Is "Quick Drive" truly a session? Where does "Quick Drive" session come from?

1611mac

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Is "Quick Drive" truly a session? Where does "Quick Drive" session come from?

Sorry for the silly questions but I just have to ask....

1.) Does anyone actually drive a "Quick Drive" session? It is not editable so environment etc cannot be set by the user.
2.) Is "Quick Drive" even intended to be ran? (I realize it may be just for a "fly through" and such but some Quick Drives I've seen have really odd/terrible environment settings.
3.) It seems that if a Route has no sessions a Quick Drive is created automatically?? Though when I hover over a Quick Drive I see the name of the Route Author as creator. On small routes I've created there is a "Quick Drive" session which I did not save. It must be generated by the route?
4.) Obviously since there are no "Quick Drive" sessions in Content Manager, is a Quick Drive actually a part of the Route?

Does everyone just ignore Quick Drives and upon a new Route install (with no downloaded sessions) immediately create their own session with preferred settings?
 
Quick drive is the same as Ctrl+F2 it takes the route or session you are in straight to drive mode. There are no quick drive sessions. A route must have a session to operate in surveyor mode. You create your route which has a session, then you click quick drive or Ctrl+F2 to go into driver. You can the exit driver and back to the surveyor mode to do more work if you wish.
 
Quick drive is the same as Ctrl+F2 it takes the route or session you are in straight to drive mode. There are no quick drive sessions. A route must have a session to operate in surveyor mode. You create your route which has a session, then you click quick drive or Ctrl+F2 to go into driver. You can the exit driver and back to the surveyor mode to do more work if you wish.

I was referring specifically to the "Quick Drive" icon in game. Choose a Route to run and "Select a Session" appears and there is a "Quick Drive" thumbnail setting there under "Select a Session". This is what I'm calling the Quick Drive session. It is created in game from the route?
 
I was referring specifically to the "Quick Drive" icon in game. Choose a Route to run and "Select a Session" appears and there is a "Quick Drive" thumbnail setting there under "Select a Session". This is what I'm calling the Quick Drive session. It is created in game from the route?

It just opens up the Route you selected, creates a 'Default' Session and lets you drive it. It's just a shortcut.
 
I use it often to check out newly downloaded train vehicles.
Or when I created a consist and want to create a thumb for it.

It literally is what it is named: A quick drive.

And yes, I don't have TS19, but it is also a feature in TANE.
 
Thanks for the replies... but I wonder if Quick Drive is a good thing for the new user...

Quick Drive often has weirdness like 50% fog at 11:00 am in full sun so everything looks white. And environment can't be altered in Quick Drive. So me thinks a Quick Drive may be quick, but it may also turn a New User off to a Route, a particular content creator, or even the game itself, because the graphics are so bad and the new user has no clue that environment can be altered in a *real* session.

So... no more Quick Drives here.

Again, thanks much for the replies. I thought perhaps there was something I was missing... If I were a Route creator those Quick Drives would concern me...
 
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Is more like a "precocious" session. I use it to measure the distance between electrical substations to make sure that the line is "fed" properly.
 
Just my opinion but I think the strange environmental settings is a bug. In earlier versions the quickdrive session opened at 10 a.m. with clear sky. Maybe it is fixed in SP4.

I use quickdrive to setup a route with rolling stock much the way we did on a model railroad. Then when I have it the way I want, I save the session when leaving driver. My saved session is now in the list and I can open it in surveyor to make more changes. It is fun to use a builtin consists to drive around and spot cars on sidings and in the yards.

William
 
Let me give a specific example of why I think this important:

I opened MSGsapper's new/updated TRS-19 Wilson Mills and Mount Olive route in Quick Drive (Ultra Shader and Ultra Shadow settings) and it looked AWFUL. Rooftops and roads were pure white. Everything else was simply washed out. I set time of day as mid day with clear weather and it still looked awful. I know that MSGsapper has been working on PBR Parallax procedural track and 3D PBR ground textures. This is fresh on my mind as I've been running his Jesse James route with these features and you must have Shader on Ultra.

So... when everything looks so bad I immediately think it's a Shader issue or such.... I contact him and he tells me to check Fog setting. FOG.... I HAVE COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT FOG because there is no FOG setting in SESSION OPTIONS which I use all the time.

So I create a create a session, check the environment, and yep... FOG is set really high, it sunny bright, and this session looks as bad as did the Quick Drive. Bringing the FOG down to zero fixed everything.

The Point? I was about to give up on the excellent Wilson's Mill route simply because I forgot about FOG in environment and I was running a QuickDrive "session" with bad settings.....

Realize.... new users simply download a route... jump into Quick Drive... and go... not even realizing you can create new session and set environment as you wish.... (After our discussion MSGsapper posted the environment tip on the route support thread.)

Here's what the initial route looked like in Quick Drive (FOG was like 50% with bright sun) - NOTE: Things look GREAT with fog at zero.

washout.jpg
 
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Hi All
The QuickDrive session should use the route's environment settings (the same as creating a new session). If it is not, then please submit a bug report showing this so that our team can look into it.

However if you need to change these settings when you create your own sessions, then this indicates that the route's creator has set the environment settings to these values.

As the fog is an environment setting (the same as sun colour, brightness, ambient colour, water colour, etc) it cannot be changed in Driver mode.

Regards
 
The QuickDrive session should use the route's environment settings (the same as creating a new session).
That is true only if the Quickdrive time of day is the same as the time selected in environment settings in Surveyor. Quickdrive uses the environment settings for the colour control point that applies to the Quickdrive time, not the time selected in Surveyor.
 
That is true only if the Quickdrive time of day is the same as the time selected in environment settings in Surveyor. Quickdrive uses the environment settings for the colour control point that applies to the Quickdrive time, not the time selected in Surveyor.

The time and weather settings in the environment settings in Surveyor are previews only, they do not change the time or weather in sessions (including QuickDrive) sessions and never have. We have never given an indication that this is the case, and this is why the menu in the QuickDrive session is shown by default, so you can choose the time, month, and weather that you want.

However the Environment Settings (ie the colours, fog, brightness) are carried over.

So if you set the time preview in Surveyor to 10am, and then load a QuickDrive session (which defaults to 10am, as do all sessions), then you will see the same environment colours/etc in the preview and in the quickdrive session.

If a route creator has not setup appropriate environment settings at a particular time of day in their route, then this is not the fault of Trainz, the route has simply not been setup with suitable environment settings at that time of day. It is up to the creator to either use the default environment settings (which may or may not be suited to everyone; they are simply the default), or to configure all the environment settings at all time points to suit their route (this may, or may not, include using default settings at some times of day).

The same as not every route builder's choices of environment settings will be to the taste of every user; this is why we introduced the ability to set custom environment settings when you create a new session. If you wanted to, you could easily save a 'blank' session with custom environment settings, providing an alternate quickdrive session. You can then even set your own preferred start time in the QuickDrive Rule in the session.

Regards
 
So if you set the time preview in Surveyor to 10am, and then load a QuickDrive session (which defaults to 10am, as do all sessions), then you will see the same environment colours/etc in the preview and in the quickdrive session.
Yes. But if you set the preview time in Surveyor with a different time control point then you won't get that environment setting in Quickdrive. Therefore your comment "The QuickDrive session should use the route's environment settings (the same as creating a new session)" is true only if the route's environment settings you are referring to are the settings for the 10:00am time control point (or whatever it is currently defaulting to).

The statement would be true in all cases if the Quickdrive time was set from the route preview time, but it isn't. That's why people see the Quickdrive environment as different than what they were seeing in Surveyor.
 
-snip-
...If you wanted to, you could easily save a 'blank' session with custom environment settings, providing an alternate quickdrive session. You can then even set your own preferred start time in the QuickDrive Rule in the session.
Regards

Yes.... that is assuming you KNOW about creating a session PLUS setting environments settings PLUS knowing about FOG. That is everyday stuff to most users... but new users? These new users are going to evaluate routes based on what they see in a Quick Drive session.

No doubt there are many, casual Trainzer's out there who simply run routes in Quick Drive and then go on to the next Route. They may have not yet downloaded a session, likely, they do they even know about environment settings.

This is a educational issue more so than a Quick Drive environment issue.
 
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Yes. But if you set the preview time in Surveyor with a different time control point then you won't get that environment setting in Quickdrive. Therefore your comment "The QuickDrive session should use the route's environment settings (the same as creating a new session)" is true only if the route's environment settings you are referring to are the settings for the 10:00am time control point (or whatever it is currently defaulting to).

The statement would be true in all cases if the Quickdrive time was set from the route preview time, but it isn't. That's why people see the Quickdrive environment as different than what they were seeing in Surveyor.

The time preview is not considered an environment setting in terms of the routes/sessions; it is just a preview. I have updated the help page on our wiki to explain this better.

All configuration settings are used by the route, but if you change these settings at just one time point then you will only see that change at that time point. At any other time (remembering that the clock in Driver will be running, unless you pause the session, so this will change when running a session) it will be different.

This is the same as all previous releases of Trainz, where the clock in Surveyor provides a preview (And allows you to configure the environment settings for different times of day), whilst the time in sessions is defaulted to 10am. This default applies to both creating a new session, and using the QuickDrive session.

We do not currently have any plans to change this, in particular as many route builders have left the previews at inappropriate time points (ie in total darkness) since the time preview does not affect sessions.

I have put in a task to look at providing some better documentation on Sessions vs QuickDrive vs Environment Settings for new users; unfortunately I cannot say when this may occur as it'll require substantial additions to the help wiki to cover this properly.

Regards
 
- snip- this is why the menu in the QuickDrive session is shown by default, so you can choose the time, month, and weather that you want.

However the Environment Settings (ie the colours, fog, brightness) are carried over.
Regards

ZecMurphy...

Thanks very much for your input on the topic. I've learned some very important things. I think part of the "problem" for me personally is that N3V views FOG as a non-changeable Environment Settings and not simply "weather" (and thus, changeable in Driver). In my mind, Fog s/b controllable as an option in Driver session settings. If I can control rain and snow for ANY session, why can't I control fog? Why is FOG so secrocanct? I mean.. I just went into a Route and (to make a point) and set Heavy Snow in August at a time Rate of 60X. Why can't I bump fog up or down? Just doesn't make sense to me.

But that decision has long been made and I yield to it. The solution for myself I guess is to never use Quick Drive and simply create my own session to "quick drive" a route with my own settings.

Thanks for your participation in the thread here... it has helped me understand some things a lot and I appreciate your help very much.
 
In my mind, Fog s/b controllable as an option in Driver session settings. If I can control rain and snow for ANY session, why can't I control fog?
You can control fog for Quickdrive, but you have to set it (in Surveyor) for the time control point that controls the default time for the Quickdrive session which, unless you change it, is 10:00am. If you set fog for any other time control point it will not apply in Quickdrive until you have driven long enough for that time control point to become active.
 
You can control fog for Quickdrive, but you have to set it (in Surveyor) for the time control point that controls the default time for the Quickdrive session which, unless you change it, is 10:00am. If you set fog for any other time control point it will not apply in Quickdrive until you have driven long enough for that time control point to become active.

I don't understand... Are we calling "Quick drive" the same thing? I'm referring to the Quick Drive "Session" tile in game "sessions." From Quick Drive I have only Driver... I cannot go into Surveyor. I have to create a session to get into Surveyor. And once I create a session I'm not referring to "Quick Drive" any longer... What am I not understanding here? Do I have terms/meanings wrong?
 
And again... I'm speaking from a new user point of view who doesn't even know that Surveyor exists. If you can simply jump into Quick Drive and control weather... why not fog? Why is fog any different than rain or snow?
 
Quick drive is the same no matter what location it is in. It is a short cut to go straight to a driveable route to have a look.
If you select a route and open for edit, you are in surveyor, it will create a default session. The route wont function without a session attached. If you build your route and select Quick drive from the drop down menu, you are taken straight to the driver mode to drive trains you have placed.
If you select route and click on one of the session boxes that appear you can then select edit session and you will be in surveyor again with the route and attached session. Quick drive from the drop down menu will once again take you to the driver mode.
Quick drive in the session selection just takes you to the first session created in to driver mode. If you select the next session along you need to click on drive session which is all so equal to quick drive.
 
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