[James Ross]

Open Rails Driver Aids

Overall Aims

• Familiarity: MSTS users should feel reasonably at home.
  
• Ease of use: Less experienced users should be able to get and keep moving easily.
  
• Challenging: More experienced users should be able to make it sufficiently hard to get and keep moving.

What Is Not Covered

• Variable physics, such as simplistic acceleration modeling; these ideas are pretty orthogonal to the driver aids themselves and can be discussed separately.
  
• Non-visual aids, such as sounds and tutorial audio/text. Realistic sounds, e.g. for wheel slip, should always be added and should not need to be part of this discussion; other things outside scope for complexity/time reasons and should be considered later.

General Ideas for Aids

• Appropriate aids to get started should appear by default.
  
• Aids will have different "levels" to show more or less detailed or complex information based on user skill.
  
• The visual display should be unobtrusive and aids should get out of your way when possible.
  
• Not all aids will be appropriate for all users or all activities.
  
• Every aid and aid state will be changeable in-game.
  
• Position, visibility and state for each aid will be saved and restored.

The Driver Aids

• Help (F1)
  
• HUD (F5)
  
• Locomotive Aid (F8)
  
• Route Aid (F9)
  
• Activity Aid (F10)
  
• Operations Aid (F11)

Help

The help window will pause the game when opened; the user is able to unpause the game without closing the window. The purpose of the window is to cover all the (static) information the user may want to know about the game, route, locomotive and activity while playing. This includes controls, settings, descriptions and any help text provided by the content (e.g. activity briefing). It will be in a visible window box and split in to tabs with vertical scrolling panels.

HUD

The HUD (head-up display) is, in effect, the aid for the game itself. It will provide only very basic information about the route, locomotive and activity. It is not intended to be sufficient to drive a train. It will continue to have extensive debugging data on separate "pages", but these should be focused on just debugging.

Locomotive Aid

The locomotive aid is intended to provide information about the locomotive to the player, in a clear manner consistent with their level of knowledge of the locomotive. There will be the following different levels of this aid:

• Beginner - only basic information necessary to drive the locomotive without much fuss.
  
• Intermediate - all the gory details of the locomotive's operation.
  
• Advanced - only information not conveyed by the simulation's graphics and sounds, e.g. acceleration.

Route Aid

The route aid is intended to provide information about the route to the player, in a clear manner consistent with their level of knowledge of the route. There will be the following different levels of this aid:

• Beginner - stylized graphical view of upcoming track indicating speed limits, signals and points-of-interest (stations, sidings, reversing point, etc.). The view will support both horizontal and vertical orientations, moving up (vertical) and right (horizontal), using symbols for all the key upcoming items and text labels for key distances, speed limits and station/siding names. It will also be resizable in the direction of the graphical view, up to the length of that display dimension. The display will be adjusted for the train's speed, showing at least 5 minutes down the line.
  
• Intermediate - text showing current speed limit, next speed limit with distance, next signal with distance, next point-of-interest with distance, current gradient and next gradient with distance.
  
• Advanced - text showing next point-of-interest and current gradient.

Activity Aid

The activity aid is intended to provide information about the activity to the player - I think you're getting the idea here. There will be the following different levels of this aid:

• Beginner - graphical indicator for location of and distance to next operation plus text showing the next operation with location name, target time, expected time.
  
• Intermediate - text showing the next operation with location name, target time, expected time.
  
• Advanced - text showing the next operation with location name and target time.

Operations Aid

The operations aid is intended to provide information and controls for all train operations. There will be the following different levels of this aid:

• Information - graphical display of cars' IDs, type, fuel, brake and handbrake statuses.
  
• Passenger - graphical display like 'information' but additionally with coupling controls.
  
• Freight - graphical display like 'passenger' but additionally with brake and handbrake controls.

The 'information' display is intended for people who like to see what's going on, but don't need any controls, and will be the most compact version. The passenger and freight levels will have interactive controls and will be the default display levels in an activity (selected based on the player's train type).

Driver Aid Visuals

The aim of all the drivers aids will be to leave the view as unobstructed as possible, without sacrificing readability and clarity of information. To that end, there will be an option that controls the size of all of the aids - both text and graphics.

All text will be rendered either on a solid background (e.g. white on black) or with at least twice the stroke width in border (for reference, all the HUD text has only once the stroke width in border).

Feedback

All feedback is appreciated! Note that nothing in this proposal is carved in stone, but please be constructive when suggesting alterations. In particular, the precise details of the different levels of the aids is very much open for discussion, but I would like to see some consensus on the principals outlines above.

Thanks!

[jared2982]

Just a question and maybe a suggestion if not already included in the Route Aid display, will mile markers be included in the points of interest?

[markus_GE]

Expanding the MilePost question: Since the F4 track Monitor also is some Kind of Driver aid, will the mileposts return to be shown in there, compared to MSTS?

Apart from that, Looks like a good concept to me :sign_thanks:

Cheers, markus

[James Ross]

jared2982, on 01 November 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

Just a question and maybe a suggestion if not already included in the Route Aid display, will mile markers be included in the points of interest?

Yes, I should think so. :sign_thanks:

[thegrindre]

MSTS allows the aid windows to be re-skinned and the elements inside, such as text and color and among numerous other things as well, to be adjusted as one sees fit for their own personal enjoyment. I'm hopping that OR will follow offer the same options.

:sign_thanks:

:clapping:

[cjakeman]

Hi James,

Very exciting developments proposed - great to see things taking shape..

James Ross, on 01 November 2013 - 01:06 PM, said:

Open Rails Driver Aids

General Ideas for Aids

• Not all aids will be appropriate for all users or all activities.
• Every aid and aid state will be changeable in-game.
• Position, visibility and state for each aid will be saved and restored.

When saving the settings for each aid, are they saved for the current user, the current activity or for the game?

I think the best option is to save for the current activity.

When starting an activity for the first time, what settings should be used? The settings used for the most recent activity?

An alternative would be to allow the user to add named settings - e.g. "default", "expert passenger express", "beginner switching" and then save the name with the activity.

What do others think?

[James Ross]

cjakeman, on 02 November 2013 - 01:46 AM, said:

When saving the settings for each aid, are they saved for the current user, the current activity or for the game?

I think the best option is to save for the current activity.

When starting an activity for the first time, what settings should be used? The settings used for the most recent activity?

This is definitely an open problem. Their position, visibility and state should certainly be saved with the activity and restored when you resume that activity IMHO, but when you start a new activity I am not so sure what should happen. We could take MSTS's route and have options for their visibility/state and just start from that, or we could get a bit smarter and remember them per-route and locomotive (each aid stored appropriately for what it covers kind of thing).

[James Ross]

thegrindre, on 01 November 2013 - 11:51 PM, said:

MSTS allows the aid windows to be re-skinned and the elements inside, such as text and color and among numerous other things as well, to be adjusted as one sees fit for their own personal enjoyment. I'm hopping that OR will follow offer the same options.

The reskinning is available today - just replace the images in the Content directory. :) I will look at the possibility of making the whole thing more customisable.

[Buttercup]

It would be nice be able to move appropriate displays to a second monitor.

[James Ross]

Buttercup, on 02 November 2013 - 04:29 AM, said:

It would be nice be able to move appropriate displays to a second monitor.

Yes, multiple displays would be good in general. I think it's partially orthogonal to redesigning the UI though; as there's no way we can use non-in-game UI with fullscreen, they have to be constrained to whatever game windows we have.