Gazz292

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?

Are you sure you have clicked in the chat box properly? I set up letter Q to activate my chat box (in the controls menu) So i press that letter and all other controls stop working as the chat box typing part is activated, I can type any letters i want and they become the message i go on to send and don't affect anything in the cab until i click back in the cab or press escape.. i often send messages asking 'how long will i be held at this red signal?' which has a few 'E's' in it, and i've not once stood up from my seat ...... Ot a bit, but It would be nice to auto exit the chat box after pressing enter to send the message, i can always press the Q key again if i need to send a 2 line message etc. I did notice that the shp/cuzak reset no longer works when pressed whilst typing, so i need to escape from the message to reset it then go back to typing if i'm moving (i have a mic, but hate speaking, text based comms is 90% of how i communicate in every day life.

What about in 2018? how often did the EP07's run then? I only drive the trains in SimRail, but i'd have thought that if every train on the line ran at 160 or 200 kph it'd get pretty boring for the dispatchers, surely some of the fun is slotting in the slower running trains between the fast ones, trying to jiggle things so as not to slow the faster trains down too much, but also not delaying the slower trains either,

i'd love to see more of the classic 'old skool' trains in SimRail. most of the train driving games / simulators based on european operations seem to concentrate a lot on the modern computer controlled trains, i know one train game maker says they do this because that's the best way to make money, they are trying to get the younger people playing their train driving game, and they apparently won't do that if the trains available are ones that stopped operations before they were born (they also say that 90 minutes is the absolute max time these people will play for before getting bored, hence why all their routes are shorter than this) 😞 I know SimRail is based on the Polish railways in 2018, where the EP/EU07 was still 'king' as the most reliable loco on the system, but i'd love to see some more of these kinds of older trains, the ones that are dying out or simply not used on the main line anymore, So whilst you may not get to ride them in real life outside of a museum line, in the simulator you can do better than just see them in action, you get to drive them for ~300km taking almost 4 hours.

Once we get the SDK's released, i imagine this will be one of the first things made with them, There's already the TCP port stuff in the system, "VD_Remote=tcp://127.0.0.1:51528" so i imagine we just need to know what to send to SimRail over the TCP and how to read the data it returns, then we could do like TS-MFD has done for train simulator classic..... have multiple monitors, or android tablets or those i-thingies (which handilly have the touch screen bits included) connected to the main computer via wifi or usb, and display on them the in cab screens / gauges.

Pfffft, the EU/EP07 is the train i have driven for about 95% of my time on SimRail, done over 4000 Km in it, it's bloody amazing. It's an amazing train where you need to think about operating it, not just push a lever and let the computer do the rest.

i'm really not a fan of these 'camera lens effects' Like having the sun ahead of you and you get that lens flare effect that is from the light bouncing back and forth between the multiple pieces of glass that make up the lens, or the star burst thing, or the way everything goes black and white then really bright before settling down to the normal image when you exit a tunnel.... Those are all things that you see when viewing the image from a camera, but in a train driving simulator we are supposed to be driving the train as a person with Mk1 eyeballs, which do not have these issues (ok some have the star burst thing at night) On some other train driving 'games' you can turn these effects off in the .ini files, not sure if this is possible in SimRail?

I've noticed and wondered this too, I guess IRL the driver would have the printed timetable sheet to look at, tho i imagine it does not give the distances between the signals? So is it just down to route knowledge? or is there a system to work out that passing a certain type of signal means the next one will be 1Km away, and another signal means the next will ne 2Km away etc?

maybe the pendulino can drive in level 2? Or the signs are for other trains that use the route that we don't have access to in SimRail perhaps.

i've figured it out, i do drive differently.... whenever i get ready to brake, i tap the apply key to put the brake handle into the 'initial' position, then i press and hold down the apply key to move the lever around to the pressure reduction i need to slow down. If i do not put the brake lever into the 'initial' position first, pressing and holding the apply key does indeed rapidly move the lever around into emergency position before you have time to react. So it is just as you said, the way i drive / handle the brakes means i never noticed this behaviour.

people think they are a reflection of the cariages tail lights that face the loco, as they seem to light up a bit at night too, But the reflection in the cab glass is tied to your direction on the map, switch to the outside camera and get the angle right looking through the windscreen, the side windows in the cab glow fully red.

not sure what you mean by the upper detents, The brake lever in the EU07 has an off detent, a fill detent, a run detnet, then it's smooth all the way to the full service detent... then re-application and finally emergency detents. I regularly hold the key down for a second to move the lever around to about 3/4 to slow down fast at a station, then when the train is down to about 10kph, i press the key to snap the lever to the 'run' position, and the brakes will be releasing but still on enough to stop the train without a jolt... then apply the brake lever again (that's how most real drivers do it in the cab view videos i watch) Now occasionally if i repeatedly tap the keys to adjust the lever position it will sometimes move around seemingly on it's own, right to emergency if i don't tap the release key, However, i just noticed this is in single player part of the forum, and i drive in multiplayer, so i may well be talking out my arse (happens a lot) and the lever in the EU/EP07 in single player acts differently to how it does in multiplayer.

i've had no issues with the EU07's brake lever, and i've been almost exclusively driving that train, got more than 4k miles racked up in it. If you keep tapping the apply key it will go to emergency position, but hold the apply key down and it'll gently move round to the detent, and then into emergency if you keep the key held down.