Gazz292

ahh, i spend most of my time laying on my bed, so i have an over bed table that my laptop sits on, i can operate the laptops keys at a good height right in front of me, and there's a shelf to the side of the table that the trackball sits on, as using the laptops trackpad is a pain for me. Earlier this year i was making a (mostly 3D p[printed) train driving controller that sat over my laptops keyboard, this was for 'that train driving game i don't like anymore' Hopefully i can resurrect it next year, and get it working with SimRail (with a more EU07 set of controls) as to get it working with tsw needed a lot of hackery and even then half the controls would be dead, so i've given up with that game.

oh yeah, a few people have been asking for keybinds to turn toggle switches off too... there was a post where the devs said they can't set a single key to trigger a control in the opposite direction (flip flop style) , i.e. press say 'k' for cab lights once and the switch turns on, press 'k' again and it turns off. I'm hoping that it can be done with modifier keys, so 'K'; turns cab lights on, 'SHIFT + K' turns them off. I think maybe the devs thought using the mouse to operate the trains was ok, but there are people who hate using the mouse, and people who can't use one, but can press keys. : Im using my numberpad for all the trains power and brake controls, emergency brake is 'backspace' brake release is 'zero' PLUS and RETURN on the number pad is for power up and down, 3 and 6 = shunt reg, 2 and 5 = loco brake, 1 and 4 = train brake, 7 = train brake lever move to running position' So i have a (logical to me) setup where to increase a control it's the upper button, to decrease it is the lower button.... none of this A for regulator increase, D for regulator decrease stuff side by side keys for up and down lever movements. The alerter reset is my left shift key, fast rotate for the EU07 power wheel is left control key (that's the 'quick move' aka 'sprint when walking' key i discovered) This is so it's comfortable for me to rest my hands each side of the laptops keyboard and have all the most used controls at my fingertips, only needing to move my hands to operate the horn, the door switch in the EMU's, or turn the cab or instrument lights on (but not off 🙂 My reason for this is i have an arthritic condition and especially in this weather my hands are a bit stiff so i wanted to reduce movement to a minimum.

Re: the loco moving around... i read a post where someone didn't like it, saying it was unrealistic! If anyone has ever ridden in a real locomotive, they will know they ride rough, you have a lot of weight on those springs and close coupled wheels, The average locomotive weighs around 80 tons. So every little defect in the track is going to be felt through the seat of your pants, The loco lurches and jumps and rocks and sways, your neck and back muscles will be sore for weeks when you first start driving, from trying to correct the movements all the time. It feels nice and smooth when you are a passenger sat in the carriages as they weigh about 15 tons, have widely spaced bogies and much softer springs / air suspension, So it's a similar nice ride for the driver on an EMU / DMU (excepting the British class 140-143 Pacers, aka the nodding donkeys)

oh yes i've heard that too, i have been wondering what the sound is for. convincing myself i was not hearing someone going 'ooh' and it was something like an air operated contacter operating.

i'm assuming the speedometer is reading how it does in the real EU07? therefore for those of us who want to drive with the HUD off (which i want to do once i've learnt the signalling and signs better) we can do what a real train driver would do: Remember that the speedo under reads, so make sure we are doing ~117 in a 120 block, and ~120 in a 125kph block.

A thread to post the cool things that you have noticed in SimRail. ALL Trains; Bugs on the windscreen: You need to use the washers as well as the wipers to clean them off, AND you need to run the washers for long enough to fully clean the screen. Not using the washers or using insufficient water and you don't get all the bugs in the wipe area removed. All Trains; Variable dwell times in stations: If you are running late, instead of being made to wait the normal 3+ minutes in a station, you will be told to wait a much shorter time, usually something like 15 seconds, Thus giving you a chance to regain lost time when you get going again. If you arrive early then of course you wait until your departure time. Stations; The digital displays and announcements: Some stations have the digital displays working, they are very detailed and even include delay banners with your actual delay time on them. The announcements at the stations that have them working are pretty cool, if you are late the announcement apologises for your delay, and tells the passengers how late you are along with where the train is stopping at after this station, it's destination, where it's from, which platform and track number to find it, to stand back as it's departing etc! EU07; Low voltage Volt and Ammeters actually work (the 2 left upright gauges): The voltage shown will slowly rise as the batteries are charged (from 90 to about 125 volts) At the same time the current will drop from about +40 amps to zero (middle of the gauge) as the batteries reach float voltage. The needles will jump realistically when the compressor starts up, showing the surge of the compressors motor when it's starting, and when the compressor shuts off the ammeter and voltmeter will spike a little and fall back, showing the rotary converters regulator adjusting the output as the load changes suddenly. The rotary converter is basically a 3KV motor driving a 125 volt motor as a generator, an old way to convert DC voltages (with AC you'd use a transformer, but Poland's OLE is 3KV DC) Locomotives; Rough riding, suspension movements: The way the locomotives ride, especially the EU07, In outside view you can see the body moving independent of the bogies as the loco sways side to side as it's moving along. And going over points / switches you get realistic lurches and bumps as the 80 ton loco "bounces" heavily over the uneven track work. Locomotives; Coupling details: Currently only working in single player mode, but to uncouple a wagon / coach you have to do more than just click in the coupler area. I've noticed from the language files there's entries relating to disconnecting the individual brake and air hoses, the electrical cables if used then the screw coupler, as well as attaching the hoses, cables and screw coupler when coupling up. The brake systems seem to be well simulated, leaving a brake hose disconnected and you will not be able to release the brakes on the train. Ai trains; Headlights: When an Ai train is routed over the left hand track (wrong line running) it changes it's headlights to show this, with the left hand light being changed to red. When you do the TRAXX tutorial, you are shown how to change the headlights for wrong line running, and there are many different combinations of white and red lights to set, depending on what your train is doing, i.e. running empty, light loco and so on, some trains even have a SOS mode, that flashes the headlights to warn others something is wrong. All Trains; Random Bang and 'ooooh' noise: So it turns out this noise is part of the sim that's used to train real drivers, where the instructor places a human on the track that gets run over (to see how the trainee handles the situation... i've seen this on tram training simulators) We should not be hearing this noise in our version of SimRail, so we are asked to report it as a bug so the dev's can remove the appropriate sound markers. (please send in a separate bug report with details of where you heard this sound) I'll update this post with other peoples observations of cool things SimRail does as they are posted (assuming i can edit it for long enough)

am i the only one who gets the following whenever i start the sim (started happening yesterday) A feature not implemented on the multiplayer tests perhaps... but i'm thinking this is hinting at saves being available on single player?

no wipers keys yet. I agree, it's hard to get at the wiper switch, the washer switch is totally hidden by the brake lever stanchion, and when the brake lever is in 'initial' position, i find i can't operate the wipers switch, as the brake controls are popping up all the time.

Hopefully they will enable the modifier keys.... obviously it's not a game breaking thing, more important stuff to work on atm, but it's a 'would be nice' feature... There are people out there who don't like using the mouse to click and drag controls, and even some people who can't use a mouse and rely on keyboard alone. Enabling modifier keys is not just to enable one key to operate a control in both directions, but to allow us enough keyboard keys to assign to all the controls in a train, When assigning controls to keyboard keys, if we just use the letter keys alone, we have 26 of them, but add the SHIFT modifier, and that's now 52 keys available, add in CONTROL and its 78, ALT makes for 104 ... and each modifier has a left and right one you can have ... 208 keys to assign to controls.. plus the number pad and so on. We'd likely need separate key maps for each different train, that's where games like tsw fall down, trying to have just one universal key set that covers all trains (and that horrible thing they do where how far a control moves depends on how long you hold a key / game controller button down for) train simulator (classic) has a key map for each loco, and we know a lot of tsw is just 'tarting up' past tsc content and reselling it to us over and over again 🤬 SimRail is the breath of fresh air we've been waiting for

yup, i only drive the EU07... i like mine older 😄 Go back to the steam days, speedometers were only fitted in right at the end in hte UK (late 1960's) sure you could work out your speed by counting the distance posts or telegraph poles as they went by, but it was usually up to the drivers judgement to stick to a safe speed. There's a story in a book (A loco mans log) about speedometers being fitted to the steam locos, and suddenly all the trains were running late, Turns out that the trains had been running way over the posted limits forever, Now the drivers could see the speeds they were doing, and actually slowing down to 40 for a posted 40mph junction... instead of just 'rubbing the brakes a little' for a 40 limit, and applying them for a few seconds for a 25 limit.... the timetable was useless. The solution... instead of re-writing the timetables, the speedometer drive cables were disconnected, and services went back to normal.

there are diesel loco sound effects in the menu screen... perhaps a hint?

i personally like the open radio thing, you get to hear the convo's between other drivers and the signal box, and you can learn information that may apply to you a little later on down the line,.

Talking about stops... something i like is that the station dwell time can alter, if you arrive early then you have to wait till your departure time of course, but if you are running late, you can get a nice short dwell time, i.e. sometimes about 15 seconds from stopping to being told to get on your way again. that's something always complained about in tsw, where you can be running 20 minutes late and still held in a station for the set 5 minutes or so.

i've just deliberately drove over the speed limit of 120kph... and i could sit at upto 123kph for ever it seemed and not get any points taken away, it felt like they only get taken away after i get to 124kph, and only after i've been sat at that speed for a little time.

i think in SimRail you don't start getting points taken off until you're doing 124kph in a 120 stretch, it may even have a time limit to allow you to get the speed under control before it starts giving the penalties too, i.e. a few seconds for you to realise you're speeding and correct it.

yes, i agree that the speed penalty system should be changed slightly, to operate off the in cab indicated speed, Not that i care about the points i'm earning or losing, i'll leave the earning of points / medals / awards to the games,

yup, the signals are all placed to give you more than enough braking distance to stop at a signal... of course the faster you go, the more attentive to the signals aspects you need to be. But there will always be an issue with train sims that you can not see as far into the distance as you can in real life... that's why there's a slider to make the signals glow artificially like a bright orb as you approach them from distance, This is set via the "Signal visibility enhancement level" in the 'simulation' tab of the options. i have mine set to 250%, Then it's just a case of learning the different signals and what they are saying to you.

i figured this is programmed like that, all part of the realism of driving a old tech train 👍 Have others noticed the converter current needle jumps and reads higher / lower when the compressor starts up and shuts off, again stuff we don't really see in other train driving sims... ditto with the flies on the windscreen that need the washers operating to wipe them away, wipers alone leave them behind. : Usually a speedometer is 'calibrated' to under read your speed tho'. Check this with your cars speedometer, when your cars speedo needle points at 70mph, if you check sat-nav speed, you will be doing 60-something... and pretty much all cars built in the last 20 years use the cars ABS signal for speed reading, the speedo needle is moved by a stepper motor, So it can be set to accurately point to the correct speed in the software of the car's ECM, But most countries have laws that speedometers can over read by upto 10%, but should not under read, i.e. they can show you doing 100 mph when you are really doing 90, but are not allowed to show you doing 99 when you are really doing 100.... tho usually there is something like a 1% allowance for under reading.... ...this is from back when a speedometer was a mechanical devise, with a flexible cable transferring rotational motion from the gearbox / axle, and the drive to the speedo needle was by magnetic flux... a magnet rotated constantly when you were moving, and a metal cup positioned to sit over the magnet that the needle was connected to moved in a 'linear' fashion depending on the speed of the rotation magnet.

Just had a little drive after the update, i really like the extra key binds for controls, For anyone who hasn't found this out yet, we now have new keyboard keys for: Brake Release button (used after setting the brake handle to emergency) Train Brake Handle To Running Position Cab Lights Instrument Lights The key that allows us to write in chat can now be set (before it wouldn't allow us to bind a key to that function)... but i haven't got that to work yet.... i assume it should be like mouse clicking in the chat window, but a key to press that activates the chat writing bit. And i also noted that in the EU07, the combo of SHIFT and power wheel up and down keys (usually + and -) before it just rapid moved the wheel between notch 28 and to zero, and if in notch 43, it would rapid move to zero. Nnow a second press of SHIFT + the power increase key moves the wheel to notch 43, and SHIFT + power decrease rapid moves to notch 28, a second press rapids it to zero.... awesome. : I would like to see every button in the cab have the ability to assign keys to them, maybe that will happen in the full release, We still need a way to turn switches off via the keyboard, as ATM we can only flip toggle switches on, i know the dev's said a toggle switch changing state with each key press can't be done, but there must be a way.. say 'SHIFT + the key' to flip it off? as that would count as a separate key press event?? as that works with the EU07 rapid power wheel movement. i mostly drive the EU07, and another key bind that would be handy is the traction motor overload button, as i am still tripping the overload occasionally, and have to use the mouse to pan the view then press the reset button. A big thankyou to the SimRail team for listening to their customers and implementing things people ask for.

I filter by typing 'eng' in the search box, and it shows me the english servers, But a setting that remembers your preference for a certain language server would be nice, i've noticed what you have, the servers are getting the ping times, and the list in not fully populated and searchable until all the servers have the ping times showing... untill then some servers show a '-' dash for no ping available yet.

I'm really hoping we can get access to the data in the simulator, to use it for things like this... or a german style EBuLa, which can be shown on a 2nd monitor or a tablet, and updates your position as you drive.

i think the traction lock operates when over 0.35Mpa is in the cylinders, i know i cheat as use the brakes in 'initial' handle position for a few seconds to slow down when my speed has crept slightly over the speed limit, rather than wind the power wheel back to zero, brake, then apply power again,

I know this is just a playtest, but i'm wondering if anyone has played about with the individual program settings in the Nvidia control panel? i remember with tsw there were a few people who knew what each setting does, and had worked out how best to tune them to get even better results (well with tsw it was more how to correct the annoying problems) i'm running SimRail on stock settings, the same as i run the desktop / web browser at, and everything on High or Ultra in SimRails graphics setup screen. : If i had one moan about SimRail, it's that is has the same issue all train simulators / games have, with the shadow along the tracks on the rails that is drawing about 100 meters ahead of the cab, sometimes this will jump in stages being drawn in sections, i'm not talking about the large circle of higher res textures and shadows that apply to all the scenery around the train, but the long straight shadows that are usually on the right hand side of the 2 rails ahead of the train.

yesterday i did get a bit of stuttering, when moving the camera positions, or switching to the external camera etc, but i deduced this was due to the server i was on, as when i changed to a different server, i got butter smooth results, i could move the cameras view about wildly and not a single stutter,

the right hand gauge isnt reading where it should... it looks to be way over at 1.6Mpa, that's the main pressure i believe, it shouldn't go over the red line at about 0.8Mpa. Not sure how you'd correct that... the safety valves on the compressor and tanks should have operated a little above 1Mpa or so, : i had accidentally turned the compressor off once flipping switches, forgot you have to press the 'compressor overload release' button to start the compressor back up, but that results in the brakes not being able to be released as the main pressure drops, right hand needle went down to about 0.5Mpa when i noticed this... but i could also tell the brakes were not releasing by left hand gauge not going back to zero,