[eric from trainsim]

Okay, forgive me if this is already been covered at some point or another but the thought came to me and I need to ask the question before I forget.

The old way of doing horn looping has been to include cue points or Loop points within the file itself. Since there is now only one program left that can do this (Goldwave) we may be at risk for this being a perpetual solution.

Would it be feasible to include the loop start and stop values in milliseconds as an alternative to cue points as a new subfield in the SMS definition?

[Weter]

Great!
Tweaking of sound performance would be much more easily then.

[QJ-6811]

You can still make markers (crue points), for example in "Wavosaur". (free).
Alternatively, what any audio editor can do is "chop up" the file as Start.wav / loop.wav / end.wav and create it in the SMS as 'PlayoneShot, Startloop-releaseloop, Playoneshot', as it has always worked .
(see example in " https://www.coalston...physics/sounds/ ")

Adding it as an extra option in de SMS file is - in my opinion - unnecessary. Moreover, "tuning" the milliseconds settings becomes very difficult, if you don't have an audio editor example... (?)

[eric from trainsim]

Tuning by milliseconds using trial and error would be no more difficult than trying to figure out where to cut a file into three pieces.

If anything, being able to load one file and do trial and error on the actual Loop points might be more sufficient as far as IO and CPU goes versus trying to load three individual files.

[ErickC]

I actually have two ideas for what would be great alternatives. One would be to have three clips for the horn that crossfade automatically into each other - a start, loop, and end. Then the loop can terminate and crossfade into the end clip at any time.

The second, more involved, idea would be to make "horn air pressure" a variable with a volume curve that blends a low-pressure clip and a high pressure clip. Then the .eng file would have values setting how fast the pressure ramps up and down (PSI per second or some such). You could hold space for full pressure, or, say, shift+space for partial pressure. Then you could quill to your heart's delight and not have to worry about start, middle, and end clips. You would, of course, need to record both a partial pressure and full pressure sample...

[Weter]

Hi, Erick.
Your words are balsam on ears: somewhere (most likely on ET) I've read about steam locomotive's whistles blowing.
In case of steam, as everybody, who hear it, knows, pressure variations cause even bigger influence on sound appearance.
As like with musical instruments, overblowing there can even cause higher overtones to be heared.

[eric from trainsim]

Any comments from one of the developers?

[Traindude]

ErickC, on 25 September 2022 - 06:56 PM, said:

I actually have two ideas for what would be great alternatives. One would be to have three clips for the horn that crossfade automatically into each other - a start, loop, and end. Then the loop can terminate and crossfade into the end clip at any time.

The second, more involved, idea would be to make "horn air pressure" a variable with a volume curve that blends a low-pressure clip and a high pressure clip. Then the .eng file would have values setting how fast the pressure ramps up and down (PSI per second or some such). You could hold space for full pressure, or, say, shift+space for partial pressure. Then you could quill to your heart's delight and not have to worry about start, middle, and end clips. You would, of course, need to record both a partial pressure and full pressure sample...

I'm totally on board with quillable whistles & horns. As for controls, I'm thinking a USB analog joystick, like the one shown below (or something similar), could be used for a quillable whistle/horn--the idea being that when the joystick is in its center position, the whistle or horn is "off", when moved in any direction (backward, forward left OR right) as far as it will go, that's "full pressure".

https://electroeshop.com/image/cache/data/new_image_2021/BSTB0002EAA36-500x500.jpg

This reminds me--there's a cool Android app put out by the guys working on the NCSL 576 project called "whistle simulator" that can potentially demonstrate what the quillable whistle functionality would look like in OR and how it would work.

Weter, on 04 October 2022 - 11:27 AM, said:

Hello.
Even pressure growth, according to time, spacebar pressed (but what should be done while spacebar released?)
Looking like pedals simulation in race games, if keyboard controls acceleration&brakes.

That seems like a good option. I gave the USB joystick example since it's more analogous to the driver/engineer pulling on a whistle/horn lever or cord. But yeah, there needs to be a keyboard control scheme as well.