[railguy]

A post over at T-Sim reminded me of a couple of things that I would like to request for OpenRails. I believe that I mentioned one long ago. Here they are:

1. In OR currently loose consist locomotives, by default in the OR programming, have the headlight on. More preferable in my view would be to have the headlight of a loose consist default to off, unless the .eng file specifies the light to be on all the time. In this respect, I think that OR currently treats a loose consist loco the same as an AI loco. If one wants to use a loose consist as a static "stand-in" for an AI train (with the headlight on), what I have done is to set up the consist as an AI train with a very short path and a long waiting point. That takes care of the issue created if my suggestion to have loose consist headlights off by default in the programming if one wants to have a loose consist with the headlight on.

2. Related to AI trains and loose consists, I would also request that things like air compressor operation (and sounds) be implemented as they are in player locomotives. For example, in most all of my locomotives, I specify a TrainPipeLeakRate, meaning that the compressor will run periodically to recharge the main air reservoir. It will do that in a player locomotive, but not in a loose consist or AI. I believe that it should.

3. Unrelated to the above, I would request that the Explore in Activity Mode option have the ability to include loose consists and AI traffic from an activity when running in Explore in Activity Mode. That would offer the advantage of running an Explore mode session with loose consists and AI traffic. It would also be handy when testing various paths against AI traffic before specifying them in an activity one is creating.

I would be curious to see if anyone else would like to see these features included in OR. Thanks.