Gazz292

Being able to couple and uncouple will be in the final release i'd expect, There are already the onscreen messages stored in one of the files in the playtest for coupling, for operating the screw coupler, connecting and disconnecting the air lines and electrical connections. Maybe we'll get a little diesel shunter later on. But in the real world you have un-electrified sidings and lines leading off from the electrified ones, they have signs up warning of this for the driver: So the driver should stop if they see the above sign when driving an electric loco down that siding / route. Ok the signaller should also know not to route an electric train onto the wrong track, but humans make mistakes... computers do too at times. Maybe SimRail can make things very realistic and have damage happening if you drive off the wires with your panto up, then you have to arrange with the dispatcher for rescue, and the breakdown team to come and remove your wrecked pantograph before you can be dragged back.

pretty much any music that you play in videos on youtube will hit a content match nowadays, it's not the owners of the music doing this, i know of some youtubers who paid for a license from the actual artist to use a piece of their music in a video, and got copyright claims which were upheld by youtube, because there are companies out there where all they do is file copyright claims, They approach artists and say that for a small fee they will file copyright claims on their behalf on youtube, When this happens the ad money earnt from the video goes to that company... and what do they pay the artist of the music when it is a real claim, pretty much feck all. the ones getting rich are the copyright claiming companies. A channel i watch that has used one of the instrumental pieces from the 1800's as his intro music for years, then suddenly he was getting multiple copyright claims from different companies for the same bit of music, music which has been in the public domain for about 100 years, as soon as he clears up the false claims from one company, another tries it on.

I managed to get onto the 2nd wave of playtest slots, and 99% of people were pretty clued up on railways, most of the 'issues' were from people trying to control a signal box without knowing anything and just mashing buttons. But people communicated and learnt the ropes, wrote tutorials, figured things out and it was going well, Then more slots were opened up and more people came flooding in, then we started to see the asshats who would do things like take control of a large signal box and shout on the radio 'i've got 4 tracks available, lets have a race' or deliberately cause chaos by either routing trains down wrong lines or towards each other. Then the 'i'll start the sim up, get control of a train then leave it to sit there blocking the tracks up' people started getting on. : And then with the last playtest slots, we got the 'ThIs GaMe iS kRaP, i HaTe iT, aNd iTs YoUr FaUlT tHaT i cAnT FiGuRe ThInGs OuT, yOu lOsT a CuStOmEr' types, people who have no interest in railways, have never played a train simulator game before, and likely only clicked to be a playtester because they thought it was a way to get a free game. They would be the type that if they did buy the finished product, would file for a refund or constantly moan it's not what they were expecting, driving a train should be easier than driving a car, as you don't even need to steer trains etc.

exactly, Just look at tsw, they release on the day they said it would no matter what, and what happens every time, within hours of release people are reporting loads and loads of bugs and leaving bad reviews. back to SimRail... I noticed that a couple of bug reports that i had posted in the bug report part of the forum were not approved for a good 20 hours, i.e. all day on the 21st. To me that means the dev team were working solidly on the sim update stuff, not having time for anything else.

that might explain why i cant find what i read about 2 different flash frequencies by searching for 'Poland S3 flash' It might of been another country where they have introduced that.

hey, guess what, an announcement has just been made about possible server outages due to the update... and single player will be working... i bet some people will be moaning ' they said single player release on the 21st, and it released 49 minutes into the 22nd, thats not good enough'

please learn polish, thank you

I've read that recently they introduced 2 different flashing speeds for some signals, but as usual i can't find the web page that i read that on, if i find it again i'll post it tomorrow. Also, videoing modern LED signals with a digital devise can cause weird things to show that our eyes don't see, the signal's led's are lit by PWM.... which is turning the led's on and of very rapidly to get the desired brightness, us humans have persistence of vision, so we don't notice the flashing. But the rolling shutter of a digital camera will be out of sync with the led's PWM rate, and you will see the lights doing things like appearing to flash when they are not, A lot of british railway drivers eye view videos on youtube get comments asking why the red signal lights blink in the video, but in real life they have never seen it flash.

With the EU07 'manual' posted at the top of the forum, i managed to work out how to operate this train, The EN92/ELF and E186 i already knew about from the prologue and demo. It's working the signal boxes that is the hardest part, and people have managed to figure them out and run them pretty well so far, again there's a 'manual' at the top of this forum, and beginner servers that people ask for help when they get stuck.

Sorry, the OP had posted the same kind of thing in a few different posts and on the discord server, basically saying the train takes over control before they have time to learn anything, and it's going to lose a customer etc. But for that to happen no input is being made for over a minute.

The AUTO function is a timer. If you have not made any input on SimRail for 50 seconds whilst driving... i.e. moved a control, pressed a button, even just hitting any key on the keyboard or clicking with the mouse... you get a warning on the screen saying a bot may take over if you continue to do nothing. If you have not done anything at all on SimRail by 1 minute and 5 seconds (when driving) the auto pilot takes over. (I've just tested this on an empty server to get the 1:05 takeover time, BUT when sat at a station with a 7 minute dwell time, i got the same warning at 50 seconds, BUT it was almost 5 minutes before the bot actually took over) When the train has been taken over and being driven by auto pilot, at anytime you can click at the top where it says 'click here to disable autopilot' just like you did when you loaded into the moving train, and you have control of the train again. So if this is stopping you operating controls, you are not pressing any keyboard keys or clicking the mouse for over a minute! : I know it's a lot to learn for someone who has never driven a simulated train before, but this multiplayer test is live and in real time, there are other real people connected to the server you are on driving some of the other trains around you, and real people controlling some of the the signal boxes. A lot of these people have been doing this for the last 10 days, and their goal is to run the simulated railway in a professional manner. : This timer was implemented because some people were taking over trains then ignoring them deliberately, letting them sit idle just to screw things up for others, this caused 'train jams' where the lines were blocked up, with many trains stuck around the train that's not being controlled. It's not like driving a car, you can't just drive around a stopped train, the line you are blocking may be used both ways and be part of the route for loads of other trains from all directions. Same with the people running the signal boxes, some people deliberately ignored their tasks to mess things up, but others were trying to control something that's far too complicated for someone new to the sim, you really can't just load in and spam all the buttons to find out what does what here, This simulator is realistic, so the interlocks in real trains and signal boxes are in place, you can't just apply emergency brakes then accelerate away the second you have stopped, you have to operate the controls as they are done in the real thing. This is what SimRail is about, and what sets it apart from other train driving 'games' where you can just press one key to go faster, and another to slow down.

The main thing i love about SimRail is the EU07, a 1960's loco where everything is manual and the computer controlling it is the drivers brain. I love the older stuff, but i am not a fan of driving steam trains in sims, give me some nice 1960-80's era trains to drive, my favorites being vintage German electric loco's, a nostalgia thing, i lived in Germany in the 1980's growing up, so saw stuff like the BR-103, BR-420 S-Bahn emu's, the BR-111, and BR-143 running on the train lines. Being a forces brat back then, traveling past the iron curtain was not allowed, so the polish stuff is all new to me, but i am loving it in SimRail.

I remember world of subways, Number 1 was the new york version, and the instructions for German players had to explain the concept of AM and PM, and how in America they use a 12 hour clock cycle, Then number 2, the Berlin U7 line, the english instructions had to explain the 24 hour clock system. i can remember the forums back then with people raging at how stupid either system was.

this is a PLAYTEST... as with all playtests, it's about finding bugs, it's not supposed to be a 'free way to get a go on the game' With other game playtests you get given a very small part of the map and are asked to play it over and over again finding every way to break it, then you do it again with the fixes until it's as good as possible, then you may get another small section of the map and so on. Only a beta release do you usually get access to a bigger part of the game. This playtest you get almost 2 hours of driving time and over 140Km's or track to drive, and multiple signal boxes to control... and it's all done in real time. Most of us have an interest in trains and have driven in other games that pretend to be simulators, This is a simulator, it's supposed to be hard.... last night i drove for 40 minutes at 20Kph because of signal failures, something that happens in real life, and it's awesome that this kind of thing can happen as a random event in this sim, how many people would have just rage quit after 3 minutes of that? If you are totally new to train driving, then play the SimRail prolouge or demo, that is all tutorial. but it is sounding like this kind of Simulator is not for you, there is a place for games like train sim world, where you can earn medals for pressing the buttons it tells you to and it's all very arcade game like, this is not what SimRail is. Sorry to be negative, but shouting on discord that they have lost a customer because the PlayTest is too hard to figure out isn't really helping, the multiplayer part of this Sim is LIVE, if you faff about stopping a train that you cant work the interlocks to get going again, you are holding up all the other people driving trains in the Sim around you, so wait for the single player part to be released,

A couple of days ago i heard station announcements for the first time, and i think i have figured out they were there all along?, but i only hear them in the cab of the EU07 if i have the side window down. When the window is up and closed, it blocks out the station announcements totally (as well as the water textures, but someone else has posted about that) Not sure if this applies to the other trains, as i have been almost exclusively driving the EU07. : Then there is the language of the announcements, i heard one apologizing for my late train* last night as i rolled into Opoczno Południe station, and then one for 'this train is about to depart, stand back from the platform edge' and they seem to be only announced in english. Is this intentional? I expected to hear the announcements in Polish, as i am driving a train in Poland not england, Maybe multi language announcements on some of the main stations, but not on the small stations out in the countryside? : : *I was driving train number 41138 (on EN9) and at about 21:50 there was a signal failure from just past Olszamowice, for maybe 10 km to past Pilichowice, so i had to run at 20Kph and stop at each dead signal before proceeding again... at 20Kph, making me over 40 minutes late when i finally got signals back a few Km before Opoczno Południe station. man i love this simulator... i know some people would have got bored and rage quit after 3 minutes of doing 20kph, but i stuck it out as if i was driving the train in real life, there was even an ED250 that overtook me on the left line, those signals were working, but i was stuck on the right line with dead signals, and no way to move me over to the left line, such is life 😊

There is a setting in the menu, Simulation, there's a slider for the Signal Visibility Enhancement Level... this makes the signals artificially glow from a distance, i have mine set at 250%, and can see the signals from about 1Km or so away.

i've mainly been driving the EU07, but playing with the radio, all the buttons and dials move, I'm guessing the middle knob is the volume, as that moves in a linear fashion around (i drive mostly on EN2 or 9, and hear no radio chatter / voice chat at all to see if it's a volume knob) The right hand knob moves 3 positions, i can't quite make out what the text says for the positions tho, Then there's that button next to the power button, that goes between pushed down and up, but cant see that it does anything, and of course the ZEW buttons that are hold down types, which i was told are for contacting other trains (ZEW1) and the dispatcher (ZEW3) these send a tone when held in, (ZEW2 doesn't) I guess there is a lot more to SimRail that will be activated as it gets released, and i can't wait.

is this 0.5 second flash what happens on the real railway? or just something that you think would look better? The signals i've seen flashing in real life are a slow flash, But if you have video of polish signals flashing faster, please post them, as this is a simulator, and it's simulating the real railway.

I might even get back to work on my project that i was calling my "mostly 3D printed 'EuroRailDriver''... the levers being 68.5% the size of real ones (which i have a driving desk from a BR111 in storage) as i find the raildriver a bit too small for my big hands. Was aimed at driving the German trains in tsw, but that game is so restrictive needing hacks to get anything like this working, i gave up on it, and havent booted tsw up for months, and likely wont again. I have plans in my head to make a control panel based on the EU07, this time i will likely go for the force feedback method of notches rather than 3D printed changeable notch plates to suit the different trains levers.

I'm always one to lower the tone.... It makes a change from some of the things real signalers got up to in the last century in UK signal boxes when they were bored: From the British Medical Journals: “A 65-year-old railway signalman was in his signal box when he 
bent down to pick up his tools and ‘caught his penis in a Hoover Dustette, 
which happened to be switched on’. He suffered extensive lacerations to the 
glans, which were repaired with catgut with a good result”. A hoover dustette was a handheld vacuum cleaner, with the metal fan blades positioned only a couple of inches inside the nozzle 😧😬🤕

i found that when i 'tested' the timeout thing when driving a train, once the AI took over my avatar changed to a bot one rapidly, but even when i had taken back control it did not change back to my avatar for a very long time... clicking on the bot icon for the train i knew was mine showed my name as driving it in the details below the map tho, It does lag a little i noticed, when another player passed me and i did my 'flash one of the headlights on and off' thing to say hello, it was about 10 seconds before that player was shown as passing me on the map, but i imagine there's a lot of data going between the sim and the map app, and i don't have the fastest internet connection in the world for sure, but it is still blowing my mind how amazing SimRail is.

Oh yes, i have used that when i drove a freight train, it allows higher current to be drawn by the motors when they are in series connection (first 28 notches) a situation i'd expect it to be mandatory to have both pantographs raised then, as even more power is being drawn from the OLE. It's good that it's simulated that going past notch 28 and into the parallel motor connection part, you get no power until you turn that switch back to low power (thats how it seem'd to me when i tried it) Similar to how the parallel part of the power wheel wont activate if the field weakening / shunt lever is left in an active position (for the resistance cut out section, wind the wheel round to notch 43 and boom, you try and pull over 1200 amps and the current limit relay drops out. : Re: the lack of neutral sections in other countries, i wonder if it's to do with infrastructure age, or train technology? i know that some of the modern trains in Germany can get a signal at a neutral section and automatically switch off and back on as they pass the neutral section, similar to the pantograph down sections, I love how this has to be done manually with the older trains, makes them a lot more interesting to me, as you need to keep on your toes when driving, and not just let the onboard computers do it all for you. The polish train system does seem to be a little on the older side, the Czuwak / SHP thing is a very basic form of driver vigilance, sort of similar to the old AWS system in england, where you could cancel a warning of a danger signal ahead and drive right past the signal if you chose to, I think i read that the ETCS system is slowly being rolled out, i wonder how that will be implemented in the good old EU07 loco,

i think whats happened is these playtests have shown that some people have been deliberately blocking things up by taking control of a train / signal box, then ignoring the sim, People have been asking for a timeout that kicks players who are doing this deliberately, or re-assigns the AI to take over. and the quickest way to implement this is a simple timer, when no input from the mouse or keyboard has been detected for a minute, you get a warning, fail to acknowledge it and after a while the AI takes over, then you get kicked and someone else can have your role in the sim. : I know it would need a lot more coding, but i think what players want is a more 'intelligent' timeout system, One that for the train drivers monitors if their train is moving or not, if moving then usually about every 2 Km or less there will be a SHP to acknowledge before the signals.. i've only really been driving the EU07, and the czuwak / Alerter seems to go off very rarely, it's deffo got more than a 1 minute timer... so the current 1 minute timeout feels a bit annoying when you are cruising along looking at the road ahead, but not needing input for the train (and i know with German trains they have a 30 second SIFA thing, but thats built into the train and realistic, the current timer feels not part of the sim, if that makes sense) Then when you stop at a red light or a station, the timeout stops counting whilst you are supposed to be stationary, as that's not holding anything up, But when the light changes to a proceed aspect, or it's time to depart the station, the timer starts again, 30 seconds or a minute later if you haven't moved off the AI takes over and drives the train, preventing backlogs in that section, Then you have a certain time to re-take control of the train before you are kicked back to the train selection screen, and someone else can drive your train if you don't re-take control of it from the list of trains on the server available to drive. : For the dispatchers this is going to be more complicated, as there will be periods where it is quiet, and as in real life, between trains the signaler may do other things like read a book, write a letter / email, browse the web etc, Having to press a button every minute whilst nothing is actually happening in the sim is going to get annoying, and people will use workarounds to send a keypress every 59 seconds automatically 😞 So the system needs to detect there is nothing for the signaler to do at the moment, and pause the timer until the next train is offered to his signal box, Here again i can imagine a timer starts, fail to respond before it timeouts and the AI takes over the box, and like the train driver you have a little time to re-take control or you are booted etc.

There will be a lot more neutral sections on the Polish lines compared to Germany, as Poland uses 3KV DC, opposed to 15KV AC, So power feeds into the overhead lines need to be more frequent to give the trains enough power, and the current drawn on 3KV is pretty high compared to 15/25KV lines, the reason you have a neutral section is to prevent back feeding the section ahead with power from the section behind as you pass through it, and other reasons. I read that when you stop at a station and have the carriage heating on, you are supposed to raise both pantographs, this is due to the high current being drawn from the line, as in some circumstances having just one pantograph raised could draw so much power in one spot for long enough to weld the pantograph shoes to the line, Similarly, in a heavy freight train, when starting off you should have both panto's raised for similar reasons, spreading the load drawn over a wider area, and lower the other panto once you have got about 5Kph or so... but this is getting pretty deep into the 'how to drive a polish train realistically' I'm just a nerd that loves learning about this kind of thing.

I've got a couple of android tablets mounted each side of my laptop screen (mounted using car/bike type mounts on the over bed table i have my laptop sat on.. originally i had them as MFD and EBuLa screens when playing train simulator classic, using a program called TS-MFD that reads data from that game and displays the trains speedo/power/engine panel screens, EBuLa etc on tablets or 2nd monitors... really hoping something similar can be written for SimRail, it can't for tsw as they wont allow access to the data needed) I have just had a drive with the map app open on the right hand tablet, sync'd to my train, it was awesome being able to see the route i'm taking, other trains coming towards me etc (i know i need to rotate the tablet 90 degrees really) I'm am loving SimRail more and more each day,