[ATSF3751]

I first want to thank everyone for there feedback and happy to see I could at least get the ball rolling with these ideas I had. Yes I would like to try and take these ideas to more then just talking about it but it takes people who are dedicated in coding to make that happen. Being I am not a coder I can not help in that respect but I do know how to take leadership and help others out with research, model building, sound design, and route building!

If I am reading this all correctly from everyone I think we are all on the same level when it comes to these specific topics and I am going to try and break it up into sections here!

1. New and or Updated Editors- AKA TSRE, Activity, consist and other editors that would be of help.
2. Dynamic Weather- Improvements on sky and water textures
3. Safety systems- Safety equipment implemented/issues and defects while running trains.
4. Donation/Funding- This idea is still questionable but I am not ruling it out quite yet as for hiring professional coders/improve the ORTS Website when future development comes about.
5. Continue work on updating current physics to improve them for future development.

Now all of this being said I do not want to get ahead of ourselves!

Brandon

[Monty]

I think that you are way too far ahead of yourself already. I just can't see a great deal of any of this happening. Just take a look what is against it. The fan base for OR is far too small for a start . When you look at this hobby we are already at the point that all that is left are the diehards. Next to get people interested you need new content to run. Most of the freeware and payware creators have gone. I just can't see them coming back no matter how much you improve OR. Paying coders ... you have to be kidding,the cost is too high.
I have been in this hobby right from the start of MSTS and to be honest I am grateful for all that OR does and I am happy just to run with what we have. Can't see too much change in the near future. Might sound negative but I think that it's just the way it is anything else is just wishful thinking. Cheers Monty

[eric from trainsim]

Nah, there's a huge market for ORTS.

India alone has thousands of folks discovering train simulation each week.

They're ignored as a market by Dovetail because they're not going to pay for DLC over the Steam platform, so they've adopted the MSTS/ORTS platform.

[Monty]

XThe Indian market may be large but does everyone here want to run Indian stuff. I don't see much on this site that's Indian. We struggle to see anything different,for example where are Tier 4s? Take the new release Shasta route all 2nd gen gp's and sd's and a lot of the rolling stock is just renumbers. Don't think that is going to attract many new simmers. You have to generate interest and that is just not happening with OR at present nor is the freeware and payware doing much. How much new stuff coming out at the moment is of any decent quality? The Danny Becks and Jeff Auberpines and others have gone. Very few new joiners are going to take on modelling or texturing because the learning curve is too steep. All they will want to do is run trains. We all have wishes for what we want to see in OR but I just can't see it happening. How many of our present coders are going to sit and rewrite OR for hours on end? Very few especially when it's all for free. Let's face it Dovetail make money out of it's sim. Does OR? Enjoy what we have at the moment because OR is bloody good for something done for a hobby. In fact I think it is the best of all the Trainsims out for just all round enjoyment Cheers Monty

[eric from trainsim]

 Monty, on 30 October 2023 - 08:21 PM, said:

XThe Indian market may be large but does everyone here want to run Indian stuff. I don't see much on this site that's Indian.

Keep in mind this site represents a very small fraction of the overall ORTS community.

I've had over 1,000 users on Trainsim.com downloading Indian content within the past 24 hours. There are thousands of models, activities, and routes just for that market, and we see more produced each week.

Some of it is pretty good. Some of it is junk. But the fact remains that it's a very active community.

[railguy]

A quick comment about the "Indian market": People miss the main reason that there is so much interest in train simming in India. It is the fact that, in India, trains and railroads are still an integral part of most Indians' lives, just like railroads were in the U.S. in the 1940's and 1950's.

Also, without getting too political, I think that the seeming growth in interest in 1960's-1990's era routes and rolling stock in the U.S. is that many people are not happy about what today's U.S. railroads have become, just as they are disheartened about what the country is today. They long for the "good old days," and "period" train simming is one way to get there vicariously. I enjoy both "period" simming and current-day railroading, but I agree there is a shrinking amount of new content coming out for the latter.

Finally, it would not take a quantum leap in OR to get it to the point of being a much better sim. Better lighting, better weather, and some new or revised content would go a long way. On that latter point, consider this: there are several "early" MSTS routes that absolutely beg for better scenery, higher quality track textures, etc., without having to a ground-up built new route. Some examples, not even an all-inclusive list: Kicking Horse, Rogers Pass, Shuswap, Willamette Pass, Tehachapi, Marias Pass, Kootenai. Many of these routes are pushing 20-years old. Maybe the payware builders should consider "allowing" third-party developers (payware or freeware) copyright and EULA permission to upgrade and re-release these improved routes. It would likely increase the payware providers' sales of rolling stock, etc. associated with those routes. And, as for add-on content, there is an almost limitless market for better buildings and scenery objects. One need only look at the quality offerings from fellows like Tim Muir and Chrisger right here on Elvas to see what kind of quality is possible.

[FS.E652 091]

It is wrong to say that ORTS has no future and no development possibilities.
It is a concept of those who unfortunately do not look realistically at the feasibility of things and above all their potential.

In Italy, together with the staff of which I am part, our projects are highly requested, and above all both associations and railway driving schools are seeing great potential in simulators to be able to use them for their purposes.

This is where we need to start... the great potential of Open Rails can be exploited to ensure that it is seen throughout the world not only as a well-developed program, but also as a flexible and dynamic program with broad standards of realism, both graphic and driving.

As I have always been taught... investing has always had its fruits...

I have been on the path to payware projects for a couple of years now, I can assure you that it is helping me a lot because I am out of work, and above all it stimulates me to do better..

(I'm one of those crazy people who creates more than 300 objects including houses, stations and particular infrastructures relating to the areas for a Payware scenario... so I know what it means to develop and have new ideas...)

As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to development and ideas, you will always have my support, just as I'm giving it on this topic ;-)

[Unoriginal]

 railguy, on 31 October 2023 - 06:15 AM, said:

Finally, it would not take a quantum leap in OR to get it to the point of being a much better sim. Better lighting, better weather, and some new or revised content would go a long way. On that latter point, consider this: there are several "early" MSTS routes that absolutely beg for better scenery, higher quality track textures, etc., without having to a ground-up built new route. Some examples, not even an all-inclusive list: Kicking Horse, Rogers Pass, Shuswap, Willamette Pass, Tehachapi, Marias Pass, Kootenai. Many of these routes are pushing 20-years old. Maybe the payware builders should consider "allowing" third-party developers (payware or freeware) copyright and EULA permission to upgrade and re-release these improved routes. It would likely increase the payware providers' sales of rolling stock, etc. associated with those routes. And, as for add-on content, there is an almost limitless market for better buildings and scenery objects. One need only look at the quality offerings from fellows like Tim Muir and Chrisger right here on Elvas to see what kind of quality is possible.

Stuff like this has happened before, there's a few upgrades for MLT michigan iron ore and 3DTS donner pass on trainsim.com, and 3dtrains (rip) had upgrades for both cajon and tehacahpi. I'd like more upgrades like those to older routes, but most end up being private (I don't blame them for that though as releasing route upgrades like that can be kinda awkward).

[ATSF3751]

Here is a podcast I just listened to and think many would Bennifit from hearing this! Some of my very ideas they talk about that I have stressed to the ORTS community. It is an interview with the founder of Jointed Rails Simulations and may give you guys an idea of where Train Simulators are going!

https://theroundhous...-rail-mike-cyr/

[DimPoint]

What I am about to state might look long, but it is important. It might provide a big insight on what could make the installation of routes and other OR content much easier. One of my insights could also remove the route element limit that OR currently has.
I am younger than 30 and can tell you that the problems Brandon has stated are only some of the issues. The issues that have not been brought up are the following.

OR is only available on Windows, and forget about Android or iOS, it is not even available for Mac. Many other rail or plane simulators have long been on Mac, and have even gone on mobile. (This is probably the biggest problem outside of graphics, and is preventing others from using OR). As for Android, the developer of TSRE (Goku), had released a video on his youtube where he actually shown he had created a mobile version of TSRE that could actually simulate the routes. This video was also not even recent and almost a decade ago he had made this app. Many have asked him about it and why has it not been released to the Google Play Store. However there has been no response, or his response would be something along the lines of beating around the bush. Forget about simulation stuff even, full fledged games that one point were only on gaming consoles are even being released as mobile apps. Even stuff like AutoCAD or 3D building is now available on Android. We are not just behind as Brandon said... we are WAYYYYYYY behind.
OR is not optimized for more modern screens like 4K.
OR can crash in places where it would give a bad appeal to those using OR.
There are many routes on here, ET, and on RailServe, that have .bat installation files. For anyone that does not have MSTS, the bat installation file would do nothing. The workaround for this involves installing a large well made Mini Route like Vince's PRR, opening the bat file from Word Pad, and seeing what files to copy from mini-route main route, to the route with the bat file manually.
Some routes have been uploaded using not default tools and thus requiring special unzipping software like WinZip.
People are releasing reskinned train engines by copying problematic engines (the ones that are still in like kN), and the trains never move like many of the U25Bs. Thus it becomes a chore to find a working model of a specific engine. I think sites like this and ET should at least require train engines to work without the need of modifying the engine files by the person who downloads the file.
The route downloading via websites and the slow download rate. (Will go into this in more detail as to how another open source simulator is doing much better without these limitations).

As for the errors:

Error messages mid-simulation leading to the simulation to crash due to car spawner for those that never had MSTS (this is easily fixable, instead of the simulation crashing to main menu, the error message should have the option to continue by ignoring the car spawn file).
The Cntrl+9 map needs to be re-done. It can become too laggy, and if it freezes for a certain amount of time, the simulation will crash.
Multi-steam engine unit consists where one of the steam engines does not have cabin view is unusable (no way to turn on water valve, thus leading to fuse plugged if first engine, or simulation crashing if water level goes bellow zero).

In terms of platform availability, I think the OR team should consider getting the mobile and Mac applications available before working in the waters with the graphics. This might give us a much larger base of people who would support the project, and thus more people to work with the graphics. Storage space is not that big of an issue in modern day mobile devices.

Now on to what I was talking about in terms of route downloading, and an alternative way. There is a open source simulator that is called FlightGear (will be reffered to as FG following this point), and yes it is for planes not trains but the point I am trying to make is how they load scenery or one gets aircrafts. They use a download area needed at that moment method, rather than download everything and run it from local storage. The point is simple, not everyone is going to visit every nook and corner of a route in OR. Downloading new content at the moment and saving it to cache saves time that might be wasted in downloading parts that are never used.

In terms of how FG lets users get aircrafts, it is more central and via the app (however it is possible and optional to download FG aircrafts from the web and manually install them like how we install train engines in OR, some people do that to get aircrafts for FG outside of what FG main has.) The central aircraft download and choosing system, which is the main menu of FG does the work of downloading and installing the aircraft for the user.

In terms of how all this could be implemented in OR, there are two ways it could be implemented.

The first method uses the downloading of the entire route method we currently use, and would be implemented as follows. The OR main menu would have the option to login to TrainSim.com, ET, or other OR content provider via OR rather than going to the website and logging in. Regardless if one is logged into one of the content providers or not, a tab in the OR main menu will have the option of "Download/Install". This is because under this method, RailServe.com is set as the default OR content provider for routes, cars, etc, and thus one does not have to login to use OR, more info of this in last paragraph. Clicking on it will display a list of routes, cars, and train engines installed. To find a route, car, ect, that is not installed, one has to type what they want in a search box that is also on the same tab. This search box will look for matches on all OR content provider that the user has provided credentials to the application. This would save time from going for here, ET, or etc to find something specific. Next to each listing, will be an option called "Download & Install". The application itself would download and install the content itself rather than the user doing so manually. Also in the "download/Install" tab should be the options to point to a different location than that stated as the source folder location where a installme.bat file points to. Another option available on that tab should be to check whether car spawner would work on a specific route, and options like ("delete car spawn file during route installation" or "try to find and install required cars") if it detects that car spawner could throw an error.

The second method involves something similar to the system that is implemented in FlightGear (that is not a typo, FlightGear is another open source project like FlightSim). On a side note, using this system could also allow us to implement real live live weather data in to OR. In FlightGear (FG), real actual live weather from the real world is inputted and displayed in the game by accessing METAR weather data. Basically by using a system of the following:
current coordinates -> find closest airport to current coordinate --> get metar data from that airport --> use that data to display weather on the screen.
What we could do is
current coordinates -> find closest airport to current coordinate* --> get metar data for that airport --> use that data to display weather on the screen

*I actually don't know how FG does this, but we would have to implement something similar.

Now for the hard part which would require a lot of work, I would like to call it "Dynamic Route/Scenery Downloading" (DR/SD). Before we get into details, support for route files would remain in place. This is for those that have worked hard to make routes not feel as if they worked hard all this time for nothing, and to allow fantasy/made up routes. Now lets go into detail. In DR/SD, OR would install differently. All very highly used scenery, sound, track object, and signal files would come with the installation of OR. The only thing that would not come with the installation is routes (and/or how DR/SD will do routes), locomotives/rolling stock, terrain info, and not very highly used (scenery, sound, track object, and signal files). Those things would require an internet connection to get.

Everything stated above that does not come with the installation, with the exception of routes, can be downloaded using a the "Download/Install" option tab stated in the first method.

When a user opens the program the GUI will have two extra drop down saying track access and year. The first drop down will have the options of "Local" or "Server". If the first option is selected, the GUI would look like how the GUI normally looks. The second drop down will only display if the first drop down just discussed has the "Server" option selected. The second drop down of year will have the options of, "1900", "1920", "1940", "1970", "present". These options can vary and more options could be implemented. The drop down would decide which OR track server to access. Now let's get into the nitty gritty of this.

In DR/SD all route and terrain data for the real world would be online. There would be a total of 5 servers in this DR/SD idea. Each of the servers would have route data of all routes created for OR, with the route time set to a specific ranger year. For example,
1900 server would have routes set in 1900 to 1919.
1920 server would have routes set in 1920 to 1939.
1940 server would have routes set in 1940 to 1969.
1970 server would have routes set in 1970 to 1999.
present server would have routes set in 2000 to present day.

When the sim starts for the first time, it will download terrain data, track reference, and object reference data of 9x9 simulation tiles, where the center tile is tile where the sim would start. It will read this data and save it in a cache folder, so that it would not need to download it again if the player were to access that area sometime in the future. While the user's computer reads the data it received, if it sees any track object, scenery, sound, or signal file that it does not have, it will download that too. Once everything is available, the user's computer will create the display on the screen and it starts.
Now, what about the other tiles in a route, and what about the routes? Here is the dynamic part.​ As a user reaches 2 tiles away from the boundary of downloaded area, OR will look in its cache to see if it can find the content of 5 tiles ahead and 1 tiles to the left and right of the direction the train is moving in. If it does not have it in the cache, it will download this data.
The only downside here is that all routes in the above years would have to be merged into a single route. The good news on the other hand, NO MORE ROUTE ELEMENT LIMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RailServe.com actually has routes, cars, engines, and other stuff up for OR to download, some of which are not available here and nor even at ET. That too with no login and at fast speeds, thus it would be a good idea to put it as the default content provider in the event that OR is to use a centralized app for download and installation. This way, slow download speeds would not be a detractor and would not be the first thing experienced by a new user of OR trying to download and install content. For those wondering what I am talking about, and where does RailServe have this stuff, I will do a walk though here on how to download a 250 ton crane freight car from railserve.com

1. On railserve.com under games and sims, there should be a link for MSTS, click it.
2. The should be a link for Freight Cars, click it.
3. The 250 ton crane should be the first listing, click it and it would download a zip file with no login requirements.