What happened to station anouncements?

[darryl0768healy]

Where did the station announcements go?

I heard them for about 2 days then they were gone....

[Jason35]

They were in dutch language, so that's probably why 😄

[Gazz292]

I think there may be a problem with the sound engine in SimRail. 

Skip this waffle to get to the point at the bottom if you want:
i've just put a fresh win11 install on my laptop (it's what it came with, i just left most of the lenovo bloatware stuff out) as i'd noticed an issue where the realtek HD audio drivers would go to sleep (something a lot of people have an issue with, on desktops as well as laptops it seems)

So the sound card would wake up to play a sound with a pop and miss half the sound in the process (think of the windows 'du dunk' sound when you do something it dosent like, it would only play the '---unk' part as the soundcard was in power save mode and by the time it had woken up the sound was almost over... so i thought this could be why i was missing some switch click sounds and the brake lever sound in the EU07 is all broken up... and possibly why i hear station announcements very rarely.

But try as i might, telling the realtek hd sound driver to stay awake all the time by editing the registry settings never worked... so for that issue i found out to let win11 load the normal "Realtek(R) audio" driver, then block windows update from updating it to the 'realtek HD audio' version, this time changing the registry setting to not allow the sound card to go to sleep worked... and i no longer have any delays or pops in windows sounds. 

 

But alas, i still get missing sounds in SimRail, 
Like i can move the power wheel or  weak field / shunt lever in the EU07 a notch, and only hear a slight click and then the thunk as the tap changer moves behind me, then next time i'll get the full 'kerlunk' from the lever, and the 'kerlunk' sound from the tap changer. 
Same with operating a switch, instead of the 'click' i get a 'ik' noise sometimes. and the train brake lever i sometimes get a nice steady hiss of air, other times it's "hiss----- shhhh------isss-----sshhhkkk-----issssss------"  (the ---- bits are silence) 

 

The point:
So i am wondering if the sound cue to play the station announcement is being missed by the sound engine so it doesn't play?  if that's possible?

 

 

[weezzah]

I did hear station announcements just a few hours ago when I stuck my head outside the window using the [ 4 ] and [ 5 ] keys.

By the way, are these announcements pre-recorded, or are they dynamic text-to-speech (TTS) voices? Wild theory: If they're dynamic then there may be local issues with your TTS setup. I've encountered TTS in other games where my local settings affected the voices in game. For example changing the voice from Microsoft David to something else also changed which voice was used.

Going off topic here, but if the announcements are pre-recorded then the SimRail team should look into using Microsoft Natural Voices instead. They sound a lot better than MS David. Not sure about localization or licensing though. Have heard natural voices being used by 3rd party devs elsewhere.

[ArtU4]

11 minut temu, weezzah napisał(a):

I did hear station announcements just a few hours ago when I stuck my head outside the window using the [ 4 ] and [ 5 ] keys.

By the way, are these announcements pre-recorded, or are they dynamic text-to-speech (TTS) voices? Wild theory: If they're dynamic then there may be local issues with your TTS setup. I've encountered TTS in other games where my local settings affected the voices in game. For example changing the voice from Microsoft David to something else also changed which voice was used.

Going off topic here, but if the announcements are pre-recorded then the SimRail team should look into using Microsoft Natural Voices instead. They sound a lot better than MS David. Not sure about localization or licensing though. Have heard natural voices being used by 3rd party devs elsewhere.

It seems they are TTS. It's prototypical as PKP uses TTS for station announcements (at least at newer stations).

[darryl0768healy]

2 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

I think there may be a problem with the sound engine in SimRail. 

Skip this waffle to get to the point at the bottom if you want:
i've just put a fresh win11 install on my laptop (it's what it came with, i just left most of the lenovo bloatware stuff out) as i'd noticed an issue where the realtek HD audio drivers would go to sleep (something a lot of people have an issue with, on desktops as well as laptops it seems)

So the sound card would wake up to play a sound with a pop and miss half the sound in the process (think of the windows 'du dunk' sound when you do something it dosent like, it would only play the '---unk' part as the soundcard was in power save mode and by the time it had woken up the sound was almost over... so i thought this could be why i was missing some switch click sounds and the brake lever sound in the EU07 is all broken up... and possibly why i hear station announcements very rarely.

But try as i might, telling the realtek hd sound driver to stay awake all the time by editing the registry settings never worked... so for that issue i found out to let win11 load the normal "Realtek(R) audio" driver, then block windows update from updating it to the 'realtek HD audio' version, this time changing the registry setting to not allow the sound card to go to sleep worked... and i no longer have any delays or pops in windows sounds. 

But alas, i still get missing sounds in SimRail, 
Like i can move the power wheel or  weak field / shunt lever in the EU07 a notch, and only hear a slight click and then the thunk as the tap changer moves behind me, then next time i'll get the full 'kerlunk' from the lever, and the 'kerlunk' sound from the tap changer. 
Same with operating a switch, instead of the 'click' i get a 'ik' noise sometimes. and the train brake lever i sometimes get a nice steady hiss of air, other times it's "hiss----- shhhh------isss-----sshhhkkk-----issssss------"  (the ---- bits are silence) 

The point:
So i am wondering if the sound cue to play the station announcement is being missed by the sound engine so it doesn't play?  if that's possible?

Funnily enough I have the same little sound issues thats described....brake hiss, kerlunk....all of that intermittent. 

[Gazz292]

Just had a 3+ hour run from one end of the map to the other,  and i heard station announcements at almost every station, 

I had already copied the Polish text for the announcements into my english announcements folder, so i got a female voice announcing everything in Polish... as that's what i want... i'm driving in Poland, i don't expect to hear english station announcements. 

[darryl0768healy]

22 minutes ago, Gazz292 said:

Just had a 3+ hour run from one end of the map to the other,  and i heard station announcements at almost every station, 

I had already copied the Polish text for the announcements into my english announcements folder, so i got a female voice announcing everything in Polish... as that's what i want... i'm driving in Poland, i don't expect to hear english station announcements. 

Unless there's specific instructions from Simrail devs to do this then I'd have no clue how to do it. 

I guess I expect announcements to just work properly?

[Gazz292]

oh blimey, no, me messing with the files is not condoned by the devs at all, infact i'd imagine it's discouraged at all costs... if i see an issue whilst driving i know not to send in error reports as the error could well be my fault for messing in the files.

i just like tinkering... hence i've replaced the wording used on a lot of the pop up messages,  instead of being told i'm losing 1 point for speeding, it now says 'slow the fuck down'  or the message that says 'STOP, you are leaving the playable area'  for me it says 'woah! there be monsters ahead'  childish stuff like that....
Bt i know that any errors or issues i see in SimRail could well be my fault now,  hence the first thing i will do if i get an error / issue is do a steam file verify to put it all back to standard.

 

But i hated hearing the station announcements in english, as to me that's just not realistic .. maybe in the large interchange stations there'd be multi language announcements, but i expect to hear Polish announcements for the little village stations, not an american accent reading them out. 
So i swapped the Polish language file for the english one... i recently had a run with RailSim all back to stock, and i get the station announcements at almost every station... but in english... so i'll be putting them back to Polish asap.