Looking for some newbie advice

[sjstein]

Hello everyone,

I have recently become interested in Open Rails and am trying to determine if it is something I would like to devote my "learning curve" budget to. I'm a Run8 user for quite a while, but am very enamored with the open source nature of Open Rails and the plethora of content and possibilities (like route building). My first thought was to try and duplicate some of my experience in Run8 with Open Rails, and to that end I've been pretty successful. Where I'm a bit stymied now is trying to find locomotives with "3D cabs". Google searches are routinely coming up as dead-ends or (apparently) inaccurate (AI generated slop).

I was hoping to get some recommendations for locomotives with 3D cabs from actual humans such are you guys.

Thoughts?

[EvolutionMan]

Assuming you're into North American content, the currently available 3D cabs are few and far between. They are found in the F/L here, but the closest you'll find to your liking will be a second-generation EMD cab and a GE Genesis cab (albeit incomplete). Each cab is included as part of a locomotive set.

The creator of the second-generation EMD cab is planning on making a generic set of them, as far as I'm aware.

[sjstein]

Thanks for the suggestion EvolutionMan - I'll have a look for those locos, and yes - I'm mostly interested in North American content.

I also noticed when playing around with the BNSF Starter Route I had downloaded, that when I'm in the cab view, the rendering on my widescreen monitor is showing as very "Zoomed" in. I can kind of fix that by pressing ctrl-1 (toggle letterbox cab), but when I do that, I lose most of the left and right of my display to black borders. I imagine this has something to do with the resolution of the cab vs. that of my monitor.

Is there anything that can be done to utilize the entire screen? Or will I be always in letterbox mode when using 2D cabs?

[derekmorton]

Hi Josh,

You can input your screens resolution to OR.

On the initial screen:-

options
system
window size

[yellowdog]

I'm mostly interested in North American content.

Most of Tyler Bundy's models have 3D cabs, as do all repaints of his models. All available for free here in the file library.

[oper190]

Your Cab view problem is related to the fact that the old 2D Cabviews were for MSTS "square" screen. In full screen you cannot see the entire image, but by using the up and down arrows you can position your Cabviews were you like it best. To see the full image you have to settle for the letterbox. There are some newer 2D cabview made for OR to display in full screen.

[sjstein]

Hello all,

I've downloaded a Tyler Bundy locomotive (ICRR SD40), and attempted to install it in a few places within my content directory structure, without any joy.

I have a content directory on my F: drive which looks like this:
F:\Open_Rails_Content\

Within that directory, there are the following subdirectories:
F:\Open_Rails_Content\BNSF Starter Route
F:\Open_Rails_Content\Demo Model 1

And within each of those directories, things look like this:
F:\Open_Rails_Content\BNSF Starter Route\GLOBAL
F:\Open_Rails_Content\BNSF Starter Route\ROUTES
F:\Open_Rails_Content\BNSF Starter Route\TRAINS
In the trains directory, there is trainset, and within there are a bunch of other directories - for example "SLI.BNSF"
I tried copying the unzipped ICRR SD40 directory into F:\Open_Rails_Content\BNSF Starter Route\TRAINS\trainset

Alas, I was unable to choose that new locomotive when choosing a starting configuration.

Any ideas?

[trs666]

Hello all,
...
Alas, I was unable to choose that new locomotive when choosing a starting configuration.

Any ideas?

It sounds like you have yet to create a consist with that new locomotive as the lead unit ... after creating that consist, you should be able to select the loco in question. If you don't already have a consist editor tool, you can find one (ConBuilder, Convoi, etc) in the file library or check for a download link to TSRE in one of the TSRE sub-forums/threads.

[slipperman]

Hi sjstein,
In the TRAINS folder of each installation, as well as the TRAINSET folder containing the stock sub-folders, there must also be a CONSISTS folder.

Before you can run any stock in Open Rails (or MSTS), you need to create a consist, using a ConsistBuilder. A consist is a file listing all the vehicles which make up a train, which can be just a single loco.

A ConsistBuilder is included in TSRE (file ID 90489 - tsre-releasecandidate3-v8.005.zip); this is started by running ConsistEditor.bat in the TSRE folder.

Cheers,
Ged

[yellowdog]

If you are referring to File ID 86777, that is one of my repaints of Tyler's model. When you unzip the folder, you will have a CRRSD40s folder. Inside, there are 3 other folders (Clinchfield_SD40 v1, v2, and v3). You have to move each of those subfolders into your TRAINSET. If you only placed the CRRSD40s folder in your trainset, you won't be able to see the locomotives in either a consist editor or the Sim. Otherwise the above suggestions are correct--you have to build a consist first.