General Rail Works Items that need fixed and / or updated.

[Rich_S]

I have one other item and it's more of a personal observation and it has to do with the grid blowers and radiator fans. On prototype EMD's (GE's as well but you can't see the GE grid blowers) the fans only run when you are in dynamics. The reason is because the blowers are in series with the grids. To see the EMD's going down the track in motoring with the grid blowers running just looks funny. Another point is the rad fans, they all do not run at the same time. They are set to turn on at different temperature settings with the number 1 fan (Fan closest to the rear of the unit, unless you are talking about a Southern or N&W unit, then it would be the fan closes to the front of the unit on long hood lead units) turning on first and turning off last. I'm just wondering how much GPU / CPU time is being wasted on all of these fans running when they shouldn't be? Is this another reason frame rates are dropping, Four engines times 5 fans per engine is this just to much animation and the fans are killing frame rates? Something to think about?

Regards,
Rich S.

[wacampbell]

Four engines times 5 fans per engine is this just to much animation and the fans are killing frame rates?

This type of animation has no effect on frame rates. The extra computations to rotate the fan a little on each frame are miniscule compared to everything else thats happening. There's other things affecting frame rates.

But your knowledge of how the fans work is good to see and it will be nice when sim realism reaches the level where the fans come on and off in accordance to the specific conditions on the locomotive. I suspect some of what you describe may actually be possible using LUA scripts once that info gets released.

[Kali]

Hrrm. The problem with looping animations is being able to stop them - the temperature business is a copy/paste/tweak job, stop/starting the fans when they're animated to spin I don't know how to do unless you just force the animation back to 0 all the time - I think that would just make it judder like it was stuck. If it was stationary and we had to script it to move there'd be no problem...

The animations themselves are just taking an existing bit of the model and rotating it slightly. You're doing that with the entire world every frame you're moving anyway, so it's not even worth thinking about the computing cost.

[MontanaRails]

Hrrm. The problem with looping animations is being able to stop them - the temperature business is a copy/paste/tweak job, stop/starting the fans when they're animated to spin I don't know how to do unless you just force the animation back to 0 all the time - I think that would just make it judder like it was stuck. If it was stationary and we had to script it to move there'd be no problem...

The animations themselves are just taking an existing bit of the model and rotating it slightly. You're doing that with the entire world every frame you're moving anyway, so it's not even worth thinking about the computing cost.

I've seen several units that were not using dynamics, that had these fans very, very slowly spinning...as if by airflow alone. Could that be a fix? High speed with dynamics, and just slowly turning otherwise?

[arizonachris]

Ricksan just covered this fan issue here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113 Along with some other interesting info.

[Csxgp38-2]

The cars need a dramatic upgrade, working wheels, and just more overall detail, a building doesn't need much detail if it's far from the tracks, but railroads often parallel roads, and intersect them often so the cars should be at least detailed a little bit more. It would just add to the realism when you go through a grade crossing and see cars that move/look realistic. Just my on a general RW item that needs updated.

[kcs_fan]

Geez! All this talk about fans turning? I'd be happy just to get my game to run on my custom route. I can run any of the paid for routes, including Horseshoe curve. Custom routes--forgetaboutit!

[kevhead]

I believe if they would just get the core game with what dlc content and all scenarios fixed would be great. This is a very nice looking sim, just needs a little TLC.

[NDORFN]

The cars need a dramatic upgrade, working wheels, and just more overall detail, a building doesn't need much detail if it's far from the tracks, but railroads often parallel roads, and intersect them often so the cars should be at least detailed a little bit more. It would just add to the realism when you go through a grade crossing and see cars that move/look realistic. Just my on a general RW item that needs updated.

I second that. Grade crossings are where half the action's at. Using SMMDigital's crossings, 3Dtrains scaleroad (and track preferably) you can achieve almost photoreal results... the only thing letting the scene down is the cars and in particular the wheels.