Navigation / Navigator?

[treblesum81]

Hi All,

Just wondering if there is a way to set up a driver command that will allow me to select where I want to end up, and it will set (or reset, in case someone else changes it) all of the switches correctly to get me there? I am capable of going along in map mode making all of the changes as I go, but I find then that I'm spending all of my time in map mode and not really enjoying the ride, plus, I can only really stay about 5-10 min ahead of the train while keeping an eye on my current location and speed. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Greg

 

[Euphod]

Use the Driver commands Drive To... or Drive To Trackmark...

 

[treblesum81]

Will these let me retain "direct" control of the train while the computer navigates? I really like "Driver" mode, but I tend to spend a lot of time at stations and pausing, just trying to figure out where I'm going, how to get there, and what switches need to be dealt with along the way. Needless to say, I've gotten lost more than a few times already. That being said, if I'm not controlling the train anymore, just so that I don't have to navigate, then I'm losing the reason I'm playing the game, so I'd really like to avoid that.

 

[Euphod]

My route on the DLS, "Regional Passenger Transit", has four sessions attached to it. Each one is fully automatic, and a user can take control of any of the passenger or freight trains in the sessions.

The thing is, do you think that when you are a freshly minted engineer, the company puts you in the cab and tells you to drive to such and such, when you never even learned the route yet? Don't you think you ride along with an experienced engineer until they deem you ready for the route? At the very least, they train you on a simulation of the route before you actually take the control stand.

My response to you is to ride along, and take notes, and write down times, and landmarks and junctions until you think you can boot the AI engineer out of the cab and drive that train yourself.

 

[R701Rusty]

Hi there,
One possibility is to set your favourite route to your navigation settings and then save the session with a name easily recognized. Then you can re-open the route and set up another destination in the same way and save it as another name and keep going until you cover all possible destinations for that route. This will still give you complete Cab Mode control but add the ability to go to different places when you want even though you have to open separate sessions. I think that you will eventually find that you only use a fraction of the possibilities and then you could remove the ones you don't want.
Using the above method would allow you to have a huge range of interaction with AI trains along the way as well. I use this method on all my routes.

Cheers
Russell.

 

[treblesum81]

My route on the DLS, "Regional Passenger Transit", has four sessions attached to it. Each one is fully automatic, and a user can take control of any of the passenger or freight trains in the sessions.

The thing is, do you think that when you are a freshly minted engineer, the company puts you in the cab and tells you to drive to such and such, when you never even learned the route yet? Don't you think you ride along with an experienced engineer until they deem you ready for the route? At the very least, they train you on a simulation of the route before you actually take the control stand.

My response to you is to ride along, and take notes, and write down times, and landmarks and junctions until you think you can boot the AI engineer out of the cab and drive that train yourself.

While I understand this line of thinking fully, I spend enough time doing this sort of thing in my day job. I also tend to move on to a different map once I've had a chance to try everything there (one of the reasons I want a super-map to work with... if I can only play for an hour or two a day, then a 10-20 hour trip will keep me occupied for quite some time), so, for me at least, riding the route for some time and taking notes just isn't my cup of tea. Truth be told, there isn't anything wrong with the way you do it, and I'm sure I'll be right there doing the same thing at least once in a while, but for me, the right "balance" between game and simulation is having to manage the train without having to manage the mess of switches.

 

[Euphod]

Oh I understand, nobody wants the game to be another job. Perhaps what you would like are the scenarios that have been created in which the dispatcher throws all the switches for you and directs your course along the way. There are some like that for certain routes, but some make you throw the switches yourself. Other than that Rusty has a fine suggestion.

 

[treblesum81]

I might like those, but something tells me that I'd get through all of them in short order and be left in the same place only later in time. I wonder if there is at least a routing program that can evaluate a layout and at least tell you what switches need to be in what order to get you where you're going. Sometimes I think its more like a giant puzzle than a form of transportation... if you put the wrong switch in the wrong position you'll end up backwards and 3 tracks over from where you need to be 15 miles down the rails and with no easy way to rectify the situation...

All of this falls back to my desire again for huge layouts of course... If you have 50-100 miles before you need to change tracks, then, aside from ensuring that you don't get shunted off onto a siding (unless you have to, of course), you wouldn't have to spend most of your time in map mode worrying about switch positions. And all of this isn't to say that shunting through 50 switches isn't interesting in its own right, I would just like to have at least 10min of real movement in a session rather than constantly messing with switches, especially when some of them default incorrectly for the destination I'm going for, leaving me, again, 3 tracks over and no easy way to get back to where I need to be...

 

[R701Rusty]

I fear that I may have inadvertently misled you with my previous suggestion. I didn't remember it until I was working on a route setting up a session that, if you change a switch setting, even one on any route then you change the basic map and will need to save it as a separate copy of the entire map. This then leads to multiple copies of the same route all with changes to a few switches. Probably something that you don't want unless you have plenty of hard drive space. When I said that I use this method myself I was referring to session that I set up. I hope that I haven't confused you too much and again apologize for my wrong information.
I suspect that if you achieve your desire to have a "Super Route" you will need to also have a computer with a very large memory capacity and a very powerful processor.

Cheers
Russell.

 

[treblesum81]

I fear that I may have inadvertently misled you with my previous suggestion. I didn't remember it until I was working on a route setting up a session that, if you change a switch setting, even one on any route then you change the basic map and will need to save it as a separate copy of the entire map. This then leads to multiple copies of the same route all with changes to a few switches. Probably something that you don't want unless you have plenty of hard drive space. When I said that I use this method myself I was referring to session that I set up. I hope that I haven't confused you too much and again apologize for my wrong information.
I suspect that if you achieve your desire to have a "Super Route" you will need to also have a computer with a very large memory capacity and a very powerful processor.

Cheers
Russell.

For me HD space is not an issue as I have about 2TB of space on my computer (believe me though, I'll be able to fill it soon enough). That being said, I'm not really sure how my computer will react to something so massive, at least with Trainz running it. I do know that this computer can handle 1GB photoshop files without too much trouble, though it does tend to slow down a little bit in access and write functions (probably a function of HD speed), so we'll see what happens.

I'm curious why no one has tried to do this before? Is there a problem with the way Trainz handles routes that makes routes bigger than MRL / UMR non-feasable? If so, what happens, and if not, why haven't I seen any mention of anything really big?

 

[Euphod]

Well, for one thing, there has always been a limit on the number of ground textures a route could support. 255 I think? Textures have never been able to be removed after application, so they tend to accumulate quickly. If you merge two or three decent size routes together you could exceed that, and then textures will begin to drop out.

 

[treblesum81]

Well, for one thing, there has always been a limit on the number of ground textures a route could support. 255 I think? Textures have never been able to be removed after application, so they tend to accumulate quickly. If you merge two or three decent size routes together you could exceed that, and then textures will begin to drop out.

Ouch... yeah I can see how that might be difficult... by the time you've traversed 200 miles, you've probably completely changed the surrounding terrain more than once...

 

[Euphod]

This may interest you, but I'm not sure if it works in 2009:

http://www.auran.com/TRS2004/DLS_viewasset.php?AssetID=54160

Good Luck