[ckawahara]

I believe Dave's Cal_P Sacramento Shops had a transfer table also.

[SP 0-6-0]

So which is easier to implement? Transfer tables or the ability to have GE diesels breath fire?

Just asking?

Robert

[DRelyea]

Hi,

Unless I'm wrong about the Freight Animations in ORTS, the breathing fire would be easier. Seems to me one should be able to animate the flames of your choice as an ORTS only Freight animation.

Problem with transfer tables is as has been mentioned, the TSection entries, and the code to make it work. The turntables work as the A1t27m that shipped with MSTS already had the coding to animate it. Others have made follow on models that also contain the groups necessary to animate correctly. Getting the bridge to slide along the pit instead of spin in place is a bit more complicated than a simple bash of the .s file.

Doug Relyea

[jonas]

I'm not sure if it is right to be discussed here, but I just want to understand what I can rely on. Because I have read here several times that the turntable shape a1t27mturntable.s is supposedly shipped with MSTS: I can not find the shape a1t27mturntable.s among the original MSTS track shapes, but only within XTracks.

Does compatibility of ORTS with MSTS foremost actually means compatibility with XTracks?

[SP 0-6-0]

The default turntable is used at Whitefish on the Marias Pass route. In out of the box MSTS there is several track shapes not registered or used in the Tsection shipped with MSTS. But, The shapes are present in the global shapes folder. Xtracks outright replaced several shapes and made several default shapes usable.

Using a freight animation for the GE flames needs to be coded to work with the engine files and locomotive physics. The fire only happens if certain events take place within the locomotive. These being specific issues with the turbo charger, fuel system, and locomotive computer control system.

For it to work correctly would mean special coding so it can happen when an engine is simulating heavy pulling whether at low speed or track speed while having engine malfunctions.

TRAINZ Simulator does the GE flaming. There is a certain set of payware Uboats that can do the flames under the right conditions. They are the Jointed Rail's U30Cs. Maybe a look at how they are programmed might offer some insight.

Robert

[rickloader]

Why don`t we just ask for a set of Tsection entries "reserved for ORTS"?
It seems a pity to restrict creativity for fear of altering the tsection, which is actually in the MSTS Community control anyway.
Then within our allocated block of entries we could also have some blank ones "ORTS user defined". Then route builders could add their own custom models.
At the moment if route builders want some custom track shapes they are forced to make their route exclusively as a mini-route.
The Global folder is a real nuisance, and all the shapes, textures etc should be in the Route folder. I guess Global is just a relic of 2001 when disk space was precious?
rick

[Jovet]

rickloader, on 22 December 2016 - 06:31 AM, said:

Why don`t we just ask for a set of Tsection entries "reserved for ORTS"?
It seems a pity to restrict creativity for fear of altering the tsection, which is actually in the MSTS Community control anyway.
Then within our allocated block of entries we could also have some blank ones "ORTS user defined". Then route builders could add their own custom models.

That does not solve the problem of avoiding a mini-route.

rickloader, on 22 December 2016 - 06:31 AM, said:

At the moment if route builders want some custom track shapes they are forced to make their route exclusively as a mini-route.

No, that is just one option. The correct procedure is to reserve your own space in the global Standardized tsection.dat file and incorporate your shapes permanently into it. In my opinion, this is the preferred option to a mini-route, but it does require cooperation with the maintainer of the Standardized file.

rickloader, on 22 December 2016 - 06:31 AM, said:

The Global folder is a real nuisance, and all the shapes, textures etc should be in the Route folder. I guess Global is just a relic of 2001 when disk space was precious?

Ummm, my Global folder is 1.2 GB. Maybe your disk space isn't precious, but mine sure is. The Global folder makes things simpler by keeping common files in one place. The tsection.dat is what I think you'd rather have per route, but the problem is that routes already have one of those for dynamic track.

[jared2982]

See post below for OR routes. For MSTS compatibility the current method of collaboration with the Tsection maintainer is a bit of extra work but it is not that hard to do. All you need is to know how many entries you need and request that space. One thing I will mention before requesting SectionID's is to make sure there is not already one present that for what you want to do. There are already a couple that have dual entries and space is limited.

[Csantucci]

I see that it has passed quite unnoticed but OR does presently allow to have route specific TrackShapes and Tracksections. Here http://www.elvastowe...post__p__203606 you can read how. Therefore OR reduces the need to have mini-route installations.

[jonas]

Csantucci, on 22 December 2016 - 12:19 PM, said:

I see that it has passed quite unnoticed but OR does presently allow to have route specific TrackShapes and Tracksections. Here http://www.elvastowe...post__p__203606 you can read how. Therefore OR reduces the need to have mini-route installations.

I haven't noticed it and read it there now. Sounds good to me. Indeed a nice feature I think.
But I would like to keep my routes still compatible with MSTS too. That's why I'll probably have to continue produce mini-routes for the time being.

[jonas]

For those who create additional OR turntables, I have written an Excel table to generate TrackShape entries with track vectors of an individual turntable for the tsection.dat. Only need to enter the diameter and the number of the desired tracks (angle distance) about the turntable to build:

Table download here
Hope the comments in the table are sufficient as an explanation.

Added Jan 2, 2017:
The Excel table is for turntable shapes with a centered pivot.
So the declared offsets for the shape in the turntable.dat can be 0:

Turntable(
	WFile ( "w-005565+015054.w" )
	UiD ( 3787 )
	XOffset ( 0 )
	YOffset ( 0 )
	ZOffset ( 0 )
	TrackShapeIndex ( 264 )
	Animation ( "TRACKPIECE" )
	Diameter ( 23 )
)

[Jovet]

jonas, on 22 December 2016 - 02:40 PM, said:

For those who create additional OR turntables, I have written an Excel table to generate TrackShape entries with track vectors of an individual turntable for the tsection.dat. Only need to enter the diameter and the number of the desired tracks (angle distance) about the turntable to build:

That's going to be a handy tool, I suspect! Thanks for offering it!

[Nicolò]

Little test with animated doors:
https://youtu.be/2Y7hqfY4LEU

[rickloader]

Hi Carlo. I am making custom turntables for my route. In the original the locos fit on the turn table with the wheelbase giving about 1 metre of spare room. In Orts even though the wheels are clearly on the turntable bridge, the sim says train partially on turntable. The loco bounding box would be bigger than the turntable bridge
My question is what determines the loco position. Is it perhaps the loco bounding box, or the contact wheel base?
I can make the turntable bigger than the scale size to fit the bounding box. Or should I adjust the parameters in the .dat?

Many thanks for turntables and your recent track sounds
and thanks to Jonas for the spread sheet
rick

[copperpen]

Far as I know, OR does not use the bounding box, just the size. So even if the wheels are on the table, if the length is longer than the diameter of the turntable it will not all be on the table. Perhaaps it is time to introduce a new parameter for use on turntables, Wheelbase. Then if all the wheels are on the table, the locomotive is deemed to be on, not partially on.