[CrisGer]

Yes you are welcome to use the Smoke Ace, have worked on it for some time and i think it is as good as MSTS can do. Happy to help out. Open License is fine however you want to work it.

[rdamurphy]

Well, we have lift off! Smoke color varies according to speed and steam and smoke output, and with both throttle and cutoff.

I played fireman for a while, pretty clueless in that department, and did get the smoke to turn pretty dark.

I need to run it through a few more tests, try a couple of things, but should be ready to commit early this week.

Of course, still going to have to do some tweaking, and will need advise on getting it to look better...

Robert

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

rdamurphy, on 23 September 2013 - 12:43 AM, said:

Well, we have lift off! Smoke color varies according to speed and steam and smoke output, and with both throttle and cutoff.

I played fireman for a while, pretty clueless in that department, and did get the smoke to turn pretty dark.

I need to run it through a few more tests, try a couple of things, but should be ready to commit early this week.

Of course, still going to have to do some tweaking, and will need advise on getting it to look better...

Robert

Good to hear you are making progress in creating black smoke. A new pope is announced by white smoke, a steam excursion coming down the track by black smoke. ;)

Nowadays, that nice fat'n'sooty black smoke is out, and clean air is in, how about smoke consumers for a next step? Overfire jets and the like ...
Gives the fireman something else to do ... :lol2:

No, just kiddin. When we have smoke and exhaust that responds to throttle, cutoff and firing, most of us will be quite pleased.
The advanced particle effets once the exhaust is out of the stack will come later.

[rdamurphy]

Went ahead and committed the code to Version 1770, if you have SVN, go ahead and try it out and check it out. Comments are invited - please, feel free to be brutal!

One of the things I want to try is to run MSTS and OR in windowed mode next to each other and compare the effects...

You can do that with an i7 overclocked to 4.4G, 16G of DDR3 1600, and an HD 7790 running three monitors...

And watch a Youtube video of a steam locomotive at the same time!

Robert

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Do I need to compile the code myself for this to work?

Edited: no I just got v1770 off the SVN, tho the menu.exe still says 1769, but that has happened before.

I used to have consist saved somewhere will all that nice WP steam power coupled to a long train. Now I cannot seem to find it ...

And now we are up to v1771.

First impression just running some light engine, the WP 2-8-2: nice! The smokemain.ace "fluffy balls" are in use?
There is an awful lot of Locomotive Information in the F5 nowadays. Now where is that firing scoop?

[gpz]

CrisGer, on 22 September 2013 - 06:37 PM, said:

Yes you are welcome to use the Smoke Ace, have worked on it for some time and i think it is as good as MSTS can do. Happy to help out. Open License is fine however you want to work it.

Chris,

It would be a great contribution, I think! Just one little note: While the inner side (the part that is really important) of the subpictures in the image look very nice, and it looks like you worked a lot on them, the similarity of the "frames" between the sub-images to the original MSTS smokemain.ace is too obvious in my opinion. The frame should be replaced with some custom one, if possible, to completely avoid any legal issue in the future.

[CrisGer]

OK i will be happy to tweak it a bit more as per your request but as for copyright, i was a book publisher and handled rights of all kinds and from the conventions of conversion and creating New from old that travels beyond former rights coverage, i have made more than enough changes to release as new. But i will work on it more if you wish...but i do think we are ok to work with the current version until i can get it done. It takes extreme care to make it work right, as many failed past steps showed. I used original photos and films and actual engines in action to study for this, and it has taken about four years ;)...glad it may be helpful and I look forward to trying the new version once i can get out of the TSM engine house where i am trapped by accumulated work....and the shipyard is tugging me as well. :)

Re the smoke project, i have studied and learned a lot from all the people who have worked on this in MSTS for the years we have had it, we all stand on each other shoulders and we all advance with each of our efforts...these include the great work of Joshua Russell, Harold Clitheroe, Niels Picciotto, Chuck Zeiler, Linda Gray, William Peebles, and Richard Haagsma, all working on the Smoke Ace :) looking forward to improvements in OR really a lot.

can anyone share a compliled version of 1770 or 1771? i havent figure out how to do the compiling yet. if not i will wait for a packaged release.thanks.

[gpz]

I would like to ask the lead developers: What is your opinion about including Chris' wonderful smokemain.ace to OpenRails distribution, and modifying the code in MSTSSteamLocomotive for that one being the default rather of the one installed with MSTS? I would vote for it to be done.

(Currently compiled version of OpenRails is also available at James' website.)

[rdamurphy]

The color isn't the issue, if you get a chance, take a look at the modifications to the smoke committed over the weekend. Much, much better. The transparency is definitely much better.

May still be work to do, though...

Robert

[CrisGer]

Yes the colour was never my main concern it was getting the dynamics of the shape of the smoke to look realistic and not like cotton feathers. That is what took a long time and a lot of trial and error. Smoke has in its progression a series of varying actually rather sharp edged shapes that shift and move thru cycles and that is what is the most realistic way to capture it in the sim.

This cycling cannot be seen if the smoke is too dark, but if it is lighter gray as engine exhuast smoke is often on Steam engines it is clearly visible esp if the weather is cold, and there is extra condensation. So far other RR sims like Railworks have failed miserably to capture this effect and I have high hopes that OR can achieve it. Here's hoping, i will try to see the new build today.