Simbus (And Tram)

[BigVern]

Notice from visiting the main site, our friends are also working on a bus simulator and a tram simulator.

This is excellent news!

Presumably no planned release date as yet.

[Gazz292]

i hope i am wrong, but i read a while back that SimRail and SimBus were 2 projects started together,  and SimRail was the more popular one so got developed.

Omsi was what got me into the driving simulators, and so far all other bus driving games are too locked down and arcade like to be considered an actual 'simulator'

but for me it's the ability to control the simulator with home made controllers... either real bus / train parts or 3D printed ones, hence part of the reason i've given up on the tsw franchise.

[Allah macht frei]

Since 2011, OMSI2 is hands-down the most realistic and the best bus simulator in its genre, even it's suffering from 32bit architecture and therefore many performance-wise drawbacks.

About 4-5 years ago, two lead developers of OMSI are separated, one of them is working on LOTUS. LOTUS is expected to be the successor of OMSI series, yet it still has long way to go (no patch updates since July 13 though. Early-Access patch 104)

[Jasonic]

I do love a good tram simulator, just waiting to try one 🤣

I hope one is in the works as well as the bus one.

I agree Omsi is the best bus sim just a shame it was never updated.

Gazz you done that Omsi driving desk didn’t you?

[Irish Spud]

SimBus was announced around the same time as SimRail. But then they decided to put all their work into SimRail. Maybe SimRail was a bigger project than they expected. So SimBus was left to the side. 

Who knows, maybe they'll go back to it one day.  

[Gazz292]

On 12/14/2022 at 11:28 PM, Jasonic said:

Gazz you done that Omsi driving desk didn’t you?

That i did, i was the weirdo on youtube who wore a BVG drivers cap when driving, as i had mounted the TrackIr led's on it.

Back in 2011 i bought a dashboard from a scrapped MAN NG272 bus ...
(later on i took my then gf on a 'trip' to Germany to see the xmas markets in Berlin and other places... and on the way called in at various bus scrapyards to buy more parts... and collect the BR111 train driving desk stuff... this was in a Smart ForTwo tiny car, luckily i had a tow bar on it, as i bought a cheap bike rack and a plastic garden store box and some ratchet straps to put the train stuff in, as i'd ran out of room inside the car)

Then i got help from a guy from Brazil called Thiago (on the AussieX forums) to make the ''Gazz.opl'' plugin that got some of the lights and the gauges working with omsi, and worked my way forwards.. but always having the bus dashboard sat on my computer desk in the living room,
Made an adapter to mount a bus steering wheel to my drivingforce GT wheel,
Got hold of a british Almex ticket machine, and made a new button plate for it on a laser cutter at my local hackspace to turn it into a Berlin version.

Helped a little bit with Komsi.. a much better and more user friendly way to control the lights, gauges, ticket machine etc.

I was working on the IBIS unit next... by then i'd split up from that girlfriend (not because of the driving sims)  and 8 months later met someone else... and then my world fell apart,

Didn't have access to my tools etc, and generally ruined my life... but i did find out i have ADHD and other things that explained to me why i am 'weird'

:

It's only the past couple of years i've started re-making my workshop, and i started on a new version of my NG272 Fahrerarbeitsplatz / driving cab, i said to myself that 2023 would be the year i complete it... but now SimRail is coming out, and my plans may change again 🤪

I think i have it sorted in my mind how to have the full 6.5 revolutions of the bus steering wheel, with a custom force feedback program (EMC FFB) and a ~150 watt scooter motor, that will drive a NG272 steering column and wheel (on the floor behind the seat in the pic)
The seat... erm...yeah...  was brand new from an iveco truck and cost me £30,  but i have it mounted on a proper suspension seat base from a bus, i will see about covering it to look more like a MAN bus seat sometime.

I have all the steel to make the proper frame for the dashboard and locker to the left of the seat that NG272's have for extra switches (and i'll mount my electronics in there, the PC lives in the compartment infront of the dashboard, and the monitor (42" tv) will sit ontop of that.

I just need to get my arse into gear and get on with the steelwork...  cutting it to size and welding it together... i even bought a tig welder as my workshop is wooden, and i didn't want to mig weld in there (mig splatters molten metal all around you, TIG is basically electric gas welding, nice and gentle)

:

In 2021 i was working on a 3D printed MAS3 IBIS unit, and the thermometer from the original Berlin buses in Omsi :

I even managed to mess with the data from Komsi to get it onto the LCD with the early/late timer thing on the right hand end of the screen (this is a replica IBIS, not my real one, that i need to gut to make work with Omsi.

But this year (2022) i got hooked on tsw and went on with making the mostly 3D printed 'EuroRialDriver' which ended half done when i realised that tsw was just never going to work well with it, due to them not allowing joystick input for controlling the trains.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Gazz292

[Jasonic]

Excellent write up, very interesting to read about your projects. Is Komsi still a thing or is it no longer out there?

[Gazz292]

the guy who wrote komsi gave up on it years ago,  it's still available for download tho, just no new features ever added to it... hence why i had to hack things a bit to make my 3D printed IBIS unit work with the data komsi spat out.