Open Rails - yet another slave to 'realism'

[zarker99]

I just tried the latest version of this amazing open source effort. Although I appreciate what they're trying to do (or maybe I don't) - like getting the perfect signalling system, rail operations, physics and what-not, I just can't get away from the feeling something is being missed - just like every other train-sim to date.

The best way I can describe it is like the difference between a geography text-book and a travel guide. The first is full of facts and figures, the second tries to portray the spirit of a particular place - trying to capture its soul for the reader to enjoy and be enticed to go there.

What I'm griping about here is the sense of speed I'm getting from O.R.

I know I'm going to be told about it has the perect, most authentic perspective from the cab - its height from the ground and its FOV, but is that enough?

What about the spirit of riding the iron horse? Think about every lyric and stanza written about railmen - the engineers - casey jones. Nobody every wrote about the tedium of watching scenery drag by so slow that grandmother's can admire the individual flowers.

If its dull, if opening the throttle and reaching 90mph hardly makes your pulse increase then all we have is another moving scenery generator. A dry textbook-simulator.

What's the point, without a little soulfulness?

[mikephfl]

I think it's there. MSTS has it. It depends on many factors. The more important ones are the route, the loco, the train being pulled. If you are slogging a loaded coal train up a mountain, then yes, I agree, grandma could enjoy the flowers and no sim is going to give you the "thrill of the throttle" in that scenario. But, with a good loco and a good route with realistic scenery and good FPS and speeds over 50mph then I think you do get the thrill of running the train.

Just my 2cents worth.

Mike

[zarker99]

Yeah - MSTS isn't too bad. I have it runnig with an FOV of 88, and it looks a lot better that way with distant objects really looking distant - but could still be improved.

I tried that trick with railsim and Railworks, but doesn't have nearly the same effect. But with thoee it takes more than just an FOV change to give some sense of 'being there' - the minimal sound effects are the problem for me on those two.

Neither does the FOV trick work too well on O.R. either at the moment - hence my initial post.

I hate to make negative comments about something that is open source, voluntary and free - but I really would love to see a train-sim that gave the visual (and audible) impression of speed without the need to keep checking the dials. (hope that makes sense? )

[muskokaandtahoe]

I don't think I'd find 2x, 3x, 10x speed very interesting, if speed is what you are getting at. As for other drawbacks to that feeling of being there, IMO the problem is not with the simulator but with the routes. Getting the railroad infrastructure in place is one thing... getting enough of the rest of the world next to it is quite another. Some routes accomplish both (London & Port Stanley and WP 3rd sub both come to mind), others miss one or both entirely (names withheld to protect the guilty). Most, IMO, come closer to fail than succeed. Most Kuju track is simply hard to look at w/o averting ones eyes (the 6 inch wide railhead worked 10 years ago when a lot of stuff was, well, small and fuzzy, but not in widescreen, hi-res OR). And no simulator can provide what's not in the route but should have been included.

[zarker99]

hell no I'm not saying to have a speed multiplier function or anything I'm not after an arcade experience. I have the the LGVMED route, and at 180mph its a scary exerience - hard to react fast enough to signal changes.

Cant explain it It's not SPEED I'm after - but a sense of speed (LOL). Watching the scenery approaching sometimes... just feels wrong somehow. Too linear.

I understand what your saying Musk But sometimes the approaching abjects dont seem to 'grow' as they approach the way I expect them to.

But I dont want to talk about what's realistic and what doesn't 'seem' realistic.

All I can say is that as a kid I always wanted to drive locos. Even got taken for a ride in a cab a few times - just up and down a siding. But after trying all the train-sims to date all i can say is I'm glad my dream never came true - I'd have died of boredom if real-life is anything like the sims.

Just wish one would come along that made driving an express train seem as exciting as the myth. All it'd take is a little creative interpretation of the rules of perspective. LOL - sounds so easy in theory

[lindsayts]

Now I have riden in a number of steam locomotives also fired two for some hours and briefly driven one and it would be VERY SAFE to say one will never get total feeling of realism in any railway sim.
You have the heat, the wonderful smell of steam and coal, the noise, the vibration you can on some occasions feel the connecting rods coming around. The movement of the cab and the tender, the power the sensitive response to both the regulator a reverser controls. None of this can be satisfactorily acheived on a single computer in a room some where.
To apreciate a sim in fact almost any sim one must make the mental leep to be IN the sim.

It would be worth while reading JRR Tolkiens essay "On fairy stories" in this he discuss's at length the problems of buiding a "real" fantasy world.

Note: I rarely drive steamers in the sim actually for exactly the reason it is difficult to achieve the reality, but I do drive them on occasion just to give the memory a jog.

Lindsay

[mestevet]

I was going to make a similar point. Since I've never actually driven a real train, or even been in the cab of a real train while moving, I can't speak to that. But the experience I can relate is with flying a real airplane and flying one in MSFS. MSFS is, in my opinion, way more realistic than any of the train sims we're talking about, but even though I've logged hundreds of hours flying MSFS, I still find it hard to get comfortable controlling the same type of airplane in the sim that I've flown for hundreds of hours in real life. My reasoning, because I'm not a klutz when it comes to computer simulations, is that I'm missing the "feel" of it. Part of it is analog vs. digital (sometimes controlling comes down to moving the stick or rudder an almost imperceptible amount), part of it is feedback (seat of the pants), part of it is visceral (I'm less alert to all the little things at the computer because my butt isn't literally at risk).

I've also been in military multi-axis flight simulators and, while very realistic, even they were clearly simulations, not real, and were lacking.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that we're not at a point in technology where anything can be simulated to the point of seeming exactly real.

Steve

[OTTODAD]

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that we're not at a point in technology where anything can be simulated to the point of seeming exactly real.

We are at that point, creating complex aircraft like the AIRBUS A380, entire aircraft carriers and outer space missions, where everything is created on computers first to make sure all is working as it should before work on whatever is being started.

But that comes at a HUGE cost and is not feasible with Train Simulators, most are using to just play trains with and never mind actually reality !

O t t o

[GoGoran]

I'd say watch some cabview videos and compare them to the simulator. The sim cannot get any more authentic than the video. And whether or not the "sense of speed" is missing dependsd on the route, and I guess it's the same in real life.

You can compare it to your car driving experience:

60 mph is way too fast on rural/farm roads. Unless you're a rallye driver you're bound to lose control on the gravel and get thrown out of the next sharp bend.

But 60 mph on the interstate feels as if you were standing still, and after two hours you will be so bored that you have to stop and take a break, eat sth., and go for a short walk to recover from the driving boredom.

[mestevet]

Otto - I can say from the standpoint of being an engineer who has created and used computer models of complex aircraft and spacecraft that those models, while they may be accurate representations of the geometry of the parts in the real vehicles, do NOT represent an accurate simulation of those vehicles. Not even close. It's like saying that a Monet painting is an accurate simulation of life in France - the painting is beautiful, wonderful for what it is, but it does not even come close to realistically simulating different aspects of 19th century French culture.

Folks get "wowed" by these fantastic things they show with Airbus or Boeing engineers donning Virtual reality helmets or other things, and "walking through" an airplane. But having done these things, they're an even less realistic simulation than in MSTS. No one would think they were sitting in the pilot's seat or a passenger's seat and believe they were actually flying. Sure, you might be able to see if you could reach a screw to maintain some part. But that's not the kind of accurate simulation we're talking about here. If it were, you'd reach out and your hand would come back with grease on it, while sitting at the computer...

I stand by my statement that technology is not at the point of actually making people think a simulation is REAL. The time may come, and it may require expensive hardware, but it's not here yet.

Steve

[Trainguy76]

I think I understand what the OP is trying to say. Sure you may be going 70 miles an hour, but it doesn't have the feeling of being there. There is no sense of "Wow" when you see something rush passed you. I think that any simulator though, will lose that feeling in the process of becoming "realistic."

[conrail1]

What I'm griping about here is the sense of speed I'm getting from O.R.

I know I'm going to be told about it has the perect, most authentic perspective from the cab - its height from the ground and its FOV, but is that enough?

No in it's current state it's not enough.

Just take a look at openBVE and you'll see what's missing as far as sense of speed/movement is concerned.

To convey a sense of motion lateral and vertical cab sway have to be implemented along with realistic audio when you hit turnouts and crossovers as well as dynamic shadows in the cab (among other things) while all along maintaining a consistent stutter free 60 fps (with a monitor that has a 60Hz refresh rate anyway).

In order to keep the user immersed in the simulation accurate train handling physics that force the user into consistently thinking ahead (just like the real world) when applying power or braking would also be needed otherwise you just end up with what we have seen from other train games.

[csantucci]

If conrail1 would'nt have written so, I would have done. Lateral and vertical cab sway due to unregular motion, train tilting due to track elevation in curves, realistic audio, realistic cab commands and indicators are essential to increase the look and feel of the simulation. And I hope that ORTS will go in this direction.

Carlo

[GoGoran]

If conrail1 would'nt have written so, I would have done. Lateral and vertical cab sway due to unregular motion, train tilting due to track elevation in curves, realistic audio, realistic cab commands and indicators are essential to increase the look and feel of the simulation. And I hope that ORTS will go in this direction.

Carlo

But that will have to be configurable - an old narrow guage steam loco bumps and sways much more than a large freight diesel, and a modern high-speed train has no motion at all - except for active tilting in bends, maybe, like the Italian Pendolino (this would be a particularly nice feature to have in the sim !).

[GaryG]

Until we have chairs that bounce and sway along with screen movements as well as the correct odors and sounds, we can not have a fully immersive 100% railroading simulator.

I am satisfied with the approximations we have available to us currently with the physics, visual and aural presentations slowly but constantly improving.

GaryG