[James Ross]

It's taken around 4 days of work, but I have replaced the scrolling text when loading with this:



The log file is still there and is written to just as the text window used to be; however, the text window is now gone. (It may return under some setting, I'm not quite sure.) Instead, you get to stare at an image. I plan to add some progress indication to this but wanted to get the major changes in sooner.

[captain_bazza]

It looks faintly ominous, IMO, as if suddenly a Jack-in-the-box character will leap out of the screen center, shouting,

"LOSERS!"

[thegrindre]

I like it, too. How about a small silhouette of a train crossing the screen for the progress bar? ;)

:lol:

[conductorchris]

Thanks for your work on it James. I like it too. I also like the idea of being able to swap other pictures in too, such as Walter's idea of the loading screens for routes or other nice things worth the look.
Christopher

[James Ross]

 Walter Conklin, on 22 December 2013 - 04:53 PM, said:

Just another suggestion - Would it be possible to have Open Rails utilize the customized loading screens that come with some routes, if the screens are available?

This will certainly be possible.

[markus_GE]

Like it. :thumbup3:

And I also would like to second the idea with the loading bar as a train silhouette.

But I´m unsure how this would work with custom route loading screens...

Anyway, I´d like to add to the loading screens: What if the route doesn´t have one custom loading screen to it?

Cheers, Markus

[Csantucci]

I like it, however I usually look at the text window during program loading to check in real time if something wrong is logged, so I would prefer to have a checkbox that allows to select if the text window is shown or not.

[cjakeman]

 James Ross, on 22 December 2013 - 04:22 PM, said:

I plan to add some progress indication to this.

The loading bar is important - like first impressions at an interview - so worth discussing. (Though I expect James has some good ideas already.)

Progress bars that stick, especially towards the end or at 100%, are unwelcome. (Research shows users are happiest with bars that speed up towards the end ! )

If an activity has not been loaded before, then all we can show is a tick for each stage completed.

Every time the activity is loaded, we could record the total bytes read and show %age bytes read as a measure of progress. If it turns out to be non-linear, we would need intermediate records of bytes read and seconds elapsed to linearise the bar.

If we can get an accurate estimate of the last 5 seconds, then we could try a countdown to build anticipation - "5" .. "4" .. "3" .. "2" .. "1" .. "World appears". Never seen it done, but I would love to give it a try.