Gazz292

and you lose points for flushing the toilet in a station!

as mentioned above, most Polish trains do not have the shunting / auxiliary controls mounted by the side windows that trains in Germany have, so you'd need very long arms to be looking out the left hand window and operating the power wheel and brake lever. It just takes 1 or 2 key presses to get the view looking backwards from the front of the train, i do this all the time, it'd get annoying fast to have to keep clicking with the mouse to open the window, select the look out option, move the view to be looking backwards, where as pressing number 4 you are looking back along the train in 1/4 of a second.

So, today i had a little play, i dug out some old 'minimus AVR' boards that i run KADE on, which gives you a USB A plu with a PCB on it, that you connect switches to the solder pads, then program it in KADE to make it into a keyboard, a game pad, a mouse/trackball/spinner and so on... it only does digital inputs, so no axis. it was brought out about 10 years ago for the MAME scene... arcade emulation. So, i set the KADE programmer up to set 2 of the input pins send the keyboard key for power up and power down. Programmed the board, connected my mini EU07 wheel to it, which is just 2 microswitches, one is tapped each time i rotate the wheel right, the other tapped when i rotate it left, so it should be just as if i was tapping the keyboard keys. I opened notepad, and spun the wheel fast to the right, i got a nice line of letters which i counted... exactly 43, i spun the wheel back to zero even faster, exactly 43 letters that in the sim would move the wheel left. I have no problems with contact bounce, skipped inputs or anything, i always get exactly the number of key inputs i need. Started SimRail in the EU07, moved my mini wheel to the right, if i go more than about 3 clicks a second the wheel in the sim stops moving. It seems to be the new animation that needs time to move the wheel 'smoothly' similar to how we can no longer hold down the ZEW buttons on the radio, there's now an animation that releases the button after one beep, even if your still holding the keyboard key down. i know there are a few people trying to make controllers for SimRail, and this new animation thing has just messed things up for us big time. Personally i preferred the old way, where the controls moved instantly when you operated them, and you could keep the ZEW buttons held down and make it beep 3 or 4 times before releasing.

well, the idea of leaning out the window was to lean from the drivers seat, I don't bother with it anyway, as i drive with TrackIr all the time, and that only works on the driving / in cab camera, if i go through the process of dragging the right hand window down, clicking then selecting 'lean out' then wait for the animation of me to do so... i'm looking forwards, and TrackIr is not active, so to look back along the train to see if it's safe to close the doors, i need to drag the view with the mouse.... Much easier to just press number 4, and it's looking back along the train kind of as if i was looking ot the window... press 4 again and it switches to looking back along the left hand side of the train (tho on the EU07's etc, number 4 has you looking back on the left side first... someone needs to get all these interactions synced with all the trains really) Re the mirror, lots of things are being changed with hot fixes and updates right now, so one of the updates has knocked the mirror camera's view off, it used to be correct, but the other night i was in the EP08, and the top half of the right hand mirror was a view of the driving desk in the cab!! bottom half was back along the platform as it should have been.

yup, dev's have answered this on discord a few times, the lean out of window thing is to simulate leaning over from the drivers chair to look out the window, something you can't do to the left window, and the same reason that the loco's with tiny side cab windows placed far from the drivers seat can not be leaned out of.

voltage drops are active in the sim now, people are tripping the overload due to icy overhead wires reducing the voltage available to the loco, so hopefully having things happen if you forget to move the controller to zero when passing a neutral section can be added easily.

it seems that the variable overhead line voltage feature has been enabled in SimRail with the latest update. Some people have reported seeing the line voltage meter's needle moving as low as 1.5Kv (normal is just over 3Kv) And as the voltage drops the current drawn will rise, so if you don't catch it in time and 'load shed' you will trip the breaker. When i had this happen to me, it was the sound of the converter winding down that alerted me to the fact i'd tripped out, as i was cruising along and not accelerating so didn't expect the trip. *no transformer in these loco's, as they run on 3Kv DC from the overhead line, so use a 'converter' or motor generator to produce the 110 volts DC for the low voltage circuits like the controls etc.*

it would be nice for each loco variant in SimRail to have slightly different sounds, especially for things like the horns which will all sound different due to aging, the air circuits being partially blocked, the diaphragm wearing etc,

Just like real life, these trains get so crowded that people sit on the floor in the corridors, makes getting to the doors at each end of the coach a little hard:

i too have experienced this a few times, had it on one of the EU07's and the EN57, washer button is pressed but it's out of water.

Would it be possible to have a way to adjust the drivers view camera angle and position in the different trains, and save it? Kind of like adjusting the drivers seat, everyone will have a slightly different preference to how they like to have their view set, and it's different in each train type. In the EN57, i'd like to have the 'seat' a little lower and the view tilted downwards slightly, so i can see the control panel from the brake gauges up, and still see out the window properly. Yet in the EU07 i'd prefer to have the view a little higher due to how the control panel is positioned on that train, i also like to have the view angle a bit narrower on that loco than in others,

just noticed that EN2 has a 12 hour difference, was that implemented recently? sure it used to be just 1 hour is any different from EN1. it's nice to be ab le to drive in the daytime, i've been driving on EN1 in the dark for tooooo long.

i like 3D printing for prototyping, the plan is to make a full sized control desk, and that will have metal parts. Yes, if i spin the wheel too fast the switches contacts bounce and i lose rotation in the Sim... but this is because i am using microswitches which have way too much mass in the contacts to switch fast, Thinking of trying using hall effect sensors and a magnet on the 'twanger' The other possibility is to use a rotary encoder, but there is the hassle of matching up the encoders pulses to the notches, can be done in software but i'm more a mechanical guy and coding is not my thing. but a rotary encoder and suitable input board would be able to keep track of every single pulse when the wheel is spun way faster than any human ever could, which is what my marco keyboard encoders can do... in everything except SimRail atm 😄

well, the macro pad is this : Set up so that rotating the knobs sends the relevant key stroke as if i was pressing the key on the pc's keyboard (which if i open notepad and rotate the knobs, it prints the letters as fast as i can turn the knobs, just in SimRail after the update it seems pressing keys too fast confuses things and is skips) That is a bought item, search something like '3 knob, 12 key macropad' to find sellers of it... it transformed driving the EU07 for me, But i wouldn't recommend buying one right now, as the knobs / encoders no longer work in SimRail properly. The rest of my controllers are here: and i have been playing with making a mini notch wheel: a spring loaded lever is 'twanged' each time the wheel is moved round a notch, and that presses one of 2 microswitches depending on the direction of rotation, but that is still a work in progress,

Probably something no one else has noticed, I drive trains in SimRail using a macro pad with 3 rotary encoders on it, so i turn the knob of the 'power wheel' encoder right, it sends the key that i have set for increase power, turn the knob left it sends the key for decrease power (the key is sent for every click of the encoder) same with the shunt lever and the brake lever's knobs, Before the update, i could rotate the power wheel knob as fast as i wanted and the wheel in the sim would follow it, i could turn the wheel faster than it rotated using the fast move key combo. Since the update i can no longer use my rotary encoders, as when i rotate the knobs faster than about 4 clicks per second the power wheel or shunt lever stops responding or lags really badly. The brake lever seems not to be affected, Is it something to do with the new animations for the EU07's power wheel and shunt lever? Using a rotary encoder was a way to give a rotating control feel until we get joystick axis support..

nice one, thankyou for fixing that.

do we have the cab sway simulated? i've only driven with TrackIr active, and it seems to remove the head bob bits with that active (or the way i have to do it it does, my Tobii eye tracker web cam has to go through FaceTrackNoIr to produce the TrackIr 'signal' that SimRail works with (would be really nice to have native Tobii support in SimRail)

the timetables are made by the SimRail.Express guy, and that's where you can download them as .pdf's and print them out, or display them on a tablet, e-ink reader etc. Hopefully SimRail will include the ability to send the timetable from the current train to an android tablet in the future, or a second monitor etc. It would also be nice to have the current page of the timetable displayed on the trains timetable holder, especially as the timetable light now works, and we can click the timetable as we do on the empty holder now to open up the larger view and scroll to other pages.

That's why some people like to throw ballast at signal box windows, and the Polish VR signalling sim has an event where someone is trying to kick the dispatcher post door in because he's held up at the barrier. I can only guess there is a station before the level crossing? and the rules are the same as in the UK... barriers have to be down for a train that is stopping in the platform before the crossing, just in-case the train over runs the end of the platform and fouls the crossing whilst it's open (crossing near me does this, and it can be damn annoying when you have to wait 5 minutes for the train to stop, pick up passengers then move off again)

this would also enable me to 3D print a replica Radmor radio and have a speaker in it that just plays the voice chat, We can adjust the voice chat volume in the menu, so a way to adjust that via a keybind would allow the volume knob to work, same with the channel change knob if we get keybinds for that in the upcoming update with the new input system.

yeah, it's sort of how i've read about how things used to be done in the UK, They have / had 'grades' or 'links' a new signaller would be assigned to a signalbox to learn the ropes, then when ready to do the job on their own would be given the lowest grade of signal box (lowest for both pay and difficulty of the job) and then work their way up to the hardest most highly paid box on the system they are working for. Nowadays with a few large signalling centres that control the entire region, they'd still start at the lower grades (do they still have the 'tea boy' position?) and work up to be managers in charge of all the signalling centres in the region, but not on day 1 of their career. A driver would get training, then go into the lowest 'link' to gain experience driving (or being a second man) on short local runs, and slowly work their way up the 'links' until one day, likely 20 years later they are driving the 'best train' on the system.

is that platform used in real life? i.e. in 2018 did that platform get regular use? if not, then just as real life, do not route a stopping train to that platform.

Drop the "Vegetation Density" slider back a little, i have mine set on 80%, and it really helps with FPS, it removes a little of the procedural tree's and bushes around the tracks, but with this i get 60 fps most of the time (it can still drop to 30 fps in some places, but it does not last for long before it back to normal fps levels, A side effect of reducing the vegetation density slider, i now know that there are at least 6 herds of cows along the side of the main line, before i only saw one herd that were right by the tracks, the others were hidden in the jungle of tree's and bushes.

in SimRail the level system is there mostly to stop someone new to the simulator taking over a complex dispatcher post and bringing a multiplayer server to a standstill because they do not know what to do, So they have work so many hours at a lower level dispatcher post before they can progress to the more difficult ones, This is how it is in real life, you can't start your career as a dispatcher and expect to be in charge of the most complex and highly paid dispatcher post on day 1. With driving, again, at the beginning of your career you would not be given a 200 km/h pendolino service to drive, you may get a short slow local stopping service to drive under supervision (and before that, you'd have learnt the basics on the simulator... which SimKol, the parent company of SimRail makes, of which we using a slightly more user friendly version) You would work your way up the career ladder, but at no time do you need to worry about making money and buying your own trains, dispatcher posts or track etc, that stuff is for the managers of the railway to worry about, and they usually sit in their offices or go to meetings whilst we drive the trains or work the dispatcher posts for them.

Usually the derailed train gets deleted before the wreckage has come to rest so you never get to see what you did. I don't know what happens on the dispatchers side of things when that happens, is the train and it's set up route just deleted / released, or does it cause problems with a locked in route etc. : Last time i derailed, it didn't get deleted, i had a coach upside down blocking the high speed lines, my loco's bogies had been ripped off and piled up underneath, and i was able to wander about looking at the mess i'd made, Another driver behind me stopped the other side of the station and tried walking to me, i think he could see my wreckage too, i tried to move my train, but it wouldn't budge, but when i handed control to the bot, it drove off as if nothing had happened!!!, a loco with no attached wheels and dragging a single remaining coach. Then after a few hundred meters it got deleted and i was kicked for the derail.