UK DMU - Getting Moving?

[Shawmut]

I found out it was not too lengthy to cope with the odd values of the DMU .eng files.
Here http://www.interazioni-educative.it/...lation_DMU.zip you can download a .zip file containing two files that have to be unpacked in the Open Rails 1.3 folder - standard version - (after having backed up the originals, that is Orts.Simulation.dll and Orts.Simulation.pdb).
They include a method that recognizes the odd values, and corrects them, that is it multiplies by 10 the values of the max forces for every gear and divides by 10 the values of the throttle percentage.
It is not needed to check specific OR option checkboxes.
A feedback would be welcome.

Hi Carlo,

I did some testing with the MEP route and the MEP 108 DMBS Blue DMU running the consist "~MEP-108-Blue-2Car." I found that first gear would not start the consist at all on a 0% flat area (the Kings Cross station) with 15% throttle, but that upping the throttle to 50% did the trick. I then ran right up to its maximum speed by shifting up through the 4 gears at 100% throttle. I could maintain a speed by dropping back to 15%. So far, so good.

However, once I dropped the throttle to 0% the engine immediately turned off and I could not get it to start again by using the Shift-Y keystroke. It did this whether it was in gear or in neutral. Perhaps this DMU was designed such that 15% throttle was maintained all the time; I don't know.

Cheers,

David

[csantucci]

Hi David,
thank you that you tested that. I looked in the AtomicSystems forum post at what else was changed in these .eng files, and found out this
DieselEngineIdleRPM( 2 )
In some other cases it's even 1.
From the post I see that before this intervention idle RPM were 150.
ORTS in general takes .eng values seriously, so it idles the engine at such values: a small RPM oscillation and clearly the engine stops.
Therefore I had to introduce another check, which raises idle RPMs if they are defined as too small.
A revised .zip file may be downloaded from here
http://www.interazioni-educative.it/...n_DMU_Rev1.zip .
Again the two included files must replace the original ones in the standard OR 1.3, after having backed up the two original files.

[Shawmut]

Hi Carlo,

Success! I used your revised files to overwrite the ones from yesterday and tried the exact same testing scenario: same DMU and same consist out of Kings Cross. And this time it worked perfectly. Acceleration and braking were as before, but now when the throttle was reduced to idle, the engine did just that: it idled instead of turning off.

Using your mods means that OR is now that much closer to the "plug 'n play" model that Vern, the OP, talked about in his messages of this thread. So again, thank you so much for your ingenious work on OR; every time you come up with a mod the software works even better!

Cheers,

David

[csantucci]

That's good. When bug patch commit will again be enabled for the standard OR, I foresee to commit the patch.
In the meantime here there are also the two Orts.Simulation files for the OR 1.3E MG version http://www.interazioni-educative.it/...ion_DMU_MG.zip that solve the DMU problem .
I have also updated the OR 1.3E MG downloadable packs (both the runtime and the development pack) adding the DMU patch.

When I have time I look forward to running the MEP ORTS activity you mentioned. At a first glance however I didn't find in the activity pack (that I downloaded) the file IDs for the four UKtrainsim downloads needed.

[Shawmut]

Thanks for updating the MG version, Carlo, as that's the only version of OR that I regularly use (mainly because of vastly improved framerates).

The four files you'll need to run Stanley's activity are:

UKTS_4166_47773_RES.zip
UKTS_22066_Parcels128s.zip.zip (yes, that second .zip is not a typo)
UKTS_33080_LU_72TSR.zip
UKTS_33608_AAC_MET_PACK.zip

Cheers,

David

[csantucci]

Thanks David, that was kind of you.

[Stuz]

Hi Carlo,
I have followed this thread with great interest. I downloaded and installed the patch you prepared and it was very successful in that I can control the speed of the DMUs with the throttle now instead of having two speeds, on full or idle. Thanks for taking the time to make the changes.
Regards Stu

[Shawmut]

Late last night I discovered another anomaly with running an MEP DMU in OR. It has nothing to do with what we've been discussing re: questionable engine values. Here's what happened:

I started up the activity called "Dreary DMU Day." In this scenario you start at Retford with a 6-car consist, or should I say a supposed 6-car consist. The DMU is a DMBS-DTCL combo in the "MEP-BRCW104 DMBS Blue" folder, and the consist is "~MEP-BRCW104-6Car." Behind your two-car consist lies another set of the BRCW104's, this time a 4-car set. Here's what the activity tells you about them:

"Your local service to Lincoln basically consists of the front 2 car unit only. The 4 car unit attached at the rear is simply running back ECS to Worksop. (You will detach yourself from this unit on arrival at Worksop)."

All well and good, except this is what greets you when you step out of the cab of the head DMBS at Retford:

1.jpg

Hmm, where's that driving trailer behind the lead unit? I see only 5 cars, not 6.

Sometimes this is due to a faulty eng/wag file not pointing to the correct shape file, so I opened up the DTCL eng file to take a look. No, all the nomenclature was correct and the file pointed to the correct shape file. Curious …

So I opened up the consist in Goku's great consist editor, and lo and behold it displayed the correct 6-car consist! You can clearly see the reversed driving trailer (in US parlance, the "cab car"). See pic below:

2.jpg

Time to get out the eng files and do some comparison. What I found was that the DTCL had the exhaust offsets removed from the DieselSpecialEffects subsection of the Engine section of the file. Here's what the DMBS subsection looks like:

Engine ( MEP-104DMBS
Effects
(
DieselSpecialEffects
(
comment
(
the format of these little blocks is as follow:
offset.x offset.y offset.z
normal.x normal.y normal.z
width in metres
defining the offset from the shape pivot point
where steam / smoke should appear, the direction
it should go and the width of the nozzle
)
Exhaust1
(
.600 3.700 -8.689
0 1 0
0.1
)
Exhaust2
(
-0.600 3.700 -8.689
0 1 0
0.1
)
)
)

And here is what the MEP crew did to delete those nozzles from the unpowered trailer:

Engine ( MEP-104DTCL
Effects
(
DieselSpecialEffects
(
comment
(
the format of these little blocks is as follow:
offset.x offset.y offset.z
normal.x normal.y normal.z
width in metres
defining the offset from the shape pivot point
where steam / smoke should appear, the direction
it should go and the width of the nozzle
)
)
)

In other words, they simply loped off the Exhaust 1 and 2 parameters. MSTS evidently has no problem with this, but OR will not display the car in the consist (though it does load and run properly, something MSTS couldn't do most of the time when it couldn't find a particular parameter).

The answer to this problem is to finish the job that the MEP crew started: delete the Effects subset entirely, as well as the four DieselSmokeEffect lines. With that done this is what you are presented with when you fire up the sim:

3.jpg

Voila! A proper 6-car set. Now your rear end won't be hanging out in the breeze when you drop off the 4-car Empty Coaching Stock consist at Worksop.

For those of you who would prefer not to modify the MSTS eng file for the DTCL, attached is the file I used to get the engine to show up in-game. Put this in an "OpenRails" folder within the MEP-BRCW104 folder and you should be good to go.

Cheers,

David


MEP-104DTCL.zip

[csantucci]

Yes,
this is marked as a "known issue" in paragraph 17.1 of the OR manual. Unfortunately it isn't yet solved, because the parsers are bad beasts.

[dcarleton]

The issue is also discussed, in depth, in this thread here:

https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?329449-Missing-engine-in-OR-only&highlight=Cravens

[csantucci]

With experimental version x.4318 the fix is now present also in the standard Open Rails version.

[Stuz]

Hi,
With regard to MEP "Dreary DMU Day" there are two AI DMU early on the activity that glide passed with only one car. I presume there should be two but I cant identify them so as to change the Eng. file to enable them to show, if this is indeed the case. Could someone be kind enough to identify them? My activity editor wont open on this activity for some reason Maybe because I have already altered the 104DTCL as per Shawmuts earlier post
Regards Stu.

[brace2011]

Hi,
With regard to MEP "Dreary DMU Day" there are two AI DMU early on the activity that glide passed with only one car. I presume there should be two but I cant identify them so as to change the Eng. file to enable them to show, if this is indeed the case. Could someone be kind enough to identify them? My activity editor wont open on this activity for some reason Maybe because I have already altered the 104DTCL as per Shawmuts earlier post
Regards Stu.

Hi Stu

It won't take you long to amend all the offending files. The problem only occurs in *DTCL*.eng files in DMUs. They are to be found in each of the MEP-101 trainset folders (there are 5 of them), the MEP-GRCW100 folder and the MEP-BRCW104 folder. I think this is an exhaustive list.

Then you should find all the MEP DMUs appear correctly in all activities.

Martin

[Shawmut]

Hi,
With regard to MEP "Dreary DMU Day" there are two AI DMU early on the activity that glide passed with only one car. I presume there should be two but I cant identify them so as to change the Eng. file to enable them to show, if this is indeed the case. Could someone be kind enough to identify them? My activity editor wont open on this activity for some reason Maybe because I have already altered the 104DTCL as per Shawmuts earlier post
Regards Stu.

Hi Stu,

The two services that display that one-car consist in "Dreary Day" are actually the AI versions of the DTCL you converted for the player consist! The answer is to go into that same folder - MEP-BRCW104 - and do the same surgery to the AI version of the DTCL that you did to the player one. That file would be:

#MEP-104DTCL.eng

As Martin above points out, there are other DTCL's in MEP's Trainset folder; perhaps a project for a <ahem> dreary day …

Cheers,

David

[Stuz]

Many thanks to both of you for your replies. It is in fact a dreary day here today so I plan to get right on to this.
Regards Stu.