[R H Steele]

Engine fan animations do not work for the BLW ZT SD9's, ( and also the geeps) work fine in MSTS. I thought the answer was in the thread "Starting and cutting off engines" ... nope, did not work ... used correct keys of "Y" for main and Shift+Y for helpers, engine sounds, throttle up ,etc worked nicely but no fans. I know this is minor, add it to the bottom of the list. Anybody experienced same and found a fix??? Love the new menu consist options, very nicely done, thanks, thanks. thanks. rhs

[markus_GE]

R H Steele, on 19 June 2013 - 10:37 PM, said:

Love the new menu consist options, very nicely done

Well, I can´t fully agree with that (although I know this actually doesnßt belong into this Topic). Making it possible to sort the two colums is already a start, yet I would like to see a column also showing the Name of the loco as specified on the line "Name ( "xyz" ) in the .ENG.

I tend to giving every Piece of stock I install a custom nmae of scheme RR Name, Type of loco (Nickname, for Steamer, like Big Boy or something like that), Number, Special specifications if any. Now, when displaying only the names specifies at the line Wagon (, it´s a bit hard to find a certain loco...

Nevertheless, keep up all this great work! :whistling:


Cheers, Markus

[B & O GUY]

Yes! The fans don't work on my new SD-9's either. They did work with version 1581 however. Is there another designation besides Wheels1 thru ? to use for the fans? Would be nice for them to rotate constantly instead of just with the movement of the locomotive for or aft.

Allen

[copperpen]

Strange one this. I just checked a GP35 that has rotating fans and in v0.9 they do not animate. However, user Alexander here has made an excellent model of RRT_CHME3-4544 and the rotating fan of his v2 model still rotates in OR v0.9. Looking at the model in SFV, he has used Rod01 for the fan.

Far as continuous animation in an engine or even a wagon model goes, I don't think it is possible within the MSTS framework. It may well become a possibility in OR at a later date, time will tell.

[PA1930]

Well... One could say that, if the engine's temperatures could be simulated on ORTS [if they're not yet, as I don't know], with a certain temperature, it would make the fans work (of course, depending on a different locomotive, different temperature values for the fans to start rotate).

Though as far I as know, usually the locomotive's fans are animated somehow joint with the wheels movement, so I'm not sure at what point it would be possible to make the fan work aside from the loco's wheels. (Probabbly either a new model, or maybe modifying current models, but that's something I don't know about).

[James Ross]

B & O GUY, on 20 June 2013 - 07:34 AM, said:

Yes! The fans don't work on my new SD-9's either. They did work with version 1581 however. Is there another designation besides Wheels1 thru ? to use for the fans? Would be nice for them to rotate constantly instead of just with the movement of the locomotive for or aft.

In 0.9, we specifically disabled animation of Wheel* items that are towards the top of the locomotive because a bunch of them had fans which where Wheel* items but did not animate correctly at all (rotated about entirely the wrong axis).

For the ones that you have seen working correctly, can you tell me whether they have animation controllers attached?

[copperpen]

James, I only ever found one that had fans rotating in the wrong axis, and found a second version of the same that did not. By and large all fan animations do work correctly in OR, so turning it off for the sake of a few that are wrong is a mite heavy handed.

As for animation controllers, if there is not one, the item will not animate anyway. Wheelsx have to be animated by hand at the model construction stage, Wheelsxx are automatically animated in MSTS but are also associated with a Bogie which is also auto animated in MSTS.

In the case of the CHME3 Alexander has used Rod01 for the fan. All of the Rodxx items have to be animated by hand as well.

[James Ross]

copperpen, on 20 June 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

James, I only ever found one that had fans rotating in the wrong axis, and found a second version of the same that did not. By and large all fan animations do work correctly in OR, so turning it off for the sake of a few that are wrong is a mite heavy handed.

As we were only aware of problematic cases for fans, it was the logical thing to do to make them work. In light of this new information, other things will be looked at. Please do try and understand how much of a pain in the bass this whack-a-mole game of getting MSTS content to work is. :pardon:

[copperpen]

James Ross, on 20 June 2013 - 02:00 PM, said:

As we were only aware of problematic cases for fans, it was the logical thing to do to make them work. In light of this new information, other things will be looked at. Please do try and understand how much of a pain in the bass this whack-a-mole game of getting MSTS content to work is. :pardon:

I have whacked more moles in MSTS than I care to count. Been doing it for quite a few years now. The one model I found that did not rotate in the correct axis in OR had them running round the x axis, although in MSTS the rotation was correct. I shall have to revisit the .s file and see if I can find the difference.

[copperpen]

Well, that did not take long. In MSTS you have the ability to use 3 bogies with associated wheelsets. In MSTS these can actually be oriented in a plane other than a normal bogie, which is what the first version of this model had to animate three roof fans. OR correctly interpreted that this was a bogie and animated it correctly for a bogie wheelset. This uses Bogie for parent and WheelsXX as the children, auto animated.

The version that works in both MSTS and OR uses the WheelsX notation which means the animation has to be coded into the model shape and therefore cannot be incorrectly interpreted.