[Need more time table and save function for singleplayer]

no pause in MP,  as you'd need to pause the other 30+ people on the server at the same time.

you can however let the bot take over driving your train in MP whilst you go do other things,
not sure how long it will keep you logged in to the server like that tho, as a griefer / troll and their mates could do that and just leave them all in AI driving keeping other people from being able to drive the trains on the server.

[Schedules as pdf]

i'd love to be able to 'move' that side bar style timetable from on the main screen to another screen, or ideally to a phone / tablet,

Then gradually add more details to it... it already has the next stops / marker posts in it... if you drag the list of stops / posts upwards with the mouse you will see more.
But having things like the hectometer board numbers for the stops / posts, and maybe having the distance to the next stop in the timetable panel would mean the top right panel with the next signal status etc could be turned off.

 

[Cold start in multiplayer]

Being teleported into a moving train is about the best way you can do it in multiplayer,
The alternative would be to have to wait for the train to stop at a station so you can take over, but that's only good if the train makes station stops, and you are prepared to wait for that to happen, then how do we do things, is the spot on the server / train reserved for the 40 minutes you have to wait etc.

Maybe we could be teleported into the second mans seat in the train when we load into it, and there be a virtual driver at the controls, and when you press 'drive this train' s/he gets up and you swap positions.

[train selection, sort by train type... EU07, Elf etc]

1 hour ago, GoppelPL said:

........This should give you some help for now, I think it would be the best to post info about the train route in its description.

Wow,  thankyou very much,  i had been looking online to see how the numbering worked but was just getting more and more confused,

Simply knowing that for the types of train i like to drive... passenger with lots of stops (so i can practice my braking into a station more) i want a train with a high number.

[Cold start in multiplayer]

If you are in the EU07 loco, there's a panel on the desk way over on the left,
Lift that up and inside you find a big knife switch, with positions that you can change it to for where the batteries get charged from, internal from the converter, or external.

Could the external position be for plugging into a battery charger at the shed/depot? maybe you could find your loco with dead batteries, and need to plug it in to 'jump start' it (as you need air pressure and battery power to raise the pantograph)

This is all speculation by me, but having that big knife switch modeled and animated kinda makes me wonder why 🤔

[Signs and Signals found in SimRail printable Guide]

I found a mistake in the phone versions of the guide, where i'd labeled the 'Crossing Signals both as Osp 1,

Osp1 is the 2 horizontal yellow lights that warn you the crossing ahead is not secured, so you must do no more than 20 km/h as you pass over the crossing (no lights at all must be treated as Osp 1 as well)
Osp 2 is the 2 vertical white lights that means the crossing is secured, and you can proceed as normal.

I've also renamed the 'cheat sheets' to 'guide' as that makes more sense in other languages.
A new .zip file is on the first page with the corrected stuff in it... new names for some folders due to the change of name from cheat sheets to guide.

[Cold start in multiplayer]

Hopefully later on this could be added, but right now the dev's are concentrating on getting the stuff we do have in the sim working well.

[Why i must play tutorial :(?]

"friends"... what are those? 🤔🤠

[Why i must play tutorial :(?]

Some of us may have already driven 3000+km's in the playtest, but there are a lot of people who are totally new to SimRail.

So i guess without a way to port your experience / kilometers driven over, we all have to start out as a newbie again.

Having to complete one tutorial is a good thing i think, for those of us from the playtest we can fly through the tutorial as we already know what to do before we are told (tho having every crossing signal showing Osp1 (2 horizontal yellow lights) telling you it was unsecured, so you have to do 20 km/h over it was someting new, this happened when i did my tutorial in the Elf)

 

Personally i'd make it so that you need to complete a tutorial on every train type you wish to drive before you get to drive it in MP... kinda like having a day with a traction instructor on real life railways.

 

it's ok to go bumbling about on single player, mashing buttons, triggering the emergency brakes and then locking the controls out until you figure out the reset procedure etc, your train blocking the main line for 20+ minutes does no harm to the other virtual drivers in single player,

But do that in multiplayer and you are going to annoy the other drivers of trains stuck behind you who are real people, real people who are now going to be late for the rest of their run, which has the knock on effect of throwing all other services that are timed around these trains out, 
Some of those people only have maybe an hour an evening to dedicate to pretending to be a train driver,   if you are one of those you're not going to be happy at losing half that time stuck behind someone who's just bought SimRail and loaded straight into driving a train in MP and hasn't got a clue what to do.

 

:

 

:

There are some 'reviews' on steam from the playtest, saying:
The trains are far too hard to control...... they pressed a random key and suddenly the train stopped and wouldn't move again...... in their country trains are much easier to drive..... after 50 minutes of mashing the keyboard and getting nowhere they rage quit and logged straight into steam to write the above shitty review, thinking they are helping others by telling everyone to keep away from SimRail.
Their user stats show they managed a whole hour in SimRail playtest before giving up on it for good.... yet nothing is mentioned about that hour being in MP, and they were the reason one of the servers was blocked up for 50 minutes due to a player train that seemingly "refused to move" after stopping between stations.

[Schedules as pdf]

When the SDK's are released later on, this kind of thing should be possible,

For Railworks / tsc there is a program called TS-MFD, which reads your in game location and speed, and uses it to update a working EBuLa screen that was displayed on a 2nd monitor or an android tablet (i think ipads worked too)  tablets were better due to their touch screen, so the buttons on the EBuLa work.

Ive shown the picture below before... but i have 2 android tablets mounted on holders each side of my laptop (plus a phone holder, the phone lives below the right hand tablet and usually shows the brake pressure gauges, but i'm using it to take the photo)

When i was using train sim classic i was able to use TS-MFD to get the right hand tablet as a working EBuLa that updated it's position as i moved in the game, and the left hand tablet is showing the left MFD screen from the train, with the clock, ole voltage, motor current bars working, and again pressing the virtual buttons around the screen took you to other pages to set things up as you would in a real train.

Often i'd drive using my main PC, so the view out the train windscreen was displayed on a 55 inch TV, which is about 2 meters infront of the laptop location, and i'd put the centre MFD on the laptop screen (the speed and traction meters, with the SIFA and the PZB / LZB indicators etc)

 

[Signs and Signals found in SimRail printable Guide]

Updated to add ETCS signs, and add .pdf versions of all files, plus now the textless sheets for translation include the phone view versions as well as the main sheets.

[Coal Train From The Mine is Empty]

Just pretend you went to the mine to collect the coal, but the boss came down and told you that this months bill hasn't been paid, so you have to drive home again empty 😄

[Ability to rotate camera views]

I agree, i keep trying to move the camera angles to look around the interior of the carriages, 

 

It is good that pressing '4' goes directly to looking back along the train (press it again yo look from the other side) as if you have put your head out the window to check it's safe as you are leaving the platform, but sometimes i want to adjust the angle a little.

[ETCS signs, feedback on my wording]

I'm adding a panel to my signs and signals found in SimRail cheat sheet with the ETCS signs used in Poland on it.

I've used the 2020 PKP signal rule book to see which signs are used in Poland, and there are only ECTS signs10 in use,  i know ETCS is not operational in SimRail yet, but there are the signs along the route so i thought i'd add them so people know what they mean,

I've condensed the 10 signs to 4, as 9 of them are groups of 3 signs with the same sign size, colour etc, just the version of ETCS is different (L1LS / L1 and L2) which is shown on the sign it's self, so it's more getting across that a yellow one means 'Get ready to use ETCS in the mode mentioned on the sign)  a white sign means 'ETCS starts from here in the mode mentioned' and the white with a red cross means 'ETCS in that mode ends here'

I've also added the signs for ETRMS / GSM radio, again i believe in SimRail the 150 Mhz analog radio system is in use along the whole route, but the signs may be seen as you drive.

 

Can someone who knows the ETCS system please tell me if my wording below the signs is misleading, and an alternative way to convey what the signs mean please, but in no more than 6 words to fit in the boxes and be readable when the whole sheet is printed on A4 paper.

 

[Quick drive scenarios]

oh i know we need more services in SP,   a full days timetable would be nice, but that's for the future.

I was just showing a way to drive in the night or day by choosing a different server in MP that is kinda the best we have for now.

[Single Player - Limitations]

and how the feck did i manage to double post,  now i've broken the forum too 🥸

I'll use this 'double post' to show a hoodie my GF got me for xmyth that she thought sums me up perfectly...... the red cross i added, as i don't want to get banned for that 'naughty word' 😏

[Single Player - Limitations]

57 minutes ago, BigVern said:

Those of us asking the question are certainly not "crying Anglo Saxons",

is that similar to when an ozzie calls us english 'whinging poms' ?

I often offend people without realising, but that because it's pretty much impossible to offend me so i assume others are the same,
Call me any 'offensive name' you like, i'll likely agree with you 🤪

[Quick drive scenarios]

in MP, if it's day time in your time zone and you want to drive at night (of vice versa) choose a server on the other side of the world and it should be night time there, as the MP sim time is tied to local time of the server location.

[Pdf manuals and tutorials]

I have made a 'cheat sheet' that you can print out or display on a tablet / phone, showing the signals and signs you are likely to see / use in SimRail.

When we had the playtest forums, there was a General forum that i posted it in, but we don't seem to have that forum for early access, so i posted it in the multiplayer forums, but people who only play single player may not see it:

 

 

[Cars stuck in level crossing.]

i had this a few times last night,

at some crossings i notice the cars seem to slow down then stop gently at the crossing barriers, but at others they are doing full speed then suddenly stop dead at the barrier. These ones seem to have the most chance of jumping past the barrier and getting stuck on the tracks then.

[InGame game time for station unlock is too slow]

i would imagine that you need to work as a dispatcher to earn the time credits for access to larger signal boxes.

no use driving a train for 6 hours then being able to take over one of the big signal boxes and create havoc.... i've never touched the dispatcher side, i'm purely a train driver, my ~80 hours in the playtest were all driving, i wouldn't have a clue what to do in the dispatchers role.

[Automatically change radio channel enabled by default]

They should get a 'points loss for radio wrong channel' pop up showing over and over in the top left corner, which also tells them the correct channels in the area (but when there are say 3 channels to chose from, which one is the one the dispatcher will be on)

Much as i want to drive with the HUD off, i think that whilst learning the signs and signals along the route, it would be nice to have an option to have the important signs you are about to pass show up on the HUD,

 

So when you are say 500 metres from a radio change sign, a picture of it (below) will pop up on the HUD, telling you the radio channel may be about to change, you can then look along the track to spot the actual sign, and you will get used to spotting them without the hud the more you drive.

 Same with the signs for a neutral section ahead, meaning you are to return the power lever / wheel to zero and draw no current until you pass the relevant one telling you it's ok to draw power again (meaning the one with a 'L' if you are driving a locomotive, or the next one with no 'L' that is when an EMU can safely draw power again (as their pantographs are further back than a locomotives are)

[Hours needed]

<sarcastic mode>  being a dovetail fan as your avatar shows, you should be used to everything resetting and starting from zero again every time they release a new version of the same game </sarcastic mode>  🤪🤠

[Key Binds (reserved ones)]

i too am hoping there will be more keybinds available.
and the ability to move a control the opposite direction using a modifier key (K for cab lights on, SHIFT + K for cab lights off)
I do recall from the playtest being told the keybinds part could do with re-writing, but there was no time to do that before early access launch, so i remain hopeful that things will change in the future,

 

i also worry that having a single global keybind scheme will get rather awkward as people start to make new content for SimRail and their trains have controls not found in Polish trains etc, 
we'd either end up with a 10 page long list of all controls for every train like Omsi did it, where you spend 10 minutes looking for the one that applies to the particular bus / train you need to set the keybind to,

or be like tsw, with a very limited set of keybinds, the more complex trains you are expected to operate the controls in the cab with the mouse 🤢

 

What would be better is to do it how railworks / tsc and some flight simulators do it, have a local keybind scheme that is stored with the train, so the relevent keybind file is loaded as the train is being loaded, allowing you to set the same key to multiple functions that are spread out through different trains,

i.e. the keys for 'shunt' aka the field weakening lever in the EU07, 2 keys are set for a control that only applies in that train, same with the cruise control up and down keys in the Elf,
I'd like to use the same keys to operate the shunt lever in the EU07 as the cruise control buttons in the Elf, but can't do that with the keybind tool in the control section of the sim (i know i can if i manually edit the 'Buttons.conf' file)

 

Of course when joystick control is released hopefully the situation will change, and the joystick levers and buttons can be set up to individual trains... so the lever used for brakes in the Traxx can also be used for the combined power and brake lever in the Elf and so on.

 

[train selection, sort by train type... EU07, Elf etc]

Yes, that would be nice,  as i drive mostly services hauled by the EU07,  in the playtest i was used to looking for the first 2 digits, i think if it was 41xxx, it went north to south, if it was 14xxx it was going south to north,

But there is a lot more to the train codes, apparently the first digit is the destination, the 2nd digit is about where it branches off along the way etc,

 

Maybe someone needs to make a PKP service number decoder...
or tell us on the selection screen a little more info, would be really nice to have roughly where abouts the train is that you will be joining, and how many stops are left etc.

I want a loco hauled service that stops at the most stations, rather than one that is going to do 100km with no stops at all, but atm it's a guess for me to find these.