Couple of Issues With Respect to Open Rails 1.6

[meeshu]

Running activity under Open Rails 1.6 stable. Noticed that there is a significant difference in train speed indications between the Track Monitor (F4) and the locomotive screen.

Why such a big difference in speed indication? Which is the correct speed? Or are both speed indications wrong?

speed_discrepancy.png

And noticed that on odd occasion, and in viewing from either the locomotive cab (1 key), or viewing from head out view (from the locomotive) (Home key), the outside view stutters (once) briefly despite the video frame rate running at 59~60 frames per second (according to the Train Monitor).

Never really noticed any stuttering on previous versions of Open Rails (including testing, unstable, and monogame versions) unless the activities were running at low frame rates (much less than 59 frames per second).

EDIT: Another issue I have just noticed is that on outside view of train (4 key), the train appears to be slightly blurred with double images for the locomotives and cars!? The surrounding scenery remains sharp though. This blurring disappears shortly. Tried taking screenshots of the blurring, but the screenshots turned out to be sharp!?

Never seen this train blurring before until now.

[geepster775]

Not seeing that.

In fact, I did a little intentional wheel slip and everything resorted back to normal.

But then again, I usually don't dabble in crowdsourced cabviews or MSTS grade physics. So who knows what else is going on with your installations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbFOnhNBRtQ

[pschlik]

That's all signs of using advanced couplers. Don't. They are quite broken and have been for years. 1.6 changes nothing about advanced couplers, I don't see any changes in the last 5 years, and everyone's off doing other things as there isn't much motivation to fix a rarely used feature that most people already know to avoid.

[meeshu]

Comments noted, thanks.

Advanced couplers? What is that? I am essentially using the default settings in Open Rails, and I don't recall seeing anything about "advanced couplers".

So how do I check for advanced couplers setting(s) in Open Rails? What do I need to change in settings?

Thank you.

[pschlik]

Advanced couplers use ORTSTensionStiffness, ORTSTensionSlack, ORTSCompressionStiffness, and ORTSCompressionSlack in the Coupling section of the .eng and/or .wag files. If those 4 parameters are deleted or commented out, couplers will return to being 'simple' which work much more reliably.

[meeshu]

Thank you very much for the clarification.

I did a thorough search of all locomotives and cars (on my computer) for the presence of these ORTS . . statements/parameters. Found 19 well cars which had these ORTS statements/parameters. My test train consisted of intermodal cars which included some of these ORTS statements/parameters.

Deleted all these extra ORTS statements/parameters within the affected cars and re-ran my test train. So far there have been no further issues with regard to blurring or double imaging and stuttering!

For a moment I suspected my video card (driver) was faulty. But considering that the train activity scenery was normal (sharp), I thought that maybe there was some issue with the train itself, since only the train was stuttering/blurring and not the scenery. As it turns out, I was right. It was a problem with the extra parameters/statements within the *.wag files.

Still testing, but so far everything seems OK now.

[pschlik]

At least that's the only thing causing the trouble. I'm surprised you found anything with advanced couplers set up at all, it'll clearly need to be fixed (or just disabled entirely?) eventually but obviously too late for that to happen with 1.6.