Trains Planes and Automobiles

chili46

Member
I know this is a Trains simulator and a darn good one at that. I really like the animated scenery and such. I also like the realism. Sometimes, making it real requires a little bit of extra effort, but that's also the fun part about the game: you can make it real it that's your desire.

So, having said that, I like realism. I like trains, but in the real world there are automobiles and planes. I have created, using the ATLS content, real road intersections with stop and go traffic. A tractor plowing a field can trigger the traffic stoppers. Works pretty good. You need one controller, one invisible rail loop, one John Deere tractor (or train), and as many triggers and traffic stoppers as you want. The triggers are set to a specific channel. Set the tractor to run at a speed that gives you the desire interval between green and red lights. The ATLS slave and inverse slave are set to the control channel. Add the traffic stoppers and, boom, done.

The title mentions planes. The world is FULL of planes. Big planes, little planes, planes that shouldn't be flying. On a elevated invisible rail line a plane can fly around forever. Well, that's cool, but not very realistic. Did I mention I like realism? Planes cannot circle a map forever! They need to land once in awhile. So, my latest plane does several things - by the book. Taxi to a take off position, wait 10 seconds (requesting permission to take-off), flies around the map, lands (same runway), taxis to a taxiway exit, taxis to the runup area, waits (some amount of time), repeats.

Neither of these have anything to do with driving trains. Moving consists from one staging area to another, loading and loading products, etc. But they do add realism to the game. If you were to stop and watch an intersection you would see it behaving as in the real world. If you caught a ride on the plane, it would be pretty darn realistic. All part of the "game" and all a heck of a lot of fun. Loading cargo at a warehouse and seeing a plane fly overheard it cool - dare I say, realistic?

TRS19, and some of the previous versions, allow you to create you own worlds the way you would like to see them. It's fun. It's fulfilling. It's whatever you want it to be.
 
I totally agree. I don't go as far as you with the traffic stopping at lights, but I do have planes & helicopters flying around, animated combines in the fields, speedboats, etc. in my route.
 
I'd be happy just to get the road traffic stopping at level crossings!




One of the problems with road traffic "bunching" up at the crossings (and moving through the crossings when the gates are down) concerns how close a road spline circle is to the crossing. It takes a few seconds for traffic to "see" a crossing after said traffic has passed a spline circle. Things work better if there are no spline circles within say 50 yards or more of the crossing gates. That being said, route builders should avoid having a road turn immediately into a crossing, since it is impossible to make a turn with out a series of spline circles.

I hope I have explained this clearly enough.
 
I'd be happy just to get the road traffic stopping at level crossings!

A lot of my level crossings are created using the ATLS objects. There's more control and I can have custom angled crossings. I have seen the TRC objects and read a little bit about them. Sounds like they have some interesting settings like if a train stops before the crossing, the gates will go back up, but I've also heard that they can be a little more difficult to implement.

The other problem I have with some of the pre-made level crossings is there appears to be a speed bump in the middle. Car literally jump up in the air when going over them.
 
Train stopping at a crossing without triggering the crossing can be achieved with ATLS. My advanced ATLS demo will show that working in the route it also has trams, boats and cars. It also demonstrates a very complex crossing of a single lane lift bridge with traffic, trains and boats all sharing the single lane and taking it in turns to cross over or under.
My Heathrow airport uses a portal set some distance away on its own baseboard to receive or produce planes that will fly in and out of the airport. ATLS is used to control planes landing and taking off and the airport is a full scale image of the real airport with buses and fire engines. Nearly all the terminus gates are accessible in all 5 terminals.
Working on a route that uses all the canal assets and all working under AI with ATLS in control of all the locks.
 
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