Cab Sway / Car Physics

[jayzhead]

This is a core engine issue - so I didn't know whether to stick it here on in multiplayer, as it applies to both. I ended up sticking it here, even though it's pretty quiet here compared to the multiplayer section. (As an aside, I think maybe this section should be renamed to "General Sim", rather then single player, as SP is very limited for the time being and no one seems to be playing it 🙂)

But in any case... Cab sway physics and head movement... it is... to put it mildly... unsatisfactory. The EP07/08 and variants seem to have a scripted sway that just rocks the cab from side to side mechanically with no regard to the track - neither bends nor speed seem to have any effect. Switches trigger a similarly mechanical up and down motion that never varies. The newer trains - the Pendolino and the Elf - cab sway is nonexistant, even the primitive script kind that is in the EP07s, and switches only trigger sound.

IMO, this is the one big gripe I have with this sim as it stands. Everything else I'm really enjoying. The gameplay (multiplayer!), the route, the look, the overall train physics and sounds are all great. But this train-glued-to-track feeling is very distracting and takes me out of the realism often, especially with the ED250. Flying 200kph down the track feels exactly the same as going 20, and it is just boring this way. The other thing that bothers me, the lack of raildriver support, I'm not even worried about - as it is clearly coming soon, being on the todo list that was released a while ago. Cab sway and head movement physics are nowhere to be found on that list and that worries me. Cab sway is the one thing that still makes me even consider firing up that other sim (that shall not be named), occasionally 😉

Is there any info on the subject from the devs that I might not be aware of? Is this something that is even being worked on? I'd love to know.

 

[Gazz292]

I agree, cab motion is one place that really needs work,  BUT in other train driving 'games' when they turned up the cab movements, people complain of it giving them motion sickness! so they had to tame it right down.

In real life the driver is thrown about all over the place when driving a ~100 ton locomotive at speed, the EMU's will give a smoother ride due to being part of the passenger coaches and having air suspension usually, but isnt one of the Polish loco's nicknamed the bucking bronco or bull or something like that due to the way it rides. 

Maybe give us a slider to set the amount of cab sway we 'can handle' so those who get motion sick from looking at a computer can turn it off or way down, and others can turn it way up to get the realistic view from a drivers eyes. 

[dis0nored]

I am all up for cab sway, there's never such thing as a smooth ride on a train even as a passanger. These are old old old beasts, they are meant to be wild.

[Angelo]

On 5/10/2023 at 9:45 PM, Gazz292 said:

the EMU's will give a smoother ride due to being part of the passenger coaches and having air suspension usually, but isnt one of the Polish loco's nicknamed the bucking bronco or bull or something like that due to the way it rides. 

Yeah, the "bull" ET22. Which, by the way, will be in SimRail - as a DLC perhaps?

Air suspesions are too modern for the EN57. I don't know in Poland, but here where I live they were introduced in 1979 with our first double deckers (well, if we don't count some cars from the late 1800s), I guess as a way to keep the cars at more or less always the same level, despite loading twice the amount of passengers of a normal car. We now have single decker trains with air suspension, built way more recently.

Also, the EN57 is limited to 110 km/h, which itself doesn't taste like modern suspensions. And even if it had them, the kick you get when starting is definitely something you feel. In fact, personally, in SimRail, I always start with the brakes slightly applied.

 

If some people find cab sway unpleasant, they should be able to turn it off with an option, like in some other sims.

[Gazz292]

yes, having a slider to set how much sway and bounce you see would be nice, 

 

i know some people hate cab motion, i recall they had it in tsw but people were complaining it was making them 'sea sick'... so rather than give players the option of turning it on or off, or varying it's intensity, it was switched off altogether for a while. 

[Isambard Kingdom Brunel]

There isn't an EMU or DMU on the planet. That would stick to the rails, like the EN57-71 in SimRail.

 

There should be sway all the time, increased sway and bounce over points and junctions. Plus some hunting at top speeds.

[qbahn]

22 godziny temu, Angelo napisał(a):

Air suspesions are too modern for the EN57. I don't know in Poland... Also, the EN57 is limited to 110 km/h, which itself doesn't taste like modern suspensions. And even if it had them, the kick you get when starting is definitely something you feel...

Definitely. The EN57 suspension is very old, so the sway can be very strong, especially on some weaker tracks

or switches:

Edited December 3, 2023 by qbahn

[Gazz292]

that is a great video,  really shows how much you bounce about in these old trains. 

i can imagine that maybe one reason for very small 'head bob' movements in the sim is some people use the mouse to drive,

it's already hard at times for me to operate the switches that are mouse only atm as i use TrackIr (well, a Tobii eye tracker webcam, with FaceTrackNoIr to convert the signal to TrackIr)  and if i move my head whilst aiming the mouse for a switch, i will miss it. 

So maybe a way to have the mouse pointer move with the cab sway would be needed, or have a keyboard key to hold down to temporarily disable cab sway, operate the control with the mouse then release the key to get the cab sway back. 

 

Or just give us the ability to map every control to keybinds... and / or joystick buttons / axis, and there'd be no reason to touch the mouse once you've clicked the on screen button to turn the bot off and take over driving, 
The mouse would then just be used to move the view around. 

[Angelo]

...or silently, slowly disabling the cab sway when mouse movement is detected, then slowly re-enable it afterwards.

[jayzhead]

On 12/4/2023 at 8:43 PM, Gazz292 said:

it's already hard at times for me to operate the switches that are mouse only atm as i use TrackIr (well, a Tobii eye tracker webcam, with FaceTrackNoIr to convert the signal to TrackIr)  and if i move my head whilst aiming the mouse for a switch, i will miss it. 

 

I've gotten a trackir set a few years ago and played OMSI with it for a while, but came off it because it was too much work putting it on every time with all the wires. Didn't even think of trying it with SimRail until you just reminded me it exists 🙂 But with the length of routes in simrail I can't imagine being tethered to the computer for that long 😅 In any case the issue is probably solvable by a simple toggle switch that is keyboard mappable - IIRC the trackIR itself had F11 mapped to pause tracking at any time.

The more I play the more I come to the conclusion that cab sway is a must have feature for me, I dunno how much longer I'd stick with simrail if it continues to not have it. Also, it's not like it's difficult to implement - every other train or tram sim I currently have has it implemented, and I do have most of 'em 😉 It is, however, probably difficult to implement WELL. Dovetail's implementation always felt a bit off to me, something about the cab sway in TSW feels too light, like the train doesn't have much weight. There is a little game on steam that you're probably familiar with called Diesel Railcar Simulator that is mostly about old British trains - IMHO it has the best cab sway physics of any sim, you can actually feel the joints; and looking at the bogies doing their thing over the old track and how it affects the sway of the cars is just mesmerizing. I think that DRS and SimRail are built on the same unity engine, so it should be possible to do with simrail just as well? (Not that I know much about game building 😅)

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by jayzhead

[Gazz292]

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 😄

[jayzhead]

2 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

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 😄

Funny I thought that might be a useful thing to do minutes after I've written the previous post 🙂 I'll find the trackIR in my attic and give it a try 🌟

As for the metal reflector clip that goes on a cap I never quite did get that to work, it only worked with the powered light and even that wasn't very reliable when the sun was setting and came in through the window at a certain angle. it'd go all berserk. I am however setup in a different room now so it might work better

[TK40]

Yes, having the view move and shake due to cab sway, bumps, vibration is a must for me. The way the trains glide so smoothly over the tracks is my biggest complaint with Simrail at the moment.

Edited December 6, 2023 by TK40

[mluczak.kutno]

16 godzin temu, jayzhead napisał(a):

The more I play the more I come to the conclusion that cab sway is a must have feature for me, I dunno how much longer I'd stick with simrail if it continues to not have it.

For me, overall train "feeling" is more important than beautiful graphics (well, there are moments in Simrail, when everything looks great) or new lines. Right now we have many promises about upcoming DLC's, but there is no word about any physics improvements. Strange, obviously scripted, cab swaying from left to right is a problem that is with us since very long time, at least since playtests (or maybe even Prologue). Almost a year has passed and nothing changed.
Ps. Long time ago I made a forum post (in Polish section) about coupling/ decoupling railcars. It's good time to see, if anything changed in that matter. I want to be surprised 🙂

[jayzhead]

I wholeheartedly agree that the feeling of a train - made up of mechanical behavior, physics, sounds and of course cab sway - is much more important than eye candy and graphics. I've started my trainsimming journey back in the day with BVE - a freeware japanese sim that pretty much only had good sounds and physics, the graphics and route details were nonexistent, at least in the early days, with mostly just the track and the immediate objects adjacent to it simulated. But the cab sway was there, and the trains felt very realistic (for the late 90s at least). Then a couple of years later when MSTS came out I was incredibly excited by the screenshots, ran to the store, bought it, installed it and was immediately appalled by the total lack of cab sway, the poor sounds and the plasticky physics. I ended up hardly playing MSTS and just went back to BVE.

Unfortunately there are few people that prefer physics to eyecandy, so from my experience pretty graphics are always going to be a priority for developers, not proper physics. Lets just hope that SimRail's devs won't take many years to implement cab sway like the developers of MSTS - at the time Kuju, now Dovetail - did in their sims 😅 I feel like SimRail already has excellent sounds and very good behavioral physics. But the cab sway is sadly very poor or nonexistant, depending on what you're driving 😑

Edited December 8, 2023 by jayzhead

[mluczak.kutno]

I will just leave it here. Some pretty good suspension at work, albeit not in our game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GElCnl8dxg
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-jheewlwYg