy Bus Simulator 18 goof, but I would very much like to visit Wuppertal. I’m sure I could become a serious OMSI driver for this. Stop taking shortcuts over the pavement. Stick to a schedule. Not jump the train off the rail into the river. I could do that. The new expansion does also let folks drive buses on the streets of Wuppertal too, but why would you when the city has a flying train?

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(Next week in The Flare Path: How to Draw a PMD-6 Anti-Personnel Mine)>

Going by the number of sketches arriving in the FP inbox at the moment, this column’s recent foray into art tuition is going down extremely well. For every RPS reader keen to spend their Friday lunch hour reading about upcoming quadruplex transport sims, imminent Seven Years War strategy offerings, ill-conceived wargame patches, and my ongoing World of Warships dalliance, it seems there are three or four hungry for bite-sized drawing lessons. I’d make some comment about the pencil being mightier than the sword/Schmeisser if I wasn’t aware of the experiments conducted in the late 1940s by the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment that proved the exact opposite. … [visit site to read more]

Both the OMSI and the OMSI 2 manual begin with the same Goethe quote. In 2011 Such a work is never actually finished – one must simply declare it to be finished once one has done as much as possible given the time and circumstances. > felt like a dangled promise… a hint of riches yet to come. In 2014, in the light of the NG272-length bug list currently dominating my play notes, it feels like a whispered apology… acknowledgement that the follow-up to one of the finest driving games of recent years was bustled out of the door before it was good and ready. (more…)

OMSI 2 has just been released and the Steam page contains my favourite feature description of all time:

Relive the change taking place in Spandau between 1986 and 1994! OMSI 2 now replicates the exciting years following the German reunification and all the innovations and route expansions (line 137 to Falkensee) that came along with it.

The exciement and dramatic changes of German reunification recreated via transport developments, timetable changes and route expansions. I’ve been waiting for this transport simulation period piece to come out ever since I first read Tim Stone’s words about the first in the series. His diary is still one of my favourite pieces of writing on the internet.

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