The problem
Sometimes, when using the "last car" external view (the one activated by pressing the "3" key), the camera shakes from side to side: it abruptly changes position and orientation horizontally. This is exceedingly annoying. I suspect that I am not the only person who has encountered this problem.
I have determined that this only ever happens when my train has an end-of-train device. As far as I understand, in Open Rails, the end-of-train device is treated as though it were a car coupled behind the last real car of the train. Because of this, the "last car" view is attached to the end-of-train device, not to the last real car. Sometimes, perhaps especially when travelling along a curve, the end-of-train device abruptly changes its orientation in the horizontal plane of rotation. Because the camera is attached to it, the camera abruptly changes position and orientation along with it.
Further evidence in support of this diagnosis of the problem is that I sometimes see the end-of-train device changing orientation when looking closely at it while travelling along a curve.
My current workaround
Typically, when this problem occurs, I manually switch the view to the real last car (the one preceding the end-of train device; from the perspective of Open Rails, the second-last car) by pressing alt-pageUp. However, when I leave the "last car" view and later return to it, the view becomes attached to the end-of-train device again, which means that the workaround must be repeated.
The proposed solution
I assume that it is not trivially easy to prevent this rotational behaviour of the end-of-train device, or to fundamentally change how end-of-train devices are represented in Open Rails, without severe losses of backward compatibility. I therefore propose a change which will hopefully eliminate this problem for most players without such costs.
I propose that, if an end-of-train device is present, Open Rails should automatically attach the "last car" view to the real last car instead of the end-of-train device. This would essentially be an automated implementation of my workaround. As far as I understand, the backward compatibility risks of this solution should be minimal: no part of the simulation is changed by this, and it is very unlikely for any user to prefer the old behaviour. It should be relatively easy to implement this because, as far as I understand, end-of-train devices in Open Rails are a distinct type of object in the simulation, which means that the logic to identify them and prevent them from being the focus of a camera view should be simple.
Sometimes, when using the "last car" external view (the one activated by pressing the "3" key), the camera shakes from side to side: it abruptly changes position and orientation horizontally. This is exceedingly annoying. I suspect that I am not the only person who has encountered this problem.
I have determined that this only ever happens when my train has an end-of-train device. As far as I understand, in Open Rails, the end-of-train device is treated as though it were a car coupled behind the last real car of the train. Because of this, the "last car" view is attached to the end-of-train device, not to the last real car. Sometimes, perhaps especially when travelling along a curve, the end-of-train device abruptly changes its orientation in the horizontal plane of rotation. Because the camera is attached to it, the camera abruptly changes position and orientation along with it.
Further evidence in support of this diagnosis of the problem is that I sometimes see the end-of-train device changing orientation when looking closely at it while travelling along a curve.
My current workaround
Typically, when this problem occurs, I manually switch the view to the real last car (the one preceding the end-of train device; from the perspective of Open Rails, the second-last car) by pressing alt-pageUp. However, when I leave the "last car" view and later return to it, the view becomes attached to the end-of-train device again, which means that the workaround must be repeated.
The proposed solution
I assume that it is not trivially easy to prevent this rotational behaviour of the end-of-train device, or to fundamentally change how end-of-train devices are represented in Open Rails, without severe losses of backward compatibility. I therefore propose a change which will hopefully eliminate this problem for most players without such costs.
I propose that, if an end-of-train device is present, Open Rails should automatically attach the "last car" view to the real last car instead of the end-of-train device. This would essentially be an automated implementation of my workaround. As far as I understand, the backward compatibility risks of this solution should be minimal: no part of the simulation is changed by this, and it is very unlikely for any user to prefer the old behaviour. It should be relatively easy to implement this because, as far as I understand, end-of-train devices in Open Rails are a distinct type of object in the simulation, which means that the logic to identify them and prevent them from being the focus of a camera view should be simple.
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