Gazz292

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,

yes thats it, EB / Electronic timetable u / and La / Speed restrictions Basically an electronic version of the timetable book, with your speed limits, station / freight stops and other things you need to know along the route, but it auto updates your position as you drive via GPS (in the real train) and shows the hectometers etc, so you can look out the window at the hectometer boards as they pass, and think 'in 5Km i will be routed to a different line and there's a speed restriction of xxKph'

Awesome, I imagine over time we will get these for all services, and we can have them as a PDF and open them on a 2nd monitor / tablet next to out main screen, Or print them out and have them on a clipboard. Now. do the modern trains (ELF, traxx, pendulino) have the polish equivalent of an EBuLa screen in a German loco?

i get a banner across the middle top of the screen saying 'you can stop now' this tells me the rear of my train is fully in the platforms, and no need to keep going right to the end of the platform when you only have 3 carriages behind you.

oh yes, i know when i first started SimRail and other train driving sims, it seems so daunting, there's so much to do and little time to do it in before things go wrong. but after a week or so of driving, things are becoming natural, i know how to operate the basics of the train, looking at and reacting to the in cab gauges rather than the HUD, I start to learn the signal meanings and watch and react to the signals on the track side rather than the HUD, i know when to expect the in cab alerter / signal warning alarms, and the driving experience is enjoyable, I even begin to start to learn the route (tho that is always the hardest part for me, as in real life i need the help of a sat nav to get to the local supermarket) I slowly begin to learn the braking points and stop entering a platform at ~30 Kph (that's partly due to tsw and it's crap brake simulation, where applying more brakes when slowing down seems to do nothing and you overshoot, i've not overshot a platform in SimRail yet.... ok i likely knocked every one in the train to the ground by slamming on the brakes harder, but the brakes in SimRail seem to operate how i'd expect them to, from experience of traveling on the old class 101 DMU's for 3 years to and from school being able to see the driver operating the controls... many years ago now) Then i start to crave more realism, more things i need to do respond to whilst driving.. like the neutral sections, panto down sections and so on. A gradient overlay on the HUD would be good too as you say, as long as it's optional, like how the current 'next signal' hud element could do with the option to turn the signal aspect off, but still show the distance to the next signal, as thats the hardest part of route learning, I do like how the trackspeed in the bottom right corner applies to the speed of the train, and not just the track speed of the line (again a common complaint on that tsw.. along with how that game measures distance as the crow flies and not along the track!)

What do you plan to do when you are up there? That's access to the signals for the maintenance people, not train drivers or signalers.... tho maybe if it was set in the 1960's when oil lamps lit the signals at night, you could climb up to re-light a lamp in stormy weather.

i have seen things moving on the map, Awesome work there 👍

One of the problems that tsw suffers from is having one global set of controls that is supposed to cover every train, the railworks / tsc that came previous to that did have a separate set of controls that could be changed for every different train (by editing the control file for each train) Of course the main basic controls can be shared between all trains, the keys / joystick controls for power, brakes, doors, main lights etc, But as more and more trains are added, especially from different countries, we are going to end up with either a massive long list of every control like it was in omsi, and having to spend ages searching that list for the control that's applicable to the train you are currently setting up to work with your keyboard or controller, Or we will have a limited list of only the main controls operable via keybinding / joystick buttons, and the others have to be operated by mouse (like it is now, with no key bind for the wipers, washers or the motor overload reset button in the EU07, i.e controls that are used fairly often and would be nice to have a key to press to operate them) Not sure if this is planned for the release version, or when joystick control is added? Also, have a FOV that's adjustable per train, as i like to have it set for 55 for the EU07, as it allows me to see the gauges better, and all the controls are still visible, but it's a bit too close for the EN96 / ELF, so i'd need to keep resetting it manually each time i drive a different train.

yeah, unfortunately a lot of serial griefers are people who have no life and disposable income (or a mummy who buys them any game they demand just so she can have a quiet life) They generally don't have the skills to complete games the correct way, so always buy every upgrade via micro transactions so they can grief the new players immediately. They make it a 'career' of causing misery to others, they literally have nothing better to do. And even worse, there are groups of people on facebook and similar who band together to perform a 'Total Take Over' going after forums and games they think are lame and full of people who deserve to be bullied, A train driving / signalling simulator falls right into their 'we are better than them, they deserve to be bullied' category, Or the little kids who think they are making the game/sim more fun for everyone by arsing around, setting up races and sending trains on head on collisions etc.

i thought i'd figured out that the Scenario Duration is how long you get to drive the train for, certanly if i take over one of the trains on the other part of the line with 6 minutes left, that how long i get to drive for. Also, the servers reset every 3 hours, so you may take over a train with a 1 hour 40 minute drive time, but the server is going to restart and boot you in 20 minutes (hence why people are asking for a 'time to next server restart' clock on the train selection page) But as for getting to drive for more than the 'duration' time, i dunno, i havent had that happen to me yet, i've driven for 1 hour 45 minutes as the longest so far, and the service i chose said it had about that time left... tho being held at a red signal for 10 minutes can alter the 'duration time' ? As for the departure time, you'd think that's the time the train departed from it's originating station, but i have seen departure times as an hour in the future compared to the server time. so i'm really not sure on that one.

yeah, maybe add a warning to the HUD as an optional feature, and have a page of realism check boxes to set if you want to have an experience like a real driver, where driving under power over a neutral section can damage your loco / the OLE, Same with panto down signs etc, OR have a more 'game like' experience where you are just operating power and brakes. Having all these extra things optional would be best, as if the driving experience is too realistic right from the start, people are going to give up saying it's too hard, So let people start with optional features off and get used to just controlling the train, then start adding the other features as they get used to the train, and it will become second nature for you to be looking at the signs along the track and reacting to them, just like a real train driver does.

They deffo need to do something about it when driving, i've mostly been driving the EU07, and i seem to get the czuwak lights pretty rarely, but every 2Km or so i am responding to the SHP as i approach a signal, what should be the time interval between getting the czuwak lights? Googling shows it to be about 5 minutes, other people say 1 minute (does it differ by loco / EMU type?) I've got no problem resetting the czuwak every minute if that's prototypical for this loco, i was used to the 30 second reset for the SIFA in German trains. But the problem is when stopped waiting at a signal for other train movements before your route is clear, the czuwak is paused in the real train then (it activates when you are driving over about 5Kph i believe) But in the sim, the vigilance timer is running and needing input every minute no matter what. I think we could do with something like the 'are you still alive' message is paused when you are stopped at a signal, as you not being there makes no difference really, you are not blocking a server as you are not permitted to move. When the signal changes to a proceed aspect, a timer starts, if you havent started moving the train when it runs down the AI takes over and drives the train, preventing holdups to other trains. You then have a minute or so to take back control or you are kicked back to the train selection screen on the server (rather than all the way back to the server select screen... giving you chance to take your train back if someone else hasn't taken it over)

i must say one of the things i enjoy about driving a new locomotive to me, is learning all it's controls and indicators, The instruction on how to set up and drive the EU07 on this forum taught me which gauges are for what, and mostly what the indicator lights are for, The ones i was unsure of i looked up online, i see this as part of my 'driver training' Kinda like when you get a new car and read the handbook to familiarize yourself with what features it has and what the lights on the dash and switches mean and do .....except that nowadays some people prefer to ask on facebook what a certain light means rather than read the cars handbook, i knew of one person who was selling his car and buying a new one, because the new one had a feature he really wanted.... his old car had that feature too, just he had never read the handbook to learn how to turn it on!!!