Gazz292

If the real life signal boxes do not have CCTV of stations in them, then they won't be in SimRail, as it's simulating the real life railway.

oh wow, that's a lot of info 🙂 Wonder how we can get all the relevant info out of SimRail to make timetables like this, without having to drive each service and note down all the details as we go. I know https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ can show the speed limits' for all the lines, but i haven't seen the mileage / hectometers on that map fo where they change etc.

i don't know the Polish signals that well, but i know the Sz things is kinda complicated, It's 40 km/h within 'station limits' i.e. an area with semi automatic signals (the ones with red and white striped poles), as they are operated by a person who can see if the line is clear. Now i think it's ... as soon as you pass the last semi automatic signal and enter an automatic block signal area (white poles, 2 or 3 aspect signal heads) it's 20 km/h, an Automatic Block Signal can not show Sz aspect, so there's that rule that if you are stopped at a ABS (usually you wait about 8 seconds) then you can pass it at 20 km/h, but being prepared to stop immediately if you find another train or an obstruction ahead / around the corner. As soon as your trains front passes a ABS or semi automatic signal showing a normal aspect (other than stop) you can speed up to either line speed or the speed the signal is telling you. The bit i'm not sure about it when you exit a semi automatic signal area under Sz signals, is it the last semi automatic signal, or an automatic block signal that is this 'boundary' marker, i think it's the former, as this always catches us out, we pass a red and white striped pole signal at 40 km/h, but the limit changes to 20 km/h.... as the next signal is a ABS one.

Sorry for the confusion, i was suggesting a way the dev's could possibly allow more keybinds, i remember during playtests one of the dev's said he could enable all switches and controls to have a keybind applied to it, but it would make the controls menu very very long, and at the time toggle switches needed 2 seperate keys to turn them on and off, we still don't have the ability to use modifier keys, so we would be stuck with about 52 keys we could assign controls to. So i was suggesting that maybe all controls could be enabled to have keybinds applied to them, but don't add them all to the controls menu as that will make things very messy and confusing for newbies, But instead allow those of us who want more keybinds to edit the 'controls.conf' file manually, either have it populated with every control but 'null' after the extra ones with nothing (yet) assigned to them, and we change 'null' to the letter we want. Or we add the to the config file, i.e. to get washers, maybe it's 'code' is 'Washers' so we add 'Washers=N' if we want to have the N key operate the washer button...... that would be the first bind i'd make, as we can operate the wipers from the keyboard, but 90% of the time i turn them on to clear the bugs off the screen, and then need to use the mouse to press the washer button 😞

I was kinda thinking about an Sz signal, where the 40/20km/h limit ends when you pass the next working signal.

i love how much detail is in SimRail, Despite me trying to be a 'hardcore train driving simmer' so the view out the cab is all i really care about, i will sometimes play about when waiting at a station and use the outside camera to view the train from different angles, I was amazed the first time i went under the train and saw the detail of the brakes, suspension etc, Similarly when i stood next to a set of points waiting for them to move over to set my route, lovely whirring of the points motor, then some of the rodding moved into the motor box and the blades moved, what i think are the point blade locks didn't move tho, they were now disconnected from the point blades (this was back at the beginning of playtests, so it might have more working parts now) But blimey, this simulator keeps on impressing me, in some other train driving games it's almost impossible to tell which way you are going at the points due to them not caring about making the point blades move properly.

Been playing about in excel and got a layout i like, bod what a pain it is to try and get things sized to show on a kindle e-ink screen as a pdf file, stupid thing will crop the bottom few lines off if it's too long, always has to show you the percentage you are through the 'book' at the bottom and crap like that (i've ordered myself a Kobo Clara HD off ebay, that should be a lot easier to work with) After a few hours i came up with this: This is where i split the timetable to fit on the kindle screen, the dashed lines at the bottom tell me the timetable continues on another page, dashed box at the top of the next page tells me i'm viewing a continuation of the timetable. The double lines reaching over to the speed box tells me the hectometer boards have changed because i've changed tracks. I likely have some of the stations spelled wrong when i put the Polish letters in them, i used a polish text translator and fed it the names in english letters, and chose it's first suggestion. The timetable carries on for another 2 pages, the last page being only 8 lines long, would probably have fitted in 3 pages... but the kindle wont play ball. Now to try and find out the times the trains depart over the day in SimRail (i think the EDR timetable for dispatchers has that data) but next i will alter the times to make a schedule that matches the workings i'm likely to drive, i'm sure there's a way to program excel so you can tell it to offset all the numbers by xx hours and minutes, but i only started playing with excel yesterday 🤓 I'm only showing here what can be done with the data, none of this would be possible without RWag78's hard work making the timetables and speed limit data by hand.

Gotta remember multiplayer is a server that's been running 100's of train services for upto 6 hours when you join it (just think of it as real life... as this is a simulator not a game) You get teleported into the train you chose, and where your train is on the line depends on if it's running on time or not, and it's schedule, that's why you can't chose a service and start it at a station like some people want to do... unless you join the train at a time it's actually due to stop at a station that is. If you chose to drive the pendulino, if the human dispatchers are 100km away, it'll only take you 30 minutes to be in radio range of them... but you'll also be out of radio range in about 5 minutes of eac hone 🙂

Brilliant, cheers for that, Going through the stations now adding the Polish letters, like ₺ for ₺azy ... PowerToys for windows has a handy thing where you hold down a letter and press space or arrow keys, and it displays a list of 'foreign' letters to choose from. as british keyboards have no accents at all. Now if i could figure out excel, i'd imagine there's a way to tell it to adjust the times in the columns by adding xx minutes / hours to all times... but by the time i read all the tutorials, i could have probably entered the times manually.

One day when we can access data from the sim, maybe someone can do some magic with excel that will auto change the times for the relevant timetable to match the train's time you are driving. but now, i'm going to try and find the times the EC411xx and EC141xx trains start throughout the day, and change the times to match, then do the same with the 'TLK' ones... basically the passenger trains hauled by the EU/EP07, which is all i drive, Then i will have a stack of timetables on the kindle i can flip through to find the relevant one. : On the subject of the kindle, if anyone does what i did and uses one to show the timetables, in my photo i am displaying a picture of the timetable on the kindle, as pdf's will not show full screen on these e-ink kindles, But like an idiot i pressed the 'update kindle' button, and it updated from firmware 5.9.2 to 5.15.1, and they have taken away the ability to view image files it seems, Also, kindles switch to the 'screensaver' screen after 10 minutes of not being touched, to that'll be annoying having to keep the kindle alive, so i'm looking at getting a Kobo e-ink reader, as those have such niceties as being able to turn off the screen timeout (bod knows why kindle e-inks do this, it's not like you can get screen burn or displaying text instead of an image is worse for it) but the kobo e-ink readers can also display image files easily and other things the kindles can't (except read DRM'd kindle books, but i wont be using a Kobo for that) Below is the layout i was working on for the basic timetable, alternately coloured lines to help read across the line, and i put the stations to stop at in bold text. Can someone who speaks Polish tell me the correct words for 'Depart' and 'Arrive' ? as trying google translate i keep getting different answers.

me too, Even if all keybind possibilities were enabled, but some not selectable from the menu as it would make the controls menu massive, so instead those of us who want to have more train functions available to bink a key to, can do so by adding the relevant text to the buttons.conf file. . . like 'whistle=N' etc.

I'd guess that if the speed restriction was due to the train changing tracks, i.e. going over points / switches / junctions, then the limit must end when the whole train is clear of the points. but when it's a speed restriction on a straight line, then it ends when the nose of the train passes the higher speed signal? as there's no danger of speeding up and having the back end of the train going through a set of points / switch too fast then. but i could be wrong, Polish signalling can be both simple and complicated at times.

there is stuff in the files referring to oculus plugins, that could just be files that are there on every game made in unity? When i view one of my player logs it shows a lot of stuff referring to oculus .dll's not found on my system etc, understandable as i don't have anything like oculus... Going OT a little, i do have a Tobii enabled webcam in my laptop, which i use FaceTrackNoIr to read the Tobii cam and make TrackIr work in SimRail, so at least i get the view in the cab follow my head movements, much better than the fixed view and dragging the view with the mouse.

it's just wedged between the laptop screen and the 10 inch android tablet that's in a Brodit mount for now 🙂 I will be designing and 3D printing a backing plate and slit light soon, and will have it mounted properly to the 10 inch tablets mount in roughly the same position it is in now. The idea is to make it look like the paper schedule holder in the EU07 So i need to find out the shade of green the EU07 is painted inside, then get some paint mixed up that i can spray the kindle mount once i've 3D printed it, and also paint the front frame of the kindle to make it look as much like it's the actual schedule holder out of the train as i can.

Sorry i offended/annoyed you, i didn't mean that, i was talking out my arse as usual, I know some people take point hunting far more serious than driving the train, to the 'point' where they will do things like sit with the train on auto pilot for most of a 4 hour run hoping to earn points for doing nothing, or constantly switch the radio between channels to get the ~50 points for switching to the correct chanel after getting 10 taken away for being on the wrong one.... or sit in a signal box doing nothing just to get the hours required to work the bigger ones. : With me, my real life is pretty shit, so simulators are all i have in a way, 25 years ago i tried to become a train driver but failed the medical, which resulted in me losing the job i had driving trucks as their insurance wouldnt cover me once i found out about my 'bodies issues' (but i guess in a way it helped diagnose things faster and get put on meds to help sooner than if i'd kept on trying to ignore the joint pains) So at the moment SimRail is my life, and it's the realistic train driving bit i love... still learning the route before i can go HUD less tho, and i usually turn the points messages off as they irritate me so much (i stopped at a station, that was my job, why do i need points for that, and again more points for setting off from the same station 🤪

Awesome, thank you for making this. I've been waiting for something like this to come along, now my old kindle has been resurrected from the scrap pile :

i believe it's to do with reducing jagglies, shimmering and that, It loads the screen at double (or more) the resolution, does something with the mipmaps (averaging the edge pixels and stuff) then scales it down to the resolution you are using, doing this results in a much nicer view than if it was loaded and displayed at the same resolution, but this takes processing power to do, which most modern-ish gpu's can handle with ease. that's about as much as i understand.

There's no prizes for gaining points or driving thousands of kilometers, and i don't think you'd impress many people down the pub boasting that you've racked up 1 million km on a train driving simulator 😁 Why not enjoy the driving experience without worrying about points? set your own personal goals like stopping at the right spot every time at the stations, Braking just the right amount so you are not having to release the brakes halfway along the platform or trundle in at 5km/h, Learn the route, Read the signals without the HUD on and so on. save the points scoring thing for arcade games. <puts on flak jacket> 🪖🔫

Warning, this is a long post and likely of no interest to 99% of SimRail players.... A few people have mentioned that the sliders in the graphics menu do not go up far enough for people with a powerful system, and they could easily get much larger distances where the low poly stuff changes into the high poly stuff (the LOD thing?) and the distance the shadows stretch to if the sliders went past their current end stops.. they can be set higher but only be editing game files, something most people wouldn't want to do. I'm trying to get rid of that circle of shadow around the loco which is most noticeable in the morning or evening, and stop the trees 'popping to life' where i think they change from the 2D to 3D trees... but it could be a shadow thing i'm seeing. Id also love to get rid of that rolling / jumping shadow along the rails, but that seems to affect all railway simulators. Programming / coding is my weak point, i kinda understand how to do some things, but i am wondering which settings in the 'settings.conf' file do what, so i know if i am adjusting the right one or not. I already have everything set on as high as they will go in the graphics menu with the exception of "clouds quality", i found i can get a 5 to 10 fps increase by changing from high to medium, and i can't see much difference in the clouds on medium. I've also moved the vegetation density slider down from 100 to 75%, this helps with the grass growing in the tracks and wheat planted in every bare space i find. So, into the 'settings.conf' file i delve... Below are the ones i've changed or am not sure what they do, so i'm wondering if i should change them or not, also i'm looking for explanations to what the names mean that i don't understand. --------------- G_CarsLimit=25 : i know this limits how many cars are on the roads, i find setting it to 30 i get slightly more realistic car numbers. R_ClipPlaneDist=2000 : That is 'Render Distance' in the menu (worked out by changing it in the menu and re-loading the settings.conf file) but is this rendering everything or only certain things? and is it 2000 meters from your eyes in the train cab, or a 2000 meter diameter circle around the train? R_LOD_DistanceFactor=1 : LOD Bias in the menu, something to do with changing where the "Level Of Detail" maps change, reading online is confusing, people saying that with the latest GPU's it's not needed, some saying a negative value gets best results, others saying it introduces shimmering etc (i'm using a TRX 3070Ti laptop GPU if it matters) R_TextureResolution=0 : Not sure, it's set to zero, so doing nothing? R_VisiblityCheckerDistance=1500 : Not sure about this one. R_TerrainBasemapDistance=1500 : or this one? VL_BufferSize=350000 : The size of the buffer, for vegetation? VL_CullDist=2000 : Vegetation draw distance in the menu, so increasing this should help with tree's that pop into the scene way in the distance (but not where they change from 2D to 3D ones?) VL_LodDist=90 : The distance the LOD's change from low to higher versions, is it 90 meters? (circle or straight line?) VL_MarginConstant=100 : No idea. VL_MarginDivider=20 : No idea either. VL_ShowPerf=False : Again, no idea. VL_BillboardMinRange=0 : Something to do with the advertising billboards? Unload_VegeCells=5 : How many cells of vegetation to unload... erm? VD_Inproc=True : Think this is nothing to do with the screen, as the next one 'VD Remote' is for the TCP thing, for future connectivity to the sim to read data from it perhaps?... or is it for the player logs function??? Simulator_Mode=False : Again, nothing to do with visuals, googling says this is a unity thing to simulate viewing on mobile devices? VehCamX=-0.45 VehCamY=3.15 VehCamZ=-8.5 : I'm guess this is the main camera position, i.e 'where our eyes are' in the cab? Side_Cameras_Active=False : maybe for trains that have 'side cameras'? or a view of the mirrors on another monitor? Max_TerrainDataDestroyer_Queue=15 : How many frames to keep before unloading them? i'm really guessing here. SimRacingMode=False : Nothing to do with visuals, but perhaps how the Sim reacts, performs, output for a motion simulator rig, or how much the train bounces on track joints? SimRacingTrackConnectionFactor=2 : How well the train sticks to the track? or adhesion? And that's the end... i've missed out the parts that i think i understand, this post is long enough as it is. And i also totally understand that the dev's would most likely prefer we didn't play with these things, but i'm a tinkerer and always messing about, i know not to report bugs with logfiles when my copy of SimRail has been tampered with by myself, and if i find a bug that's not been reported, i will do a 'steam game files verify' and set everything back to standard, and go and drive again to find the bug before reporting.

That's the big issue with raildrivers, For your ~£275 you don't exactly get quality, it feels heavy but thats from the bass speaker in it, take that out and it's featherweight, it's long been known that there's a lot of slop in the lever connections to the cheap potentiometers, that's part of the reason for needing calibrating all the time, to set these dead zone areas up... but when you only get an inch or 2 of total lever travel, having half an inch of lever movement before the potentiometer begins turning is not helping. the 2 rotary 'switches' for headlights etc are really bad, there's enough movement on the actual bit you turn to have 4, 5 or even 6+ switching positions, but again, there's a lot of dead movement, so 3 positions are the most you can get out of that 180 degrees of movement. And that damn combined power and brake lever is a right pain in the arse, needing to set it up like 2 separate levers with a massive dead zone in the middle, that's ok if you are driving a Dash 9 american loco that the levers are based on, but for driving euro trains it's horrible. Some people have taken their rail drivers apart and tightened things up, but i found they soon loosen up again... my raildriver is a shelf ornament nowadays. I'm not saying plastic is bad... i 3D print a lot of things, and was working on a 'EuroRailDriver' last year (German train style levers) but i made my levers sized more for adults (the raildriver levers are perfectly sized for children, but it's aimed at adults, and the levers are tiny in 'man sized hands' i find) But i made my connections from the levers to the potentiometers using gears, so the ~150 degrees of lever movement was geared to move the potentiometer it's full 270 degrees of rotation, resulting in much more precision, all my gears were 3D printed too, and i managed to get about 1 degree of slop when changing direction of the lever before the computer showed movement (you need some slop/dead zone or the levers in the train will jitter... but you do not need the massive amounts a raildriver has)

well, the PKP regulations do not cover the occasional asshat who thinks it's fun to take control of a train with the sole intention of stopping it on the line blocking others, and leave it like that all day whilst they go to troll people on arsecomic or what ever it's called. That's why there is the idle detector in the sim, as back during the playtests, some people did just that, when the player idle detector was first implicated it was a lot stricter, working on a simple countdown timer, so being stuck at a red light you have to keep resetting it, at least now it leaves you alone until your light is green etc. But i always thought that pressing the SHP/czuwak button reset the idle detector?

i must drive at different times to others, as i too have not encountered many trolls, the occasional bottle necked area, but people who know signalling usually jump in and sort it out, i see that as just another day as a train driver, i pretend there was a signalling failure in the area that's being fixed... as happens in real life. It's all part of what makes SimRail different, i've never had a multiplayer run the same as another due to the human element, train in front driving slowly, me being too early and having to wait for other trains to cross my path, the occasional misroute by someone learning a signal box, dispatchers role playing and having a track closed due to an emergency and routing over a single line, , , even the Ai dispatcher gives me Sz signals occasionally (40/20Km/h until the next working signal) : Bod it'd be boring as hell if every run was perfect, not a single light against me, not a single hold up due to a mistake of a dispatcher, knowing exactly who will be in each signal box... 'hello fred, hows things in your area?' ''running perfect as always mate'' .... 10 Km later... 'hello joe, hows things? ''same as ever, nothing changes because we are all 'profesional' here remember'' it'd be very....tsw like, may as well play in single player if that's the kind of driving you like.

i always thought the whistle was like the 'quiet horn' found in German trains, used most often when in a station (or at night) when you need to get someone's attention, or to reply to a zp9 signal to depart from the conductor/guard, Especially useful when in a covered station, where using the normal horn would blast the eardrums of everyone in the station.

Have you printed out the 'signs and signals' guide that tells you how to read the signals, and what the various signs mean?

The hands of the clocks in the departure boards at Warszawa Zachodnia station do not show fully, When i stopped here half an hour later, the minute hand was showing but the hour hand was still like it is here, i think the hands are not set at the same angle as the sign, so they are clipping through the clock face when pointing upwards?