Gazz292

i really should have replied to the 'raildriver' post with the link that shows mine and a few other peoples controllers we are building instead of derailing this topic... now there's been replies if i change my original post, it will mess things up even more? The link to the controller build 'blog' :

As the owner of a raildriver i can confirm that the raildriver is horrible to use with european trains, people who don't own one often do not realise it's size either, it's only about the size of a shoe box!, so if you have adult sized hands it's levers are tiny.. the shafts of them feel like matchsticks in my hands, then you have the constant recalibration needed due to how loose the connections are to the electronics, and the need to leave 5 to 10mm of travel at each end of the throws to enable you to move the ingame control fully on or off. So about 3 or 4 years ago i started working on making my own 'Euro-raildriver' with 3D printed parts in a laser cut perspex case : The levers had fast swappable notch mechanisms that allowed me to change the levers feel to suit different european trains, and as i was making this to play tsw, i had to incorporate a way to change the controller mapping on the fly, as the tsw raildriver control assignments changed depending on which dev set them up for each train, The control reconfigurator is what goes in the empty holes on the top right of the top panel above : Unfortunately half the switches i'd made would never work due to the very limited keybinds and raildriver assignments in tsw, it would have been so much easier if i could have simply set each lever up as a joystick axis, and each switch and button as a joystick button input.... but the tsw devs said that as most people are happy to play with a keyboard or a console controller, there's no reason to spend time adding user assignable joystick inputs Then i really got disillusioned with tsw when they made it so you basically had to buy the game again to use new dlc's with it, so i gave up when tsw3 came out, and waited for SimRail to be released instead. So my Euro-raildriver controller sits on one of my 'never finished project' shelves, maybe to be brought to life one day when SimRail gets joystick inputs. . So... as i much prefer driving the EU07, EP08 and EN57 style trains in SimRail, i instead made some 3D printed controllers for my laptop desk to suit : The wheel and levers rotate potentiometers via gears, and arduino's inside each controller convert the movement into key-presses ... as that's all SimRail accepts for input right now, for the power wheel, reverser and shunt levers, and EN57 power, reverser and brake levers this is easy, as they all have notches for each position the arduino's simple send an increase or decrease key when the lever moved to a new notch. For the EU07 brake levers, the train brake lever has notches, but it also has the main portion of the travel smooth,9 for infinitely adjustable brake pressure in that section (like IRL), and the loco brake lever is just a 180 degree smooth travel with end stops. So for this to work the arduino's send an increase or decrease key-press for every few degrees the lever is moved, this isn't perfect and needs a stable fps rate to work reliably (thankfully my gaming laptop runs SimRail at between 40 and 100 fps, so i limit it to 60 fps and 95% of the time my brake levers stay in sync). But things will be so much easier when we get joystick support, and then when we get the full input / output system, i will go on to making the indicator lights and gauges work (in a similar way to my Omsi driving cab i built back in 2012) So for me too, it's the input / output system that i am mostly looking forwards to in SimRail, and for now every new keybind added makes me happy, as i really do not like driving the trains having to use the mouse to operate certain switches or buttons. . One day i may get into driving 'newer' trains a little more, as i have the driving desk from a BR111 wittenberger steuerwagen in storage that i've partially converted to work with the computer.... i got this originally to use with train simulator 2012 (now train simulator classic) , as that allowed input and output via an external program, but then i got into tsw for the better graphics, and realised tsw has very limited input, and is never going to get output options... so that kind of made that project useless... it's better to be used with Zusi, but i just can't accept it's outdated graphics 😞 So it was put in the storage container of projects i'll likely never finish (this was before i discovered SimRail) One day i may get back into connecting the BR111 driving desk to the computer, but before i do that i want to at the very least have made a full size 3D printed EU07 style driving cab (i'd really love to buy the real controls from a scrapped Polish loco, but when i have tried buying parts advertised in Poland before, i was met with hostility and told they do not want scrapped Polish train parts going to the uk, and that the Polish train simmers who are making driving cabs should get access to those parts firs, even tho i was willing to pay more to get what i wanted. But then there's the whole brexit thing that makes 'importing' even scrap parts much harder than it was when i got the BR111 driving desk and NG272 bus parts from Germany. Anyway, enough waffeling, i've really taken this post off topic... it was about how some people really hate SimRail and seem to want it to fail, and here's me going on about how much i love SimRail and am looking forwards to it's future.

The ZEW buttons on the Radmore radios in the EP07's, EP08's and ET22's do not make the tone sounds anymore, you just hear the buttons clicking as they are pressed then released. The ZEW buttons to make their proper tone sounds in the EN57's tho.

The recent update fixed the keybind for the anti slip brakes in the EP08... but it still does not work in the EU07 I apologise for not mentioning that this keybind did not work in both the EP08 and the EU07 in my last bug report on this issue, and thank the devs for working again over the weekend to fix bugs like this in this great simulator.

Drove an EN71 tonight and i noticed that using the keybind for 'Compartment Lighting' makes the momentary toggle switch on the trains driving desk stick in the up position.... in the EN57 and EN71 there are 2 spring loaded momentary switches for passenger lights on and off, if you operate the switches with the mouse, they spring back when you release them as expected. But using the keybind for 'Compartment Lighting' makes the switch get stuck in the upwards position... pressing the keybind a second time releases it. There is no keybind for 'Compartment Lighting OFF' so i assume this is the issue here? We really need all keybinds that operate toggle or rotary switches to have a seperate on and off keybind... as things like the pantograph switches do... or perhaps a set of train specific keybinds for the switches that are different in the different loco's / EMU's?

The fast move function does not seem to be working in the any of the EP07's, EP08's or the ET22 for the power wheel and shunt lever... i.e. where you press 'shift' plus the 'move power wheel' keys to rapidly move the wheel from say notch 43 to 28, then to notch 1, and then to notch 0 and vice versa. It does work for the brake levers, just not the power and shunt levers, just not the power controls.

i'm noticing that the newest keybinds added in the december patch... i need you to trigger them twice the first time i use them to get the switch in the cab to operate, after the first trigger they will respond immediately. This is annoying for the switches that are toggle switches or rotary ones, as i have moved my 3D printed switches and nothing happened, then when i move them back it triggers the function... but now my switches are reversed. This would be a lot better if we had dedicated on and off key binds for every switch that is a toggle or rotary switch in the trains... like the original cab light switch keybind has.

i can see what they are trying to replicate in the first 2 pictures ... the large amounts of water that runs down the windscreens from the roof when you slow down... i've noticed that it flows downwards below about 30 km/h, and upwards over until about 90 km/h where it will clear, it does need 'some' tweaking to get it more realistic tho... i wonder if it is the new water shaders making it appear different than expected? . in the other photo's i imagine that's the mist or dirty edges of the unwiped parts of the windscreen, in the 'settings.conf' file there are entries for : WindowsDirtStatus=True EnableFoggyWindowsController=False so i wonder if having the windows fog / mist up in wet cold weather is something being worked on?

That's exactly why i made this post... some people were expecting the 'full version' to have everything in it that was ever mentioned in dev logs, posts on discord and even posts random players said they wanted in the sim, and the wording on steam does imply that 😞 But from following on the forums and discord i knew that there was a lot of things we are getting later and not in this update, but people who only read the steam pages do not know this.

I wonder if it's possible to make the signal visibility enhancement level option work only for the signals that apply to the players route? So instead it affecting all signals as it does now, it adjusts the visibility / brightness of just the signals that are for your train, leaving the signals that do not apply to you at the normal brightness. kind of how in real life on some railways, the signals are angled so they point along the route tracks they apply to at the sighting distance, to try and stop you mistaking another tracks signal as the one for your track.

to temporarily fix this when you get it : Re-enable the 'information about next signal' setting in the interface menu... press apply... then disable the 'information about next signal' and press apply, then exit the menu's back to the sim and the messed up signal hud element will be gone. I have to do this every now and then myself, i often get it when i have been in the menus during a drive changing things, this is until it's fixed properly that is.

I agree, It would be nice to get some more control over exactly which pieces of the HUD we want to display. i like to drive HUD'less... but i want some reminders to still be shown ... mostly the 'you can stop now' message that tells me when i have gone past the invisible stopping point at each station, so i don't have to drive right to the 'W4' end of platform sign for every stop to be sure i've triggered the station stop. but i don't want things like the points deduction messages for speeding showing, forgetting to use the horn, nor the SHP / Czuwak repeaters showing (perhaps show them only when using an out of cab camera view where you would not be able to see the in cab lights ? ) maybe the ability to have 'just some' of the warnings show that have 'real' consequences to your drive... like the missed radio channel change signs, just so you do not drive for ages on the wrong radio channel and not be able to hear the dispatcher,

One of the new keybinds we got with the update is to turn the carriage lights on... i imagine this is to turn the lights on in the carriages when you take a train over in daylight and it gets dark (before you had to give control to the bot and the lights would come on, then take control back) in the EN57 there are switches on the drivers desk for turning the carriage lights on and off... but they are 2 separate switches, and the new keybind only operated the ON switch, Could we get a keybind to turn them off? I am thinking for when driving in the day time and the carriage lights are off, but you want to turn them on as you are about to enter the tunnel at Tunel station, or enter the underground part at Warszawa Centralia... then when exit those sections you will want to turn them back off again.

I made this post in the early access forum in december 2023... posting it here again as i am seeing more and more people saying they want something like this : It would be nice to have tooltips show when you hover the mouse cursor over warning lights and gauges like you get on the switches, or perhaps right click on a warning light or gauge to have a tooltip popup telling you in your language what the light / gauge is for. i.e. 'Converter off (overload tripped)' when hovering the mouse over the relevant light, or 'Overhead line voltage' when hovering over the catenary voltage gauge.

but at the bottom there is a disclaimer saying that dates are approximate and may change. The way i see it, this update is the release from early access mode, and there are lots of new things to be introduced into the sim, just it's taking longer than the dev's expected.

i've noticed this too... if you mean that some players names will show and some do not during the same drive... i drive with a live map running on a tablet so can see when a human driven train is approaching so notice when their name does not show (i did wonder if it was some setting they used to not show their name)

i've seen a lot of complaints from people that the recent patch which took the simulator out of early access mode does not have the content whey were expecting in it. i am wondering if this is because of the wording used to announce that SimRail is now out of early access : So people see the 'Full Version' and 'complete game' wording and think that they are going to get every single thing ever mentioned in the development logs over the past 2 years, Some of us know that there has been a lot of extra features and content added by the devs at the request of players, way exceeding the original plan of things include in the sim, and hence there are a lot of features that will be released in the future.... Stuff like : A single player save function, Train (and hopefully) route editors, The input / output system, Console versions, Shunting (which people expect to mean spending a few hours in the sidings running a shunting engine back and forth over many points arranging waggons to make up trains, and not changing cabs or uncoupling from a train at the end of a run) The DLC's for German, Austrian and American routes, Mechanical signal boxes The CD163 loco... and so on. Would changing the wording used to describe that SimRail is now out of early access make things better? but what wording to use?... and is this possibly a translation issue (like we had a year ago when 'joystick support' was released, but it was really 'steam gamepad support' and the wording got mistranslated from Polish into English and upset a few people.

and as level 201 is almost impossible to reach (AFAIK) in the time SimRail has been out, when you see people with level 201 they have 'cheated' the steam achievements data.

As title really... some of the variants of the EP08, the compressor keybind does not work.

I have the key 'H' set for the keybind 'cabin activation' and 'CTRL + H' for the keybind 'cabin deactivation' I've found that pressing 'H' will turn the cabin switch both on and off... so when i have turned the cabin activation switch off using keybind 'CTRL + H' .. when i next press 'H' to activate the cabin, the switch in the cabin (of the EE07/EP08's) turns on then immediately off again... it will turn back on when i next cycle the control off and on using the keybinds, but the next time i do that it will turn on and off again with 'H'

The keybind for the 'anti slip brake' button does not seem to work in the EP08 series of loco's. it works fine in the ET22.

oooohhh.. i was a playtester too... so were a few hundred other people, all you had to do was click a button in steam saying you were interested in being a play tester.. and you'd get access granted in the next batch of slots they opened up. A few of us have been playing SimRail constantly since being a 'play tester' and not just coming back each time an update is announced to rant and shout. SimRail has advanced quite a bit in the past 2 years, we've had a lot of free content added for our initial ~£25 (which where i live is the cost of a large pizza and a beer) sorry to those people who live in a country where the equivalent of £25 seems to be the price of a brand new top of the range car, or those who are not old enough to get a job and earn their own money yet, But i think SimRail is underpriced for what we get... a fairly hardcore multiplayer dispatching and train driving simulator based on the software used to train real life train drivers, Do people complain this much when they spend £60 plus on a FPS game which takes about 50 hours to complete.. then £30 for some DLC that adds another 10 hours or so before you have seen and done everything and got bored with the game? I've enjoyed every minute of the 1000 plus hours i've had in SimRail, i only drive the trains on the multiplayer servers... so i am not even using half of the game (the dispatching side) but i for one hope to be playing SimRail in 20 years time and still enjoying it.

aaannnddd.. TrackIr is working great again, a big thankyou to the devs for working their assses off over this weekend in December for us.

A post on the discord channels, with the next bug fix update... the devs are still working on this at gone midnight on a Sunday morning!

yeah i get that too... pause TrackIR, turn it off, or enter the in game menus and the view reverts to being the drivers seat. i can only guess that with the new seat moving system that alters the cab cam height (i believe on a per train basis) this has messed with the TrackIr viewpoint location and went unnoticed. I know the devs have been working over the weekend to fix bugs, so i imagine it will be fixed pretty soon... we've already had one bugfix update on the 14th at 17:56, and i've read that another one will be released on Sunday (today)