2 Operations Questions

[MSTS lifer]

I have 2 two questions:

1. Can you set the starting speed of the lead engine in OR like you can in the MSTS activity editor? IE, designate the train to be at 20 mph at the start of the activity.

2. The zoom out camera. Can it be adjusted for a helicopter view or "Goggle Earth" view? The cam dat I currently have for MSTS does both.

Thanks

[seagoon]

Can you set the starting speed of the lead engine in OR like you can in the MSTS activity editor? IE, designate the train to be at 20 mph at the start of the activity....

Nope.
Not yet, anyway.
This means that some (many?) Activities which start on the fly need to be compensated for when played under Open Rails.
It can be a little bit irksome when the Activity's AI meets are based on "on time on location" formats.

Bruce

[rdamurphy]

I ran into kind of an odd thing when looking at some MSTS activity problems in OR. Basically, if you create a consist in the AE, it sets a speed limit in the .con file based on the route the consist's activity is created for. However, if you use that consist in another route, the consist has a speed limit that does not match the one in the route, which causes some odd things to happen. I believe, that OR doesn't use that particular piece of data any more. There are other oddities in MSTS that require that some things will need more work to get them to work correctly.

I, for one, have spent some interesting moments scratching my head wondering what the heck the programmers were thinking when they wrote MSTS...

Robert

[mikephfl]

I, for one, have spent some interesting moments scratching my head wondering what the heck the programmers were thinking when they wrote MSTS...

Robert

You and many others have wondered the same thing. It's well known that KUJU wasn't ready to release it but MS forced them to.

Other consist building programs such as, <shameless plug>YardMaster</shameless plug>, let you modify the maxvelocity value which is what I believe you are referring to that is limiting the AI consists.

[MSTS lifer]

I need to clarify something. I'm taking about the starting speed of the player train, not AI traffic. AI traffic has always been a "crap shoot" for me when planning an activity in MSTS. That can be ironed out after running the activity a few times and making time adjustments. Still not quite perfect, but achieves the same thing.

[rdamurphy]

To be honest, I've never liked the activities where you're plopped into the cab of a moving locomotive. Too disorienting for me, and rather unrealistic. Almost as much as I hated those Flight Sim ones that plopped you into the seat of a 747 on approach to Chicago in 0 visibility and expected you to land 30 seconds later without making headlines...

Robert