Reading the press release, it sounds like it's a continuation of the current sim (I make that assumption on the basis that backward compatibility is being mentioned). I'm fairly happy with TANE but my main gripe is, as it has been since the first version of Trainz I bought, that vehicle physics are awful when it comes to braking and acceleration, as are built in sound effects. The Other Sim has been pissing all over Trainz in that respect for a long time now (and yes, it has shortcomings in other areas)."Meh, it's just eye candy. Probably will have the the crappy sound engine that gives us the famous default Clickity Clack tracksound, won't allow us to use dynamic engine sounds for electric locomotives and Multiple Units, No decent squealing or screeching when going through curves, nothing but a hammer sound on a table when going over junctions. It's funny cause a free opensource railway simulator like OpenBVE does all that."
I've been lucky over the years with my versions of Trainz, with only minor technical glitches compared to some users. I've been happy to stick with it because of the route editing side, though in all this time, I've still only managed to upload one route! If I could have the intuitive functionality of the route editor from TANE and the graphically immersive aspects of The Other Sim, I'd be very happy. That's a simplification on my part as there are other areas I'd cherry pick from both sims.
As it's a fairly niche market, I doubt we'll ever see a definitive sim that takes the best of both but as I said, I remain optimistic about the next incarnation of Trainz and look forward to seeing what we get this time (with plenty of bugs as is the N3V way ) I'm not going to knock it until I see it.