[R H Steele]

Disclaimer for following statement -
This is a totally personal opinion, an observation, a rant, probably shared by a good number of otherwise silent folks.


All the problems, real and supposed, would disappear (probably in the 90+ % range) if we immediately cease developing Open Rails and intensely go to work on bringing Microsoft Train Simulator up to date and error free. Now what I propose is to get some venture capital and get a team of 100 or so world class programers that are also extremely well-versed in all things railroading and put them to work recrafting this slipshod program that was released before being ready just to make a buck for Microsoft. I can hear screaming, cursing, and frothing at the mouth, but your dear baby train simulator is just that - a baby - it never progressed past infancy. There was a promised version two, never released, just a series of patches (well meaning though they were - Bin among the best) from many people - representing an unplanned, uncoordinated effort to keep something from dying. Tricks, work arounds, obscure code, misunderstood, misinterpreted code, --- fanatastic routes and activities built with tools never supported or well designed. Geeze it's amazing anything even half-way decent was made in the last decade. At this point Open Rails does EVERYTHING better than MSTS .

New Rule, if you encounter something in Open Rails you think is wrong, assume it is wrong in MSTS. Always a safer bet -- (boy will that get some disagreement!)

For a minute quit turning purple and imagine an alternate world that never saw the existence of MSTS but only had Open Rails (FREE) and all the content (FREE - for the most part) we have. Boy-O-Boy would I be a happy camper. Come to think of it - I am a happy camper, because - I NEVER use MSTS, EXCEPT, I still have to make activities (or routes for you routes makers) with the worlds worst traim sim toolset imaginable. Remember that, next time you complain about an activity not running properly that was made by a backward, poorly designed activity editor. An editor that never was supported, never fully documented, had obscure work arounds, poor coding, and had a visual area a little larger than a postcard. (you remember those - or look it up) Whenever I encounter an activity that has glitch - I assume it was written for MSTS and not OR, then I fix it. Many people are still writing and testing their activities in MSTS - never thinking to run them in OR to see how they really behave when run in a modern, logical, well-coded train sim that actually has trains that obey the laws of physics.

Maybe most of you cannot understand what I'm talking about. Granted compared to 99% of the readers of this post I know nothing about train simulators, modeling, route building, activity making, and railroading in general. What I do know is that compared to every contemporary train sim available MSTS is probably the worst train simulator in use today. It's old, out of date, its slow, its cranky, its got crummy visuals, it cannot use modern video resources, it has laughable camera options, when it was new it had lousy resource management, it was cobbled together without regard for logic, and it's been placed on a friggin' altar out of reach of mere mortals. I may love a model T and admire how it's put together (you cannot admire how MSTS is put together) but I would not want to use it daily or compare it with a modern car.
Oh, what the heck, sometimes, I wish everyone would just stop comparing Open Rails with MSTS, talk about an albatross. I imagine the Ancient Engineer walking down the tracks with two MSTS CDs hanging 'round his neck.

To Recap - what you should remember at the msts funeral services, so you can have hope for the future:
Open Rails ....
Has quicker start times
Is very easy to install and use
Is built to manage multiple installations
Uses modern video resources
Looks really great on modern monitors
Is actually coded logically and with regard to real world physics
Has the BEST CAMERA/SCREENSHOT options of any simulator now in production
Is totally compatible with Raildriver
Is compatible with all windows operating systems currently supported, even the one not supported - XP
Can support the use of LAA
Is compatible with 99% of legacy content
Is Open Source software - "a continuing fine tradition of the digital age of the two legged critter"
Does not have a "call bill" screen
Is a resilient, robust, and efficient train simulator
European train sim community really developing multiplayer
Is a worldwide effort among like minded individuals. (if ants get wind of this they will take over the world)
Allows you to throw your old, so very old, poorly designed, tottering, on the brink of ruin, feeble, train sim in the BIN
IS FREE
Did I say IT IS FREE

Okay, I'm through, get the rope, I'll go peacefully.
(ps - I got an email that Rob Roeterdink had left the OR Dev Team. Is that true? If true, this rant times 10 would hardly be sufficient!)

[markus_GE]

Very well put, Gerry :sign_thanks:

Quote

[...]
(ps - I got an email that Rob Roeterdink had left the OR Dev Team - that true? ;) :huh: if true - this rant times 10 would be sufficient! )

[...]

Yes, sadly, that´s true. Look for the thread "End Of the Line" (Not End Of the Line II" - that was somebody else)

Cheers, Markus

[captain_bazza]

MSTS is what it is; a train simulator well into its second decade. That is several lifetimes in the computing world. We live with that fact. MSTS is a lost cause as far as any future development goes.

Open Rails' MAJOR problem is the lack of lead development control. No single person is to blame, because that's the way the project has developed.

Cheers Bazza.

[charland]

Well, it was a Microsoft program, you didn't actually expect it to work properly, did you?

Paul :-)

[EricF]

R H Steele, on 22 July 2014 - 12:56 AM, said:

you cannot admire how MSTS is put together

:rofl2: But they did such a great job with duct-tape! (Much like ike the Force, it has a light side and a dark side, and it binds everything together...) :clown:

But seriously, MSTS is, well, a train wreck as far as software goes. Without the BIN patch and workarounds developed over the years, it probably would have died off years ago.

The file formats used by MSTS are downright simplistic in some ways -- enough that Open Rails is right to treat them as just a subset of what it should ultimately be capable of. But there's so much content for MSTS out there; it's understandable that engineering enough fault-tolerance into OR when it sees MSTS files is still a good thing, in my opinion. It can use MSTS content as a springboard to bigger and better things.

The proposed MSTS 2 efforts never promised any backward compatibility or interoperability with MSTS -- probably because the programmers looked at the MSTS code and decided it would be better to just blow it all up and start fresh. OR has gone one step better, and has re-built the concepts behind MSTS, but all in modern, cleaner code. OR programmers have likely fought a lot of dragons along the way -- that's something to be thankful for.

It's important to realize that what OR is right now is just the tip of the iceberg -- with things like timetable-based operation, 3D cabs and the multiplayer feature, it's already leaving MSTS far behind. I do look forward to when MSTS "standards" are truly just a minimum or legacy feature subset.

[James Ross]

EricF, on 22 July 2014 - 03:41 AM, said:

OR programmers have likely fought a lot of dragons along the way

Oh my you have no idea! :rofl2:

I would say, though, that I am immensely impressed with what MSTS achieves, given its age - whilst there have been many a head-scratching moment trying to figure out what on earth it is doing, there have also been some genuine surprises at the sophistication and depth.

[disc]

I have no idea why people still using MSTS except for route and scenario editing. But i have an idea for what some potential content developers waiting: to be able to avoid the dreadful .s format :rofl2:

[eric from trainsim]

Dunno. I'm pretty satisfied with the .S format. What I fear is having to buy and learn new software to do what I'm comfortable doing now, i.e. whipping up models in Sketchup and knowing they're going to render without any trickery, smoke & mirrors... Whatever next-gen the sim goes to, I'd hope that there's a path that allows all that Sketchup work to persist. I suspect the guys heavily invested in GMax and TSM feel likewise. It ain't perfect, but it's home... :rofl2:

[CGW121]

disc, on 22 July 2014 - 05:05 AM, said:

I have no idea why people still using MSTS except for route and scenario editing. But i have an idea for what some potential content developers waiting: to be able to avoid .s format :rofl2:

The REAL problem with Open Rails is the same as it is with route building. It is the community as a whole. Release a route and what do you get? Comments on how I can't get it to work. Did you read the instructions? Of course not. When I released my route I used Scale Rail, and I told people to download Scale Rail. Common sense would tell you, or so I foolishly thought, to download the entire package. I got asked which ones? How do I install them? Again did you read the F@%#$^g Directions that Marc included with his product? There is a thread over at flamesim about going into emergency and cant get out. Again the vast majority of those complainers did not read the manual, and what gets me about that is a LOT of them are old time members some with over 30,000 posts who tell people to read the manual, and how computer savey they are. Then these same bozos wonder why people are reluctant to release a route. Did he forget to credit someone? YOUR A PIRATE and so on and so forth. The freeware Surfliner is a prime example of this.

So an idea. If you want a route MAKE IT YOURSELF! Try learning something for once instead of complaining. If you do not like how Open Rails does something learn how to code and modify it to your liking, especially mr 36,000 + posts who is so willing to tell you how much of a wonderful coder he is. As the saying goes PUT UP OR SHUT UP. Paul McCartney once said about his critics that if they know so much about music why aren't they making some? Same here The reason I tend to think Open Rails is doomed is not because of the ability to code an excellent simulator but rather the endless complaining and the steady stream of disparaging remarks that the community will make, will make the team come to the conclusion that the product is not worth the bullshoot. I bet Bob or what ever his name is came to that conclusion.

[Genma Saotome]

A couple of comments:

#OR Benefits: Its lifecycle is not being determined by commercial profit/cashflow considerations but instead by the personal interests of those who use the software.

#Ties to MSTS: As one who was there at the start I know the argument for MSTS compatibility was to protect the investment end users had in content and not to ensure old hardware and software would always work or that MSTS flaws would be perpetuated when a superior alternative could be provided. This is analogous to physical model railroading where once the voltage limit and distance between the two rails is set you can rest assured in the knowledge that what you acquired in 1956 will still run in 2014. It'll look like heck but it will run. And for many decades now analog control has been replaced by digital. So backwards compatibility, by definition, has both pluses and minuses and is understood as feasible, not 100% absolutely required.

#The .s file format: The fundamental problem here is (AFAIK) not the format, tho it does have issues, but the CAD software that will produce a .s file. GMAX and TSM are very old... can TSM even be purchased these days? Sketchup will be moving in another direction and 3dCrafter's owner/creator is, apparently, AWOL. This will be a problem long term... perhaps sooner than we think.

#Bitchin & moanin: Write it off as just part of the human condition.

#Installation: As a route developer I was forced to learn how things that make complete sense to me are not at all obvious to persons who don't live route development 24x7 and that the problem needs to be addressed on the sending side of the transaction. It is not as simply as zipping up files and expecting somebody else to just unzip them: Are there files in the development environment that should not be distributed? If yes, then a 2nd copy of everything is needed so those special items can be deleted before they go into the install package. Has the install routine been run in a fresh environment? You need a fresh environment to do that... so there is copy #3. Do you test that version? That means rolling stock is present that you might not be distributing.

#Telling them to do it for themselves: A natural reaction however it's not entirely fair. At the office, I could be stumped for days looking at a blank page that needed to be filled in and struggle when finally able to write something on it. OTOH, given me a written page with a request to look this over and I can edit like a master, greatly improving it. I dunno why that is, I only know it is... and so did my bosses, most of whom routinely ran their own work past me for review.