[Rick-MONON]

On the trainsim site I started a thread:
Cars and Xings

At about 70% of the crossings, not all....... the cars and trucks crossing the tracks take a nose dive down and sometimes under the road.......on the Monon-2 route and on other older routes also.

Route builders sometimes put extra tracks in so the cars do not get on the tracks when there is a road with a severe angle to the tracks, or we want the cars to stop sooner before the tracks, in msts you saw alot of cars being hit by trains because of the angle, so we added tracks to each side of the xing.......
We also add the extra tracks when we want the gates to come down at a xing on the main line but not a industrial spur that the train is not on when it is close to the main tracks.

Basically the car/truck path I was told takes into account the track position, so we get a bump effect, a very cool add to the OR program.....
But for the older routes it causes a diving effect where the car/truck goes under the road a little or even dives under the road at the xing when the route builder
places those extra tracks in before and after a xing.

Can..... we have a swicth in the Options to turn off the bump effect and have the car/truck do like msts does by just taking into account the road path only......

Many routes that used this technique look terrible in OR because of the newer/better coding.....

To fix this in just the Monon-2 alone, would mean hundreds of hours replacing all those xings guards again and doing it 4 times and having to remake the 4 era options the Monon-2 has.

Please consider this seriously, yu have converted me to OR, your work has been amazing, please do not bury mine...........

[Csantucci]

Can you please add some picture (MSTS vs OR) to better explain your point?

[Rick-MONON]

Thanks

Here you go..

https://www.trainsim...98&d=1499571730

https://www.trainsim...99&d=1499571741

https://www.trainsim...00&d=1499571754

BTW, the board would not let me upload the pic or use the img cmd to show the pic in the pm......sorry

[James Ross]

Rick-MONON, on 09 July 2017 - 06:35 AM, said:

Can..... we have a swicth in the Options to turn off the bump effect and have the car/truck do like msts does by just taking into account the road path only......

No options please; but we should ignore any tracks with a vertical position lower than the road, which should fix this fine.

[Rick-MONON]

James

Are you saying the next version corrects this, because version 1.2 does not...?????

James Ross, on 09 July 2017 - 11:19 AM, said:

No options please; but we should ignore any tracks with a vertical position lower than the road, which should fix this fine.

[charland]

Thanks James,

That would probably solve the issue us old guys are having.

Paul :-)

[James Ross]

Rick-MONON, on 09 July 2017 - 11:26 AM, said:

James

Are you saying the next version corrects this, because version 1.2 does not...?????

I'm merely suggesting a better way to fix the problem than adding an option. The fix hasn't been done yet, and will be done in Open Rails - no content changes should be necessary for it to work.

[Rick-MONON]

Thanks James

Your solution seems much better.

We look forward to the next version, you are saving us hundreds of hours of changes .................

James Ross, on 09 July 2017 - 02:20 PM, said:

I'm merely suggesting a better way to fix the problem than adding an option. The fix hasn't been done yet, and will be done in Open Rails - no content changes should be necessary for it to work.

[Jovet]

I think the elevation check could be tricky. What about the length of the track crossing the road? Most extra tracks placed for this purpose should be less than 20m long, and will be isolated from any other trackage on the route.

[waivethefive]

Rick-MONON, on 09 July 2017 - 04:27 PM, said:

you are saving us hundreds of hours of changes .................

Not that such should be the motivation, anyway.

We just need to stop adding all these dumb features like zero degree nodes and excess track under road crossings into routes. You cannot insert all these MSTS handicaps unneeded by Open Rails into a route and then complain when Open Rails reacts to them queerly. If time is such a concern, then stop adding them to begin with. Look at the cumulative time to be saved.

Wouldn't it be better to have the ability to set custom clearances when we place level crossings via TSRE? Route builders should have the ability to set distances that are longer for crossings that are sharply angled and the car spawner simply reads the data and holds the vehicles back. No need for all this stubby track buried under roads, nor any elevation comparisons added to the code to 'save the day'. Of course, such a proper fix would require moving beyond the MSTS RE, a challenge in and of itself among the self-proclaimed 'old guys'. But I'm sure Open Rails will still be at fault somewhere, anyhow.

The problem I have here is the bailout mentality. Rick did something really dumb, passing the point of no return, in his pursuit to make what became a very large route more MSTS friendly. So the fix he was faced with was considerably more complex than simply firing up the RE. If we keep providing 'easy button' solutions, when does the discipline to not perform such brain farts again ever get instilled? If we always expect workarounds in the code, then how do we get route creators to stop adding all that useless junk into future routes? Where is the motivation?

No one ever asked anyone to fix old routes afflicted with problems caused by Open Rail's display of embedded MSTS handicaps. All that was asked of them is if they want it to run properly in Open Rails, then build it properly for Open Rails from the start, without the MSTS baggage. The Open Rails project should not be in the 'route rescuing' business.