pschlik

Today I was driving train EC 14101, and upon reaching Sosnowiec Glowny I found myself unable to complete passenger loading. No matter how close I got to the station stopping point, I never got the message that "you can stop now". (And going past the stopping point wouldn't work either, that just leads to the "you passed the breakpoint" message.) As such, I could never load passengers. Even if I just stopped (the entire train was on the platform), passenger loading would not begin. I also attempted multiple times to back up and have the AI drive, but the AI just completely ignored the stop. It actually accelerated past the stopping point. (Luckily, this prevents a deadlock, but something really needs to be done to make sure that it is impossible for this to happen. Maybe make it such that you are allowed to stop if <10 meters from the end of the platform, even if something else in the code thinks 10 meters isn't a valid stopping point.)

While driving along in EN1, I encountered a huge piling of trains at Zawiercie around 4:30 AM (server time). Almost nobody else was online, which allowed me to freely jump between trains to investigate. I determined that train EC 41102 had a proceed indication at Zawiercie station on platform 2 track 2, but was just sitting there motionless (for over an HOUR!), which must have resulted in the traffic jam. When I took over the train, it still didn't move with the autopilot on. You can see here that the train hasn't even completed its stop at Zawiercie, but it also isn't clear to load passengers (the distance counter isn't green). I took over from the autopilot and inched forward to see if I could get the passenger loading to trigger. I simultaneously got the message that I could stop the train, and that I passed the brake point, when the distance counter hit 1 meter (but passengers loaded anyway?). The expected stopping precision at this station is completely insane, and that may be why the AI got stuck (perhaps the AI assumed that 47 meters left until the stopping point was okay for loading passengers, but it wasn't). After completing passenger loading, I told the autopilot to take over again and the train continued as it should have. (80 minutes of delay, ouch!) After this, I kept an eye on things and it seems like the traffic began to sort itself out...then another EP07 train, TLK 42106, did the exact same thing where it was waiting at Zawiercie platform 2 track 2 for no good reason (only difference is that it was only 3 meters from the stopping point-which still wasn't close enough!!!). I take it over and 'pass the brake point' because the stopping precision is weird, passengers load anyway. Then when I tell autopilot to take over it drives away like it should. I had to sign off at this point, but I can only imagine the next train to use platform 2 track 2 would just cause the blockage again. The server also reset at around 5:20 so any future trains were a non-factor.

At least the tractive effort meter on the ELF's screen does seem to be accurate-the indicated kN does decrease as speed increases. But yeah...the other ones really don't make sense.

I have some doubts about the tractive effort gauge on the Pendolino. When accelerating at full power, the gauge will display the maximum 250 kN seemingly regardless of speed. 250 kN of tractive effort at 190 kph is a power output of a bit over 13 MW. That power would require around 4000 amps from the 3 kV DC line, but the screens also indicate only around 1800 amps are drawn. This leads me to believe the gauge on the screen isn't showing tractive effort, it just cannot be accurate. Maybe it's showing the % power output, so 100% power = 250 kN, 50% power = 125 kN??? That's my best guess but I don't know for sure.

I have some doubts about the tractive effort gauge on the Pendolino. When accelerating at full power, the gauge will display the maximum 250 kN seemingly regardless of speed. 250 kN of tractive effort at 190 kph is a power output of a bit over 13 MW. That power would require around 4000 amps from the 3 kV DC line, but the screens also indicate only around 1800 amps are drawn. This leads me to believe the gauge on the screen isn't showing tractive effort, it just cannot be accurate. Maybe it's showing the % power output, so 100% power = 250 kN, 50% power = 125 kN??? That's my best guess but I don't know for sure.

Oops the post editor gave me the (wrong) impression that the image itself was attached, not the link to it on discord. Here's an actual copy of the image.

The wheels on the freight wagons will stop spinning when a certain distance away from them, presumably to save computing power. However, this cutoff distance is very close to the wagons, meaning that the wheels can be clearly seen not spinning. This cutoff distance should be increased so that it's harder to see that the wheels aren't spinning. For example, this is the furthest I can get the camera from the wagons before the wheels stop animating... Meanwhile, if I zoom out this far (this is max zoom out), I can tell the locomotive wheels are still spinning. Why make the wagon animation draw distance so short when it's so long for locomotives?

Here's an interesting one. When the ET25 locomotive body bounces due to suspension action on jointed rail or driving over a switch, the windshield glass stays in place, and does not bounce with the rest of the locomotive body. This looks a bit weird in the cab, as you can see the dirt on the window move, and on the exterior the glass can be seem coming disconnected from the locomotive. If you look closely at the glass over the top headlight, you can see that the glass is actually lifted up above where it's supposed to be!

Experienced something like this on both the EN96 and ET25 today. I'm finding telling the AI to take over again, then taking back control from the AI seems to fix things up.

When driving train 24931, after stopping at Sosnowiec Kazimierz, the next thing on my timetable was to 'drive through Sosnowiec Kazimierz PZS SKZ2'. No distance was showing to Kazimierz PZS SKZ2. It wasn't until I entered Sosnowiec Dandowka that the Kazimierz PZS SKZ2 objective finally cleared and it updated to tell me to stop at Sosnowiec Dandowka, but when that happened, I lost 1000 points for not stopping at Sosnowiec Kazimierz PZS SKZ2. Given the whole situation, I'm getting the impression that something is bugged about the PZS SKZ2 point. It was definitely not indicated as a place I needed to stop at, and I don't even know where it is considering the HUD never gave me a distance to that location.

While driving West toward Katowice, I saw some interesting movement on the tracks. There were some rotating trucks that spin around head over heel and stick up through the ground, it's very strange. Messed up posting image, see third post for actual screenshot (Imagine that trailer you see was spinning around on a horizontal axis, like the blade of a wind turbine.)

One problem I have with a vote kick system in SimRail specifically is how big the map is. If I'm at Sedziszow and I see a vote kick pop up, how am I supposed to know if the person voting to be kicked is actually disruptive? If I haven't seen them recently, I won't even know where they are. It's entirely possible they are blocking the line out at Warsaw...but I'm so far from there it doesn't affect me. Or maybe they were using slurs in chat at Lazy, but I'm out of radio range so I've never interacted with them. Maybe they are innocent, explaining so in voice chat, and someone else is out to get them...but I never even encountered them this session, so I just assume the reporter is acting in good faith and vote to kick anyway. Because of all that, good luck getting an accurate consensus in a server of 50 people. It's not like Team Fortress 2, where chat is visible to everyone, and the world is small enough that you are likely to personally encounter a cheater or other troublemaker. That makes it a lot easier to see a vote kick and think "Oh yeah, I've seen that guy being a jerk."

Totally agree, the current 'dispatch for X hours to unlock new signal boxes' system is a bit too simplistic and can let someone into a difficult signal box even when they have no proof of actually learning how to dispatch. An experience system would do well to not only make sure people are doing a good job dispatching before getting to difficult signal boxes but could also help by providing feedback to facilitate learning. It sounds silly but a red "minus points!" message does a good job of saying 'don't do that again' and a green "plus points!" message helps people know 'you did it right, keep it up!', and that's good old reinforcement learning in action. The current system which gives absolutely no feedback is comparatively difficult to learn from. Now for the inevitable "how dare you add a gamey mechanic like XP to my simulator" which seems to be what this community has devolved to...But to those people-how would you like the game to tell people they did something right or wrong? What sort of real-time reward/punishment should a dispatcher receive to better understand if they are doing a good job?

Having an external camera would help a bunch for getting to know the layout of the station and having better situational awareness. Fixed camera locations would be neat but I think it would be easier for the devs to implement a 'drone' camera to just fly around the scenery close to the signal box. "But muh realism!" ok to all you Mr. Realisms out there, if you don't want to have an external camera, let me tell you a little secret. You can ignore the existence of external cameras and just choose to use internal ones! Crazy, right? Who knew free will could be so powerful!

Considering this idea has come up more than once, there is certainly some interest in it. I'm all for the idea-SimRail already supports walking around, after all. I could understand the arguments against adding walking to a sim with no concept of first person (like MSTS), but that's not the case here, so it's a pretty low-risk feature.