Portals and TRS2004

[seeseeme]

Hi,

I have been testing some new Aircraft by using Portals and found something "strange" with the Driver Commands .... well strange to me anyway :hehe: . I am trying to set up planes leaving Portals and fly to different locations once they reach a certain height. Using Portals I can then have the planes flying around while "players" can see them overhead while driving a Loco or Consist.

I am using a number of Invisible tracks that increase in height/altitude that run parallel to each other, so they are identical. If I have Plane A with the only Command is to "Drive to Portal X" and then Plane B with "Drive Via Trackmark A" plus "Drive to Portal Z", my second plane with the additional command is very slow to increase in speed. I have found that by the time Plane A reaches 100kph, Plane B is at 30kph. I have also found that it does not matter how many extra commands I give to Plane B, once there is more then the "Drive To Portal X" the plane slows down while accelerating. BTW I have invisible speed signs with a maximum of 200kph.

I have tested this with a number of new (unreleased) Aircraft plus some that are already available and I have the result.

Has any one else noticed something like this? If so is there something that can be done to increase/accelerate a plane that has "more" Driver Commands to match the increase of a plane with only one instruction .... "Drive to Portal X"

While I have not tested this with a normal Loco, I would imagine that the result would be similar.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Craig

 

[norfolksouthern37]

tried any signalling on the invisible track?

 

[narrowgauge]

Craig

Try increasing the 'mass' of the sluggish plane. We have found that under unsignalled conditions locos need a substantial increase in their mass to make them run at reasonable speeds under AI control. I mean substantial. probably x5 - x10.

Peter

 

[jost62]

Yes, try narrowgauge's suggestion! Now I remember: I had a similar problem with locos, and then I read somewhere in the forum that 2004 has a bug that needs the mass to multiply by 10. In my case it worked.
Good success - let us know if this helped.
By the way: Interesting suggestion: Planes and portals - never thought of this. Which (invisible?) portals do you use?
jost62

 

[maggs]

By the way: Interesting suggestion: Planes and portals - never thought of this. Which (invisible?) portals do you use?
jost62

You can use any portal, although if you want the portal to be invisible then you should use one of the basic versions. The portal track will change to match any track that you attach to it, so if you connect invisible track to the portal the portal track will also be invisible.

The portals can generate any vehicles that are listed as traincars in Trainz, this includes any drivable cars, trucks, planes and ships as well as trains. For the bigger ships you will need to also need to extend the end of the portal track to make it long enough otherwise the larger ships will instantly derail on creation.

Have fun with the possibilities

 

[nbrettoner]

Hi Craig,

Perhaps an invisible signal may allow the aircraft to travel faster. Give it a try.

Also, there is a Driver add-on rule that allows you to choose if it behaves as a goods, normal or express loco (which affects top speed). But I'm currently finding on our 'test' route that this doesn't speed things up, where I hoped it would.

:wave:

 

[seeseeme]

Hi everyone,

Many thanks for all the suggestions, but unfortunately none seem to have solved the problem. I increased the mass from 29,000 to 290,000 with no effect.

Signaling part of the track would not work and would really not suit this idea of mine. I wanted to have a Military Airfield and while I/someone could fly a plane at the same time every so often I would have a number of planes flying overhead, hopefully in some form of formation.

While playing with this idea for most of today and much of yesterday I was getting annoyed that there appeared to be no answer. I tried it without any increase in height of the track and was about to try it with Locos to see if I would get the same result. Then I remembered some of the suggestions here but I made a mistake and thought someone had mentioned "Junctions" where as "Signals" where suggested.

I have 4 tracks side by side for my 4 planes, so I put a junction in going from track 3 to track 4 to see what would happen. For this experiment I stopped any other "planes" from the other portals. As my plane approached the junction on track 3 it slowed down even further as it was about to hit the other junction on track 4, the plane increased in speed by about 100kph and I was away :clap:, up to 590kph . As I had the invisible speed set for 700kph the plane was hard to catch up with for a second, mostly due to my surprise :hehe: .

I have no idea why this works but I now have 4 Portals with tracks just going ahead, I then created my main 4 tracks and joined them up a few spline points ahead for the junctions. All 4 planes now speed at about the same and all I need to do is now get them to fly in some form of formation. I think just playing around with where the portals ends are and the junctions are will solve this part. At the moment I have each Portal end about 10m ahead of each other.

Yes, try narrowgauge's suggestion! Now I remember: I had a similar problem with locos, and then I read somewhere in the forum that 2004 has a bug that needs the mass to multiply by 10. In my case it worked.
Good success - let us know if this helped.
By the way: Interesting suggestion: Planes and portals - never thought of this. Which (invisible?) portals do you use?
jost62

I should have mentioned in my first post the Portals I am using as one had a problem. There is one Portal called "Basic Portal (Short)" (I think) and while I can not remember why, it was not suitable at all for this. I did not really want to use the one with the tunnel, but for this idea it would not have mattered. I am using the portal "Portal Basic" Kuid 30501:22006 and any invisible track I want. As Maggs has said you can almost do anything then with Portals being invisible. For this idea though, on our layout Noel (nbrettoner) and I are working on I will have some blank baseboards with the Portals on them, then track for the planes to reach a reasonable height and then the planes will fly overhead over the textured/main part of the layout. We will also be having a Paddle Steamer doing the same thing while at the same time we can drive another Paddle Steamer.

As Maggs said "Have fun with the possibilities", they are endless.

One other thing I thought I would mention is the Invisible speed board I am using. It is by Pigeon, kuid 2:60697:23000:1 and is configurable to almost any speed you want. It can be used for a single, double or triple track situation. A very hand invisible speed sign.

Many thanks for everyones help on this and hopefully other may find this helpful as well.

Craig

 

[jost62]

Hello seeseeme,

I tried portal "Portal Basic" Kuid 30501:2200: It indeed becomes invisible. But I can not raise it higher than 20 Meters. ???? How did you do it?
I tried to look into the config and perhaps change there the hight-range, but strangely this config is NOT in my dispatcher-download-folder!???! (neither als kuid nor as kuid2). But it is available - I can place and use it. ????
jost62

 

[maggs]

Jost62,

This is how it was done, from the previous post:

For this idea though, on our layout Noel (nbrettoner) and I are working on I will have some blank baseboards with the Portals on them, then track for the planes to reach a reasonable height and then the planes will fly overhead over the textured/main part of the layout.

If you want to place the portal above the ground then you will need to use the Re-rail Portals (the basic version is kuid2:116387:6:1) as these can have their height changed using the change height tool in Surveyor.

Maggs

 

[jost62]

Thank you, Maggs,
indeed the Re-rail Portal Basic allowed the height to be changed and works successfully. Thank you!
(Still fighting that my Boing 727 is flying with 20-30mph - although the invisible speed signal is set to 300).