[charland]

If you do road switching you throw the switch behind you a lot. If you don't like this feature, you don't have to use it but don't screw it up for people how do use it.

Paul :-)

[jonas]

It certainly has something to do with the fact that I'm not a native English speaker, unfortunately I probably don't understand you correctly here:

 charland, on 22 March 2021 - 07:01 AM, said:

If you do road switching you throw the switch behind you a lot. ...

What exactly is meant by this, "Shift + G"?

 charland, on 22 March 2021 - 07:01 AM, said:

... If you don't like this feature, you don't have to use it but don't screw it up for people how do use it. ...

Sorry if it comes to this impression, but I don't want and can't screw up anything and haven't the power to do so :-), but I want only express my opinion about the thread topic here.

[charland]

If you want to throw the switch in front of you you use the "G" key, if you want to throw the switch behind your train you use "Shift+G". The player needs to be in Manual mode for either to work.

Not really sure why this would have become an issue to discuss to begin with,

Paul :-)

[Csantucci]

I believe someone hasn't got the problem described by Weter: often you have in front of you in the path a trailing switch, immediately followed by a leading switch. As it is now, you have to wait until the locomotive has passed the trailing switch before throwing the leading switch; in the above situation, you have a very short time interval to do that: if you do it too early, you will move the trailing switch, if you do it too late, you will have already passed the leading switch before having thrown it.
I appreciate that jonas agrees with my proposal of differentiating keys, and I will try to implement this in ORNYMG, if it is not too complicated. I will pass it to the official OR releases only if there will be a wide agreement on that.

[jonas]

 charland, on 22 March 2021 - 08:03 AM, said:

If you want to throw the switch in front of you you use the "G" key, if you want to throw the switch behind your train you use "Shift+G". The player needs to be in Manual mode for either to work.

Not really sure why this would have become an issue to discuss to begin with, ...

Because it works differently in MSTS for example.

In MSTS you only can throw facing switches by clicking the G key or Shift + G key, but never trailing switches.
So it's all about trailing or facing switches, as the thread topic says: "Opposite Switch-throwing with G key Is it realy needed?"

[jonas]

Pictures are worth a thousand words.

This is presently.

That's the way it could be.

[roeter]

 Csantucci, on 22 March 2021 - 09:21 AM, said:

I believe someone hasn't got the problem described by Weter: often you have in front of you in the path a trailing switch, immediately followed by a leading switch. As it is now, you have to wait until the locomotive has passed the trailing switch before throwing the leading switch; in the above situation, you have a very short time interval to do that: if you do it too early, you will move the trailing switch, if you do it too late, you will have already passed the leading switch before having thrown it.
I appreciate that jonas agrees with my proposal of differentiating keys, and I will try to implement this in ORNYMG, if it is not too complicated. I will pass it to the official OR releases only if there will be a wide agreement on that.

Apart from the problem that it will be difficult to find unused additional keys, in particular if you want to differentiate the function both forward and backward (which would require 2 new keys), it would still be awkward to handle if you pass a series of both facing and trailing switches, if you have to switch the facing switches and the trailing switches immediately behind them (like when going through a 'ladder').
If changes are required, a better option would be a selectable mode in which G and Shift-G only work on facing switches, and trailing switches are aligned automatically when approached. Part of the logic for this is already available as trailing switches are automatically aligned when using G or Shift-G in signalled areas. I would suggest to make this mode available only in explorer mode, it could have unwanted side-effects in manual mode, in particular on unsignalled routes, as the user can no longer control which switches are thrown when using G or Shift-G. It could lead to trailing switches being thrown outside the intended shunt area, even switches which are in paths of AI trains.

Regards,
Rob Roeterdink

[charland]

OK, now I understand Weter's problem, and I've run into the same many times. When I first started having the problem was when I was building the Conn River route. The prototype had back to back switches with only 5m of track between them, When The locomotive was on one switch and you tried using G to throw the next switch OR would change the points of the switch I was already on. I asked at the time if someone at Open rails could change the program so you could not throw the switch your engine was on, but throw then next one. The answer I got was it was my fault for putting the two switches so close together... Didn't matter that I followed the prototype.

Paul :-)

[eric from trainsim]

 roeter, on 22 March 2021 - 06:36 AM, said:

I believe that in the vast majority of game situations people use paths and have no need to throw switches at all.
Manually throwing switches is a 'last resort' on unscheduled shunt work, not operational running.

When I QC a route in development, paths aren't an option because they break too often during the editing process.

I'd like to see something available to open the second switch in the direction of travel, be it a new combination or ignoring the trailing point switch.

[charland]

Here's something to keep in mind about paths. If you have an operating turntable on your route and you start an activity in the enginehouse, your player path ends on the turntable and the rest of the activity will be in Manual Mode and you will have to throw all your switches.
Paul