Bin

[OTTODAD]

Otto, do you not see the point here? People have spent thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars trying to make MSTS work just right for them. Why would they give all the good stuff up which they have worked so hard to assemble for a pipe dream they cannot be assured will even work?

I do see the point but being happy with MSTSBin / DB-Tracks now, having spent 10 years perfecting some of it myself, am not concerned with other train simulators being able to use all of what it is capable of and add to it graphically and functionally.

If one will be able to let me carry on using what I have then fine and if not look forward to knocking a new one into shape like what I am doing with Railworks !

Variety is the spice of life, I don't have much left of !

O t t o

[longiron]

I definitely think any good successor to MSTS needs to be backward compatible. I like the way OR is planning new physics, same file name with differnet extension. Then OR and MSTS can coexist with each reading it's own file type. I have way too much rolling stock and engines.

Plus a set of tools to make it really easy to "convert" from MSTS to OR plus allow the community to add the required new parameters in a single step. This is tremendously important to establish a consistent and understandable format for the new OR files, so the community understands what goes where and why. We are trying to minimize problems, inconsistencies and things done out of ignorance - going forward.

[mikephfl]

I definitely think any good successor to MSTS needs to be backward compatible. I like the way OR is planning new physics, same file name with differnet extension. Then OR and MSTS can coexist with each reading it's own file type. I have way too much rolling stock and engines, not to mention 1000's of hours building my route. I'm not giving all the up unless the new simulator just blows the doors off everything else, but I don't see that happening. My plan is to go with OR when it's finished.

[asmith46]

Otto, do you not see the point here? People have spent thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars trying to make MSTS work just right for them. Why would they give all the good stuff up which they have worked so hard to assemble for a pipe dream they cannot be assured will even work?

Al

[OTTODAD]

Each of these train simulators has something the others have not and using all of them I get the best of what there is.

I have been working on MSTS routes since 2002 and my GOLD-SPIKE-X route is looking good in ORTS and will look even better after ORTS has made the display of distant mountains possible.

As for backward ORTS compatibility read this: https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...48#post1744348

O t t o

[GoGoran]

You mean for existing users of MSTS ?

Neither TRAINZ, BVE nor Railworks requires anything MSTS !

O t t o

And that's why RW, Trainz, etc. have no appeal whatsoever for me and thousands of users who have, over the course of the last ten years, invested literally thousands of hours studying MSTS and downloading and installing routes and rolling stock and activities, or gone about creating their own stuff. All that invested time and all the precious models, routes, objects, activities etc. would go to waste without full backward compatibility.

[OTTODAD]

Any train simulator without full backwards compatibility to MSTS is useless.

You mean for existing users of MSTS ?

Neither TRAINZ, BVE nor Railworks requires anything MSTS !

O t t o

[asmith46]

Any train simulator without full backwards compatibility to MSTS is useless. And thankfully, the OR developpers know this.

HALLElUIA ,

I'm going to check out OR ASAP. An entirely new Train Simulator, without use of my $100's of dollars already spent money for MSTS upgrades would be useless and definitely not possible for me. Thanks and keep going.

Al

[GoGoran]

Any train simulator without full backwards compatibility to MSTS is useless. And thankfully, the OR developpers know this.

[OTTODAD]

M$ releasing the code of MSTS which does not include the MSTSBin improvements George has made would be of little use and the changes he has made binary there is no English language compiler code for anybody to work with.

What is needed is a new train simulator which instead of being backward compatible with MSTS is being coded for the latest graphics and multi-processors technology, which I think is what the ORTS team are aiming for, but still allowing some backward compatibility with MSTS, in particular it's now DB-Tracks which a tracks layer like used by TRAINZ and TS-2012 just can not create switches with to look and function as real as the DB-Tracks ones.

Some of the MSTS functions code could be used, providing that it has been modified to perform as it should have done from the start of MSTS.

I think that this is what M$ tried to do with their MS-TS-2 and Kuju did when creating their Rail Simulator, RS.com is now having problems with trying to drag some of the original RS code into TS-2012 ?

O t t o

[GoGoran]

Microsoft will never release the source code.

Never say never again.

[derekmorton]

Microsoft will never release the source code.

OR has shown that a bunch of train buff programmers can do a MUCH better job than was done on the original MSTS.
The community support for OR has been phenomenal, and will carry it far and away beyond any of the current commercial offerings.

[drelyea]

Hi,

I may be reading too much into GoGoran's post. There's a number of things that I feel could still be improved, besides the Train physics. Some of those things may not be improvable given the coding. My bucket list:

Mipmaps on forests.

Moveable Track (lift bridges, turntables, rotary dumpers, working carfloats, etc etc)

Expansion of coupler types (Rotary, Link and Pin)

An end to the circular route/ reverse loop problem. (probably the least doable, given how the SIM has to calculate train position based on the train start point.)

Fixing the AE to use the track gradients from the route.

Adjustments to the Cab Editor.

Video modes, Video rendering, and eliminate at least the captivity of the mouse on the game screen.

Additionally, ORTS could benefit as they would know how MSTS was doing certain things. And we would finally get an approved list of all the arguments MSTS will accept.

If there's still doubt as to what a community effort can accomplish, I would direct your attention to Warzone 2100 at wz2100.net. Originally written in 1999.

Who knows, Microsoft might regain some consumer goodwill if they were to release the code to the public.

Doug Relyea

[OTTODAD]

Did George pass on any of his code?

His modification to MSTS were done Binary using Assembler and were passed on to the MSTS community, his last easy to install version being available from my web site.

O t t o

[OTTODAD]

Further on the subject of M$ releasing the source code of MSTS written in an understandable in English compiler language there is more to anybody using it, whether it's many functions and procedures have been annotated with explanations about what they are doing or not.

MSTSBin George was incredible being able to read it's functions in Binary Assembler code and understand what they are doing, including rolling stock physics, memory management and a lot more, he then was able to replace with his binary Assembler code instructions without altering the bit/byte length of the Train.exe program code, the size of it having been constant throughout, but of course not associated with it DLLs containing his modifications.

MSTS was created by a team of programmers, each one a specialist of a particular aspect of simulating what rolling stock physics and infrastructure such as signalling is supposed to be doing and don't think that there was one Supremo who knew all of what each program function or procedure was doing.

Getting the C++ or whatever source code from M$ and improving it would require programmers who not only understand what it's functions and calculations do but also how to translate real railways performance into code which does simulate that as accurately as possible when trying to modify the original MSTS source code.

There are many coders in the ORTS team who are doing that from the basement up but do not think that there are many programmers who are capable of reading the M$ MSTS source code and then modify it the way MSTSBin George did and more, knowing little about real trains and railroads anywhere in the world.

Better 3D objects are no problem, there being many capable graphics artists about, RS.com has some of like Derek Siddle, but creating a good looking loco is one thing and making it work like a real one is another.

I am happy with the MSTSBin I have and to some extent with TS-2012, using many improvements to what they do created by others as well as my own and do not need anything else !

O t t o