The truth about Lotus Simulator
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Welcome to the truth about Lotus Simulator. A bit about the background of the Lotus-Simulator and the developers Lotus Simulator is intended to be one of "most realistic" and "detailed" Puplic Transport simulators including busses, trains, trams and subways and also many more features like a dispatcher/ control center mode and multiplayer. Also Lotus should be highley moddable and include tools to create your own vehicles, maps etc. Lotus remains unfinished untill today, still missing fetures and being full of bugs. Lotus was originally planned to be the unofficial sucessor of Omsi 2. Oriolussoftware was also founded at around 2014/15 and since then Lotus has been in development. In 2016 Lotus was annouced by the Youtuber CaptnUbrauchbar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydBzOl3DCug . Like I said, there were many features annouced (for more informations about them, look at the Lotus steam-page) and the following showcase videos looked very promising. The Omsi-Community was hyped by Lotus, because it promised many new features and a new modern engine with better graphics than Omsi 2. The Price and release policy In 2018 Lotus was released for 39,99€ on steam as Early Access. There was confusion about it right from the start, because it was called Lotus-Simulator Rails Module on steam and only featured Rail vehicles. At the release date there were no Busses included in Lotus, wich was a big disappointment for the Omsi-Community. The Busses would be added with a later update in 2019 in a new extension called "Lotus-Simulator Streetes Module" for also 39,99€. So if you want Busses you will have to buy this "Street-Module". The developers call this "Module-System" and you could also buy only the Bus Module but then you cannot drive rail vehicles. So you needed to pay almost 80€ if you want to drive rail and street vehicles. Later there was a bundle of these two Modules released for still 60€. So Lotus is quite expensive compared to Omsi 2 or Train Simulator. Now to the actual content and how the developers work Although being released as Early Access, the content and features of the game at release were just a disappointment and it really wasnt more than a tech demo in the first months. There was only one tram (Gt6n) with basic functions (driving, sounds and lights, a few animations like the doors) and one small map (called "Diorama") wich was just as small as a model railway layout. At least you could already use the content-tool for importing own models and the map editor. But the tools were buggy and many festures are still missing like the game itself. Also, the performence was not great at the start. Lotus was hyped at the release, but also received lots of criticism. Oriolussoftware said (and still says) that they wanted to release the game as early as possible for the community to create mods and 3rd-Party Developers to create addons. Also they said they will listen to community feedback during the development. They will add the annouced features in the future. In the beginnig there were quite a few modders creating new content for Lotus like vehicles and maps. But most of the projects would later be abandoned because the community got tired of the Lotus developer policy. Conclusion - Lotus has lots of potential, but unfortunately due to wrong development policy and ignorant behavior from Oriolussoftware to the Omsi community it really struggles to be as successful as Omsi. Lotus is now much more advanced than at the release date, and many annouced features were actually done, but there is also a lot of content still missing (i will not tell what excatly, you can research it yourself if interested) and the development speed is very slow. It probably will take years untill everything that was annoced will be completed. By years, I mean at least 5, maybe 10 or more. There are already other Simulators like Tramsim or The Bus, wich progress much faster than Lotus and in the future it will be difficult for Lotus to atract new players. I would not recommend you to buy Lotus if you want to play a finished game, only if you are interested in the content or one of the DLCs and are willing to wait for the slow updates. Or if you want to create mods for the game. If you want a Bus-Simulator, then Omsi 2 is your way to go. Omsi 2 has still a big fanbase and there is lots of content available.
