[Lindsayts]

I was just brousing the changes for 1810 and noticed that in 1793, the needle addressing in the cabview was changed to get around problems of scaling. The change had mucked up all my hi-res cabviews as I found the needle position addressing was taken from the actual size of the needle graphic and not the cabview co-ordinate system. Apparently in 1793 the standard addressing was restored. I will have to check to see if floating point numbers for the address's is still allowed as the integer system originally used is no where near precise enough.

I had wondered why all my cabviews had gone crazy.

Lindsay

[R H Steele]

Lindsay is that why many of the needles (red & white used in Air Press Gauges) are all askew in a lot of the BLW models? I mentioned this some time ago in a post (don't know if it was reported as a bug) and many advised trying to fix them myself. Easier said then done. The needles are all centered and correct in MSTS, not in OR. BLW does not seem disposed to fix them --- I have not encountered this problem with any other payware stuff (and I do like BLW's models). I know this issue is near the bottom of things to do... is there any literature to read to see how to go about it myself? Cheers, rhs (aka gerry)

[Lindsayts]

 R H Steele, on 11 October 2013 - 05:55 PM, said:

Lindsay is that why many of the needles (red & white used in Air Press Gauges) are all askew in a lot of the BLW models? I mentioned this some time ago in a post (don't know if it was reported as a bug) and many advised trying to fix them myself. Easier said then done. The needles are all centered and correct in MSTS, not in OR. BLW does not seem disposed to fix them --- I have not encountered this problem with any other payware stuff (and I do like BLW's models). I know this issue is near the bottom of things to do... is there any literature to read to see how to go about it myself? Cheers, rhs (aka gerry)

Probably not, I found some loco's one simply has to modify the cabview file to get the needled in the right place. There is no doc's as far as I know, but the cabview file is not rocket science. The way the gauge needle's work in the cabview is this.....

A gauge is a section like this,

Type ( SPEEDOMETER DIAL )
Position ( 579 -45 32 42 )
Graphic ( SpeedRecorder_needle_white_2.01-s.ace )
Style ( POINTER )
ScaleRange ( 0 140 )
ScalePos ( 240 105 )
Units ( KM_PER_HOUR )
Pivot ( 113 )
DirIncrease ( 0 )

The two lines of concern is "Position" and "Pivot". Position is the address of the top left hand corner of the needles graphic with the needle in the vertical position. The first two values are the X, Y address in cabview units, the third value is the width of the graphic and the fourth value is the distance of the pivot from the top of the needle graphic , all these measurments are in cabview address units (640x480 no MATTER what size the cabview is) Pivot is the distance in cabview units of the pivot from the Position address, but in the centre of the needles graphic, again the distance is in cabview units. Now this is how its supposed to be differnt cabviews I have found do not always work quite like that.

Note that for all needles the pivot will be offset by around half the width of the needles graphic from Position, unfortunately some of needles are not in the centre of the graphic.

Now I have found OR does not always work the same as MSTS for the dials in the cabview, the difference is not great but I have found one needs to tweek the CVF to get the needles to work properly. One differnce that definitly does exist is that OR as its mostly working on larger monitors so displays the cabviews larger so an interger value for the cabview address's have not enough precision. For a monitor 500mm wide only having an address space of 640 elements, even if the an exact position is given one can still be around nearly a millimetre out, and this is noticeable.If there's a minor error in the Position or Pivot length it will stick out a mile.

The way I tweek the CVF is to pick a small route in roaming mode (so it loads faster) and have the loco positioned at the start in a straight section of track (this is to see if the view direction is correct) and use trial and error on the CVF. Now one does NOT have exit out of OR, just the activity concerned. One starts the route try out the gauges, exit the actvity (but NOT OR) edit the CVF and start the activity again and so on. One quickly gets used to this, it is a bit of a pain but once one has got it right its great.

A couple of minor points, the last value in the Position statement in OR controls the scale of the needles graphic, so one can do a much larger and of course finer detailed needle and get it the correct size with this value. Second point is OR can use larger (and more detailed background images) and will correctly scale these to the monitor used.

Both the above let OR display some real DYNAMITE cabviews.
Lindsay

[R H Steele]

Lindsay, thanks for the tutorial, copied and will study after I get some down time. I'll have another go at it. Thanks for tip about the route, straight track and not needing to exit out of OR. Didn't I see another post about you releasing some HD CabViews for OR (or was is someone else?) Are there any? Most of the new ones I have found are still low def. First task, is to master the needle positioning.
Cheers rhs (aka gerry) :) {we need a bigger clown)

[Lindsayts]

Its me for the HD cabviews, I know of no others who are playing around in this area which I think is completely ridiculos given the great improvement. I have so far done 6 for my own use all Australian machines. Only two of these are releasable, the photos for the others having been done by somelse who has sadly dissappeared so permission to use the images cannot be asked.

I have as yet not released any for general use. There are two reasons for this, the first is the cabviews are all for specfic Australian machines and there is no general use for them so the interest is very low. The second is at this stage one cannot do the general animations in HD and the 640x480 standard ones look awfull in the HD views, One of the OR devs say this is on the post 1.0 todo list as it requires restructuring of the cabview code. This writer cannot wait to see this done.

If you search around of Elvastower there are images of three of the cabviews, A Bluebird South Australian railcar, one for a Victorian Railways N class, a EMD DE loco and one for VR's H220 steam loco. This latter one is not yet completed as I forgot to take the side images of the cab and the museum has been closed for renovations since then.

The Bluebird and the H220 are all mine, I am currently doing a cab of the N in blender so I can replace the existing images. I am also doing a cab in blender for VLines Sprinter DMU's. These days I believe one is better to do a cabview in a 3D program such as blender as most cabs have to little space to get good cab photos and one has to spend in inordinate amount of time on the images correcting for perspective distortion to make the viewing angle in the cabview match (or at least to get closer to) the outside viewing angle. If one does not do this one ends up with the cabview having a different perspective than the outside view, this looks terrible when one knows its there.

Lindsay

[R H Steele]

I'll look up the photos here, thanks for reminding me. They will have to do (wet my appetite) until the OR team begins work on that section of the track. I would keep working if I where you, seems that when OR is finally in shape to use them, people will line up to download and use, I know I will. Maybe by then I'll have the needles aligned and will be able to produce some CabViews of my own. Cheers rhs (aka gerry):) {we need a bigger clown)

[Lindsayts]

 R H Steele, on 12 October 2013 - 02:58 PM, said:

I'll look up the photos here, thanks for reminding me. They will have to do (wet my appetite) until the OR team begins work on that section of the track. I would keep working if I where you, seems that when OR is finally in shape to use them, people will line up to download and use, I know I will. Maybe by then I'll have the needles aligned and will be able to produce some CabViews of my own. Cheers rhs (aka gerry):crazy: {we need a bigger clown)

I will never stop creating HD cabviews, there such a major improvement. I am really surprised that no one else apparently has come on board and given it a go. When I first did the N class (an EMD diesel electric) it was quite strange, now I use a 2560x1600 30 inch monitor, with this cabview there was a genuine feeling of being in the cab, the thing that gave it away was the panel was flat being on the monitor instead of on a slope as it should be. (the 30 inch monitor displayed the panel just over 2/3rds full size).

I have never used the cabview program in the editor and tools, all artwork being done on gimp and blender, cabview files generated as already described by trial and error. The first cabview took a while, getting quite used to it now though.

I am seriously thinking of trying to do a HD cab for the UP 4000 class (bigboy), now that would be awesome. I have managed to dig up a couple of cab shots, they are not directly good enough, but they do provide the info to create a cab using blender and gimp. Unfortunately the gauges are just not quite clear enough to see the manufacturers name on them, and they are not Westinghouse gauges, so I may have to wing it and use VR provided gauges (ie Westinghouse).

Lindsay