[beresford]

Setting aside the issue of the weak brakes for a moment......

1. A real steam engine regulator is not controlled by a screw adjuster, as seems to be the case in MSTS and OR, and it is possible to 'slam' the regulator shut. IMHO it would be an improvement if double-tap <A> or control-shift-whatever <A> shut the regulator immediately so you don't have to sit for five seconds with your finger holding the key down.

2. A number of cab models have the viewpoint in the wrong place so you can't see out of the spectacle plate and drive the engine correctly. It would be nice to be able to shift the viewpoint slightly to get it behind the plate (yes I know you can do it by manually editing every engine's files). It would also be good to be able to 'cross the footplate' to sight signals which are on the other side of the boiler, but some cab backdrops might not allow it.

3. Controlling the vacuum brakes seems to be an exercise in watching the pressure go up or down and then moving to 'lap' or 'running' when you reach the desired pressure (it has always been a bit of a mystery to me what MSTS means by these 'lap' and 'running' positions). When I adjust the brake in OR a bit of white text appears on the bottom of the screen and then fades away so I have to look up to the top left corner and find the brake pressure in all the text. Perhaps it would be good to have the option of displaying a window with a virtual gauge as in some flight sims.

[dennisat]

beresford, on 27 August 2014 - 08:13 AM, said:

(it has always been a bit of a mystery to me what MSTS means by these 'lap' and 'running' positions)

"Lap" and "Running" mean the same as on a real loco.

The "Lap" position on the brake controller is a sort of neutral between Apply and Release - the air is neither leaving nor entering the brake system. The "Running" position allows a slow bleed of air to the system (or exhaustion from if vacuum) to counteract leakage so that the brakes do not "creep on" while the train is expected to be in motion for some time.

Dennis

[copperpen]

A steam engine regulator is always working against boiler pressure and is not an easy thing to use, unlike an infernal combustion throttle. It is not possible to "slam" the throttle shut unless the pressure is low. It is possible to close it faster than normal if needed. That is why a steam locomotive throttle is such a big thing in the cab.

The problem however is that both opening and closing rate are controlled from within the eng file, so you can have if you want, an instant full on/full off throttle or anything in between.

[beresford]

copperpen, on 27 August 2014 - 09:07 AM, said:

A steam engine regulator is always working against boiler pressure and is not an easy thing to use, unlike an infernal combustion throttle. It is not possible to "slam" the throttle shut unless the pressure is low. It is possible to close it faster than normal if needed. That is why a steam locomotive throttle is such a big thing in the cab.

Sorry to disagree with you, but in the engines I have driven it IS possible to slam the throttle shut, and indeed that is how Midland enginemen drove them when they wanted to reduce speed (slam shut then open to desired position) due to potential problems with the second valve sticking. On Western engines with sight feed lubrication you slam it shut then open it a bit to the 'jockey' position for coasting.

[Lindsayts]

1. Steam regulators,
The problem here is you only have two on/off keys to control the function, the faster the keys control the function the poorer the precision. One way to partly get around this is if one hits the keys multiple times quickly the speed of the function change increases. Immediately the quick key press stops the function change speed drops back to the default.
An obvious way around this is for the developers to make availible an "API" or a function to allow the use of an external port. It would not be difficult to build a 4 analog input external control unit using 4 pots and a standard game card.

2. Cabview view point,
You have highlighted what I consider is a real serious problem, most steamer cabviews are not made for actually driving the machine. There's no simply way around this apart from doing another cabview, there usually simply being not enough of the background cab graphic availible. I have done one such "drivers" view steamer cab, but I do not usually drive these machines as the sim experience in my opinion bears almost no relationship with the real task, I having actual to both been able to drive and fire the real machines.

The second point mentioned, the view out of the fireman's side (actualy this is really required to see signals correctly). A number of cabviews have arranged this by changing one of the left/right views to firemans side track view, this works well.
I do not know about other places, but in Victoria, Australia to drive a long nosed loco in real life either a steamer or a diesel requires TWO safe working qualified staff. Most other machines only require a single person.

Lindsay

[captain_bazza]

As I recollect, you can adjust the reaction time (whoa to go/ go to whoa) in the controllers section of the ENG file. It's been a long while since I did this tweak, so perhaps some more knowledgeable steamer could remin me/us, thank you.

In the MSTS FS, the screw mechanism controls the reverser.

Ancient MSTS History Fact alert: although it briefly appeared in a pre-release video clip, one Brit steamer never made it to the release version, the named CITY OF NOTTINGHAM, which may have been an AI version.

Cheers Bazza

[midneguy]

captain_bazza, on 27 August 2014 - 02:05 PM, said:

As I recollect, you can adjust the reaction time (whoa to go/ go to whoa) in the controllers section of the ENG file. It's been a long while since I did this tweak, so perhaps some more knowledgeable steamer could remin me/us, thank you.
..........
Cheers Bazza

You are correct that the "sweep" action of the controllers is adjustable. In fact, this is one of the last things that was fine tuned on the OR Frisco 1500's I just turned loose, based on feedback Herb had given... Overall the steam throttle and reverser controllers appear to behave a little differently between MSTS and OR, in that they "sweep" slower in OR for the same values used. To get a faster "sweep" reaction on the 1500's, I edited the two values for the Regulator and Cutoff controllers:


Regulator ( 0 1 0.1 0
NumNotches ( 0 )
)
Cutoff ( -0.75 0.75 0.1 0
NumNotches ( 0 )
)

I've generally used 0.025 in place of the highlighted values above in MSTS, which seemed to produce a reasonably good response to large movements while still making fine movements possible with taps on the keys. The larger values above on the OR engines roughly approximate how these controllers behaved in MSTS, where tapping the keys still gets small adjustments but more rapid movement when the keys are held down.

Of course there could be a lot of variation of behavior in how easy the controls are to manipulate depending on the mass and stiffness of the mechanism, but balanced throttle valves were specifically designed to be able to be opened and closed with relative ease under all operating conditions. It's definitely not unusual for a well balanced and designed mechanism to be able to be swept from one extreme to the other within a second or two. Of course engines without a power reverse mechanism would be harder to sweep from one extreme to the other.

[captain_bazza]

Thanks for the reminder, Derek.


Cheers Bazza.

[beresford]

I HAVE to go back to the subject of brakes for a minute. I am driving the Pines Express with a 9F on Clive Heard's Somerset and Dorset route. The scenery is great with OR graphics, the vac brakes are ABYSMAL. I need to make a full application to have any effect, whereas from my driving course notes it is about 15" to 'rub' the brakes and 10" for a normal stop. I enter a platform at about 15mph, make a full application, and the engine slides past the 'stop' signal at the far end of the platform. Before anybody replies with a 'helpful' suggestion to edit all the ENG files, most of the braking on a vac-braked train is done by the carriages, which is why there is a lower speed limit travelling light engine than with a train. All that happens on the footplate is air admission to the train pipe.
So the characteristic should be that a vac-braked engine with no fitted stock should suffer a slight delay in braking action and this delay should increase as a train is added and increases in length.

Occasionally when pulling a passenger train with a freight engine with linked steam and vac brake control the engine steam brake does act faster than the carriage cylinders, and there are various engineman's tricks to hold the steam brake off in order to prevent the carriages buffing the engine (is this bailing off?).

[markus_GE]

beresford, on 01 September 2014 - 07:16 AM, said:

... (is this bailing off?).

A simple yes for that one :)

Cheers, Markus