Gazz292

the new 'input' system with new control animations seems to have made the controls 'sluggish' to those of use using controllers it seems. I really notice this when i use a rotary encoder to turn the EU07's wheel, the encoder sends out 1 keypress for every click it's moved, and before the update i could spin the encoders knob as fast as i could, and the wheel in the sim would match the speed i was rotating the knob.. i could move from notch 43 to 0 faster than the fast move button combo did. but since the update, if i rotate the knob too fast the wheel in the sim misses a lot of steps it should have moved, on my arduino boards i've added a 70 millisecond delay between repeated keypresses so the controls do not miss steps., Not sure if this is the case with your controllers, I only have a button box using JoyToKey, and haven't noticed any difference in how that is working, I don't think the gamepad thing can be disabled, but i do know there is a 'gamepad switch sensitivity' slider in the control menu, i expect this adjusts how much the analog controls on the gamepad have to move to activate a switch, but i could be wrong.

i figured frame rate played a role... it really showed this when i was driving an EP08 tonight, in Warszawa Centralna station, where if i have the mirrors in view it drops to ~5fps (from my usual 60+) moving my brake lever about 5 clicks resulted in the lever in the train going right the way round to emergency.... which should be about 65 clicks. i wonder how this will be handled when we get joystick input, and the input/output system, hopefully we can have 2 way controls, i.e. we tell the lever to move to xx position, the lever in the sim moves and reports back it's position, so then the input system knows the lever has or has not moved the correct amount and can self adjust. This functionality would be very handy when taking over a train, as the sim will report all the controls positions, switches included, and any toggle / rotary switches we have on our 'driving desk' will report their positions and the ones in sim will move so they match... no more having to move switches in the sim with the mouse to match the initial switch positions on our 'driving desk' when we forget to reset some of them (can't reset them all as some need to be on when we take over a train in motion)

I've just finished 3D printing my 'mini' EU/EP 07/08 brake lever to go with my wheel controller : This is the one controller i'm having problems with converting the potentiometers rotation into key presses, as the other controllers i've made have specific notches they move between... so the arduino code simply checks when the potentiometer output goes past a set point (between 2 notches) and sends a keycode depending on the direction it's moved, and everything so far works ok (the new animations for control movements mean i need a 70 ms delay between keypresses to avoid the in sim control getting out of sync) : But this brake lever really needs analogue input as it does not move between notches, so the best i could do is set it so it sends a keypress for moving each time the potentiometer moves a certain distance. However, i've counted the key presses needed to move the brake lever in the trains from 'disabled/off to emergency' positions and back again (using a rotary encoder which sends a single keypress when moved one click... so no repeating key issues as using a keyboard) And i'm getting different numbers of key presses needed for the brake valve in different versions of this train. Someone on discord suggested framerate could play into why i'm getting different results, but i was wondering if a dev could tell me how many key presses it should take to move the lever fully around and back, and if the number of key presses does indeed vary between the different loco variants? (and if so, why, as AFAIK it's the same brake valve in them all) this is the data i've got so far... --------------------- EP07-174: 114 apply 111 release EP08-001: 109 apply 105 release EU07-092: 123 apply 134 release EU07-241: 106 apply 101 release EU07-068: 112 apply 103 release ----------------------- like i say, frame rate could play into this, i could only get one of them from single player and moving the lever when the train is parked in the sidings, the other variants i had to stop in an empty server and count the keypresses, but other trains came past as i was doing this, and that could have glitched things? I do have the key press for 'move brake lever to drive position' sent when my lever moves to the 'drive' notch, but with the new input system / lever animations, this only moves the lever when it is more than xx number of clicks away from the drive position, so things still get out of sync 😞

well... Omsi (The bus simulator) implemented real weather back in 2011 or so, you had to turn it on yourself and select the relevant airport near the map you were driving on to get the weather data from, As i loved driving in Berlin, i always used to select the one for Tegal airport.. ICAO code : EDDT. but that airport closed a few years ago 😞

It's real weather, checked every 5 or 10 minutes. There's still a little too fast a transition from weather changes, i often see overcast sky then suddenly the clouds half disappear and the moon is shining down brightly as the real weather check updates... but also got to take into account that we could have moved 20+ km along the track between weather updates, i'm not sure if the live weather checks different weather servers (usually at airports) or just one for the whole region. At least now the snow takes a while to accumulate and does not simply all appear or disappear when the weather updates says it's started or stopped snowing sometime between the last update, Though this year seems to be lacking snow in Poland.. but if it's anything like Germany used to be when i lived there in the 1980's, the snow will be most in mid January through February. So for now we get mostly rain and freezing cold clear nights... temperature is hard to convey in a simulator with no temperature gauge in the cab or complaining passengers like we had in Omsi... with the 'shit ... it's like a fridge in this bus' 😁 Maybe we could get passengers coming upto the cab at a stop / banging on the cab door of EMU's shouting 'ffs turn the heating on' when we forget to flip the train heating switch after taking a train over... as it's always off when you take over a train.

very jealous, I wish i could find someone selling the driving desk parts from an EU07 style loco, got a couple of grand for the right bits, just finding someone who could sell to me that's proving impossible (me being in the uk dosen't help, might have to take a road trip to Poland with the trailer on the car.

Made a video showing my EN57 mini controllers in use: Looks like my youtube channel has been 'hacked' again (thank you stalker) and all my video's deleted... again, getting fed up of this happening so i'm not bothering with posting videos on youtube anymore.

i've only been driving the EU07 for ~500 hours, and i still occasionally trip the motor overcurrent breaker, usually i've left the shunt lever in position 6 when i notched down to zero for a stop, so when i am gently notching back up and get to notch 28, suddenly it pulls an extra 1000+ amps. and i'm reaching for the mouse to click the reset button. as we now have variable overhead line voltage in icy conditions, we need to be pressing that button after the loco trips out due to the OHE voltage dipping to about 2Kv and your current draw rising faster than you can react sometimes,

there has never been a key bind for that button, months ago when i asked for it to be added, i was told that at the time it was not going to be added as it's not a button you use whilst moving at speed. Really hope that in part 2 of the big update we get the ability to key bind almost every control that functions in the loco's,

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 relevent light, or 'Overhead line voltage' when hovering over the catenary voltage gauge.

oh, i don't use the keyboard to drive trains 🙂 This controller is a work in progress, the reverser and shunt lever are not hooked up yet (i still have to print their gears to link them to the potentiometers and write the code for the arduino to convert positions to key presses Only problem is, with the new input system and animations when moving the wheel, i can no longer send the 'move controller up / down' key event as fast as my mini wheel can be turned, or the controls in the sim miss the inputs. So i have to send the key events with 70 millisecond gaps between them so the controls in the sim don't lose sync, so it takes a little longer than it should for the wheel in the sim to go to zero when i move my mini wheel down to zero, as can be seen in the GIF above.

do the old loco's not have a rapid power off button? There's one in the EU07 / EP08's in SimRail, it's the red button next to the wheel slip brake green mushroom button, labelled 'open line contactors' I imagine it's only to be used in an emergency, and it might actually not be for what i am thinking, but i've used it a few times when i see a neutral section 50 meters infront of me and no way i'd get the wheel back round to zero in time.

this would be a really useful thing for people who are making driving controllers, so the radio audio can be played over a speaker in the replica radio... add in keybinds for adjusting the radio's volume, as the radio volume can be adjusted with the mouse rotating the radmor radio's volume knob. I've seen people asking for something like this before, so they can have the radio / dispatchers phone audio sent to their headphones whilst the rest of the sim's audio plays over the main speakers.

i really am looking forwards to the day SimRail releases the home cockpit input/output system, I have this lot in storage to connect to a computer at some point: The driving desk from a BR111 Whittenberger steuerwagen, plus the drivers seat, the MFA panel, brake gauges panel etc... i do have an EBuLa unit, but it got damaged and the front glass smashed, but i think i will be using a set of touchscreens to replicate the MFA panel, gauges and EBuLa, then they can change for the different loco's (once we get the German routes and trains in SimRail)

Something like my 'Euro-Rail-Driver' that i was making a couple of years ago?.... (Excuse all the dust and debris on it, it's been sat under my 3D printing table for the past year+) I was making this back when i was playing tsw, i got the levers to work with a hack of their raildriver input (which was absolutely awful to use, extremely low resolution, especially when you had to split the combined throttle and brake channel in half for most euro trains, giving even less resolution for separate throttle and brake levers) One of the main features i'd built in was easily swappable 'notch plates' so the levers could be changed from an EMU style combined power and brake lever where 0 is in the middle, to individual power and brake levers where 0 is at the end of travel, the AFB lever could have the number of notches changed depending on the loco's v-max etc. The air and dynamic brake levers are coupled so move together, but pressing down on the dynamic brake lever's knob uncoupled them so you can slow down gently using just the dynamic brake, and the levers auto re-couple when both are in the same place again... it should be a twist of the knob to uncouple the levers, but i was making this at about 68% scale and the mechanism for that got too complex... this controller was sized to be portable and a comfortable size for adult hands to operate. Here's the obligatory Fusion 360 render, the controller's base was shaped to fit over my 16 inch laptop's keyboard. The list on the left hand side is showing mostly the 3D printed components for just one of the 5 levers, there were a lot of parts that all have to fit together to make this thing. The main box was laser cut 3mm plastic sheet (using my hackspace's laser cutter) The levers and switches are 3D printed, every switch mechanism is 3D printed and mimics the real ones as best as i could, even the push buttons for EMU door controls are 3D printed (the button in clear filament so they could be illuminated) I even had the reverser lever removable, and when it's inserted or removed a magnet triggers a hall sensor, sending the signal that told the tsw game that the reverser lever was inserted (one feature SimRail doesn't have... yet?) Below is the 'guts' of the beast, it needed to open easily to change the notch wheels... if i were to make this again i'd try and make force feedback levers, a high resolution encoder would track the levers movement, and a small motor would provide back force to mimic the notches as you move the lever. But as usual with me, i have these ideas and can do the mechanical stuff, but writing the code is where i struggle, hence why i went for simple 3D printed changeable notch wheels. I was building this back when i was playing tsw2, so it was using a hack someone had made for an arduino to mimic a raildriver signal, and due to the way in tsw2 it felt like no 2 loco's shared the same lever or button assignments for the raildriver, i had to have a way to change which lever did what on the fly as i changed trains in the game. I did this using a small Oled screen and a set of 4 Binary Coded Rotary Switches: i'd enter the trains number using the buttons on each switch to increment the numbers up or down until it displayed the train type number... ie.. 112.1 for the BR112 loco, then press the round button, this reset the arduino, which as it re-started read the binary code and displayed a graphic of the train i'd selected (the weird diagonal bands on the screen are only visible to a camera, the shutter speed does not match the screens refresh rate, so you are seeing the screen part way through refreshing here) If the number was for a valid train the arduino code was then to go on and set up which lever's potentiometers and switches performed which action for the serial stream sent out to the game, this was to trick tsw into thinking it was a 'real' raildriver connected to it (with all the limitations of a real raildriver like ultra low resolution, buttons controlling useless things rather than switches and buttons that were used to actually drive the train, having trains of the same type not share common controls (tho that was a tsw issue in the way the programmed the train controls so 2 identical train types had different controls depending on which DLC you drove them on) But i never got to programming the arduino to operate the controls fully... I was building this with the expectation that tsw would enable joystick support so everything could work properly, after all this was something they'd been saying they'd be introducing since 2018. But i lost interest when it was said that they pretty much weren't going to bother with joystick support anymore, something about market research said most players were happy using the keyboard, and more liked using a console gamepad. Then they said they were stopping DLC work for a few months to concentrate on fixing core game engine issues... but it turned out that they were really working on tws3, where for about £50 you get to buy the same game again 🤬 And that was where this little project died ☠️ When we get the German route in SimRail i may resurrect it ... if by then there is a joystick input system working in SimRail that is. This time i'll be waiting for the much needed analogue inputs before i make another floor ornament 😜

'Mind the doors please'... or should that be ''Uwaga na drzwi, proszę'' My EN57 door switch and SHP / Czuwak panel: The red doors open lights do not read any data from the sim, they are simply turned on or off when the relevant door side open switch is on. The toggle switches are the same ones used in my EU07 button box with the same 3D printed lever extensions, i can't seem to find a spring return / momentary version of the particular 'paddle switch' i'm using (which i chose partly due to the 2 screw mounting method) so i cut down a small compression spring and wedged it under one side of the switches lever, amazingly this works and the middle 'doors closing buzzer' switch springs back to off when released as it should, However that switch has less travel than the other 2 switches due to the spring when fully compressed stopping full travel, but i can live with that for now. The doors open lights are illuminated square push buttons with a 3D printed 'surround cap' to try and make them look a little like the real panel lights used in the trains (i can't seem to find the style of curved top, honeycomb diffuser pattern panel lights in the UK) As the 'doors open' lights are buttons, i am using them to change camera views. The SHP/Czuwak button is a 30mm diameter red anodized metal mushroom button, i really should use a plastic mushroom button, but finding one this size is hard, especially one that does not have a really tall switch mech that would not fit inside the box. The fusion 360 screenshot showing the insides of the door switch and SHP button panel, they should be separate boxes IRL, but i made them joined together with a 'wiring tunnel' to make it one item, easier to fit onto the double dovetail mount. I haven't modelled the toggle switches themselves here, so you can see how the 3D printed white switch extensions fit over the toggle switches paddles (i do need to trim them down so the upright bit of the paddle can fit up the switch extensions, as they'd be too wide and not look right otherwise, the switch extensions get glued onto the switch paddles, so no one ever sees the trimmed down bits. I'm using an arduino Pro-Micro in this controller, with 6 inputs and 2 outputs in use... i connected the door open led's to the arduino rather than simply connecting them to the switches, this is so that when we get the input/output system in SimRail i can easily make the door open lights light up with the ones in the sim with a code change on the arduino. The code for this controller looks for switch state changes and sends the relevant keyboard keys when a switch is operated, so when the left door switch is moved from off to on, the key for 'open left doors' is sent once, then the left 'door open' led is turned on, When the switch is moved back to off, the key for 'close doors' is sent once and the led turned off (as there is only a keybind for 'close all doors' if i open both sides doors with my 2 switches, when i move one sides door switch to closed both sides doors close in the sim, and both switches in the sim move back to the off position and the lights go out... meanwhile one of my switches is still in the open position and the light on until i move it to off, not the end of the world, separate keybinds for 'close left doors' and 'close right doors' would solve this, keeping the 'close both sides doors' keybind as i believe the modern trains have a single doors close button) The doors closing buzzer switch sends the keyboard key all the time it's held on, same with the SHP / Czuwak button. When i press the right hand square red button (which is also the right doors open light) it sends the keyboard key '4' so the camera view changes to 'look back along the train', if i press that button again it cycles to the next external camera... i use that button a lot as i like to check the doors are clear before closing them or moving off. If i press the left square red button it sends a '5', that switches to the last camera looking forwards along the train, but more often i use it to cycle the cameras backwards after switching to the 'look back along the train' view. Then if i press the left button followed by the right button (within 300 milliseconds) it sends a '1' key, which sets the camera to cab view, and if i press the left first then the right button within the time limit, it sends '6', end of train camera, which i use to check the whole train i in the platform sometimes. I am really bad at coding / programming, so i get help with arduino code from an Arduino forum, if you search on google for 'arduino SimRail' the first hit should be for my posts about the code for these controllers including the sketchs that i have loaded to the arduino's in these controllers.

So... i can make the EN57 go, i'd better have a way to stop it... this should do the job. I did want to make the brake levers box similar to how it is in the real train, but there's lots of complex angles on that and trying to replicate them would be a nightmare, i struggled for over a day making the simple slight wedge shape on the underside of the brake levers main body, it's that bit which makes the lever stick up at an angle off horizontal, mostly it was getting all the edges to flow nicely together and go from a block to a round at the tip. (i wonder if i can get the 3D texture of the brake lever assembly and model off that) So i simply made the box that houses the working of the brake lever the same basic shape as the power and reverser levers box in the post above for now, this made it easy to have the rear dovetail mounting system incorporated, this is so i can place the brake lever in one of 6 positions on my desk, though in reality i change it between 2 positions, one of them being more a storage position so i don't catch the underside with my hand when i go to use the track ball. (The holes in the front lip of my desk are where the 2nd position dovetail mount should be, but i'd borrowed it for the door switch panel whilst i printed another when i took the above photo) I then decided to make a steel lever shaft out of some 14mm EN1a steel bar i had laying about (as you do 🙂 ) i simply turned it down to 10.5mm, the ends to 10mm and cut M10 threads on both ends (i did cheat and used a die rather than single point threading on the lathe) Then i screwed on a 32mm polyurethane ball i found in the shed to one end, and screwed the bar into the 3D printed threads in the main lever body. I did this to add a bit more weight to the feel of the lever, i could have re-printed the shaft and ball with 100% infill (i.e. solid) but i found the ball when searching for something else and thought 'why not' I can remove the lever from the square main rotational shaft (as i presume you can with the real thing), the knurled thumbscrew works to lock it on the square shaft (the knurled thumbscrew is 3D printed with the 0.25mm nozzle, then superglued to a length of M3 stud) I made the notch plate for this lever as close as i could to the real thing, after being sent a .pdf of the technical manual for the EN57 which showed each position the lever moves to, Simrail has an extra notch for the emergency brake position that's not there IRL... but i guess that was added as there's a keybind for emergency brakes and the lever needs to move round to it when activated from the keyboard. I also made the peg thing on the end of the lever a working part, mines spring loaded, not sure if the real thing is a sliding or pivoting part, but it's used to lock the lever in the 'disabled' position when you shut the cab down (and go and drive from the other cab) The Fusion 360 screenshot showing the working of the brake lever: Pretty much the same as the power and reverser levers (i've removed the 43 toothed main gear to make things easier to see, it drives a 26 tooth gear on the potentiometer this time, as the lever needs to move a bit more than the power or reverser levers did) The yellow disc is the notch plate, it's pattern hopefully allows lever to move the same distance as the real thing between notches, Again the red long thing is the 'twanger' as i call it, same pair of stacked 4mm OD bearings that give a smooth movement between notches (and less wear) i've drawn a crude spring to show where the tension spring mounts and pulls the twanger's bearing against the profile of the notch wheel. Again i used an arduino beetle board for the 'brains' of this controller, this time it's just a single analogue input pin being used, i could have had one arduino shared between all the levers and switches, but i wanted to make the levers self contained, and have an easy way to plug and unplug them using the USB connectors. Screenshot from fusion showing where the arduino lives, i use a right angle usb micro cable to plug into he controllers, The blue highlighted bit is the male dovetail mount, which allows these controllers to simply slide onto the matching female dovetail mounts on the desk.

For the past few weeks my 3D printer has been going almost non stop. If anyone's interested, it's a Prusa i3 MK3s, all stock except for a revo 6 quick change nozzle hotend and a raspberry Pi 3 running OctoPrint, The revo 6 nozzle allows me to change nozzle sizes in seconds without tools (or risks of leaks) and i regularly swap between the 0.25mm one for detail to the 0.8mm one when i want a quick 'prototype' of a basic shape, tho the 0.4mm one lives in it most of the time. ... OctoPrint allows me to send the printer it's G-code files to print remotely, so i only have to go to the printer when it's finished printing (as long as the correct colour filament is already loaded) This is very handy as it's a long walk from my bedroom to where the printer lives at the other end of the house. I built the printer from the kit version about 4 years ago, it just... works, i can count on my hands the number of failed prints i've had over the 4 years, and they were all my fault... forgetting a brim on tall thin objects. Anyway, back to the controllers, It's no secret that i love the EU07 loco, but i am also falling for the EN57, so i decided to make some 'mini' controllers to drive that cute little EMU at my laptop desk, then carry on with the EU07 style power wheel... tho when i have a simulator room i may concentrate on making full sized controls. If anyone knows the exact size of something in the EN57's cab, say the diameter of the brake handle's ball, let me know as i'd like to work out what 'scale' my EN57 controllers are, i sized them to fit comfortably in my large hands, i call them mini controllers but compared to a raildriver, they are quite large. And here are my controllers sat next to a raildriver for a size comparison. Below is a photo of my laptops overbed table today (12/12/23) it is a different table to the one in my first post, this one is a proper hospital overbed table that i fitted an extended top to, giving a total of 1 meter width by 400mm deep, plus i added a 'mouse/tracker ball' platform around the main 'leg' of the table (i had to change my bed from a divan to a wooden post style so the hospital table would fit... <i spend a lot of time 'stuck in bed' due to medical issues i have, hence why i have my laptop and controllers on an overbed table>) The EU07 button box is just sitting on the table top for now, i will re-print that sometime to take advantage of the extra width i have now, the EU07 style horn lever is the item in the lower right with the red ball, and the 'Radmor' style microphone is still the same one from before, still mounted to it's holder attached to the back of the small tablet mount. I got a 6 button 1 knob 'macropad' off amazon to use as a temporary radio controller, seen wedged between the left hand side of the laptop and the EU07 button box above: I had to set up a button for 'radio on' and 'radio off' as you can't bind the same key for radio on and off, when i make a 3D printed Radmor radio, it will have the proper latching power button that will be able to send the on and off keys when pressed, and i will use a 10 position rotary switch with different resistors for each position, then an arduino will read the analogue signal and send the correct channel number for the position it's in. This can be done thanks to the individual channel numbers we can now set keybinds to in SimRail, ATM my rotary encoder has no way of knowing which channel it's on, so i rotate it all the way left until the channel switch in the sim stops rotating, then count clicks to the right to change channel when needed (i.e. count 5 clicks to be on channel 5 etc) You probably noticed in the photo of my laptop desk that the controllers are mounted on the front of the desk, they slide into 3D printed dovetail mounts so i can quickly add or remove them, change their positions (i do that with the brake lever usually) And as i make more controllers for different trains, i will swap out the correct controllers before i take over a train in SimRail: My power lever and reverser: All the lever controllers have quite a few separate parts that fit together, i don't have a multi colour setup for 3D printing, so things like the reverser's top plate and the power levers plate are simple manual colour changes (printed with the 0.25mm nozzle for detail) The power handle was printed standing upright, with a colour change where the (M12) threaded part starts, and all threads are 3D printed, down to M3 x 0.5 threads for the screws to hold everything together. Below is a screenshot of Fusion 360 (hobbyists free edition) showing the insides of the power and reverser lever box: The levers rotate on 2 x (15 x 21 x 4) bearings housed in the 9mm thick top panel, the yellow disc is the 'notch wheel' which allows the levers 'click' between the notches (7 for power, 5 for reverser) The red long 'twangers' have a screw anchoring them at the far end, but loose enough so they are free to rotate, and a spring goes from the front threaded hole in the 'twangers' to one of the 3 sets of threaded holes to the left of the twangers (so i can vary the notch force) You'll likely notice the reverser's twanger is all plastic (i grease the notch plate and twangers pivot) that's fine as that lever does not get moved that much, but the power lever twanger has bearings where it rides against the notch plate, those bearings are 4mm OD, 1.5mm ID and 1.5mm tall.. a pair is stacked in the power levers twanger. Finally the rotation of the lever moves the 43 tooth (module 1) gear, which rotates the 19 tooth gear, and that rotates the shaft of a 5K potentiometer. An arduino beetle* then reads the potentiometers positions, and when it detects the lever has been moved enough to have moved from one notch to another, it sends the relevant keyboard key to SimRail to move the lever in the sim up or down a notch, or as many notches as the levers moved, i've found that a 70 millisecond delay between sending keypresses allows the lever in the sim to keep up with fast movements, and at each end of the travel, i.e. in the last notch, the arduino sends 3 keypress events, this ensures any missed movements is taken care of, And if i take over a train and the reverser is in 'forwards 1' but my reverser is in 'forwards 2' when i move my lever back one notch it will move the trains lever to position 0, but i then move my lever back to forwards 2, and thanks to the 3 keypresses it then sends, the trains lever moves all the way to the end notch too. * The Arduino beetle is a mini Arduino Leonardo with only a few inputs... i only needed 2 x analogue inputs for this controller, But you need a Leonardo or pro micro type arduino with an ATmega32U4 processor to send HID keyboard keys * So there isn't a massive wall of text, i'll post about the brake lever and door switch panel in the next post.

The EN57 has 2 toggle switches for the doors so each side can be opened and closed separately, but we only have a keybind for 'close all doors' Would it be possible to add 2 new keybinds for closing just the left or right side doors? as well as keeping the current close all doors key as i believe that's how it works in the more modern trains, So if the current 'close all doors' key is pressed, it does that, closes both sides with a single button, But if the left or right side close button is pressed, then only that side closes... for those odd occasions when you stop in a station with a platform on both sides of the train. : I do have a reason to have separate door close keybinds... apart from making it more realistic... when i use my switch panel to open both sides doors, when i flip one switch to close, in the sim both of them flip down and both red lights go out, yet on my panel one of the switches will still be up and red light on (the lights on my switch panel simply go on and off with the door switches, as we can't read data from SimRail yet)

i imagine that should be one of the stop markers... usually showing 200, or 400 etc so you know where to stop your train of that length.

right now, i've just been driving in the snow on EN1. The weather in SimRail is live, so when it snows in real life in the area you are driving in, it should snow in the sim. The exception is a few servers are set to a different date, like EN2 (i think it's that one) is set to september, so still has summer textures, not sure how they handle the weather in those servers... rain when it snows IRL? use saved weather data... or just make it up. I can imagine the servers set for September are so we can see the autumn season in SimRail without waiting till September 2024.

yes, IRL every single sleeper is different, every patch of ballast a slightly different shade, size of stone etc, every length of track a slightly different rust colour and amount of wear on the surface. But who it going to take on the job of walking the 500+Km's of tracks in SimRail and making individual textures for every meter of track, sleeper and ballast? (also, SimRail is set in 2018, so you'd have to rely on photo's of what the track was like back then... a lot worse condition than today, hence all the low speed limits in SimRail) And then imagine the performance hit for having to load new track textures all the time as you are moving, Sure it'll look amazing for those who stare at the tracks as they drive, but you have to call the line somewhere and use generic repeating textures to save computer resources.

doesn't TrackIr come with the reflective baseball cap attachment anymore? it just needs the 3 reflectors in roughly the right position, and enable the TrackIr cameras infrared leds, and theres no need to be 'tethered' Tho i used the IR led bar thing on a BVG drivers cap to drive Omsi, as i liked to drive in the dark when i was driving at night time, as the reflective thingy didn't fit on the BVG cap very well. You could always plug the IR led bar (thats made to clip onto headphones i think) into a usb power bank that you stick in a pocket, there's no data going to the led's just power. My laptop has a Tobii eye tracking webcam, so i use that, but it needs light to work, so if i turn the room lights all off when i'm driving at night in SimRail, it can't pick up my face / eyes, so i always have to have a side light on. The software i use to convert Tobii to TrackIr... 'FaceTrackNoIr' can apparently work with some standard webcams too.... i can't go back to any driving simulator without head tracking now. Occasionally i'll move my head around as if i was in the real train being bounced about, just to create my own cab sway effect 😄

Doh!, i get my left and rights mixed up, it is indeed left low, right high tone.

If they do that in real life, then i could be added, The communications options we have in SimRail are realistic for the time period (2018) hence no GSM radio... it's all analogue, and the land line phones between dispatch stations.