ExRail, on 01 April 2024 - 12:18 PM, said:
Realizing that creating a single weather type that looks optimal year around and all times are impossible without lookup tables, I've started to think of possibilities. while the planet is spinning and is on a tilt of 23° creating the seasonal cycles. GTA San Andreas is located at the same place unlike Routes and was using a 8 hour timecycle table for all colors/sprites and fades between them,modders have increased that to 24 and made and interface for it that pop up when pressing Ctrl+T it looks like this.
New LinkUsing time don't work since it's sunrise and sunset that matters for light/colors/shadow/haze so linking to a 24 hour one should in this case
https://youtu.be/3zTR4ayDG38?t=115only take the sun rise and sunset and put them together or something.The Only games I know who uses seasons and location on Earth are in Flight Simulators sunch as FS2004 with uses 140 textures 10 different for each 8 hour period like noon, predawn, dawn and so on.Currently the Suns position is coming from the Routes I think, it should properly come from calculation like whats the Sun's angle 14:42 on next Monday at GPS location N55 E12, Astro library function should answer that question, since it's not going to change and you could precalculate for some sectors/Capitals of Earth.Searching...:
https://www.nuget.org/packages/CoordinateSharp/"CoordinateSharp is a simple .NET library that is designed to assist with geographic coordinate conversions, parsing, formatting, magnetic data, and location based celestial calculations such as sunset, sunrise, moonset, moonrise and more."Console.WriteLine(c.CelestialInfo.SunSet); // 5-Jun-2018 4:02:00 AMConsole.WriteLine(c.CelestialInfo.MoonAltitude); // 14.4169966277874Look easy enough getting that information.
This is why I said the best solution that comes close to solving this issue is to use real life weather data provided by METAR, using the simulated trains coordinates on earth. The coordinate linking to a map has already been in the works according to a recent thread.
Traindude, on 10 August 2024 - 03:42 PM, said:
Yeah. For the time being, that's OK, but we eventually want to move away from "faking it" by treating the boats as trains. (Though it kinda reminds me of the song, "Train on the Water, Boat on the Track" from Family Guy!)So Dave, if we're treating the boats as trains in the interim, I'm assuming the drawbridge itself would be treated like an animated two-position semaphore, with the "bridge up" position being analogous to a semaphore displaying a red (stop) aspect, and the "bridge down" position being the equivalent of a semaphore showing a green (proceed) aspect? Does that sound about right?
The problem with that is it may require extending to more physics of derailment. Currently in the default program as long as the off the rails bug does not occur, the train is stopped like bumper blocks at the end of disconnected tracks.
Jonatan, on 13 August 2024 - 03:22 PM, said:
I think this thread have drifted quite a bit. So I will again attempt to say something. I may get flack for it but c'est la vie.The last few years have given us a couple train sims that introduced a novel concept to the genre: the character-based multiplayer simulator. Railroads Online, Railroader, a multitude of Roblox games, etc.This seems to be the direction that train simulation is going. Even TSW and Derail Valley, while not having multiplayer (yet), are in this category and the concept is successful.I'm in a pretty sizable train chat on Discord and I struggle to find someone who've even heard of Open Rails. In the train sim mainstream, it does not exist. And in the case it's been heard of, it's compared to, or even interchangably talked of as MSTS, and with very little positive feedback. The feedback I've recieved when asking people in said server is; why haven't they finished it?Open Rails prides itself on its realistic physics, which is great! But physics alone doesn't make an exciting simulator, an exciting game people want to play.My experience with multiplayer is a single session, and that was with the help of a friend. I've failed trying to set up a session on my own and even then I have not a single person aside from said friend to play with, because Open Rails is so unknown or niche in the hobby.Aside from this one guy, who is one among us, I have no one in my friend circles who are interested in playing it. What I present to them leave them underwhelmed, they rather play DV, RRO or Railroader. Getting involved is too complicated, the reward too small.If Open Rails is to have a real long-term future, it needs to start adapting to the times. A new player is expecting something like the aforementioned simulators in terms of playability, not MSTS+.Advanced multiplayer, especially the ability to have co-op on a locomotive (engineer/fireman), in a train (helper engine), etc, along with an intuitive multiplayer interface, is almost a must to explode in popularity. It's not a matter of "can it be done?", others have done it, lone programmers have done it. The clever chaps who type away with the code right now I'm sure can do it, if they want to.We're mostly all nerds here, with long history of MSTS and OR to make navigation and use of the sim easy and intuitive.But Open Rails will remain a very niche, backwater simulator that no one realy talks about unless something different happens that makes it interesting, intuitive and fun to play to the casual simmer. Do we want it to remain a "nerdy programmers only" software?I doubt I'll be listened to because why listen to a curmudgeon with an opinion on the internet, but that's what I wanted to say after quietly observing the train sim scene at large for a while.
A lot can be done with ORTS. In fact if one were to actually use the off-the-rails bug/glitch the default program has, physics would reach another level in the game. As for the non-physocs stuff, I think I made a large post earlier as to what should be done to make the sim better.