[railguy]

I and others have mentioned this in other discussion. Loose consist locomotives smoke as if they are at full throttle all the time. Is there any timetable for a fix for this?

Thanks.

[PA1930]

I have noticed on multiplayer sessions that this also happens to other players trains.

[railguy]

I'm resurrecting this zombie thread because the loose consist diesel locomotive smoking at full throttle problem still exists over a year after being brought up as a bug. All one has to do to prove it is to set the DieselSmokeEffectInitialMagnitude and DieselSmokeEffectInitialSmokeRate at ( 0.0 ) on a diesel locomotive and make it part of a loose consist. I did just this last night when designing an activity and the loose consist locomotive pours out smoke like its running at full throttle. As soon as a player locomotive couples to the loose consist diesel locomotive, the smoke rate drops to idle. Could one of the developers please look at this?

Thanks.

[railguy]

I'm bumping this back up because I discovered what likely may be a related problem. I had not noticed this previously, but it may have been present and reported. If so, please forgive me. As before (I'm using X2834), the full throttle diesel smoke issue is still alive and well, as it has been since sometime in 2013. What I had not noticed was that loose consist locomotives emit no sound until a player locomotive couples up to them. Once that happens, the smoke level drops to idle speed AND the loose consist locomotives also emit sound. For the record, I was running the SLI BNSF Seligman Route with Diesels West locomotives, however the locomotives were using a mixture of DieselsWest and MLW-aliased sounds. I don't think the issue is a function of the .sms files, but likely a bug related to the loose consist exhaust issue. My suspicion is that OR just doesn't quite know how to treat loose consist locomotives until they are coupled to a player locomotive. Then OR figures out how to handle the exhaust and sound files. Has anyone else noticed the sound problem?

Thanks.

[R H Steele]

I think it must be engine specific. It is not a cross the board sort of thing. I have only seen it in locomotive with the old MSTS settings. See Screenshot taken on West Colton, AI loose consist engines with no maximum smoke, they are idling.

I admit that having the team perform a coding adjustment to alleviate users having to make all the individual adjustments would be nice. Providing that a user could still make individual locomotive exhaust profiles. I would not like every exhaust to look the same.

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[cr-stagg]

R H Steele, on 04 February 2015 - 03:53 PM, said:

I think it must be engine specific. It is not a cross the board sort of thing. I have only seen it in locomotive with the old MSTS settings. ......

Which "old MSTS settings"?

[railguy]

AI locomotives behave correctly. It is loose consist locomotives that have the problem. The full throttle smoking loose consist issue occurs with every diesel locomotive that I've made into a loose consist--payware, freeware, etc. from numerous sources. Now, if one adjusts the maximum exhaust parameters to ( 0.0 ), they don't smoke, but that doesn't fix the bug, it just hides it.

[R H Steele]

railguy, on 04 February 2015 - 06:49 PM, said:

AI locomotives behave correctly. It is loose consist locomotives that have the problem. The full throttle smoking loose consist issue occurs with every diesel locomotive that I've made into a loose consist--payware, freeware, etc. from numerous sources. Now, if one adjusts the maximum exhaust parameters to ( 0.0 ), they don't smoke, but that doesn't fix the bug, it just hides it.

I made a mistake in typing, that is not an AI traffic train, it is a loose consist in the yard. (see screenshot to verify) By the way the maximum exhaust parameters are not adjusted to ( 0.0 ) in the screenshot case.
I really don't know if it is indeed a bug or a more accurate interpretation of the data being presented to ORTS.
Surely you're not saying we should change OR to a less rigorous code rather than change inaccurate settings in the engine file?
I also noticed a narrow gauge reference (was that only geographic?) for you railguy ... so ... are you referring to steam engines in loose consists? If so, then we are at cross purposes, the steam exhaust thread was a whole different ball game for OR than the diesel exhaust.

Charles, by using the unfortunate phrase "old MSTS" I really meant the values that worked well in MSTS but that put out way too much exhaust for ORTS. The type of smoke you would use Marcus's DPU to adjust. Some of these examples were exacerbated by the exhaust nozzle being too narrow in the exhaust parameters.

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[gpz]

railguy, on 04 February 2015 - 06:49 PM, said:

AI locomotives behave correctly. It is loose consist locomotives that have the problem. The full throttle smoking loose consist issue occurs with every diesel locomotive that I've made into a loose consist--payware, freeware, etc. from numerous sources. Now, if one adjusts the maximum exhaust parameters to ( 0.0 ), they don't smoke, but that doesn't fix the bug, it just hides it.

Is there a test case available somewhere, that shows the bug, using default MSTS routes and consists? I think it wasn't fixed, because no developer has a test case.

[railguy]

To answer the above questions, I was using diesel locomotives, not steam locomotives. A long time ago, I replaced all of my default MSTS locomotives with either freeware or payware versions (by remaming some aftermarket locomotives to the default file names), so the default locomotives are no longer even on my hard drive.

I have researched the loose consist smoke behavior quite a bit. The loose consist diesel locomotive is smoking at full throttle all the time. Here are the smoke settings for two locomotives in a loose consist as an example. The first is a GE Dash 9, the second an EMD SD70MAC (please note that I have already modified the smoke parameters to look realistic when the locomotives are run in OR as player locomotives):

DieselSmokeEffectInitialMagnitude( 0.1 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxMagnitude( 5.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectInitialSmokeRate( 0.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxSmokeRate( 4.0 )

DieselSmokeEffectInitialMagnitude( 0.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxMagnitude( 4.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectInitialSmokeRate( 0.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxSmokeRate( 3.0 )

Both of these locomotives are pouring smoke out like crazy ("crazy" being full throttle crazy) when idling. As soon as the player locomotive couples to them, the smoke level drops to nearly invisible on the first, and completely invisible on the second, consistent with the "Initial" smoke rate and magnitude setting. They will stay at the level if the player locomotive uncouples from them. If I change the "Max" smoke rate and magnitude to ( 0.0 ) in the .eng file, the loose consist locomotives don't smoke. The changed .eng file smoke parameters from the above two locomotives would thus read:

DieselSmokeEffectInitialMagnitude( 0.1 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxMagnitude( 0.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectInitialSmokeRate( 0.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxSmokeRate( 0.0 )

DieselSmokeEffectInitialMagnitude( 0.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxMagnitude( 0.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectInitialSmokeRate( 0.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxSmokeRate( 0.0 )

Now, changing the locomotive engine files to the following parameters ALSO yields no loose consist smoke:

DieselSmokeEffectInitialMagnitude( 12.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxMagnitude( 0.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectInitialSmokeRate( 12.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxSmokeRate( 0.0 )

DieselSmokeEffectInitialMagnitude( 12.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxMagnitude( 0.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectInitialSmokeRate( 12.0 )
DieselSmokeEffectMaxSmokeRate( 0.0 )

What this indicates is that the idle "Initial" smoke parameter is having no effect on the loose consist locomotive. My only conclusion is that a) OR is only reading the "Max" magnitude and smoke rate parameters in the .eng file for loose consist locomotives, or b ) OR makes some sort of assumption that an idling diesel loose consist locomotive has, in fact, its throttle open to full throttle. Whichever that case, coupling to it with a player locomotive cures the problem. I suspect that the former is the case because, when coupling to a loose consist, the loose consist locomotive smoke immediately drops to idle rate, not as it would if the locomotive were running at full throttle, then having its RPM drop from that to idle at the RPM change rate found in the .eng file. The same appears to be true for the sounds, as well. When one couples to the loose consist locomotive, the sound file becomes audible at the idle rate, not a decelerating rate from full RPM to idle.

I hope that this explanation helps.