[R H Steele]

Timothy, first thanks for your kind remarks. I installed the Tallah Sub this morning and it does load and run in OpR. Just by chance my first explore chose a broken path...at least that's what OpR indicated, have not had an opportunity to investigate. The path menu name is Aucilla to Tallahassee, "605 - 928.pat" in the folder. Otherwise looks good. I'm running XP with a brand new rig, so I can't rightfully say what your computer will do. Take Falcus advice in these matters. I could never write a sentence like this "probably won't BSOD your comp, it'll probably crash straight back to desktop." I love reading it though....I understand the message although I don't know what the heck he was saying!

I second Falcus on the Surfliner 2.0 it also is my favorite commuter route, although I don't think of it that way, more like a familiar run up/down the coast --- being located in that area of the world. Also the RMD East gets my vote also, Tim Muir's electrics are indeed beautiful. Another utility program to find is Train Store, good to use when the sim install starts getting bigger. I believe it can be found on the UK TrainSim site. I am working on some Italian and European electric route, trying to figure out cabview, sounds and such. It's the downloading language barrier .. entirely my deficiency. I do find them fascinating but it's a slower slog for me than the US routes.

Falcus -- do you mean the Western Pacific Feather River Route, (WP 3rd Sub) payware from 3DTrains.Com? Its an excellent payware, driven the canyon often in the auto and once years ago on a passenger train (not driving, just a passenger). One of my favorite payware routes is not really a route but the West Colton Yard...$$, but worth it ... takes lots of resources to run, but there is more yard traffic and AI moves than I have ever seen on any other route. Great fun if you like switching, yard activities.

Thanks for the mention of "Serial "Blog-Cast" done by Nick Ozorak (A.k.a Train-a-Mania) called "At the Railyard"" - new to me --- sounds good. I think the scenery upgrade Nick Ozorak did for the LS&I route is wonderful.
Cheers to both of you, rhs (aka gerry)

[Falcus]

Wow, yea, I meant Feather River, not White River <.< lol. oops!

Falcus

[timothyskinner]

Oh my Falcus - plenty of info in your reply,

I cannot do full justice at 2am, please forgive.

Route Control sounds good and like ActivityMaster which however didn't sort a problem I had this week.
The problem resolved itself when I realised my computer wasn't copying absolutely 100% from an external HD.
That was a new one on me and rather worrying. I am thinking about an upgrade. If OpR is resource hungry and I want to return to route building then it is a easy decision...

White River? I've never heard of that one, Feather River, yes.
Stampede Pass has an interesting history being overlooked by the GN and now by the MSTS community. Others that come to mind include the Salt Lake route, Gulf Summit, Beaumont (someone had a go I think) and the "Big Daddy" of all mountain railroads, the lower half of the KCM&O to Los Mochis. There is also a long grade west of where the KCM&O crossed the Sunset Route near Alpine. And, as for Alaska...

Timothy

[timothyskinner]

Hi Gerry,

As its 2.30am in England I should be in bed instead of running trains on the FBL and Yandi.

That is a piece of very good news re the Tallahassee Sub on OpR... I shall check that out tomorrow.

Timothy, zzzzzz..

[R H Steele]

Well Timothy you got me beat, but not by much. It's 1:10AM PST USA and I've just stopped downloading and installing acts for the Tallah and Pokey, I had been looking for some Southeastern USA routes. That's the reason I got a new machine, felt the resource requirements of OpR needed an up to date+ graphics card, with all new stuff to go with it. Was not a waste of money....I think OpR is worth it. Time also for zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Cheers rhs (aka gerry)

[Falcus]

@ Timothy

If you don't mind my asking, what are the critical stats for your computer? CPU, Ram, Graphics Card Status? Knowing those we'll be able to give you better advice about what you might be able to run or not.

Just by the by, I'm on an old Dual Core with 2x 1.6GHZ CPU, with 2GB Ram and no Vid Card. I can run alot of the older Routes (GN Hi-line, Pocahontas Div, RMD East though this one is a little rough with more then a couple AI trains when passing), but not the newer ones.

If you've been gone for 7 years then you should know that in seven years there has been an explosion in the available ability of Programs and Creators to create much higher resource hungry creations. Texture files on their own have gone from very basic 256/512MB on every model to 2048MB as the gold standard. That right there is an improvement on the order of several magnitudes in the terms of required processing power. Add to that that we've gone from "Gee bob, is my model with 1000 Polys gonna be too much?" to "Hey guys, this new locomotive comes in at 25,000 Polys and counting, so I'm making it an OpR Only Model", and having that GPU on that Video Card suddenly becomes a critical issue.

In this line of historical discussion, I will also point out that Routes have gone from having half a dozen buildings and a "passable" back drop, to literally having hundreds of buildings in one town, and I won't even go into things like Trees and Vegetation (Grass is a whole nother can of beans). MSTS used to be limited by its own programing to being able to use 1GB of Ram, with MSTS Bin that has been expanded to IIRC about 4GB of Ram. OpR has no such limitations, and is set up to use whatever resources it can to create the best graphics it can (With in the Video Settings) while also trying to give at least decent FPS, but if it can't meet its minimum base line for graphical quality FPS gets cut down real quick.

Just out of curiosity, you mentioned GN "overlooking" Stampede pass? Not sure what you meant by that?

Reply to what you can when you can. The wonder of modern Forums, unless you anger the FBI, or the world comes to a sudden unexpected end, its not going anywhere XD.

Falcus

[markus_GE]

First of all, hello to you, timothy, here on ET :)

Second to all: Read it - thought it - liked it. OpR is the future for Open Rails (although it is called the ORDev Team, isn´t it?) ;)

Cheers, Markus

[R H Steele]

Hello Again, Timothy ... forgot to mention all the new sound files, cabviews, activties, rolling stock, that has been uploaded at the various sites in the last couple of years. Some very nice stuff. Lot's of new Acts and rolling stock for the FBL, which is also a favorite of mine. I think it was the first route I downloaded after finding my set of MSTS cd's. I believe it is up to V3.03 with scale rails and "sigview" technology, also there has been an optional scenery change/update to green instead of desert if that is something you'd like. If you do begin running FBL in OpR and the signal lights aren't working but everything else is OK, try cutting the large SKIP section from the sigcfg file to a text file. That should restore the signal lights for OpR. The development team is aware of it but I'm sure it's not a priority, rightly so. Thanks to R. Roeterdink for posting the fix. Cheers, rhs (aka gerry)

[timothyskinner]

Hi again Falcus,

Stampede Pass overlooked? yes, I like to read railroad history. GN, NP and Milw were all surveying at one time. With low accessability (err...mules) and no Google Earth or military interest there were several possible routes, but it was the NP who found Stampede. GN had found just 2 others before NP came to the north-west and didn't believe there were more. Stampede is, of course, inhospitable in winter, but without the problems of the tunnel that GN had to bore, manage and eventually electrify.

I am maxing posts (in case you hadn't noticed) as I want to DL the nice WP 2-8-8-2 for the nice new activity published at TS.

Timothy

[timothyskinner]

Hi Falcus,

Athlon 3800, 2GB RAM and X1950 vid card - I have a bad installation after reloading myself after losing everything I had to a hard drive physically breaking. I suspect I will buy 2 large external hard drives for route building and look around for something with a better vid card. At present I have a system that is leaving behind transfers from an old external HD (done that several times this week), is still fluttering with high resolution routes and freezes if I leave it on without a program running or keyboard entries.
That said, it is making me sharpen what it is I want to do and then after that decision what computer I need.

Timothy