[Hobo]

That sure looks and sounds very good to me . You also added the pull rope to the animation which gives it even more realism .
I believe that will be a very welcome addition - - - thanx Carlo and Geoff !

[mrmosky]

Nice job! That must be the quickest new feature ever added.

Geoff

[abschlammventil]

Nice new feature. I already love the enhanced steam effects possible in OR. Steaming generators, air pumps and moving parts like the bell really let the machines come to live in the sim. :thumbup3:

Regarding the beginning of this thread (Big Boy): 4014's bell does not move - it's fixed. Only the clapper moves (it seems to be powered electrically). See here:

[Mipman25]

Steam locomotives in Open Rails can have wiper animations, meaning you can swing a bell with the press of a button. This wasn't the case in MSTS, as only diesel and electric locomotives had wiper animations. Tim Muir made a PE steeplecab with an animated bell for MSTS, and it even syncs up with the bell sound!

[jared2982]

Will you be going farther into this so that the speed of the animation can be adjusted instead of having to adjust the sound files? If all the bells are adjusted to match the preprogramed animation speed then every bell will be forced to ring at the same speed.

[Csantucci]

Jared,
the swing rate is determined by the animation parameters within the .s file. Geoff selected 16+1 frames corresponding to a 2 seconds full swing rate; if a different frame number is used a different swing rate will result. No need for further parameters in other files. Of course the sound file shall be tuned to the swing rate.

[Csantucci]

Trello box to vote: https://trello.com/c...-bell-animation .

Feature now available in OR NewYear MG rel. 22.

[mrmosky]

It probably is not necessary to be able to vary the rate of Bell swinging. Locomotive bells are of a similar size and should swing at a similar rate, if you consider them as a pendulum.

This is borne out by the video below, which seems to show that all bells are swinging at the same rate of about 2 hz.


https://www.youtube....h?v=SoKs2-YJnDY

Anyway, the animation speed can be varied by changing a number in the .s file, but that might affect other animations. It is the number 30 that controls the speed of animation. The higher the number, the faster the animation.

animations ( 1
animation ( 16 30
anim_nodes ( 17
anim_node MAIN (
controllers ( 0


Geoff

[ErickC]

mrmosky, on 21 May 2019 - 01:06 AM, said:

It probably is not necessary to be able to vary the rate of Bell swinging. Locomotive bells are of a similar size and should swing at a similar rate, if you consider them as a pendulum.

Anything between the air valve and the clacker itself can affect the time between strokes, so the rate at which a bell rings will vary greatly - and it's often uneven. What you're saying only really applies to steam locomotives, where the entire bell moved.

Anyway - using animation length to control the bell animation cycle will cause problems with any other animation (doors, for example), because all animations will necessarily be slaved to the longest animation in the model. For example, I might want a door to open and close in one second. I might want the wipers to cycle every two seconds. So I animate accordingly. But now the doors will open and close in two seconds, for a total cycle length of four seconds. The door might only move for a second, sure, but there will be a delay while the animation completes itself. This is problematic if you want to synchronize audio to visuals. You could change the door animation length, sure, but nobody takes two seconds to open a locomotive door. The rate at which animations loop absolutely needs to be controlled separately (this is the root of the 3D cab door/wiper bug, which is why I don't bother to animate the doors and wipers in the 3D cab). I mean, could you imagine what the sim would be like if wheel rotation speed was controlled solely by animation length? Why should the door animation length be slaved to the bell, or the mirrors, et cetera?

I can see how it might be a bit much for now, but some sort of rudimentary scripting will really be necessary at some point. I suggest using a format similar to the SMS file, where animations outside of the basic wheel/bogie/et c. animations can be triggered by discrete events, and be looped or not, with the rate controlled by dedicated parameters, that way doors can animate at one speed, bells at another, wipers at another, and so on. Ideally, the configuration file would specify the name of the part to be animated, so that the developer can just name the parts whatever they want, and the code does all of the work, much like the SMS code does with sound samples.

[jared2982]

I must second the above post. I really think the bell animation speed should be tied to an entry in the eng file or something for bell animation speed in fps. Some are slower, some faster. There isn’t a one size fits all.