The truth behind MSTS vs ORTS

[R. Steele]

To each their own is what I say. If you like MSTS then surely that's fine, and if you love OR then that is equally fine. It seems to me that whatever is done to promote train simulation must be a plus.
It would be a poor world if we all did the same - variety is definitely the spice of life. This hobby gives pleasure and a sense of achievement in so many ways such as creating routes, building railway stock, etc. In addition it allows us to develop many virtual friendships, which in some cases turns into face-to-face friendships.
We should celebrate this hobby of ours, as well as recognising and acknowledging all of the excellent work on offer.

Such a generous, excellent, good-humored and civil statement cannot be repeated enough. You don't post much, but when you do, it's worth its weight in gold. Thank you!

[kd5giv]

Hi,

I like OR a lot with the realism of connecting to cars, if the consists are in the right direction. If the consists are backwards and you connect with brakes and hoses disconnected and stuff it can get very confusing trying to get them setup right and the air built up. It may seem like a backward consist is crazy talk, but remember MSTS can roll the wheels on wagons backwards, opposite from the direction of travel? This is one of the only activities that Full Bucket 3.03 has on here where I can find all the rolling stock for the activity.

Also there was a reported bug for Full Bucket where the signals were dark and I can't find a fix for it.

I was an MSTS driver back in 2004 or so down to maybe 2013, but since I became a limo driver for Union Pacific, I am around yard working trains and I guess that job got my train sim blood going again. Now I don't know too many routes anymore so I thought about making a route that I know the trains better (Enid, Duncan, Oklahoma City Subs).

I think there is major potential with OR and I wish I could help with it, but I don't know programing at all.

[R. Steele]

Hi,

I like OR a lot with the realism of connecting to cars, if the consists are in the right direction. If the consists are backwards and you connect with brakes and hoses disconnected and stuff it can get very confusing trying to get them setup right and the air built up. It may seem like a backward consist is crazy talk, but remember MSTS can roll the wheels on wagons backwards, opposite from the direction of travel? This is one of the only activities that Full Bucket 3.03 has on here where I can find all the rolling stock for the activity.

Also there was a reported bug for Full Bucket where the signals were dark and I can't find a fix for it.

...

There is a learning curve to ORTS, the track monitor window [F5] is good to use if you get the directions mixed up.

Regarding the fix for the dark signals on FBL. Remove the stray underscore _ after SKIP in the sigcfg.dat file.

SIMISA@@@@@@@@@@JINX0G0t______

Skip _(

SIGNAL TYPE NAMING STANDARD

ORTS doesn't accept Skip followed by an Underline _

OR will accept either Comment or SKIP in dat, eng, wag, and other MSTS type files.

After fixing the FBL signals you may want to learn how to use the Signal Light Glow option in OR. Section 6.10.7 Signal light glow, in manual. More than likely you'll also have to adjust the radius in the sigcfg file, normally 0.13 is a good starting point, use 0.08 for dwarf signals.

[kd5giv]

Regarding the fix for the dark signals on FBL. Remove the stray underscore _ after SKIP in the sigcfg.dat file.

SIMISA@@@@@@@@@@JINX0G0t______

Skip _(

SIGNAL TYPE NAMING STANDARD

ORTS doesn't accept Skip followed by an Underline _

OR will accept either Comment or SKIP in dat, eng, wag, and other MSTS type files.

After fixing the FBL signals you may want to learn how to use the Signal Light Glow option in OR. Section 6.10.7 Signal light glow, in manual. More than likely you'll also have to adjust the radius in the sigcfg file, normally 0.13 is a good starting point, use 0.08 for dwarf signals.

Thanks for the signal fix. I saw in the bug report that the SKIP statement was the problem, so I just deleted the line. Then the signals worked, but the lights were huge. I think I was using that distance addon from Maple leaf or somebody to see signals from far away, but I will also do the radius change you suggest.

[R. Steele]

The radius numbers I posted will probably not give the same results when using the MLT siglight.ace.
Here's the difference between the siglight.ace file I'm using for OR (on the left) and MLT version (I don't particularily care for it)

bandicam 2016-07-25 11-15-15-053.jpg

[ftldave]

Hi Dave, I'd be glad to adjust whatever files my skills allow. Let me know if you need help.

Gerry, thank you very much for the kind offer. I'll organize the files and will be in touch.

Dave

[canuckster19]

Let's remember that some of the critics on this thread are already on the record with previous comments knocking open source projects in general because they don't create as many jobs among the IT 'brotherhood' as legitimate for-profit software ventures do. Their agendas are bigger than simple enjoyment of a simulator.

A lot of truth in this, I simply enjoy ORTS because I can play it at 60 FPS on my pimped out beast rather than MSTS on my outdated laptop with Windows 7, maybe getting +30 FPS in low object areas. I haven't had ORTS fall below 50 yet, and that was with My train, plus two AI trains and a well filled yard at Winslow AZ, so lovely to pullup Afterburner and seeing my Graphics card barely breaking a sweat.

[qballbandit]

The whole great FPS has me stumped.
I have a pretty decent system, although a little long in the tooth now, and my FPS can be so inconsistent from session to session, even on the same route/activities.
I do mod all of my routes out, populate sidings and yards with a mix of high and low poly cars, and run a few AI trains in for good measure.
But I am often struggling to get past 20 FPS, sometime 17-20. I have not found the magic setting combo yet.
Pretty much all non-need tasks/services are disabled prior to running, including AV, on my WIN7 machine.
3.2g quad core, 4g ram, and 1gig ram vid card. (A gaming machine by design, 6 years ago.)

[canuckster19]

The whole great FPS has me stumped.
I have a pretty decent system, although a little long in the tooth now, and my FPS can be so inconsistent from session to session, even on the same route/activities.
I do mod all of my routes out, populate sidings and yards with a mix of high and low poly cars, and run a few AI trains in for good measure.
But I am often struggling to get past 20 FPS, sometime 17-20. I have not found the magic setting combo yet.
Pretty much all non-need tasks/services are disabled prior to running, including AV, on my WIN7 machine.
3.2g quad core, 4g ram, and 1gig ram vid card. (A gaming machine by design, 6 years ago.)

I'm using a rig that's less than a year old, so, yeah that helps. Windows 10 is much better as well for gaming I have found. Although I understand you might want to keep your laptop on WIN7 for the activity editor, I have a six year old laptop for that.

[EricF]

FPS can be so inconsistent from session to session, even on the same route/activities.
I do mod all of my routes out, populate sidings and yards with a mix of high and low poly cars, and run a few AI trains in for good measure.
But I am often struggling to get past 20 FPS, sometime 17-20. I have not found the magic setting combo yet.
Pretty much all non-need tasks/services are disabled prior to running, including AV, on my WIN7 machine.
3.2g quad core, 4g ram, and 1gig ram vid card. (A gaming machine by design, 6 years ago.)

1GB Graphics card VRAM may hinder it a bit -- Open Rails can make better use of the graphics card; lots of graphics calls for objects could be hitting a bottleneck sometimes.
4GB RAM ought to be just fine.
Your CPU -- just curious -- AMD or Intel? AMD CPUs tend to be less efficient in single-thread performance, and Open Rails isn't a heavily multithreaded application. So again, if you happen to have an AMD CPU, you might be hitting an occasional bottleneck, especially in conjunction with limited VRAM -- sort of a "perfect storm" combination once in a while that hits the frame rate until everything settles down again. Limited onboard cache on an otherwise good CPU can cause headaches, too. Just depends on the particular CPU architecture.

[qballbandit]

Hello Eric,
It's an older AMD Phenom II Processor/ATI 5770 combo. I had a feeling the card may be one factor. Of course my route modding adds to it as well. I get lots of tiles in the 1,000 to 2,000 object range. Though, with ignorance, thought OR wouldn't mind it.
MSTS framerates, overall, are higher than OR for me, though OR loads the tiles faster.

[Vince]

The whole great FPS has me stumped.

Good Morning Neil,
Have you looked at the F5 Debug Information HUD to help you get an idea why?

1. Press F5
2. Holding the keyboard [SHIFT] down, press the F5 key 6 more times to cycle through the HUD panels to the Debug Panel.

As an overloaded render process will impact video frame rate you may see why the frame rate drops.
There is a lot of good information on ALL panels of the HUD.

Regards,