Gazz292

Ahh right, dang 😢 One thing i can see people complaining about is the current inability to turn a switch off from the keyboard, But with the inability to use modifier keys, that's going to be very hard to solve... as often you'd expect, for example to press 'V' for wipers on / next position on the rotary switch, and 'SHIFT + V' for wipers off / last position on the rotary switch. Same with raising and lowering the pantographs, could that be why i haven't seen any "WE1" and "WE3" signs for lower and raise pantograph in the sim... as you have a key to raise the pantographs, but not one to lower them. -------------- I just counted and i have 78 keys that i could assign a command to... that's the number keys, letter keys, arrow keys, keypad numbers, stuff like 'Delete' 'Home' 'page up' space, return etc... i didn't count escape or the F keys 'F1' 'F2' etc, as they are usually used for specific things like to exit / open the menu. Then there's Shift, Ctrl, and Alt modifier keys, that makes 312 keys i think... but nowadays left and right modifier keys are separate, so left shift and right shift, left alt and right alt, etc, That could make 546 keys? Ok, no way anyone would likely remember all of them. --- For me personally i want to use joystick type controllers to drive the trains with in SimRail, hopefully that will be easier to assign many controls / switches to joystick buttons?

The HUD bits that i'd like to have on would be: Distance to next signal. Speed limit changes ahead, with the distance to them. Current speed limit. Distance to next stop or post / timing point. The timetable / schedule (i'd turn it on and off to check it as needed) ------ I could then read the time i'm supposed to arrive at the station / post / timing point from the schedule / timetable. And the loco's power level, current, speed etc, that's all there on the in cab gauges.. but turning that off turns off the current speed limit too... the one thing i struggle to remember. Like others, i don't want to know the signal aspect ahead of me on the HUD, as i want to react to it as a real driver would, if i've passed a single amber distant, i start braking ready to stop at the red signal that is next... if that signal changes 50 meters after i've passed the distant signal, i don't want to know until i sight the signal that's changed from red to another aspect, as that's how it is driving a real train without in cab signalling. It would be really nice if we could move the HUD pieces around, so we can set up our personal preference of where the info is displayed, but i think that might be asking too much, as i can imagine it would be a lot of work and possibly break other things.

And here's the signs in the Sim:

Is it possible to get a keybinding for the 'traction motor overload reset' button in the EU07? That's one button i 🤥'occasionally'🤥 need to use, but it's a pain as you have to move the view about with the mouse to see it, then click the button with the mouse. Sorry i keep moaning about having to use a mouse to operate controls, but i find it hard to do with my arthritic fingers at times. The windscreen washer button would be another regularly used button that doesn't have a keybinding. Do you know if, when SimRail releases, will all the controls / buttons in the cabs have keybindings we can set up?

That is the one you will lose points at if you do not blow the horn as you pass it.

If you bind that to a key, you find it operates the wiper switch (only in the on direction as we don't have a way to turn switches back to off via the keyboard yet) A snippet from my 'Buttons.conf' file for SimRail... i set 'N' for wipers: ::::: InstrumentLight=Semicolon Wipers=N FastMove=LeftControl :::::

So, how fast you can move the wheel in SimRail is about similar to real life: SimRail 2022-12-27 21-35-39.mp4

i think i was mostly complaining about how hard it is to read the text that Zargos has posted here... for me it goes way over to the right off the side of the screen, and it's hell trying to scroll sideways to read a line, then move down a line and move back again. i believe that random events are turned off in the playtest, but are part of the final release, this sim is based on one use to train real drivers, which has the ability for the instructor to place a person on the line infront of a driver. Having seen some of the things present in the playtest, i have high hopes that we will see random events like traction motor faults, maybe low voltage on the overhead wires... depending on how you react could end up tripping out a substation. We already have a great feature of the insects on the windscreen, where they build up as you go along, and you need to use both wipers and wash water to clean them away... if you dont hold the washer button down long enough, some are left behind in the wipe area!!! having birds fly infront of the train is something i know that happens to all train drivers, and the thud and flurry of feathers can be a little sickening (i've had a pheasant hit a truck i was driving at 90 kph, it got stuck halfway through a headlight, my boss was more mad at me for not bringing the pheasant back with me for him to eat than the broken headlight that cost £250 to replace) But a bird coming through the windscreen would be very rare i hope... unless it was a frozen chicken (that's a decades old joke about british rail borrowing a chicken cannon which is usually used to test aircraft windscreens for bird strikes... but every chicken they fired went straight through the trains special laminated windscreens, so they asked for advise, and were told they should 'defrost the chickens before firing them' 🧐 Now a brick thrown from a bridge, could that be getting too realistic... and maybe put ideas into some peoples heads? I know some rail routes had parts known as ''missile alley'' due to kids throwing things at trains as they went past, a broken side window on a train used to be a common thing due to stones being thrown at them as they went past... where the whole train has to be taken out of service after any injuries to passengers are dealt with,

Thankyou for trying to figure things like this out, Sounds always seem to be one the the hardest things to get right for a simulator, it seems like the game engines used never have the right controls in them for driving based games / sims.

maybe a different kind of 'scoring' perhaps? In omsi you had your drivers record card, which would be affected by such things as speeding, harsh cornering and braking, having the bus too cold or too hot, running late.. or worse departing stops too early (potentially leaving people behind who were on time)... and of course not stopping after an accident and calling the police (which made you very late afterwards) or running someone over at more than 5km/h. I'm hoping that the SDK for SimRail when it's released will include a way to access the trains data, so someone could write a separate add on competitive scoring system to allow people who want to compete with friends to do so, with all sorts of data points being measured to make the scores as detailed or as simple as you'd need/want. I mostly like driving passenger services, and i like to read about things relating to the realistic running of the trains so i can use them myself in the sim.... So i pick up things like that for passenger comfort you shouldn't apply the brakes so as to lower the train pipe gauge below 3.8 Bar... i may have that wrong and it's 4.2 Bar, and 3.8 is considered a harsh stop for the passengers behind you. (i'm used to Bar, i know Kpa and Mpa are just finer graduations of Bar, so just add 2 or 3 zeros to the end) As the train slows you need to release the brake pressure a little, and as you come to a stop the brake lever can be put to the off position just before the final stop, This is to allow a gentle stop as the brakes are still on along the train, but beginning to release at the point where you'd get a lurch if you kept the brake handle in the same position for all of the braking (obviously apply brakes again once stopped... a lot of old train cab driving videos i see the loco brake is used to hold the train in the station if it's on level track, the train brake having been fully released just before the train came to a standstill) I've always done a similar thing when driving a truck or a car, i used to drive recovery trucks so had passengers onboard a lot, and never had a complaint about rough or bad driving, I'd read a book on how to drive as a chauffeur when i was a kid, and remembered stuff from it like: As you slow down to stop at a junction or traffic lights, Just before the actual final stop, release the brake pedal then apply it again gently to hold the vehicle still, This will result in a nice gentle stop that most passengers will not notice, as opposed to that kind where you are thrown forwards against the seat belt then are pushed back into the seat by the inertia of a harsh stop. When changing lanes, time your maneuver so the vehicles wheels cross between the cats eyes, avoiding the bumps of going over them. If the passenger moans they are late and demands you 'step on it' keep to the speed limit but drive roughly... slightly harder cornering and braking harsher than usual makes them think you are helping by speeding, but you are not risking your license... as lose that and you lose your job.

Thank you for telling us what this strange 'bang and oooh' noise is for, Can you keep it in the sim, but place the serial griefers who deliberately disrupt those of us who take this Sim seriously on the tracks for us to run over 🤕🤠

deffo need a way to perma ban someone who is as toxic as that, that will follow them no matter how many times they change their steam accounts and login names.

oh yes, i forgot about that, i'm sorry for not remembering you telling me this in another post.

how long do you think it takes to wind the wheel round 43 notches in real life? it takes about 3 seconds in SimRail to fast move from notch 42 to zero, using the 'shift' key and the '+' or '-' keys. Part of being a train driver is anticipating the road ahead, you are not driving a car, it can take a couple of kilometers to stop a heavy freight train,

What the fekinhell is this supposed to be? have you joined up just to post something you grabbed off a steam whinge post? 'windshield sale Supplement by a multidude of crushed insect above' WTF??? are you asking for dead flies to build up on the trains windscreen... like already happens in the Sim... and you need to wash them off with the wipers AND washers. As i keep saying.. this is a PLAYTEST, it's a small portion of the full simulator to enable us to report bugs, There's also lot of features turned off for the playtests, so the released simulator will be a lot more than we have seen with the current playtest.

i always question if we as the train driver should be hearing level crossing warblers / sirens / gongs / bells at all unless we were stopped before one when it started it's cycle. usually the sounders stop playing once the barriers are lowered and the crossing secured, they are a warning for the car drivers that the road is about to be closed.

Personally i want to get as far away from the tsw style arcade game scoring as possible, if the dispatcher changes the signal to red 600 meters infront of me, that brake lever is going straight to emergency brake position and staying there until i stop, i'm not going to think 'damn, i don't want to lose points so i'll risk a SPAD by braking gently' 🙂

Loving the track details, with double wooden sleepers under the track joints.

yep i know Zusi, i've been looking for a train driving simulator that is like Zusi for realistic operations, but with modern good graphics, i think i may have found that in SimRail 🙂 I wasted so much time on train sim world last year, that had the pretty graphics, but unfortunately far too much of the stupid stuff, like collectables, medals, trophies, and the damn annoying puns. Like with most of the scenarios where you drive a BR 401, BR 406 etc, they made a stupid pun of the word 'ice' which is the spelling of the word for frozen water in english, But anyone who knows a little German knows it's pronounced 'eeh - tsay - ay' Sounds like 'ee szet eh' in english. Re: the points resetting, over the past 2 or so weeks the points have been stuck on 1 for a while, then they built up... i got to level 8, then they went back to 1, built up again and have been stuck on 1 for a few days now. In the final version the points system would be enabled properly i imagine, and they will properly accumulate on your steam account, as there are things like certain trains that require being over a specific level to drive, and hopefully the signal boxes will have something similar, as some of them are very complex and definitely not suitable for beginners to learn in.

This has been happening the past few days for me, some areas are perfectly fine, but others are like this all around the train. SimRail_log_2022-12-26_19-28-57.txt

<sniff> 😢 i've only done about 1300 Km, i've got a bit of catching up to do 🥸

it's fun figuring this train out i think, i am getting the impression that SimRail will be a very realistic simulation, and we will learn the little quirks and tricks that real drivers of the locomotive use when driving it. it's deffo a lot more fun that just pushing a lever forwards and having a 2000 ton train take off like it's a a local stopper with just 2 carriages on tow,

nothing is broken, this is a PLAYTEST, You get access to a small part of the simulator for free, and in return you report the bugs you find, including your player log for the run in question so the devs can fix things before the full release of the sim. A lot of features are switched off in the playtest, and one of them is point scoring, hence why you can drive any train and work in any signal box (that is available to you in the test) without needing to meet requirements of experience levels to access the box/train. When the full simulator is released i would guess everyone will start at level one, zero km driven. But honestly, if scoring points whilst driving a train is so important, then you'd love train sim world, as they think people want to collect items and get awarded medals for doing things like operating the wipers or reverser handle, or for stopping right at the end of the station with a short train and so on, thats what games do, this is a simulator.

i believe it is, i switch it to freight when i have a freight run, and notice a difference in the way / time it takes for the train brakes come on compared to passenger setting... it could be me imagining it tho.

The EU07 has a few things that should help. First it has a 'Current Setting' switch ... it's one of the 3 rotary switches on the middle of the console, the right most one. It has 2 positions, normally it's in 'Low Power Mode' this is for normal driving, But if you turn that switch to 'High Power Mode' then it allows upto 750 amps instead of 600 to the motors in the serial notches ... i.e. the first 28 power settings, This is switch is be used to help get a heavy freight train going, You need to put the switch back to low power mode before moving into the parallel motor notches... notch 29 upwards... if left in high power mode the motors wont switch to parallel and you'll go no faster. Then there's a rotary switch 'Adjust Forces To Wheel Pressure' i am not sure about that one to be honest, thought it may be something like traction control in a car, you can hear a nice thunk from the electrical room when it's operated, but can't say i've noticed it do anything. There is a green mushroom button to the left of the power wheel called 'Antislipping Brake' You press this when the wheels are slipping, and it rapidly applies some braking force to the loco wheels, much faster than the loco brake lever can apply and release the brakes... so it's sort of a manual ABS system. Others have said, if the trains not rolling back down the gradient, then you haven't fully released the brakes, it takes a while to release all the brakes on a long cargo train, so putting the train brake lever to the fill position can help get them off a little faster (just remember to put the lever back to running, as over time if left in fill it can overcharge the brakes) There's also the 'Brake Releaser' button you an use to help release the brakes fully... a green mushroom button to the right of the power selector rotary switch. As for sanding... i believe this should be operated with one of the foot controls, but they do not move yet, there is a 'Sanding Breaker' with the other breakers below the flap in the desk that battery switch is in... thats on by default tho.