Basic Issues with Trainz

[kennethpardue]

Just purchased Trainz and am trying to get it to work on a Macbook Pro running boot camp. The main issue that I'm having is that an external 23" Apple Cinema Display is attached to the Macbook Pro, but since there's no way to set it as the primary display Trainz keeps launching on the laptop display. Is there a way to force Trainz to go fullscreen on alternate displays?

Also, I'm not completely sure that I've purchased the correct version, since many of the Driver scenario descriptions seem to be in French and the information in the Marias Pass scenarios look like they're in German or something. Is Trainz not internationalized, or did I purchase the wrong version?

Also of issue is that the website shows the SD40 as being a major improvement in this version, and yet in at least the brief testing that I've tried to do in it, specifically in Marias Pass, the scenarios still seem to be using the older, uglier SD40's.

Is there a complete failure at the Auran QA department or is Trainz really just a mish-mash of unrelated content? On the surface, this doesn't look to be a very polished product to be charging money for.

 

[colin55]

The SD40 is brand new for 2009. The Marias Pass scenarios and others are using content made for previous versions of Trainz.
In fact 2009 contains content made for the very first version of Trainz, which is why you see locos and boxcars sliding along the track!
If you want to see animated bogies on old content you will have to open the config and change the bogey kuids yourself.

For boxcars

Open the config.
Find the bogey line.
Then change
100080 or <kuid:-1:100080> to <kuid2:86105:50003:0> or <kuid:76096:50000:1>

change
100065 or <kuid:-1:100065> to <kuid:76096:50000:1>

change
<kuid:-3:10064> to <kuid:58422:50120>

change
100827 or <kuid:-1:100827> to <kuid:58377:50053>

change
100011
100008
100073
100074
10007
100075 to <KUID:45681:50001>

For older SD40 locos you may find

bogey <kuid:95761:50150>
bogey-1-r <kuid:95761:50151>

is better

For GP398

bogey <kuid:47092:50060>

For F7

bogey-r <kuid:47092:50060>

-r so the bogies turn the right way

 

[john259]

Kenneth,

A lot of the issues that you list may be fixed by later service packs which will probably be made available free of charge.

If you don't want to wait, then it might be worth considering TRS2004 or TRS2006, both of which are available as a low cost budget software items in some countries. Opinion is divided roughly 50/50 as to which of these is superior.

John

 

[johnwhelan]

Also of issue is that the website shows the SD40 as being a major improvement in this version, and yet in at least the brief testing that I've tried to do in it, specifically in Marias Pass, the scenarios still seem to be using the older, uglier SD40's.

Is there a complete failure at the Auran QA department or is Trainz really just a mish-mash of unrelated content? On the surface, this doesn't look to be a very polished product to be charging money for.

I assume you've picked up TRS2009?

Trainz has two sources of content, the first is Auran, they don't create very much, they basically build the game engine. The second is the community, and the quality is variable. However having said that there is some very good end user created content. Most routes on the DVD are in fact end user created routes built for earlier versions of Trainz. TRS2009 WBE is basically the TRS2009 game engine to allow end users to create content for TRS2009. The EE edtion will have more content.

Auran released four new items for TRS2009 to show the new capabilities of the game engine, one was an SD40, another was a tree, and I think the rest were track. They have also made some ground textures available to the new standard.

Basically Trainz is fairly open and flexible and its appeal is the user created content much of which is on the download station where there are some 120,000 free downloadable items. Buy a first class ticket though to avoid the 100 mb download limit.

Cheerio John

 

[sparky15]

Hi,
Not sure what your macbook pro specs are but I,m using a MBP 2.16 with 2 GB of RAM hooked to a 17" studio display. Instead of boot camp I use VWWare Fusion to run TRS04. A lot more convenient than boot camp as I don't have to boot back and forth between XP and OSX.
Someone posted that TRS09 runs well on a MBP 2.4 with 4 GB of RAM on VMWare. Might be worth exploring if you can swing it just for the convenience. Just an idea.