jayzhead

While I'd love to see luggage added to passengers, I think the passenger system as a whole in the game has much more pressing issues that need to be addressed first. As was already mentioned, the passenger quantity is laughably small, and given current performance concerns I understand that it would be difficult to implement many more of them, but it should be considered a priority to work on, there are train sims that manage much more animated passengers than simrail currently does, so I suppose it must be possible with some clever coding. But even the passengers that are currently in the game need an urgent behavioral upgrade. For starters, most of them don't ever even get on the train, even on local service platforms that only have one service stopping - what exactly are they waiting for, I wonder, if most passengers on the platform ignore the only train that stops at said platform for the next hour? Also, the few passengers that do want to get on, tend to spread out across the entire platform - which is unrealistic behavior - people IRL tend to bunch together, towards the middle of the platform, and on top of that the passengers in simrail only "wake up" to walk to the train after you've opened the doors, which means most of the time they are left behind as they need to walk for a long time to reach the train, especially if it is a short train stopped in a reasonable mid-platform position. Also, they often walk for ages to a random door down the train's length instead of walking to the door closest to them. So, a few relatively easy fixes that will not affect the game's performance in the slightest would be: * Make passengers stand closer together, towards the middle of the platform, mostly closest to the platform entrance points (stairs, underground corridors, etc). Definitely not all the way at the very end of the platform, beyond the stop points, where many of them tend to spawn now. * Have passengers start walking towards the train when it approaches the platform, as it happens IRL: people will usually get up and start walking towards a door while the train in still slowing down at the platform. * Have the passengers get on the door closest to them at any given moment, and not stubbornly slow-walk all the way down half the length of the train, making you late * Have most, if not all, passengers that are waiting on the platform get on the g'damn train, and not just stand there waiting for Godot 😛

That is definitely something that would be very fun to do in a MP service. Unfortunately, I don't see how it is viable for passenger runs as there are currently no passenger services in the game that have an actual start station - all the services come in off map already mid service, on the Warszawa end they come from W Grochow, and on the Katowice end they come from a variety of locations off map, like Bohumin, Gliwice, etc... Maybe when the Krakow extension will (finally) be released it could happen, as Krakow Glowny is the terminus station for the associated services. But the freight services that originate from the Katowice Staszic loop can definitely have a cold start added to them, especially now that many of them are run with the ET22 which is the only loco currently that supports a full cold start procedure.

Generally, the AI dispatchers are very primitive. They only seem to look at the section to the previous post, and completely disregard the timetable. If a slower service has a pt stop that is timetabled to let a pendo pass, if that pendo is not yet in the immediate section prior to the AI controlled station, it just flags the slower service through, often condemning the pendo to hang behind a freight train for a ~25km section. It is pretty much impossible to have an on-time run in with the EIP services unless the dispatch stations are all populated by players (players who know what they're doing, that is, but that's a different issue 🙂). Also, there is just plenty of weird behaviors at different AI posts that are baffling - like Dandowka, which is pretty broken and constantly holds passenger services to loop freight around them, which is the exact opposite of what it should be doing. Or GW's tendency to put on time EC services in the siding for absolutely no reason when going south, with no trains coming up behind them for the long section from Psary. Anyway, it is what it is for the moment. We just have to work around the current limitations of the AI in the game and hope the devs will improve it at some point.

As the button is not yet simulated, just cutting traction for a neutral section should be sufficient, like with older rolling stock. You can do that quickly by pressing Ctrl+numpadminus twice, that'll snap the throttle lever to the off position. IIRC, someone here claimed that is the requirement for drivers IRL anyway.

I know these are trains that are departing from my station, but for all intents and purposes they are in a random order in relation to their distance from the station (or rather, just a downstacking order by number, which means the freight trains are always on top). That is not convenient, as the moment you actually want to communicate a departing train is when it is either passing you or leaving a platform, which usually makes it closest. Anyway, it is beside the point regardless - even if they were in the right order, I'd still prefer to manually type it in - it's just faster on the keypad then sifting through a drop down menu, and it helps with keeping the number in mind when you then have to go into the timetable and mark the departure. That switch should default to wherever we left it last. That way whoever prefers to go through the drop down menu can just not switch it on. I don't see a downside here.

I was just about to make a topic about this. It is quite annoying that the supposedly improved report box now requires an extra click to type the number in every time - is really should remember the selection, at least for the current session, even better if it was global. The drop-down list is really cumbersome, it's much faster to punch in the number manually then it is to sift through a list of random trains that just happen to be nearby. If at least the train currently closest to the dispatcher would be on top, like it is in the HUD, it would be somewhat useful - but even then, the switch should remember it's position

The wipers on the 241 are not actually wiping the water when it's raining hard. Tried exiting the game and re-entering it still would not remove the water. It accumulates until eventually it is very hard to drive the train

I wholeheartedly agree that the feeling of a train - made up of mechanical behavior, physics, sounds and of course cab sway - is much more important than eye candy and graphics. I've started my trainsimming journey back in the day with BVE - a freeware japanese sim that pretty much only had good sounds and physics, the graphics and route details were nonexistent, at least in the early days, with mostly just the track and the immediate objects adjacent to it simulated. But the cab sway was there, and the trains felt very realistic (for the late 90s at least). Then a couple of years later when MSTS came out I was incredibly excited by the screenshots, ran to the store, bought it, installed it and was immediately appalled by the total lack of cab sway, the poor sounds and the plasticky physics. I ended up hardly playing MSTS and just went back to BVE. Unfortunately there are few people that prefer physics to eyecandy, so from my experience pretty graphics are always going to be a priority for developers, not proper physics. Lets just hope that SimRail's devs won't take many years to implement cab sway like the developers of MSTS - at the time Kuju, now Dovetail - did in their sims 😅 I feel like SimRail already has excellent sounds and very good behavioral physics. But the cab sway is sadly very poor or nonexistant, depending on what you're driving 😑

Funny I thought that might be a useful thing to do minutes after I've written the previous post 🙂 I'll find the trackIR in my attic and give it a try 🌟 As for the metal reflector clip that goes on a cap I never quite did get that to work, it only worked with the powered light and even that wasn't very reliable when the sun was setting and came in through the window at a certain angle. it'd go all berserk. I am however setup in a different room now so it might work better

I've gotten a trackir set a few years ago and played OMSI with it for a while, but came off it because it was too much work putting it on every time with all the wires. Didn't even think of trying it with SimRail until you just reminded me it exists 🙂 But with the length of routes in simrail I can't imagine being tethered to the computer for that long 😅 In any case the issue is probably solvable by a simple toggle switch that is keyboard mappable - IIRC the trackIR itself had F11 mapped to pause tracking at any time. The more I play the more I come to the conclusion that cab sway is a must have feature for me, I dunno how much longer I'd stick with simrail if it continues to not have it. Also, it's not like it's difficult to implement - every other train or tram sim I currently have has it implemented, and I do have most of 'em 😉 It is, however, probably difficult to implement WELL. Dovetail's implementation always felt a bit off to me, something about the cab sway in TSW feels too light, like the train doesn't have much weight. There is a little game on steam that you're probably familiar with called Diesel Railcar Simulator that is mostly about old British trains - IMHO it has the best cab sway physics of any sim, you can actually feel the joints; and looking at the bogies doing their thing over the old track and how it affects the sway of the cars is just mesmerizing. I think that DRS and SimRail are built on the same unity engine, so it should be possible to do with simrail just as well? (Not that I know much about game building 😅)

There is also the polish community-driven "Train Driver 2" which also recently gained cab sway and is multiplayer. I want to give it a try one of these days, but free time is not forthcoming lately 😶 I might be wrong about the elf's sway animation, it might only really be visible when going over points. I seem to remember there was very slight sway but I wasn't really driving it lately. The old locos are most definitely (unrealistically) swaying with no regards to physics, but since the camera is locked in with the sway you can only notice it if you get up from the seat or look at the sky or the catenary.

The feature was not disabled, it was never really there. Cab sway simulation needs to be dynamic and physics dependant, and that never existed. A simple side-to-side swaying animation is baked into some of the trains in the game, and not others. The EU07/08 still sway from side to side like they always have - you can notice it easily when you look at the sky through the window for example, or if you get up from the chair while driving and see the train rock back and forth around your avatar. The elf also has a slight sway animation, especially on points, while the pendolino and the EN57 don't have it at all. While the simple side to side animation is better than nothing, it's not at all satisfactory for a sim of this detail level IMO. Cab sway is implemented in pretty much all of the major (and minor) train sims nowadays. It's especially good in Diesel Railcar Simulator, and with the recent update to Derail Valley it became top notch there as well. This is by far the feature I personally want most, but unfortunately the devs never mention working on it. In the polish thread you linked the dev responding is also brushing the issue aside claiming that making the cab sway is unnecessary for the sim - "I don't see such a need" he claims, at least through translate it seems.

It keeps happening to me after the patch as well. And the last time I played was in the early afternoon, the server was hardly half full. It ghosted me more times that I could count on a local run of the slow line 🤷‍♀️ I also thought it was fixed at first but it doesn't seem to be. It's a really annoying bug as if you're not constantly checking your progress on the livemap, you have no way of knowing it happened - until you stop at a red signal and find out you have no way to communicate with dispatch, while they see you frozen 10 km back the way you came 😅

On the 57 that left window is definitely big enough to lean out of, and it would be much more useful than the right one, as there is no mirror on the left to see the doors. I think it's an oversight, hopefully it gets added at some point. Also, the right side mirror on the EN57 is beyond useless. Is there a way to adjust it? Did I miss something? As it stands I can't see the doors and most all of the platform, only the fence behind it 😅

Oh yes. Thank you. I was also searching for that.

Server issues continuing despite the patch, it seems. I just got "ghosted" by the server multiple times during a single run. Welp, back to waiting for another patch I suppose 🤷‍♂️

[Played a couple of hours today, seems that there is no more ghost train bug since the patch came out. Yay. ] EDIT: Yeah, scratch that. Bug is still totally there. Just had it happen to me three times during a run 😶 EDIT 2: Wow, now it seems to be much worse than before... Tried to continue that run and the server kept "ghosting" me every few minutes, I had to disconnect and re-enter into the game, happened four more times then I finally gave up. All that in a single run. Seems to be worse on the Sedziszow line than on the main trunk, it seems. Then again it might just be completely random. Well, back to waiting for another patch, I suppose.

Well, I'm officially giving up for now. I've tried to play MP for the past three days, but I cannot get 20 minutes in without my train becoming a ghost train. By that I mean it freezes on the live map (even though it keeps displaying the speed) and the dispatchers see me frozen in place - while the game on my end seems to keep running fine - until the next signal that is, when no matter the aspect I get stopped and thrown back to the signal. I lose all ability to communicate (chat and push-to-talk don't work although I can hear others talking). The only way to fix it as far as I can tell is to completely quit and then take over the train again from the main menu, only for it to happen again after a while. Turning the bot on and off doesn't fix it. It happed to me seven times now during three runs, and the last one I did was just now when the server hardly had anyone in it, so it's definitely not overcrowding that is causing this. I can't be the only one this has happened to, can I? I hadn't seen any posts about it. Is it just on my system? I know this is early access and all but before the update the game was always rock solid for me. Now it's just unplayable. 😶

Very true. And true for all trains too, but this one especially. This is my #1 issue with this game. I haven't yet heard or read any intention from the devs to add it though.

Cab sway is definitely not simulated, unfortunately.

I've tried running two trains yesterday and both times at some point I've become invisible to the dispatchers, couldn't type in chat, and just sat at red lights as the controllers couldn't see me. Other drivers could see me, strangely enough. Today tried running another one - and got randomly disconnected "for an unknown reason" after 10 minutes, with someone immediately hijacking my train. The rest of the server remained working just fine. I don't know if logs can help in this case, as at no point did the game crash... I saved them just in case. Attached SimRail_log_2023-11-21_22-08-31.txt SimRail_log_2023-11-22_00-01-09.txt SimRail_log_2023-11-22_20-43-48.txt

I don't know, after all the wait this comes off to me as a bit of a disappointing update. The game is now nearly unplayable in MP for me. I've tried running two trains yesterday and both times at some point I've become invisible to the dispatchers, couldn't type in chat, and just sat at red lights as the controllers couldn't see me. Other drivers could see me, strangely enough. Today tried running another one - and got randomly disconnected "for an unknown reason" after 10 minutes, with someone immediately hijacking my train. The rest of the server remained working just fine. The weather, lighting and seasons is great, and the one single player run I did was pretty. The EN57 is a lot of fun. But - my two biggest gripes with this sim, the lack of cab sway and the almost total absence of passengers, were not addressed at all, and there is not one single mention of either on any roadmap or stream that I've seen as of yet. If anything, the EN57 feels even more glued to the track then the older trains, and these old trains are quite bouncy irrc... Of course I'm still happy there is progress, but as it stands it is very hard to enjoy the sim now. MP is pretty buggy and inconsistent, and the game also became quite laggy in MP, with voice messages being very choppy and difficult to understand. Maybe it's just strain due to the influx of players, but the servers have been pretty full before and I don't remember it being this bad.

It is true that the raildriver is not very well made, and the levers are pretty poor. But the big upside as far as I am concerned is that it is one relatively compact unit that can be neatly tucked away when not in use. I'd love to one day have a dedicated simming setup with proper levers but I just do not have the space in my house to set it up, nor do I have a budget for a separate machine for the job. I sim on my studio PC as that is the most powerful computer than I have, and I can't really have train levers sitting on my desk when clients come to work on their mixes, that would not look professional 😁 So the fact that I can put it on my desk when I'm playing and then tuck it away in a moment when I'm working makes it a good enough solution. The american style throttle lever is definitely the weakest link, but if the sim allows one to remap the controls (which that other sim we all know does not allow despite repeated requests going back years), one can use the pretty decent brake lever as a perfectly adequate combined controller for modern locos.

That would definitely help, especially in the Pendolino where the CC number on the screen is tiny and illegible from a normal driving position.

Wow! That is the beginning of a pro control desk if I've ever seen one 🙂 Can't wait for that controller support to come in... My raildriver is just gathering dust for now 😶