Train Simulator Editors

[OTTODAD]

There is no way I could have done any of what is featured in this thread with RS ! ;)

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=271097

O t t o.

[ENTrainman]

There is no way I could have done any of what is featured in this thread with RS ! ;)

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=271097

O t t o.

You come into a KRS forum posting how great you are at MSTS? lol

Yes, you could have done all of that in RS, and it wouldnt crash every 5 minutes ;)

[jamesc25313]

There is no way I could have done any of what is featured in this thread with RS ! ;)

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=271097

O t t o.

Theres no way you could have done that with MSTS five years ago either or maybe even two :) Nice work though.

[OTTODAD]

Yes, you could have done all of that in RS, and it wouldn't crash every 5 minutes ;)

Care to explain how you can join two existing routes in RS, change the environments, globally modify the contents of forests, change the vegetation, terrain, including that on distant mountains and change the tracks choosing from 13 options ?

Did not have many Route Editor crashes working with MSTS routes since 2002 ! ;)

The few I had caused no problems, having multiple back-ups of work in progress !

O t t o

[ENTrainman]

Care to explain how you can join two existing routes in RS, change the environments, globally modify the contents of forests, change the vegetation, terrain, including that on distant mountains and change the tracks choosing from 13 options ?

Did not have many Route Editor crashes working with MSTS routes since 2002 ! ;)

The few I had caused no problems, having multiple back-ups of work in progress !

O t t o

lmao, i have been around since the very beginning... a member since about 6 months before MSTS released... Everything you have mentioned has been added by 3rd party members, nothing was possible with MSTS.

At the same time, most of what you have mentioned is already possible in RS, or has been made obsolete.... you really have no idea how powerful that RS editor toolset is do you?Once you have stopped complaining about RS and started to really look at it... you will see....

Terrain , texturing , marker files, track placement, tunnel creation, bridge placement, road creation, rivers and lakes, object placement, mileposts, importing new objects, EVERYTHING is easier to do, with more options, and much faster...

[jamesc25313]

lmao, i have been around since the very beginning... a member since about 6 months before MSTS released... Everything you have mentioned has been added by 3rd party members, nothing was possible with MSTS.

At the same time, most of what you have mentioned is already possible in RS, or has been made obsolete.... you really have no idea how powerful that RS editor toolset is do you?Once you have stopped complaining about RS and started to really look at it... you will see....

Terrain , texturing , marker files, track placement, tunnel creation, bridge placement, road creation, rivers and lakes, object placement, mileposts, importing new objects, EVERYTHING is easier to do, with more options, and much faster...

I have to say, if you read my first post which is only been a week or so ago youd see I didnt give RS a chance but once I got over a few things, I dug in and most things that bugged me I can easily fix them myself. In a few days Ive been able to somewhat get a little better sound although not perfected and still has work to do. But what gets me is this sim has been out for almost six months and no one has thought to tinker with the sound!?! The simplest of things as many big words that get thrown around in these forums Id think someone has enough brain power to replace a sappy wagon sound with another.

This brings me to the point of what you said about complaining and really look at it. I agree %100 but not in OTTOs particular case, I mean as a community in general. I dont think too many have tried to dig in and really take a look at what they can do to help bring this sim to life. Im not trying to start one and some peoples arguments are the dynamic brakes and no slack action ect but Im sure that will be fixed at some point and oh yeah the displays in the es44!!! :) To sum it up if everyone would 5% effort into rs as they do in msts I think we'd have a "decent" sim experience. When I fired up RS and seen all the bad things wrong with it and after I cooled down, I said to myself what can I do to make this a little better so Im trying to do my small part. Also, as a final note, I know people love to argue in these forums and I dont want to argue with anyone and Im not going to either so if youve read this and are ready to fire one off at me go ahead because I wont reply this does nothing but keep the fire burning and brings nothing positive to the table.

[ENTrainman]

I have to say, if you read my first post which is only been a week or so ago youd see I didnt give RS a chance but once I got over a few things, I dug in and most things that bugged me I can easily fix them myself. In a few days Ive been able to somewhat get a little better sound although not perfected and still has work to do. But what gets me is this sim has been out for almost six months and no one has thought to tinker with the sound!?! The simplest of things as many big words that get thrown around in these forums Id think someone has enough brain power to replace a sappy wagon sound with another.

This brings me to the point of what you said about complaining and really look at it. I agree %100 but not in OTTOs particular case, I mean as a community in general. I dont think too many have tried to dig in and really take a look at what they can do to help bring this sim to life. Im not trying to start one and some peoples arguments are the dynamic brakes and no slack action ect but Im sure that will be fixed at some point and oh yeah the displays in the es44!!! :) To sum it up if everyone would 5% effort into rs as they do in msts I think we'd have a "decent" sim experience. When I fired up RS and seen all the bad things wrong with it and after I cooled down, I said to myself what can I do to make this a little better so Im trying to do my small part. Also, as a final note, I know people love to argue in these forums and I dont want to argue with anyone and Im not going to either so if youve read this and are ready to fire one off at me go ahead because I wont reply this does nothing but keep the fire burning and brings nothing positive to the table.

Good post :) I was the same way.. the first day (after i got over the graphics) i started to notice a few things that i didnt like... but that is the best part of a program like this... you can change it so much of it... and thats really half the fun IMO

[OTTODAD]

But that is the best part of a program like this... you can change it so much of it... and thats really half the fun IMO

The main difference between RS and MSTS is that the RS Assets database applies to all routes using either the UK or US sections, whereas in MSTS most objects shapes are route specific.

Any change to RS assets will affect all routes scenarios and can not be restricted to just one route, unless it is a RS-MINI copy like my stand-alone CAJON-OTTO-MINOR route, also demonstrating what I can do with RS ! ;)

All the changes I have made to the GOLD-SPIKE were done without a Route Editor by simply either renaming shape files, like using one of Mike Sinclair trees shape files and renaming it to US2Fir1.s, changing the latter's appearance of all of them, or using a Text Editor like UltraEdit32 to replace individual ones by editing the WORLD files they are in, at the same time altering densities of forests, or doing a global Find in Files and Replace in WORLD files, none of which I can do in RS.

RS does not provide anything which can compare with what you can do with MSTS forests, which are re-sizable, can choose the desired density and what type of vegetation is in them, which could even be cows, Frank Carver did in his UK-GWR-Toddingon route ! ;)

The type of MSTS weather, water, clouds, terrain and tracks textures can also be changed easily without the need for a Route Editor and changes apply only to the route which is being modified. RS is limited to just a few weather options for the seasons.

Now if you know a way of doing all that just as easy in RS then I would appreciate your advice so that I can apply it to my CAJON-OTTO-MINOR route.

Just trying to modify rolling stock sounds is getting me nowhere, but was successful with improving the notching and braking of all the RS rolling stock I use, thanks to the advice of Jim Ward and Jean-Louis Chauvin.

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=271040

Tom Boswell's new weather options are a start:
www.otto-wipfel.co.uk/rs/tom-boswell-weather.zip
and a guy in the UK is working on improved tracks textures and that's about all I am aware of, apart from some new rolling stock and multiple re-skins.

I think that I am doing my fair share to make RS better ! ;)

O t t o

[ENTrainman]

The main difference between RS and MSTS is that the RS Assets database applies to all routes using either the UK or US sections, whereas in MSTS most objects shapes are route specific.

Any change to RS assets will affect all routes scenarios and can not be restricted to just one route, unless it is a RS-MINI copy like my stand-alone CAJON-OTTO-MINOR route, also demonstrating what I can do with RS ! ;)

All the changes I have made to the GOLD-SPIKE were done without a Route Editor by simply either renaming shape files, like using one of Mike Sinclair trees shape files and renaming it to US2Fir1.s, changing the latter's appearance of all of them, or using a Text Editor like UltraEdit32 to replace individual ones by editing the WORLD files they are in, at the same time altering densities of forests, or doing a global Find in Files and Replace in WORLD files, none of which I can do in RS.

RS does not provide anything which can compare with what you can do with MSTS forests, which are re-sizable, can choose the desired density and what type of vegetation is in them, which could even be cows, Frank Carver did in his UK-GWR-Toddingon route ! ;)

The type of MSTS weather, water, clouds, terrain and tracks textures can also be changed easily without the need for a Route Editor and changes apply only to the route which is being modified. RS is limited to just a few weather options for the seasons.

Now if you know a way of doing all that just as easy in RS then I would appreciate your advice so that I can apply it to my CAJON-OTTO-MINOR route.

Just trying to modify rolling stock sounds is getting me nowhere, but was successful with improving the notching and braking of all the RS rolling stock I use, thanks to the advice of Jim Ward and Jean-Louis Chauvin.

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=271040

Tom Boswell's new weather options are a start:
www.otto-wipfel.co.uk/rs/tom-boswell-weather.zip
and a guy in the UK is working on improved tracks textures and that's about all I am aware of, apart from some new rolling stock and multiple re-skins.

I think that I am doing my fair share to make RS better ! ;)

O t t o

There is no doubt that there are improvements to make to RS

The advantage with RS is that you dont have 95 GB of route files due to the same items existing mulitple times and you dont have a lot of the other problems associated with that (Such as missing dependencies) It was a poor way to design a program, that everyone just made due with, and got a little creative! MSTS 2 will be the same way as RS, as it is based on the FSX engine.

Personally i found the forest tool to be more pain than its worth in MSTS, but each to their own on that one.

With regards to your track problem, my only solution (So far) is to create a track asset of your own based on the default track using the same mapping... then if a track comes out that you like more, just simple swap the texture files.

"All the changes I have made to the GOLD-SPIKE were done without a Route Editor by simply either renaming shape files, like using one of Mike Sinclair trees shape files and renaming it to US2Fir1.s, changing the latter's appearance of all of them, or using a Text Editor like UltraEdit32 to replace individual ones by editing the WORLD files they are in, at the same time altering densities of forests, or doing a global Find in Files and Replace in WORLD files, none of which I can do in RS."

all of that information is stored in the bin files under the scenery folder, all we need is a program that uncompresses (using serz.exe) / find and replace / recompress so instead of renaming and replacing an object, all you need to do is run a "find and replace"

Just trying to modify rolling stock sounds is getting me nowhere, but was successful with improving the notching and braking of all the RS rolling stock I use, thanks to the advice of Jim Ward and Jean-Louis Chauvin.

depending on what you are trying to do, you might actually want to change the track bed and track sounds? I havent spent much time with it, but that might be worth looking into.

Another benifit to RS would be the ability to have welded rail sounds on the main, and jointed rail on the sidings ;)

Anyways with regards to the notching, did you use the irregular notch for the throttle or the equal interval? i had mine originialy using the equal interval notch before... and power in notch 1 was way too high. (12.5%, when normally it should be 4% ish) but found that changing to the irregular notch allowed for realistic power application of 4% in N1, 10% N2 , ect :)

[jamesc25313]

Just trying to modify rolling stock sounds is getting me nowhere, but was successful with improving the notching and braking of all the RS rolling stock I use, thanks to the advice of Jim Ward and Jean-Louis Chauvin.


I wasnt directing anything to anyone in particular :) The rolling stock sounds sound fine to me, its the welded sounds Im having a problem with. That alone to me is a huge improvement (my opinion) If MSTS2 wasnt coming out everyone would be behind this and lord knows what type of rolling stock and different things would be thrown around. Im trying not to take up for RS since so many things were missed its hard to excuse them :\ My whole point was its been six months and from what Ive seen we are just now playing with the wagon sounds??? Maybe if someone started six months ago we'd have a solution. Some seem to be waiting for RSDL to fix everything. I will make my small improvements or try and if they fix dynamic braking and the whole list of other issues then Ill be very happy but if not then theres always MSTS2 but until then theres only Rail Simulator so guess what Ill be messing with for the next year or so. Thats %90 of the fun to me is messing around with the game anyway :)

[OTTODAD]

Another benefit to RS would be the ability to have welded rail sounds on the main, and jointed rail on the sidings ;)

Hi Chris !

Not sure where that has been coded, in the main code or somewhere in the *.bin files ? But making "Yard" tracks produce more frequent joint sounds and fewer with mainline tracks should have been possible ?

Anyways with regards to the notching, did you use the irregular notch for the throttle or the equal interval? i had mine originally using the equal interval notch before... and power in notch 1 was way too high. (12.5%, when normally it should be 4% ish) but found that changing to the irregular notch allowed for realistic power application of 4% in N1, 10% N2 , etc :)

Finding that the DB BR294 and Class 166 DMU combined throttles notched from 0 to 17% and nothing in between, the rest of the settings being erratic too, Jim Ward had a look at it and produced a fix, I applied to all his and all other versions of the BR294 as well as the DMUs.

Throttle only controls seem to notch O.K. !

You can check it out by downloading the: www.otto-wipfel.co.uk/rs/brakes-combo-throttles-geep7.zip and have a look at the BR294 Engine Simulation.bin file. Perhaps you can tell how he did it ! ;)

I don't know much about what most of the parameters in all these *.bin files are for and what their settings are supposed to do. My old programmer's brain is not as good as it used to be ! :(

Is there another method of viewing *.??PcDx files other than with the Assets Editor, I can not run ? I am wondering whether MSTS Shape files and their associated with them ACE files can be converted for use by RS ?

Another problem with clumps of vegetation or other objects such as rocks in RS is that their individual components do not align themselves with undulating terrain, burying some and flying others. Unlike MSTS where every whatever item in forests sits vertical on the terrain, no matter how irregular it's surface is.

Creating one is easy ! Simply make an entry for it in the forest.dat, selecting an ACE file which could be any object, determine it's height range from minimum to maximum and a density and it will be available for planting, being able to stretch it's rectangular perimeters to suit up to their maximum and for variety can plant others on on top of each other !

I am missing that for covering large areas in RS !

O t t o

[boleyd]

Another thing to be concerned about is how large forest objects are handled. If they remain individual objects linked together I would think that the load on the CPU/GPU would be higher. However, if the forest is only one object then perhaps the compute load would be less. To get the trees to tilt to the terrain It should be no big trick to tilt the entire forest to the vertical regardless of how it is constructed. A clever designer could link the vertical component to the wind for dramatic results.

[OTTODAD]

To get the trees to tilt to the terrain It should be no big trick to tilt the entire forest to the vertical regardless of how it is constructed. A clever designer could link the vertical component to the wind for dramatic results.

You can tilt clumps of objects in RS to match sloping terrain, but doing that also tilts forinstance trees, which are then no longer vertical, but still does not take into account any unevenness in the sloping terrain, some trees being part-buried and others flying !

Achieving that would involve re-coding of part of the source code of RS I imagine ? But could that affect clumps of objects which have already been placed in scenarios ?

O t t o

[MikeSimpson]

Hi Otto,

It is quite easy to convert MSTS scenary items to RS if you have the original source files in 3D Canvas format (and I believe that you can import TSM source into 3D Canvas as well), so there must be thousands of MSTS source files out there somewhere which could be converted to use in RS.

Maybe some MSTS modellers could be persuaded to hand over some of their source files for conversion?

Mike

[ENTrainman]

Hi Chris !

Not sure where that has been coded, in the main code or somewhere in the *.bin files ? But making "Yard" tracks produce more frequent joint sounds and fewer with mainline tracks should have been possible ?



sorry i should have been clear , it is 100% possible, you set the sounds, the distances of the joint spacing, ect .. all in the blueprint editor .. very easy!

The sound aspect of RS is very well handled IMO, for example , engine sound is based on RPM... not 8 files, one for each notch .. HUGE potential :D



Finding that the DB BR294 and Class 166 DMU combined throttles notched from 0 to 17% and nothing in between, the rest of the settings being erratic too, Jim Ward had a look at it and produced a fix, I applied to all his and all other versions of the BR294 as well as the DMUs.

Throttle only controls seem to notch O.K. !

You can check it out by downloading the: www.otto-wipfel.co.uk/rs/brakes-combo-throttles-geep7.zip and have a look at the BR294 Engine Simulation.bin file. Perhaps you can tell how he did it ! ;)

I don't know much about what most of the parameters in all these *.bin files are for and what their settings are supposed to do. My old programmer's brain is not as good as it used to be ! :(



the bin files are the same as the xml files, just compressed... they do absolutly everything Just like the text files do in MSTS


Is there another method of viewing *.??PcDx files other than with the Assets Editor, I can not run ? I am wondering whether MSTS Shape files and their associated with them ACE files can be converted for use by RS ?

Another problem with clumps of vegetation or other objects such as rocks in RS is that their individual components do not align themselves with undulating terrain, burying some and flying others. Unlike MSTS where every whatever item in forests sits vertical on the terrain, no matter how irregular it's surface is.

Creating one is easy ! Simply make an entry for it in the forest.dat, selecting an ACE file which could be any object, determine it's height range from minimum to maximum and a density and it will be available for planting, being able to stretch it's rectangular perimeters to suit up to their maximum and for variety can plant others on on top of each other !

I am missing that for covering large areas in RS !

O t t o


Dont know too much about the PcDx files, i havent really looked at that as of yet...

The problem with the clumps is the fact that they are one model, if we could use a brush to apply single foliage items... that would come in handy!

[OTTODAD]

The problem with the clumps is the fact that they are one model, if we could use a brush to apply single foliage items... that would come in handy!

Now that's a good idea ! ;)

Select a tree, bush, weed, animal, etc, give that function a random distance parameter from-to, height from to and then just paint in onto the terrain, not being restricted to a rectangular or circle area ! :D

It can be done with Copy / Paste like Jim Ward does, but is time consuming.

Could you please give us more details on how to modify the track joint sounds with the Blueprints editor I am just starting to learn how to use, James might also appreciate ?

O t t o

[ENTrainman]

Now that's a good idea ! ;)

Select a tree, bush, weed, animal, etc, give that function a random distance parameter from-to, height from to and then just paint in onto the terrain, not being restricted to a rectangular or circle area ! :D

It can be done with Copy / Paste like Jim Ward does, but is time consuming.

Could you please give us more details on how to modify the track joint sounds with the Blueprints editor I am just starting to learn how to use, James might also appreciate ?

O t t o

I would recomend reading document 8.01... i think after a quick skim through that... you will see how easy it is!

joint spacing is based in 2.3 of that document, under "TrackBedRumble"

(download the sample files so you have something to test with in the blueprint editor)

[jamesc25313]

I would recomend reading document 8.01... i think after a quick skim through that... you will see how easy it is!

joint spacing is based in 2.3 of that document, under "TrackBedRumble"

(download the sample files so you have something to test with in the blueprint editor)

Ill be sure to check that out today! Ive already found in the documents that setting the sound to 1.000000 is full volume so setting it to 16 or 30 wouldnt matter.

[OTTODAD]

Ill be sure to check that out today! I've already found in the documents that setting the sound to 1.000000 is full volume so setting it to 16 or 30 wouldn't matter.

Seeing that you are going to check that out, there is no point me doing it too, you knowing a lot more on that subject than me.

Looking forward to what you can achieve, already having done a lot to improve these sounds ! ;)

The bogies should create at least a speed related double clonk when they go over track joints, audible outside as well as inside driver cabs and never mind that most diesel bogies have triple-axled bogies. ;)

Take care, O t t o.

[jamesc25313]

Seeing that you are going to check that out, there is no point me doing it too, you knowing a lot more on that subject than me.


Well incase you do want to tinker with the soinds or anyone else for that matter the bogie sounds are in the bogie folder this is what you hear inside and outside the cab and if you want to change the distance between joints this can set in the TrackBedRumble folder and of course convert the SB_Standard Ballast.Bin to xml and when you open it up youll see a section named
<DistancebetweenJoints d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="0000000000806640" d:precision="string">180.0000</DistancebetweenJoints>
Currently it is set to 180.0000 and I dont know if this is feet or what, the documents didnt specify they have the example joint distance set to 30. I will work on the "double clunk" for now.

[ENTrainman]

Seeing that you are going to check that out, there is no point me doing it too, you knowing a lot more on that subject than me.

Looking forward to what you can achieve, already having done a lot to improve these sounds ! ;)

The bogies should create at least a speed related double clonk when they go over track joints, audible outside as well as inside driver cabs and never mind that most diesel bogies have triple-axled bogies. ;)

Take care, O t t o.

I have been looking into it a little

realistically the double click should occur every 19.5 feet , and not the 39' that the rail actually is (in typical north american section rail) as the tracks are layed similar to bricks... so the track joints for each rail are not side by side..

Though if you are like me and have the recomended Creative GFX card.. the sounds are already a 100 times better than those without it... ;)

[jamesc25313]

HI. I set the distance between rails to 60 metres and cut the sounds down to only play two sounds instead of 10 random ones and I think it sounds great. I tried recording with fraps but it didnt work out well. Ill record just the sound and take your inputs.

james

[ENTrainman]

now that i really think about it...... i find with the XF-I card in my system (at least when it is turned up loud enough to match the real thing) i only find the most minor of changes nessisary to make it mirror the rear thing.. i havent tried it without an XFI card so i dont have much to compare it to in that sense, but i do spend lots of time on and around the real deal....

what we should really do to get this forum working together... is create a few core threads (like the physics one) and keep all of this discussion relevent , with all the discoveries in their respective threads :)

[jamesc25313]

what we should really do to get this forum working together... is create a few core threads (like the physics one) and keep all of this discussion relevent , with all the discoveries in their respective threads :)

I try at least with my threads to keep what Im working on to my thread like the welded sounds for example I just posted there but I seem to get off track so to speak and post some things in other areas but it helps for reference to go to a certain thread and re-read any ideas or previous thoughts or posts on a particular subject. Sometimes I forget what Im doing a read a thread to see what i was going to do next :) so my threads keep me up to date also

[jamesc25313]

I have been looking into it a little

realistically the double click should occur every 19.5 feet , and not the 39' that the rail actually is (in typical north american section rail) as the tracks are layed similar to bricks... so the track joints for each rail are not side by side..


If I set the sounds to go off at 19 feet then all Id hear are clicks. At around 70 mph the clicks are constant. I think personally the way I have it sounds good until around 60 mph and then it gets annoying :) I need to get a video or sound of the clicks froma low speed on up to see what you guys think.

[ENTrainman]

If I set the sounds to go off at 19 feet then all Id hear are clicks. At around 70 mph the clicks are constant. I think personally the way I have it sounds good until around 60 mph and then it gets annoying :) I need to get a video or sound of the clicks froma low speed on up to see what you guys think.


That is very true in your case, but in my case you wouldnt be doing more than 30 mph on the jointed rail as it is only 85 lb rail, and fairly old...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i13DWJbiQHY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y478DqNS43k&feature=related

would be a good example.. if you listen carefully.. even at 20 mph it sounds like all joints because the rail is so short.

The main point is that any type of track can be created with any joint configuration! :)

[OTTODAD]

If you listen carefully.. even at 20 mph it sounds like all joints because the rail is so short.

Yes, that's the realistic track joint sounds in the second video I am missing watching RS trains go by and inside the driver cab.

The MSTS RAILWAVES add-on does that and lets me determine their frequency in the Ttype.dat.

No such easy method to do the same in RS, changing the sound type of the clonking too ? ;)

O t t o