The future of Open Rails

[landnrailroader]

I have stayed with MSTS and now ORTS for one reason. IT JUST FEELS RIGHT. Unlike many, I have a little experience with the "real thing" thanks to 13 years at Southern Railway in a period when wildcat strikes were almost a weekly occurence. I tried TRAINZ and the DoveTail products and yes, the graphics might or might not be as good as, or better than ORTS, but if it don't feel right and I have to pay for everything, forget it. I recently bought the Shasta, Donner, and Mullan Pass routes while they were on sale and they are really well done. They have one signal that I wish was available in freeware and that is the bi-directional intermediate signal where you have heads in both directions on the same mast. You can do this easily and correctly with a signal bridge but not with a mast signal. But it is what it is. A greater issue is Microsoft. For example you can (and I do) keep XP on a older machine and use it for things that don't work well if at all, on Win-10. Now Win-11 is out and if that old XP breaks down, even if you have the install discs, I am advised by my supplier that newer disks etc. will not run on XP. So what happens when Win-?? comes out. Win-11 is a b****h now but maybe if it only accepts the current level of ORTS--what then,? I have two new routes in my queue and I just sent a large (tracks & some roads only) route to one of our members to detail. The new routes are the Kanawha Sub. of CSX(C&O) and the New River Sub. Both will have all branches as they exist now, and in some cases as far back as 1980. I'm not including Russell as it is mostly car storage now, so the Kanawha Sub. will start at Ashland yard. I had already completed tracks & most roads for the Big Sandy Sub. south of Paintsville, KY but I decided to extend it to its start which is at Catlettsburg, KY off the Kanawha Sub and I am piddling along on that while further detailing the 2nd version of the Knoxville Division, L&N with most Southern lines too. I expect that some of my routes will go to the "incomplete" group. My son-in-law has the necessary data to upload all of my unfinished routes if I get my last Running Orders before they are finished. It was fortunate that Don Karch sent his Mega-Colorado route out when he knew his time was limited to a few weeks and I completed it for him to the limit of his plans. All of us need tto consider that issue - all of us face it sooner or later.

Jerry Sullivan

[eric]

I decided long ago that the simulator I was going to use was one where I could build my own routes. I didn't particularly care for the defaults, and wanted to run places I was familiar with.

While Railworks had a route editor, I was already invested in MSTS and didn't see a reason to stray. And, as Pete noted, Railworks later DTG Train Simulator was primarily paid DLC.

Fast forward 20 years, and while there are some great eye candy sims out there, the only one with a decent route editor remains ORTS...

While that new F-350 with the leather heated seats at the dealership looks really sweet, once I see the price tag, I eventually come back to the realization that my existing truck does the job I need it to do, and it's paid for....

[BrandonS261]

I do understand why the Open Rails team chose to go with MonoGame after some research but there are some drawbacks as there is no tooling that goes with MonoGame and it is the platform that took over for XNA.

I got this off of Wikipedia! MonoGame is a free and open source C# framework used by game developers to make games for multiple platforms and other systems. It is also used to make Windows and Windows Phone games run on other systems. It supports iOS, Android, macOS, tvOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.[3][4] It implements the Microsoft XNA 4 application programming interface (API).[5] It has been used for several games, including Bastion, Celeste, Fez, and Stardew Valley.

For ones who would like to help with coding or learn how to code in C# I did find a few YouTube videos on MonoGame so I thought I would share it here! Sure MonoGame may not be what "everyone" wants for Open Rails but it is what the Open Rails team has chosen to use and I do have high hopes for the future of OR as a whole. Sure the graphics may not be the best in the business but I think the Open Rails team was looking for a way to improve Open Rails without loosing much of what has been accomplished already.

I am sure there was quite a bit of research was done before choosing MonoGame and we all just need to back the ORMT and work with them to all make Open Rails better! For modelers we can first start by exporting our models to the new features that OR now has. 3D cabs, the updated PBR textures and glTF files instead of .S files. This is still a work in progress and I hope we can all work together and stop arguing about this.

The ORMT has done a good job with managing everything and doing what is best for OR as a whole. YES UE5 would be very cool for Open Rails but why don't we first update what we have first and work with the ORMT to come up with updating features, new ideas and backing up the ORMT in there decision instead of trying to work against them.

I know I was the one who started this thread and thought UE5 would be a great idea but that is all it was! An idea, and I think we need to just keep moving forward with OR because we have already come a long ways from the MSTS era and it is already much improved from what we had.

Yes there are many improvements that need to be done and yes graphics and eye candy is still one of them along with an activities, route and consist editor but that will all come in time!

Brandon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57r4EuAvGGI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw85...K8lQSoKX1USZst M-ZXikFHp

[John_P]

Back in the lockdown period, I got Open Rails and also bought Trainz 2019, when it was on sale for $15. I ended up not using either of them very much, but I've recently become more interested again. Certainly a free program written by enthusiasts is a good thing, but I have to say (hoping not to hurt anyone's feelings!) that Trainz looks better when it runs. The saving grace of that, though, is that it's a lot less demanding on the computer, and I have a very modest laptop that's not much good for gaming. OR works properly, and the action in Trainz is pretty jerky. I checked the specs of what's needed to run Trainz, and I'm failing to meet them by a lot. It would be good if the user were given an ability to turn graphical quality up or down, according to the hardware it had to run on.

Another thing Trainz seems to get right is the route creation software, which they call Surveyor. I haven't tried it, but there are videos on Youtube that make it look as if you can get very nice results in a short time. Is there anything there that offers ideas?