[Genma Saotome]

Just curious about what criteria is being used to determine whether a car spawner should be activated... up to 2000m? Up to near terrain view distance? Everywhere?

Any part of the car spawner length or are both ends needed in-view" to activate?

[YoRyan]

As soon as the world tile is loaded, all car spawners become active and begin to produce vehicles. View distance is not a factor.

[Genma Saotome]

:sign_thanks:

A thought: It might make a LOT of sense to move the spawning initiator to Activity files. For example any car spawners along a branch line might not be needed in any circumstance outside of an activity for that branch line. The same is true for any sort of industrial switching where it makes sense to have a few cars go by the factory when you are working it but in no other circumstances.

Look at how AI trains are handled -- always in an activity file. Are AI cars that different from AI trains?

The change could be best understood as a performance improvement rather than an ordinary feature.

[Hannes44]

What about timetables without activity files?

[YoRyan]

 Genma Saotome, on 04 September 2020 - 11:49 AM, said:

A thought: It might make a LOT of sense to move the spawning initiator to Activity files. For example any car spawners along a branch line might not be needed in any circumstance outside of an activity for that branch line. The same is true for any sort of industrial switching where it makes sense to have a few cars go by the factory when you are working it but in no other circumstances.

How so? It'd be a massive burden on the activity designer to have to program events to turn every car spawner on and off. Better to use an automatic mechanism like draw distance - assuming testing shows there is performance to be gained in the first place, of course.

(But I have seen route designers add invisible tracks to run "road vehicles" as AI trains. It might be worth designing a dedicated mechanism for such cases.)

[Genma Saotome]

 YoRyan, on 04 September 2020 - 06:19 PM, said:

How so? It'd be a massive burden on the activity designer to have to program events to turn every car spawner on and off. Better to use an automatic mechanism like draw distance - assuming testing shows there is performance to be gained in the first place, of course.

(But I have seen route designers add invisible tracks to run "road vehicles" as AI trains. It might be worth designing a dedicated mechanism for such cases.)

No need to drop the activation by world file loading. What I was speaking to was a tile by tile list of car spawners, some set to turn on, some to stay off. The default could be to turn on. To save resources the activity designer could mark those he didn't need to be turned off. The same idea is needed for sprite text tied to sidings and spurs. Why bother naming those 5 spots over there if you are not going to work more than one? This is not so much of a resource issue as it is to make clear to the player which few location(s) out of the many present he will work.

Here is in one of my my complex situations (real, not imaginary):


Those two spurs that run out horizontally have 4-6 story buildings on both sides... the space between them is about 14ft.

[YoRyan]

Still too much work. No activity designer is going to be bothered to turn off car spawners by hand. The simulator should be able to manage its resources automatically.

As for siding markers, we already have an "automatic" mode that only displays markers for sidings relevant to the current activity. Unfortunately, it's not documented... you have to press Shift+F6 until you cycle to it.

[Csantucci]

 YoRyan, on 04 September 2020 - 06:19 PM, said:

How so? It'd be a massive burden on the activity designer to have to program events to turn every car spawner on and off. Better to use an automatic mechanism like draw distance - assuming testing shows there is performance to be gained in the first place, of course.

(But I have seen route designers add invisible tracks to run "road vehicles" as AI trains. It might be worth designing a dedicated mechanism for such cases.)

This could have been the case to run specific vehicles different from the ones used in the standard car spawners
. This is no more needed with the multiple car spawner lists feature.

[YoRyan]

It's more of a one-off mechanic. Specifically, I'm thinking of the Tehachapi Pass II route, which features a police car that paces your train during one of the activities.

More generally, it would be nice if activities could modify the scenery. Not just by adding and changing car spawners, but also adding objects, like maintenance vehicles and track hazards.

Related feature: Frequency-based traffic, like a rapid transit line that operates every 5 minutes.

[Genma Saotome]

If there was such a thing as an "append" world file tied to an activity I'd be moving both siding names are car spawners into it.