Coordinate discrepancies between ORTS and MSTS

[Dispatcher]

I work with a route author in fine tuning a route before release to the public. I run over the route looking for little things like floating trees, etc., and report back to him, usually with a photo showing the no-no and the compass on the top of frame. We have worked this way for years without any problems. This latest route of his, however, is so dense that I cannot run it while in MSTS and must run in ORTS. I used MSTS before because it is much easier to stop, shoot a photo and then commence my run without that annoying wait while the air builds up in the braking system. He then uses the coordinates to hone onto the area and correct same. Lately, he would note the coordinates that the ORTS would show and then would not be able to find my noted problem using the MSTS Activity. Eventually, we discovered the coordinates in ORTS do not correspond to the coordinates in the MSTS Activity editor. One case in point-- At the East end of a siding on the route we are working on now, the coordinates in ORTS for the points on that siding switch are-- lat 47.216400, long 121.171300, and in MSTS -- lat 47.22605, long 121.16087. . When my author friend tries to find the problem, he misses greatly. That is far too much discrepancy between the two. With the thousands of routes available since MSTS first showed up way back and without any one stating a compass problem, I would be inclined to believe that the ORTS compass is at fault. Has any one else found this to be true or they just don't notice? Could someone check into and correct this problem with the ORTS compass if,in fact, it is at fault?

Moe Smith

[NW 2156]

Even more issues come up with TSRE as well. It's still very frustrating.

Robert

[charland]

Open Rail's latitude and longitude have always been off. I have no idea how much but when someone sent me a screenshot to check something it was a good mile off, the few times I've tried using it it's been anywhere from a few hundred feet off to a mile.

It's a long known issue, almost from OR's start. that has never been fixed.

Paul :-)

[Vince]

Hi Paul,

When you say "Open Rail's latitude and longitude have always been off." what exactly do the coordinates differ from?

regards,

[charland]

Hi Vince,

Here's a little demonstration for you. I had a test train sitting in the Fonda NY yard. Took a screenshot while in MSTS and then another while in OR, the train didn't move and in both cases I trued to camera so it was looking east just because the latitude and longitude were partially covered in the MSTS shot by the cabview.

MSTS co-ordinance were lat 42.95451 lon -74.36449



IR co-ordinance were lat 42.845190 lon -74.379260



If you put the Open Rails co-ordinance in MSTS Route Editor you end up about a mile away from the engine.



This is pretty typical with OR and the bug was reported to the OR team on ET by someone about a week after the very first beta was out. Nothing has every been done by OR to correct it.

Paul :-)

[Vince]

Hi Paul,Your saying that compared to MSTS that Open Rails is off.
Now from building the NEC4 I noticed in MSTS there are missing miles between Philadelphia and Wilmington so MSTS is flawed also.

I would love to how MSTS & Open Rails locations matches up with the real world as shown by lets say, Google Maps?
Those missing miles, about 5 or 6 as I recall have always bothered me a bit.

regards,

[charland]

Hi Vince,

Is that 5 or 6 miles missing compared to an Employee Timetable? The farther east you go the worse it gets. When I was doing the first version of the Dominion Atlantic I lost 15 miles between Windsor and Windsor Junction, about a 40 mile run, that's west to east. When I was drawing north to south it was next to nothing, maybe 0.2 miles over a 25 mile stretch.

If you really want to see the problem in OR, hop in an engine, turn the compass on, and take a ride where there are signals. Take a screen shot every time the mile to the next signal change, then go into Route Editor and go to the latitude and longitude that show on the compass, you probably will be no where near the track.

Paul :-)

[ebnertra000]

There's a way to determine the extent of the discrepency in TSRE with the help of the ruler tool. The difference between game length and geo length (real-World distance) can vary widely by location and direction.

In Duluth, MN, I got the following. All game lengths are 128m, values below are geo length:
North/South: 133.1m
East/West: 123.7m
NW/SE: 124m
NE/SW: 132.4m
Worst discrepency: NNE/SSW (134.4m)

This is by no means the worst I've seen. I started a fictional route using terrain northeast of Japan, and 160m game length showed up as 328m geo length. A lot of places could benefit from a revised World projection, or some other fix to this if it's possible

[Rick-MONON]

LOLOL

Do not forget, MSTS and OR are flat.

The Earth is round....

[Erick_Cantu]

And boy oh boy did FSX cause headaches for scenery developers when it went to a round world model.

I mean, it's worth it, but there was some definite technique adjustment.

[Vince]

Hi Vince, Is that 5 or 6 miles missing compared to an Employee Timetable? The farther east you go the worse it gets. When I was doing the first version of the Dominion Atlantic I lost 15 miles between Windsor and Windsor Junction, about a 40 mile run, that's west to east. When I was drawing north to south it was next to nothing, maybe 0.2 miles over a 25 mile stretch.If you really want to see the problem in OR, hop in an engine, turn the compass on, and take a ride where there are signals. Take a screen shot every time the mile to the next signal change, then go into Route Editor and go to the latitude and longitude that show on the compass, you probably will be no where near the track. Paul :-)

Hi Paul,
The missing miles are real world survey distances. Using the MSTS RE as a standard does not work.

So it looks like we have three different programs, MSTS, Open Rails and TSRE that show differences to real world survey data and the differences vary according to location. Oh great!

So which one of the three programs comes closer (closest?) to real world survey data?
Would one even know if a particular route was one foot or 1 mile off position? I certainly can't tell!

Seems to me as though as long as a route has the correct gradient profile and curvature it wouldn't be noticeable by the user if the route was a couple of miles off position? How would you know while running a route unless you set out to measure?

I can tell you that the latitude / longitude coordinates from Google Earth push-pin data I used with Route_Riter to lay out the LIRR markers was spot on.

regards,

[geepster775]

Now if Paul had input those same OR compass coordinates in TSRE, where would the jump have landed the camera?

[charland]

I'm not even sure I have TSRE loading on my system anymore, still using MSTS RE but I'll check once I've had another coffee!

I suspect a lot of the missing mileage is the way MSTS calculates the length of each curve section. Instead of calculating the actual diameter of the curve and then the number of degrees to get it's length, MSTS just calculated the distance between the two end points making a shorter distance. If you're route has a lot of curves, you're going to be out a few miles.

That said, you still need to us MSTS to be able to get the location of mile posts to be placed in RE, you'd never have a chance to do that using OR. The only alternative would be to sit down and calculate track section lengths until you find the next mile.

Paul :-)

[charland]

Just checked in TSRE and it was correct, put me right where my engine would have been in the Fonda yard.

Paul :-)

[Coonskin]

LOLOL

Do not forget, MSTS and OR are flat.

The Earth is round....

Are you SURE it's round? I've been doing some research using a highly respected research site, and I'm discovering that the earth may indeed be FLAT. FURTHERMORE, we never went to the moon... and Bigfoot is documented and real... and extra-terrestrial aliens have breakfast at Tiffany's on a regular basis, but all such information is being suppressed by the alien using Hillary Clinton's body. (Hillary has been deceased for years.) This and more await your discovery if you dare do the research.

The truth is out there.

Simply go to YouTube and do your homework.

Sheesh.