[Csantucci]

On my wishlist there is the possibility that when you run activities your AI trains can get random delays. This way every run could be different from the preceding one. I played with some railroad dispatching software having that randomizing and found it amazing. Also passenger load/unload time for player train could be randomized.

[cjakeman]

Csantucci, on 01 February 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

On my wishlist there is the possibility that when you run activities your AI trains can get random delays.

Good idea. I've added it to my wishlist - now up to 63 items.

[roeter]

cjakeman, on 01 February 2013 - 10:34 AM, said:

Good idea. I've added it to my wishlist - now up to 63 items.

Just to put some details to this :
parameters (separate sets for passenger and freight) :

• % of trains affected
  
• avg. minutes late and spread of minutes late (mean error and standard deviation set the probability)
  
• flag : allowed early (freight trains only - passenger trains in general do not depart early - or should not, anyway)

Would not be difficult to add to present activity processing if some means of definition could be worked out.
If anyone has a suggestion about the definition I will gladly add it to the AI processing - I would indeed very much like to have this.

Regards,

Rob Roeterdink

[Csantucci]

I like the details Rob has put. Referring to the "allowed early" flag, passenger trains do not depart early, but they may arrive early (only if there are not human level-crossing keepers ...). But maybe this already happens in ORTS, in the sense that the effective arrival time depends from the maxspeeds the train encounters during the run and from the maxspeed of its engines and not from the arrival hour.
Referring to the means of definition, I am not sure if I understood it well, but if you mean how and where to define such parameters, maybe the "Activity details" menu window could have also an interactive part, where the player can insert your parameters. Another question is if such parameters should be saved somewhere from one run to the other (in a special file stored in the ACTIVITIES folder?) or not.

[roeter]

Csantucci, on 01 February 2013 - 11:59 AM, said:

I like the details Rob has put. Referring to the "allowed early" flag, passenger trains do not depart early, but they may arrive early (only if there are not human level-crossing keepers ...). But maybe this already happens in ORTS, in the sense that the effective arrival time depends from the maxspeeds the train encounters during the run and from the maxspeed of its engines and not from the arrival hour.

Correct - the train just runs as best it can - arrival times are ignored except to determine the time the train requires to be stopped at the station.

Csantucci, on 01 February 2013 - 11:59 AM, said:

Referring to the means of definition, I am not sure if I understood it well, but if you mean how and where to define such parameters, maybe the "Activity details" menu window could have also an interactive part, where the player can insert your parameters. Another question is if such parameters should be saved somewhere from one run to the other (in a special file stored in the ACTIVITIES folder?) or not.

You understood it correctly.

Regards,

Rob Roeterdink

[cjakeman]

Csantucci, on 01 February 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

On my wishlist there is the possibility that when you run activities your AI trains can get random delays. This way every run could be different from the preceding one. I played with some railroad dispatching software having that randomizing and found it amazing. Also passenger load/unload time for player train could be randomized.

In the UK there is a website that pulls in real-time passenger train data and updates a Google map with the train movements. When you select London King's Cross at the morning peak hour, you can see the red markers showing all the trains travelling into the capital and a few green ones going back out again.

There is the potential there to synchronise the AI trains to the real ones, take over a late running train and try to outdo the professionals.

Is real-time data available in other countries?

[roeter]

cjakeman, on 14 February 2013 - 12:01 PM, said:

In the UK there is a website that pulls in real-time passenger train data and updates a Google map with the train movements. When you select London King's Cross at the morning peak hour, you can see the red markers showing all the trains travelling into the capital and a few green ones going back out again.

There is the potential there to synchronise the AI trains to the real ones, take over a late running train and try to outdo the professionals.

Is real-time data available in other countries?

Yep - we have in here in the Netherlands as well - similar way, showing all (passenger) trains running around the country. One problem here is that the info is not obtained through transponders but depends on input from the Traffic Control - so sometimes they just update a train, e.g. from 5 to 15 mins. late. On the display you suddenly see the train take a jump back to where it was before!
If you want to take a look at it : it is here.

[cjakeman]

roeter, on 14 February 2013 - 12:25 PM, said:

If you want to take a look at it : it is here.

Very nicely presented.

Can't help thinking that a rail sim should be able to take advantage of all this data somehow. It's all about delays, cancellations and coping with equipment problems - more about running a railway than driving a train.

[Csantucci]

I have a small wish: in the save list that appears when you want to resume a saved game, I would put the ORTS time in the "Time" column, and not the time from activity start as now. This because what one has in mind is the ORTS time, not how much time has passed from the start of the activity.

[pnrailway]

One other thing I would love to see in the development of ORTS is an increase in the types of weather that the sim can show. With the right setting in MSTS it is possible to have fog like this:


Also an increase in the variety of winter. While I have lived quite a ways away from where winter must be endured, it normally is just a cold gray period with snow blanketing the ground only occasionally, but most of the time without it. At least that was the way it was up in the Mid Atlantic region where I use to live. :oldstry: