[lineman]

I have to agree with Rick & Lindsay. I very seldom run steam on OR because the team has'nt gotten the steam physics or animation done correctly yet. This is a WHIP and understandably runs as such. I don't think anyone is bashing the effort of the team, just stating facts of the situation as of now. The team has made great strides toward a prototypical experience. The diesel side of the equation has progressed immensely and is a joy to behold in the game. Three cheers to the team, keep up the great work, and in time this will be the best rail sim out there!! IMHO

Larry

[Shay 5]

Here's to the OR team. :rotfl: :good: :rofl: ;) :bravo: Yeah, the diesel performance is super. I love when you power up and down. The smoke responds to the throttle.

[Alexey_Soljenitchev]

 Shay 5, on 15 March 2012 - 07:41 AM, said:

Yeah, the diesel performance is super. I love when you power up and down. The smoke responds to the throttle.

As it does in MSTS.

A serious remark about the debate here and elsewhere:

It's a sign of immaturity to consider the pointing out of flaws, errors or things which are just missing or have not been considered yet as offensive. And no, I don't think we have to sugarcoat it by putting words of praise for the OR team into any such post -- if we did not appreciate their work, we certainly would not be wasting our time with OR, at all. So can we stop this kindergarten style bitching once and for all ?

Unless someone gets rude, that is expressively rude, by calling the OR team or individual developpers names or swearing at them, etc. Then the case is clear, this is misbehavior and should not be tolerated.

But I consider it highly rude and offensive if someone assumes that I was rude or offensive towards the OR team, if I don't hide my constructive criticism in a deluge of alabations and praise for the OR team. That is not rude, that is being matter of fact, concise and to the point.

PS: I'm a repainter, fine-tuner and 3d modeler, by the way, and you can criticize my work any day without assuring me first in two or three sentences just how great and wonderful I am. I do not treat other people any different than I want to be treated myself.

[Matej Pacha]

 Alexey_Soljenitchev, on 15 March 2012 - 11:42 AM, said:

As it does in MSTS.

As it doesn't in MSTS - ORTS has implemented a color change depending on diesel speed change (simulating non-optimal combustion during speeding up the diesel RPM and cut-off the smoke during RPM going down).

I understand your feeling about any childish-like delight. But we are happy anytime we read a post like that. Even if the reason is childish, every appreciation is a big reward to us. If you do something for free, you need some kind of reward. We are reasonable enough to recognize it childish or not. On the other hand, if there is a criticism (and it should be), we are ready to keep looking for a solution. If I may suggest: keep praising and keep criticising...

Matej

[captain_bazza]

Quote

I very seldom run steam on OR because the team has'nt gotten the steam physics or animation done correctly yet.

Regarding steam, which is my particular interest; I have to say that at this stage of development, it is better in most respects than MSTS. I believe that saying, "has'nt gotten the steam physics.........done correctly yet," is partially true, but I would qualify that statement with, ".......fully implemented yet, but that is to be expected at this stage of steam development."

My prefered test route is the US 3ft gauge Cumbres &Toltec RR. The section I mostly use for test purposes is the section between Chama and Lobato Trestle, for short runs, and the section between Chama and Cumbres Summit, for longer test runs. Once out of Chama, the line climbs to Labato, then continues up the grade to Cumbres, at the summit. There is a ton of historical as well as modern anecdotal prototypical resource material available for this line and this information is a great measuring device for testing the steam physics as they continue to develop.

I'm not sure what you mean by the reference to 'animation', because I've found this works very well and I look forward to additional features at some stage, too. The standard animation sequence for one rotation of the drivers, etc, is 0 ~ 16 frames, where zero is the neutral key frame, with sixteen frames @ 22.5 degrees of rotation per frame, to give 360 degrees rotation in total.

Just out of curiosity, are you finding that drivers appear to 'slide' a fraction when starting? Is that what you mean?

Cheers Bazza

[Lindsayts]

 longiron, on 14 March 2012 - 05:28 PM, said:

Linday,
Please don't make blanket comments about "some kinds of serious problems" that are unsubstantiated. Randomly changing values within the ENG file without understanding their use or even if Open Rails even uses them at all isn't going to address the performance in the game. If you want to understand, please ask I'm sure others would be interested, too. Currently, the MSTS ENG file parameters yeilds generally similar physics performance -- if the ENG parameters are used as they were intended.

Hi longiron, never take life to seriously one will never get out of it alive :D :)

In case it is not obvious I place great emphasis on acccuratly performing rolling stock, when I mean accurate that it behaves like the real thing not just it behaves as MSTS would like it to be.

I put the "serious kinds of problem" statement in as there is something in the current physics model that causes problems. Unfortunately I have yet to pin it down inspite of much testing. I DO NOT change anything in the eng files at random. I have spent many months studing the eng files and rolling stock principles, operation and performance, this has been done inorder t try ang get better and more accurate performance. I can for instance give one a very good description of how the Diesel electric engine control system works, something few others could do. I have an excellent railway technical library put together at great expense in order to try and better understand the principles behind railway rolling stock both motive power and braking.


I believe in this case it may just be a quirk of the current release (this is a problem that comes with the territory with developmental software) so have not put in a massive amount of testing as yet.


I have spent many years in opensource development. I have NEVER like submitting ANY bug report unless I can pin down the problem. I once spent over 4 months working out exactly how the frame buffer code worked in the Linux kernel, a VERY difficult task in order, to successfully pin down a hard to find bug. I work this way as as a developer I really do not like getting vague bug reports which usually are impossible to do anything with and of course then waste time that one does not have.

Lindsay

[Lindsayts]

 captain_bazza, on 16 March 2012 - 02:50 PM, said:

Regarding steam, which is my particular interest; I have to say that at this stage of development, it is better in most respects than MSTS. I believe that saying, "has'nt gotten the steam physics.........done correctly yet," is partially true, but I would qualify that statement with, ".......fully implemented yet, but [i]that is to be expected at this stage of steam development."


Cheers Bazza

Captain Bazza has put this perfectly, one of the major reasons I have not said much as at this stage most of the "phsyics" still has a great amount of scaffolding around it so it is somewhat pointless to pick it apart until the team has it performing someway to what they wish.

As along time open source developer I would NEVER run down any others work at all. With text based communication it is somewhat difficult to get good communication so one always must take all posts with a good bit of humor, sometimes of course this is not easy.

Lindsay

[captain_bazza]

We value your testing skills, Lindsay. We all offer our honest opinions based on what we know and find. In the end, OR will be a much better train simulation. The journey may be more interesting than the arrival. :D

Cheers Bazza