[PA1930]

Out of curiosity, is it possible for one to change the current configuration on how the overhead wires appear to the older way it appeared? If yes, how so? Does it involve coding or could just some files be replaced?
Thanks.

[Csantucci]

I've just submitted a proposed patch in the related bug report.

[cjakeman]

Hi Carlo,

 Csantucci, on 11 May 2013 - 11:43 AM, said:

I've just submitted a proposed patch in the related bug report.

I haven't had time to look at your patch yet and I don't know if anyone else has.

Yes, of course we want Open Rails to support a variety of overhead wires although, speaking just for myself, I would prefer a tidier solution than yet another checkbox in the menu.

All this talk of a project fork to create Open Rails ITA seems very hasty. It's your right under the license, of course, but it would be better for OR and less work for you if we can find a good solution without a fork.

So I'm asking you to give us time to look at the options and perhaps help us to trial a solution before deciding to branch out on your own.

[Csantucci]

Chris, I have made a first proposal, that is to revert to the two-wire solution, but it wasn't accepted. Therefore I made a proposal to have it optional with a checkbox. You have said that you do not like it. I then have described why accordingly to my opinion it is too early in this phase of ORTS development to have a route-related flag, and had no reply on that. So I lost some hope that this feature would be of some interest for the developer group.

Following your post above I will try to propose the last simple idea I have: within the ORTS options there is already a checkbox named "Overhead wire": could maybe this checkbox become a 3-options thing (no overhead wire, 1 overhead wire, 2 overhead wires)? I hope you can agree on this solution. Else I hope that you can provide an idea on how to make this available now to everyone.

[PA1930]

I agree with Carlo here on having this option. I am not sure if does have any impact on coding, but implementing this sure would make many people happy with their own options of wanting to use what values for the overhead wires. I would like to use the two overhead wires as before, personally.
What I don't like much though, is already creating one ORTS appart from the versions available on the "official site". Because it will get as confusing as lots of versions like on the Open TTD community, and then there's some really cool versions that then aren't able to have some different add-ons because of the different versions and such... a huge confusion in my point of view.

[James Ross]

My personal opinion is that: 1) we should ditch some of the boring checkboxes, like train lights, precipitation and overhead wire, and always render them, and 2) add an experimental checkbox for the 2-wire version.

My reasoning is that none of these three things cost performance (unlike the other options, especially dynamic shadows), so there isn't much point having them as options, and that - just for the moment - we want to keep non-MSTS behaviour/features as 'experimental'. (Once we sort out of own content system, that will have all the abilities we can give it to specify what overhead wire to use, etc., so no option should ever been needed for typical use.)

[PA1930]

Let me ask then, why changing the overhead wires from the two wires to one? Shouldn't that have been also discussed first? Since it doesn't really have any impact with coding. Experimental features, yes, I do get your idea James, but why not add it now? I can't speak much you know, I can't really help with all the simulator's coding. I'm just thankful for the few experimental features we can have such as superelevated curves. But why not being able to choose how many wires the simulator displays? All in all some routes use overhead wires placed as objects, usually to make the overhead wires more realistic looking than rather only one wire like MSTS had and now ORTS has it too. As for train lights and precipitation I must agree with you, they could be "taken off" from the options tab and be always rendered; Though overhead wires [unfortunatly] there's many types of them, hence why being a bit nice to be able to choose between them what would we want to use.

[eric from trainsim]

I wouldn't call the tab Experimental. I'd call it what it is - Enhanced Functionality.

I'd also be curious how many people would be willing to part with requiring 100% compatibility with the MSTS way of doing things.

Has anyone in the OR leadership team considered doing a community survey to help figure out what the priorities should be?...

[cjakeman]

 eolesen, on 17 May 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

I'd also be curious how many people would be willing to part with requiring 100% compatibility with the MSTS way of doing things.

I have trouble understanding what you mean here.

OR has achieved a surprising degree of compatibility with MSTS content and MSTS features which work today will continue to work in the future. This backwards-compatibility is part of our mission.

Hope that helps,

[James Ross]

 eolesen, on 17 May 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

I wouldn't call the tab Experimental. I'd call it what it is - Enhanced Functionality.

It varies by feature, really; some are enhancements (like 2-wire) and some are actually experimental (like DM, superelevation, max LOD). I'd say it's somewhere between experimental, advanced and miscellaneous.

 eolesen, on 17 May 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

I'd also be curious how many people would be willing to part with requiring 100% compatibility with the MSTS way of doing things.

Firstly, we're not requiring 100% compatibility with the MSTS way of doing things. However, when dealing with MSTS content, we are aiming to replicate as much of the functionality and playability as we can. Things will never be exactly the same and some things will forever be different but, when we can match MSTS, we should.