Moving Trains

[Guest]

We know there are moving vehicles ;) and we know the ACES team developed train sim. So, will this mean FSX will have a capability for moving trains? Please tell us...John.

[Guest tdragger]

There's one big difference with trains. Can you guess what it is?

[Guest Knikolaes]

Tjhat they are becoming extinct?

[Guest tdragger]

Huh?

[Guest]

> There's one big difference with trains. Can you guess what it is?The AI is alot less difficult to program because trains don't need to give way, over take etc. But they can change to other tracks.

[Jeff Nielsen 1,385]

Maybe he's talking about MSTS...LOL.JK with ya Chris :-)

[Guest Robin.B]

They're several pieces connected together that have to follow a line, and it becomes complicated in turns?

[Guest Knikolaes]

>Maybe he's talking about MSTS...LOL.>>JK with ya Chris :-)**chuckles** Aye that too. Either way, seems like trains are becoming extinct as a transportation alternative even for cargo. Some of my family are retired railroad, and so that is a piece of conversation often around here.Seriously in answer to the original question, I have no idea how they are different from vehicles other than they are on tracks. So I have no idea how that would appear in FS as "animations" LOL.

[maxter 0]

>Huh?:-) :-) :-) :-)Maybe because they are articulated and would have to "change shape" everytime they went around a bend/corner/curve/turn etc.Cheers,Chris Porter:-outtaPerthWestern Australia

[Guest tdragger]

Ding! Ding! Ding!Kudos to maxter as well, but your answer was posted first. Yes, the big difference for us is that trains are articulated. For cars it's easy to simplify the problem by reducing the object to a point and just have that point follow a line.For trains we need to manage the relationship between cars. There are several techniques for doing this in a game where they are just supporting players but none are perfect. (And there are several differences like greater constraints on grade and turn radius.) We've thought quite a bit about the problem, I just can't say now what will happen to trains in FS. (And no, we can't just take the code from TS and plop it into FS. Wish we could...)

[maxter 0]

Woops, didn't see the other response...Cheers,Chris Porter:-outtaPerthWestern Australia

[Guest Robin.B]

Isn't it possible to make each carriage of the train have a car logic? For example, make FS think that there are 4 or 5, elongated cars driving right behind each other and each carriage follows a line just like a car, just that they're right behind each other.

[Guest wingnut2]

> Isn't it possible to make each carriage of the train have a car logic?This is it, instead of 1 point there are X (as in Xbox). Each car will have its own position on the line, and hence if there is a curve each car will have a different angle based on the gradient. Sometimes you can over complicate things ;)

[Guest cwright]

That's exactly what I did when I added dynamic objects support to my AutoAsm scenery design program. If you add a train you can specify the number of carriages and the carriages move together as a single object. However, when going around corners it still looks a bit odd! For anyone interested you can see the thread about this on the FS scenery forum around the end of October 2005. There are some screen shots including trains. Here's an example: http://www.kline.demon.co.uk/as9.jpg Unfortunately the current FS dynamic scenery system seems to have a limit of about 220 objects (could the FS team members who are active on this forum confirm this or make any comments?) and also a limit on the number of path points. I would be fairly confident FSX has a completely new and far more powerful dynamic scenery system that hopefully has no arbitrary limits built into it. Best regards, Chris http://www.kline.demon.co.uk/autoasm.zip

[Guest wingnut2]

Thats not a bad effort there, I could believe thats a train :) Even a basic architecture would be better than nothing, and then the addon guys will go crazy..