Gazz292

from what i've heard, operating the signal boxes in single player mode would require a lot of server side stuff to be made local, and that would give the asshat's who pirate games what they need to get SimRail pirated 😞 Same with private servers, not going to happen due to piracy issues. Quite often on Discord the topic of a dispatchers points systems comes up, i don't know if it's changed recently, but having the requirement to operate a dispatchers post based on time spent driving trains isn't really working. Something like they earn points operating smaller posts, work their way up to the larger boxes, then lose points for every Sz signal they use unless it is a valid option, lose points for misrouting trains and so on, lose to many points and they get demoted to a simpler post until they build the points back up again,

Sometimes happens to Ai trains when spawning (only way i can imagine this happened... the loco was stopped at a red signal further up the track on the left) )

i don't play as dispatcher myself.... but i can see how it must be frustrating for people who'd like to try out the bigger dispatcher posts, but see the same people in it all the time. Someone on discord was talking about writing something that would automatically log him into his favourite post, basically by automatically spamming the server with requests to join the post he wanted, so the second it becomes free, he's in it (thankfully i believe there are things in place to prevent this, but it can't be nice to think that same person in the best post is there due to an unfair advantage) At least with driving the trains, your shift ends at the final station, and if you are driving the ~4 hour / 270 km long passenger services, there is a new one every hour (even if now every 3rd one is a damn traxx) so others get to drive them. there is nothing to stop someone playing the same dispatcher post all day long every day apart from server restarts 3 times a day. So something needs to be done, a shift system would be what i'd go for, with the lesser used posts having longer shifts available.... something that will help spread out the dispatchers over more servers too, as for the english community, everyone wants in on EN1, whilst EN2 and 3 are pretty much empty... except for the newest big dispatcher posts.

made V 2 a few weeks ago... has train head / tail light position added.

it's often all red, or all green (like the catenary masts sometimes go red or green... i assume this is the base colour and the texture map has failed to load) But not long ago i saw this.... rather groovy i thought, in a 1970's psychedelic way 🤯

Are you able to show the server time with seconds? Often the server time is 5 or more seconds behind real time, but also it's handy to glance over and see that departure time is in say.. 28 seconds. rather than just having minutes showing and wondering if it's about to change to the next minute, or has just changed and you have another 58 seconds to wait till departure time.

about a month ago there was an open invitation for people who can model trains and routes to get onboard and produce content for SimRail, That's how we have the German route being built, plus i believe an american one and more, SimRail is still in early access, has only been released to the public for less than 5 months, there are still bugs to work out, things to get working properly, new timetables to be released, until all that's sorted out there's no point releasing an editor, as things are changing all the time with how SimRail works.

i'm waiting for controller support before making my control desk (tho i have already made a Radmor style microphone and an EU07 style horn lever that i use in SimRail) I 3D printed a desktop controller last year to drive the German trains in tsw, but 5 years after they promised controller support, they still didn't provide it, so i gave up.. with both the controller and tsw. I really hope we get the kind of controller support they have in railworks / train sim classic, with 2 way communication, i.e. you can query the position of a control in the train, then command it to move and check it actually has moved where you wanted it to. And also when you first start the sim up, it will set the trains controls to where your controllers are set at. Much better that sending a command to move a control and just hoping it's received... a bit like now when if the FPS is low it misses inputs from the keyboard. But as you can likely tell, the coding / programming side of things is where i struggle, i'm a mechanical guy so have no problems making the actual controls,

I agree, cab motion is one place that really needs work, BUT in other train driving 'games' when they turned up the cab movements, people complain of it giving them motion sickness! so they had to tame it right down. In real life the driver is thrown about all over the place when driving a ~100 ton locomotive at speed, the EMU's will give a smoother ride due to being part of the passenger coaches and having air suspension usually, but isnt one of the Polish loco's nicknamed the bucking bronco or bull or something like that due to the way it rides. Maybe give us a slider to set the amount of cab sway we 'can handle' so those who get motion sick from looking at a computer can turn it off or way down, and others can turn it way up to get the realistic view from a drivers eyes.

I think i know what you mean, The other trains slow down, some stop dead altogether, but most jerk forwards about half a carriage / wagon length aa time once they are in the high resolution view (LOD) of about 20 or so meters around the driver. The kind of thing you get in multiplayer games where the other players will suddenly teleport about around you instead of moving smoothly, due to server lag, high pings and all that stuff.

Also made an EU07 / EP08 horn lever.... my levers pivot point is further back hence the larger opening needed to move the lever side to side to go heeeee hawwwww 😄

I decided i'd had enough of using the built in laptops mic and holding down a keyboard key to talk on the radio, so made myself a handheld Radmor style mic: 3D printed the microphone housing, side key (which of course works) and the mic holder, the mic cover is a 50mm tweeter grill sprayed grey. A curly USB extension cable plugs in the bottom, which mates inside the housing with a little 3 port USB hub, and plugged into hub is a USB microphone dongle, and an Adafruit 'Trinkey' a single key USB board that i set up to send the SimRail microphone push to talk keyboard key when it's button is pushed by the mic's side key.

yup, in Poland you drive the train, Elsewhere in europe / the world, the train drives you 🙂

Totally agree, deffo needs to me some form of 'grading' to use the larger dispatcher posts. But even the simple posts can be abused, yesterday i had my first asshat who sits in a dispatcher post, gives me all green signals then sets the final controlled signal i'm approaching to red then leaves the post (at least i think that's what happened, the signal went back to green just as i was about to pass it with emergency brakes applied as it had gone back to Ai controlled (saw this in the map app i always have open when i drive)

There seem to be 'sound boxes' placed about the SimRail universe, Usually in the middle of a platform / station there will be one, it's only audible within about 5 or so meters, and usually sounds like a football match / or a street fight / riot (which i'll admit i have never been to either, so am guessing here) Very odd when you pass one on a quiet country station, but i guess they are for later refinement to have station sounds (crowd chatter etc) added or they could be like the 'bang - oooohhh' sounds that were left in from the real simulator that were triggers for a 'one under' event that real drivers had to train for.

Isn't that from when the driver of the freight has switched to the number 2 camera, and is watching the train from the rear? as the driver disappears from the cab and is now looking along the train floating outside.

Had you turned the compressor off by mistake? When playing a while ago, i found that when the air pressure drops too low, the pantograph will drop (as it should in reality) But i found that the small battery powered compressor is not simulated in SimRail (yet?), so you are then stuck, as you need the main compressor running to make more air to raise the pantograph, but you can't make that air without the converter running, which runs from the overhead line power.

wow, SimRail is so immersive, you even have to dig the coal out for your train now 😁

only thing that puts me off using this map is it's stuck in dark mode, and during the day i like to see the map with all the greenery showing, as i can see the maps details better... like where there is a forest and where it's a field, a lake / river etc.

Do'h 😣 I've always mixed up capital I and lower case l on computers, thankyou for pointing this out.

the simulator will be getting random effects, after it is out of early access stage. Right now the devs want things to be repeatable so they can find and fix the bugs. We do get one random effect right now, a 1% chance of an Ai dispatcher giving us an Sz signal, which i have experienced quite a few times now.

SimRail is amazing in 7.1 surround sound, it really adds another dimension (my set up is dolby atmos, with 2 of the speakers hanging from the ceiling) using an AV amp, i also use TrackIr (Tobii web cam in my laptop - FaceTrackNoIR - TrackIr) and it's amazing to turn my head and hear the sounds moving around depending on where i look. I drive mostly the EU07 / EP08, and love hearing the clicks from the power wheel Infront of me, then the thunks behind me from the high voltage compartment of the tap changer notching up. And other trains passing me is awesome to hear, especially a freight going over some points so i hear the flange squeal] along the train, and the thunka-thuds of the wheels on each wagon going over the frog of the points. I sometimes wear headphones, some of those that do a fake surround sound using just 2 'speakers' and it's ok, much better than stereo, but not quite as immersive as a proper surround sound speaker setup (i guess the distances to the actual speakers plays a part) After a nearly 4 hour drive in the EP08 my ears are ringing from the converter drone (i have tinnitus, so i expect that) but i can imagine every real life driver of these loco's has tinnitus too... there's no volume knob in a real loco. Re what a real driver does at a station: i'm not sure, i believe that opening the main breaker will kill power to the coaches, so the A/C / heating will go off, and the lights will run on the batteries (each coach has an axle driven generator i notice) But... you can't accidentally drive off leaving the main breaker off like you can with turning the converter off.

That's the life of a train driver, it is a noisy environment in the cab of a locomotive (a lot less than it used to be, hearing loss for older train drivers used to be common) When i use my 7.1 surround sound system and drive the EU07 / EP08, the drone of the converter when you are stopped can be very annoying, so i turn the converter off if i'm stopped at a station for more than 1 minute.... have to remember to turn it back on when i start off again as the air compressor runs off the converter, and not the batteries, so when the air pressure drops enough the brakes begin to drag (after being applied and released... they cant fully release due to low air pressure) The more modern locomotives you will be hearing the high pitched inverter whine, all part of the realism that SimRail captures so well.

Ahh, didn't know that, In the 2013 onwards Ie-1 (Polish signalling instructions) it says: So i presumed the blank D6 shields in SimRail were intentional (the above is machine translated from Polish, so does not read perfectly)

For other software... could try Touch Portal, i believe that allows you to do mouse clicks at coordinates, and you can combine different actions to make up complex actions from a single button push. Touch Portal turns an android or apple tablet into a sort of stream deck, with virtual buttons that you touch on the screen to perform the actions, i use it for shortcut actions on things like excel, inkscape, fusion 360 etc (i use a macro keypad with 3 rotary encoders to drive the EU07/EP08 trains in SimRail, as i only drive, i don't dispatch) I originally got touch portal to try before getting a stream deck, but found touch portal does all i need. This is my 'excel' touch portal screen... 12 x 7 'buttons' on a 7 inch tablet. could easily be made to be a screen for the dispatch panels like DazT has done on his stream deck.