I thought I'd present a quick little story in screenshots with the fun I've been having tonight - thanks to Carlo our Turntable Master http://www.elvastower.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/bravo.gif
So here I am in Oroville with one of the big 2-8-8-2's ready to head into the roundhouse for servicing... There's just one problem though, the Hostler forgot the default alignment of the Oroville Turntable and ended up with this predicament...
Great... So now he'll have to make another move to get on right? Or maybe not? :D
That's more like it! Now to just gently ease her back since these engines are really a tight fit...
Looks like he pretty much nailed it on the first try ;) Now to just get her spun around and headed into the proper stall...
Now to just ease her off nice and slow, and be careful to not send her through the back wall of the roundhouse!
With 253 safely in her stall, it's time to get to work servicing her so she's ready to take the next train up the Feather River Canyon ;)
Awesome work Carlo and an immense amount of fun to watch!
Now just a couple comments after playing around with this all evening... Yes, this is indeed using the "SR_Turntable_w_37m.s" turntable that Carlo mentioned early on as being one that he didn't think could be used. However, I couldn't resist the temptation to see if I could get this to work since the Feather River is still my favorite route. I created the turntables.dat file and edited the .s file to add the animation like he did for the "A1t27mTurntable.s" he showed us to introduce us to this new feature. After some tinkering to finally get a response from the turntable in the sim, I noticed that the bridge was swinging left or right around the end of the bridge rather than rotating around the center (the end opposite the roundhouse). So I had to play around with including the translation animation (which I initially left out hoping the bridge center really was at the center), and also play with the vertical offset until I eventually got the bridge spinning around its center correctly. So, at least I've proven that at least some of those other Turntables might be made to work after all :D
The only "complaints" I have, which in the big picture are really just minor observations are these:
I noticed that if I let go of the Ctrl+C or Alt+C keys when the table was between a large gap of leads (where there could be additional leads but aren't) that OR would crash with an error message of not being connected or something like that (can't remember the exact wording). If I made sure I always let go just as the rotation was almost on an existing lead track though, it would come to a stop just fine. So, it would obviously be nice if the table could just keep rotating in the same direction it is past those points where an exit path doesn't exist, and just connect at the next one that does exist that it comes to.
The other thing is that I did have it happen a couple times where the locomotive seemed to "jump" partially off of the bridge when a connection was made. This hasn't happened every time though, so I'm not sure if this is a function of how well centered the engine is or not. Along with this, it seemed like the camera position always jumped when a connection was made as well - and it would be nice if the camera would maintain the same angle and position constantly.
I have no doubt these minor issues can be straightened out though so I'm definitely NOT upset about them - I'm just ecstatic that this long wished for feature has finally arrived!
Again - a huge http://www.elvastower.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/bravo.gif to Carlo for his efforts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Linia 202 turntable.zip (52.14K)
