[timmuir]

Anyone who has downloaded and is familiar with these models knows that they are not typical in the way they are assembled. When the original models were being conceived many years ago, I had no end of troubles getting the beasts to work right in MSTS, due to their unorthodox arrangement of trucks and body assemblies with their off-center origins. But after much work and help from modelers such as Jon Davis, Wayne Campbell, Chuck Zeiler, Jeff Link, (and a few others I fail to remember, sorry), we got the big GE's to work in the sim and now grace the rails for many Milwaukee Road juice fans in MSTS. But, now I'm wondering if there's more hair-pulling and teeth-grinding in store to get these things to work right in OR.

I installed OR.7 a few days back and have been running a few trains, and marveling at how far along this version has come from the last time I tried it. But then I tried running my box cabs and was immediately struck at how the models were being rendered, using the latest release version of the E29s and E34s v3 available here in the library. It should be noted that these models consist of a front truck/wag coupled to the body/eng, coupled to the rear truck/wag and so on through each unit. The bodies have a 0.001 meter length in the z dimension to squeeze in between the truck couplings. And this is how they load:



Note the bodies are skewed several degrees to the right and slightly up. They ride like this on tangent track, and depending upon the location on the route, will sometimes straighten out. But once any kind of curved track is entered, the bodies go into a frantic, wild dance. Screen shots don't show this very well, but some idea can be gleaned from this short series:

These shots don't show the extreme fluctuations going on here. Picture these views a hundred times faster in a couple of seconds. It's pretty wild.






This one shows the bucking bronco effect pretty well.


But the clincher is when the units enter a turnout, OR crashes to a grey screen.

Here is the last log entry, although I don't know if that's any help.
 OpenRailsLog.txt (11.86K)
Number of downloads: 233

Also here's a thumbnail of my system specs.


This illustrates the arrangement of the consist of each unit, as outlined in red bounding boxes:


As an aside, I also ran a test of my earlier version of the box cabs that have a slightly different consist arrangement. The v1 models' bodies have the rear truck integral, while the front truck is a .wag coupled ahead. They do a less violent jitterbug, almost imperceptible compared to their younger versions. The v1 front trucks "over-animate" through curves, like this:



Anyhow, this is for the team to be made aware of for future reference. Docket it for later. The team has done a great job so far, thank you.

Also, as another aside, I have been considering a total rebuild of these units from the ground up. The current models are using some old textures and odd mapping, and alpha'ed truck frames I'd like to model in 3D, plus make some other improvements.

Thanks again.

[James Ross]

Neat problem! I'm going to suspect the articulated wagon code first (which is mine, to boot), but would it be possible to thrown in some links for downloading these consists/engines?

[timmuir]

Hi James and thanks for your quick reply. The E29 set is available at Elvas Tower library which has a consist file for each power configuration the Milwaukee used. Be sure to download the updated engine files too. The older models are available at Train-Sim.com, which have been upgraded by Lukas Lusser.

[longiron]

Team,
I did some testing last evening with Tim's boxcabs and the original Boxcab files. I compared their behavior on two different routes - NEC v4 and PRR Eastern Region. In both cases, the jumping and up & down or side-to-side movement was significantly less than on RMD. Camera #2 perspective also jumped at many of the same times as the Boxcab parts moved, which leads me to think that it's related to the trackwork. I'm speculating that perhaps "rougher" trackwork on the RMD is causing the issue to be more obvious?

On all routes, when the models ran through tight curves the rotation of the main driving wheels bogie appeared to be excessive. Nor I have compared the models running MSTS versus OR. I will try to capture the differences on a video.

[timmuir]

Thanks, Steve and Chris. I'll try them out on another electric route, all I have is my PE and Valley T West.

In the meantime, here's another little problem. The Milwaukee "Little Joe", also a three-part locomotive, when paired, opens like this, a kind of "Super Joe":


A 2-D+2-D-D-2! There's another D-2 hidden in there somewhere! ;)
The same consist in MSTS:


2-D+D-2~2-D+D-2

A single Joe opens correctly.

[timmuir]

I ran a set of box cabs on the Valley Transit, which has good track. The motors open in OR correctly lined up straight. But enter a curve, it's dancing the jitterbug all over the right of way. Camera 2 was stable throughout on the RMD, this and a test on the PE route, which has good track too. But not from the cabview.
Straight Track, just before curve, Valley T:


On curved track, Valley T:


Straight track, Scalerail, Pacific Electric 2:


The box cabs danced through a very sharp turn, then crashed OR to grey window shortly after this shot.


Also note overhead wire out of alignment, which has been seen in various locations on the PE.

Thanks again.

[simon1234]

timmuir, on 20 December 2011 - 09:19 AM, said:

Thanks, Steve and Chris. I'll try them out on another electric route, all I have is my PE and Valley T West.

In the meantime, here's another little problem. The Milwaukee "Little Joe", also a three-part locomotive, when paired, opens like this, a kind of "Super Joe":

Open Rails 2011-12-20 07-36-36.jpg
A 2-D+2-D-D-2! There's another D-2 hidden in there somewhere! :good2:
The same consist in MSTS:

Image1.jpg
2-D+D-2~2-D+D-2

A single Joe opens correctly.

I noticed that every engine in the consist needs a pointer to a real and existing cab view in the .eng file, otherwise it will not be visible in OR.
I had about the same problem with the EL-2B engine, changing the pointer in every .eng file to the .eng file in the cabview folder made the whole engine visible.

Hope this was any use

[James Ross]

I believe the problem with the E29s and E34s has been fixed now (V1024 for anyone with access to builds).

The locomotives are made up of 3 cars, one for each bogie and one for the body in the middle. The middle car has length 0.001m. It has two bogies (positioned where the other cars sit) but no wheels defined, and this is where OR was tripping up. I've adjusted it to work with this situation of "bogies but no wheels".