[atsf37l]

As one who has been dragging his feet and too busy with MSTS projects to really keep up to speed on this OR phenom, but as one who has discovered over the last week how far this simulator has come and what a great thing it is and is going to be, I have lots and lots of questions. Mostly these are being answered by reading through the book length tomes here in the Open Rails forum, and for all the great stuff in here I am truly grateful.

But I do have some questions that haven't been presented (or I haven't found them :)), so bear with me guys.

OK, so here goes: I want to run both MSTS and ORTS at the same time. OR is still a work in progress and, frankly, there are a lot of changes to make to the locomotives and cars and routes (60 plus routes and their related equipment) that I want to import the changes gradually and not mix up locos and cars specifically modified for OR with the MSTS equipment.

So how do you keep them separate? Do you have two separate paths, one for MS and one for OR? Have you had success with just blending everything? How do YOU do it?

I have lots of hard drive space so I could duplicate my entire Microsoft Games folder (Less Flight Simulator :wallbash: ) and still have plenty of space, but I don't want to jump in with both feet until I hear what some of you have done.

So lemme have it! :sign_oops:

[thegrindre]

Well, what I do is create mini routes. This will keep all rolling stock and locos of each route separate from each other. The ORTS routes are separate from the others in mini route form.
You can point ORTS anywhere you like to find routes, unlike MSTS.
So, I have separate ORTS mini routes and within these are ORTS models.
That's how I do it and I also have tons of hard drive space. I can create tons of mini routes.
That seemed to be the easiest way I figured it all out a couple years ago.

:)

[James Ross]

atsf37l, on 26 August 2014 - 12:06 AM, said:

OK, so here goes: I want to run both MSTS and ORTS at the same time. OR is still a work in progress and, frankly, there are a lot of changes to make to the locomotives and cars and routes (60 plus routes and their related equipment) that I want to import the changes gradually and not mix up locos and cars specifically modified for OR with the MSTS equipment.

So how do you keep them separate? Do you have two separate paths, one for MS and one for OR? Have you had success with just blending everything? How do YOU do it?

I don't fiddle with content, but I can tell you how to do this: for every .eng or .wag you wish to modify just for OR, put a copy of it in a new subdirectory called "OpenRails". OR will load that version if it exists, and from the normal location if it doesn't.

You can also use Include(..\foo.wag) inside the OR version to copy all the data and then override just the bits which are different, but this is more fiddly.

[engmod]

>OK, so here goes: I want to run both MSTS and ORTS at the same time.

I do exactly that.
MSTS is installed on my D drive, as is OR, OR is pointed to my MSTS install.

I test with OR, if an activity fails, I run up Train Store and test with MSTS.

I see no point in keeping them separate, yet.

cheers

[copperpen]

Any mods to eng and wag files to add ORTS specific parameters will not affect MSTS in any way. MSTS merely glosses over something not in its lexicon as long as the line conforms to MSTS convention. Any existing routes/mini routes can be added to OR without affecting the ability to run in MSTS as well.

I have a mix, some are used in both, and some I have modified purely to run in OR by removing the files and folders that OR does not use. MSTS routes are on an HDD, OR on an SSD.

[Gman347]

I am not at the level of capability to start modifying eng or wag files. I just like to run both sims. I have multiple installs of MSTS on my hard drive. My original install has a gobble-de-gook of routes in it so I renamed the folder 'MSTS-Dirty'. Then I created a new 'clean' install of MSTS to use for creating mini-routes. I have since used that copy to create about a half dozen mini-routes. I then installed OR into its own folder. When I start OR to run a route for the first time I just point it to the appropriate folder of the route I wish to run. I only needed to do that once for each route as OR remembered the paths. It's not complicated once you've tried it.

The only catch I can see is if you have installed content that is not compatible with MSTS, and will run in OR only, you will want to keep that separate since if you run MSTS on that install it won't like what it finds and will start throwing errors.

With the daily updates of interim versions of OR being made available I actually have multiple installs of OR in separate folders and I run whichever I choose by starting OR from the appropriate folder. I assumed that that was OK to do. I haven't run into any problems doing that. One of the OR team members would need to advise if that is not advisable.


Paul :)

[eric from trainsim]

One install of content for both sims, since I am doing my route building using the RE and my route testing in OR.

Too busy building scenery to be messing with .eng and .wag files... :)

[Lindsayts]

I use mini routes in OR to keep everything seperate,as a single install of OR makes rolling stock from half a dozen different countries to hard to handle.

All one needs to do this in OR is to copy the GLOBAL, ROUTES, TRAINS and sound directories and point OR to the apropriate directory.

I have two lots of MSTS installed, the first is just basic MSTS with the default routes but with all accessories installed, things like Xtracks, New Roads, UK fine scale etc. This is used as a base for all other directories, either MSTS or OR. One then just installs a route and its rolling stock after of course copying the required directories/files from the "base install" to the new location.

Note: I do a lot of playing around with eng and wag files.

Lindsay

[atsf37l]

copperpen, on 26 August 2014 - 03:51 AM, said:

Any mods to eng and wag files to add ORTS specific parameters will not affect MSTS in any way. MSTS merely glosses over something not in its lexicon as long as the line conforms to MSTS convention. Any existing routes/mini routes can be added to OR without affecting the ability to run in MSTS as well.

Thanks, that's great info. I wondered if MSTS would get bamboozled by things like Davis values added to the files. Good news, Copperpen. Thanks. :)

[atsf37l]

James Ross, on 26 August 2014 - 01:21 AM, said:

I don't fiddle with content, but I can tell you how to do this: for every .eng or .wag you wish to modify just for OR, put a copy of it in a new subdirectory called "OpenRails". OR will load that version if it exists, and from the normal location if it doesn't.

You can also use Include(..\foo.wag) inside the OR version to copy all the data and then override just the bits which are different, but this is more fiddly.

So James, are you saying that if you put a folder named OpenRails in your TRAINSET folder that OR will check there first for the .eng you are requesting to use? :sign_oops: :)