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Project Status (21st April 2019)
Welcome to the Railsimroutes.net Blog, where I'll be posting progress updates, work-in-progress screenshots, information about the progress I'm making with active projects, as well as anything else I feel is worth mentioning. Hopefully more frequent updates here will make the wait for upcoming releases more bearable! News from 2008, all the way back to 2001, can be found in the News Archive.

Railsimroutes.net YouTube Channel My openBVE videos and other comments from users and myself can also be found via my YouTube channel.



Blog and Progress Updates


The innovative Chashinai Railway, RSR-UK route randomisation, hi-res Watford Junction to Rugby screenshots, and server upgrades

Posted by admin on June 1, 2009 at 11:40 pm

The innovtive Chashinai Railway, randomisation and new development techniques for openBVE

Some of you may remember the Chashinai Railway network which was released way back in 2004, but soon after publication it was withdrawn, after controversy surrounding permissions where certain files were concerned. The fictional Japanese route network has now been significantly updated and is available again, and is now designed exclusively for » openBVE «. The route’s developer, Jens (Odakyufan), has devised some innovative new techniques which take advantage of openBVE’s capabilities, and together they introduce some exciting new possiblities for developers and users, including for example — even within a single route file — randomised time of day selection, randomly selected choice of train and service to drive, determining the probability of certain end results occuring, and more. Using if conditions and casing, it’s possible, for example, to choose which platform or siding is departed from or entered at random, provided code for each of these routing options has been written, specially prepared and added within the route file.

This is clever stuff, which presents all kinds of new possibilities for openBVE developers. Visit » Odakyufan’s website « to download the Chashinai Railway network which includes all the required trains (you need the latest openBVE v1.0.6 release), and take a look at the » development techniques and tips section « to see how randomisation and conditional pre-processing can be applied by developers creating routes for openBVE, along with ideas for improving the handling of tunnel object lighting, cab brightness and time of day. Incidentally, Jens also hopes to model a section of the well known Odakyu Odawara Line starting from Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku station, which should be fascinating due to the railway infrastructure, proximity between the line and the surrounding city and it’s roads and numerous buildings, and the object density to be depicted in such scenes.

Some atmospheric » Chashinai Railway « screenshots:

openBVE v1.0.6, Chashinai Railway (Kawarada, Ishinden Line), Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Chashinai Railway (Ashikari, Ishinden Line), Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Chashinai Railway (Minaminaka Sidings, Minaminaka Line), Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Chashinai Railway (Izumozaki North, Misaki Line), Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Chashinai Railway (Izumozaki North, Misaki Line), Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Chashinai Railway (Izumozaki South, Misaki Line), Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge

Incidentally, the situation surrounding the Chashinai Railway presents some issues to consider. It’s a route that was built using a large number of other author’s objects, and was originally made just for personal use — publishing the route wasn’t originally intended, so it’s author didn’t keep track of where each file came from. However, over time, the project evolved into something which was worth publishing, and this creative endeavour was shared with the community. The route was also notable as being one of very few Japanese styled lines developed by a European author (the only other I can recall right now, being Viktor’s fictional » BVE Garden Line «). Unfortunately, because Jens hadn’t kept track of the origin of the many files used, determining the authors of all these files at a later stage became problematic, so some work was uncredited, and not all permissions saught. Upon it’s release, some developers objected to this. Back then, the Western (English speaking) BVE community as it seems to me, was more like a microcosm of the worst aspects of international relations and ideological conflict than an ideal community at times, and soon after it’s release, despite conflicts with developers being resolved, the Chashinai Railway was withdrawn, presumably because of all the controversy it caused, and I guess Jens was put off from releasing anything into the community again for several years. Having seen the innovation, intelligence and artistic excellence which he’s now shared with us some years later–as a community–I think we’re rather lucky that he wasn’t driven away permanently by the awful, polarised atmosphere which used to dominate the community in the past (and I’m certainly not blameless where this state of affairs was concerned either); if he had left for good, then people in another field might be enjoying the fruits of his creativity instead of us, or indeed nobody else at all would be enjoying the results, and we would all be the poorer for it.

Information Icon Edit: I was going to discuss the community, my own changed attitudes towards copyright, and the role the BVE Developer Guidelines play as a part of this blog entry, and talk about whether for the good of the community in the future, they should be revised or whether they’re even needed any more. However, this entry is primarily about innovation and development techniques, so I’ll save the extended discussion until later.

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Randomisation in RSR-UK Routes

Having seen what Jens has achieved, I’m experimenting with these new innovations on my own routes as well. With Watford Junction to Rugby for example, I’m able to use the random pathing feature of » BRR « to create short alternative paths between, for example, Watford Junction and the crossovers to the north of the station, or between Hemel Hempstead and Bourne End Junction. This is the tricky part as it involves carefully setting up the .Rail related commands (or even inserting temporary crossovers) to ensure alternative paths can be selected and generated, followed by replacing .Turn commands with .Curve commands in BRR’s temporary route file output. Then, by referring to the casing technique example which Jens has provided, I can easily add all the $Sub() preprocessing commands to these code fragments via a couple of simple search and replace operations, and then copy and paste these sections into the WJ-R route file making any tweaks necessary, and add the condition and randomisation code, to allow openBVE to randomly choose whether the player starts on the fast or slow lines, or switches between them for short sections en-route. Currently this isn’t practical for longer sections of the Watford Junction to Rugby route; not really because it’s too difficult, but rather because it increases loading times too much due to the sheer number of commands I’ve used in the WJ-R route file, which takes too long to be parsed. I can also randomise the time of day chosen, along with the service and traction, and the optional display of a multitude of objects within the route. The location and types of passing trains shown can all be randomised, along with appropriate sounds, and so-on. All within a single route file and program. 🙂 The » example code « for achieving some of these things may appear complex at first, but actually it’s not so bad once you’ve tried it–naturally something like Watford to Rugby is much harder to work with as it’s so complex, so if you try it with your own route, it shouldn’t be as difficult. I’ll continue to experiment with this as my projects develop… More to come in future.

In the meantime, it occurs to me that I don’t think I’ve ever uploaded many, if any, high resolution images of Watford Junction to Rugby before, so here are a selection showing the aforementioned junctions, and a couple of others (please forgive the mixture of pre 1990s and post 2000 infrastructure at Watford…). This is still very much a work in progress, and neither the lighting or shading is refined yet. The scenery quality has fallen behind that of X-City South v1.4 in some respects now, and 2D trees are still in use at the moment as so much detailed 3D geometry has been applied to the railway infrastructure itself; with openBVE 2’s graphics engine, perhaps more will be possible though…


openBVE v1.0.6, Watford Junction to Rugby (Watford Junction)--click to enlarge
openBVE v1.0.6, Watford Junction to Rugby (Watford Junction)--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Watford Junction to Rugby (Hemel Hempstead)--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Watford Junction to Rugby (Bourne End Junction)--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Watford Junction to Rugby (Bourne End Junction)--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Watford Junction to Rugby (Near Blisworth)--click to enlarge
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Server Upgrades

Lastly, apologies if some of you were unable to access the site for a little while yesterday; my webhost was performing a scheduled hardware upgrade of the server where Rail Sim Routes UK is hosted. I’ve been very happy with the performance and speed of the server since I moved the site to the new host last November, with no problems reported to me, as far as I’m aware. However, it should perform even better and with greater reliability now after this upgrade, which I gather consists of a step up from a single to a dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor configuration along with a doubling of the quantity of RAM to 8GB. In the unlikely event that anyone tried to e-mail me while the server was briefly offline (sometime between 23:00 and midnight on 31st May), any messages should have still reached me, however if you think there might have been a problem, please try again just in case.

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Posted in openBVE, Site News | 1 Comment »



openBVE v1.0.6.0, Cross-City South v1.4 Updates

Posted by admin on May 24, 2009 at 11:50 pm

New openBVE release–v1.0.6.0

A new version of openBVE is now available, version 1.0.6.0; head over to the » openBVE homepage « to download the latest stable release. One of the three most noticeable improvements in this version (the other two being time acceleration and the ability to mute sound, more below) concerns the Smooth Transparency feature, which has been dramatically improved. If you’ve enabled this option in openBVE previously, you might have noticed that while the quality of the rendered scenes was much better with Smooth transparency enabled, occasionally, unsightly fringes appeared around some transparent textures, where translucent pixels were rendered. This was problem was also more pronounced on Cross-City South v1.4 due to the frequency with which texture transparency is used in the new scenery. This issue concerning texture transparency and the z-buffer is a complex topic which I gather not all OpenGL developers adequately address, however Michelle has found a way of solving the problem, and while the performance is a little lower than with the previous implementation (especially on routes where a very high number of polygons use texture colour transparency), the visual quality is far better, as the following comparison screenshots demonstrate (along with the new X-City South v1.4 screenshots below).

On the left, we have the » ATS-Sn/P Test route « in openBVE v1.0.5.0; click the thumbnail and note the fringes around the catenary gantry texture. On the right, we have v1.0.6.0–no such issue can be observed, and the end result is superb:

openBVE v1.0.5.0, ATS-Sn/P Test Route, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge
Smooth transparency [openBVE 1.0.5.0]
openBVE v1.0.5.0, ATS-Sn/P Test Route, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge
Smooth transparency [openBVE 1.0.6.0]

Similarly, here we have the » Chashinai Railway «:

openBVE v1.0.5.0, Chashinai Railway, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge
Smooth transparency [openBVE 1.0.5.0]
openBVE v1.0.5.0, Chashinai Railway, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge
Smooth transparency [openBVE 1.0.6.0]

For a detailed explanation about this solution, please see michelle’s » Developer’s Blog «

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Other welcome enhancements and changes in v1.0.6.0 include:

  • A time acceleration feature (Ctrl+J, switches between x1 and x5 speed);
  • The ability to mute the sound (Ctrl+M — now you can listen to music via your media player while in-game, which is quite a lot of fun when used with the time acceleration feature! 🙂 );
  • A consistent look is now achieved where fog and background images are concerned, regardless of viewing distance;
  • And more… Please see the » changelog « on the openBVE site for details.

If you’re still using openBVE v1.0.3 or 1.0.4, then after updating to the latest release, you’ll also benefit from changes which were introduced with v1.0.5, including amongst other things, a bug fix relating to odd behaviour where unwanted roll was initially applied to the external camera view, enhanced AI driver behaviour where cruising is concerned, and additions to the Doors parameter of the .Sta command.

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Cross-City South v1.4 scenery improvements

Firstly, apologies for the lack of project updates recently… Unfortunately I’ve not done quite as much as I’d hoped to in the past month. Nevertheless, I’ve been working on updating the scenery objects for Cross-City South v1.4, and this is proceeding quite well now. It’s proving to be quite time consuming, and the bulk of the work involves replacing a fair number of the previously 2D trees and bushes with more realistic partially 3D versions, allowing the scenery to look good even when the camera is panned to the side, such as when looking out of the windows, while also enabling the camera to be moved a little further away from the train in the external view without the scenery looking unrealistic. Hedgerows have also been improved, not just the trees.

I’m currently adding pretty highly detailed vegetation just to test performance and visual quality, but once I’m finished I’ll likely perform a batch search and replace operation on all the scenery files to reduce the number of surfaces to improve framerates a little. I’m relatively happy with how the scenery is turning out, but I have to say, it’s just a little tedious; I’ll be glad when this task is over and I can get back to the animated objects!

Here are some screenshots to show the progress so far; the scenery, lighting and shading isn’t finalised yet, but the images give a general impression of the end result I want to achieve. The trees and hedges still look a little too repetetive to me–I’ll try and improve upon this if I have time… All screenshots depict the route at 1280×1024 resolution with 8x antialiasing, 16x anisotropic filtering, and with openBVE v1.0.6.0’s smooth transparency enabled. A fast graphics card will likely be needed for higher framerates with the latter feature in use, at least with openBVE 1’s renderer:

openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge
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I’m also experimenting with mixing both 2D and 3D trees to achieve a balance between visual quality and performance; 3D trees are placed near to the lineside, while 2D trees are placed behind these, and the overall effect looks reasonable to me; I hope you agree. It should work well, provided the player doesn’t move the camera beyond the effective scenery edge boundary which the 2D tree surfaces create–openBVE is still primarily a cab view simulator, after all. Here are some examples of the scenery testing location at Longbridge:

openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge
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I’ve also added shadows beneath the trees and OHLE masts (another feature brought in from Watford Junction to Rugby), as well as beneath hedgerows to improve the appearance of the scenery. The shadows are simply very low resolution textures, which in the interests of performance, don’t use alpha channels, just ordinary texture transparency. The low resolution of the textures provides the necessary blurring:

openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge
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Lastly, I’m also updating the pointwork so it’ll be up to the standard of Watford Junction to Rugby:

openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.6, Cross-City South v1.4, Smooth Transparency option enabled--click to enlarge
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openBVE Help Guide updated

Just in case anyone hasn’t read through the comments on my last blog entry or otherwise noticed, I updated my openBVE Help and Information Guide recently, to include instructions explaining how openBVE can be installed and used by Ubuntu Linux users, either via the Add/Remove option, or by installing and running the program via Wine (which allows BVE 4 plugin DLL equipped trains to be used in Linux). I update the guide regularly as well, so if you need any assistance with openBVE which isn’t covered elsewhere, please visit the updated guide for more information: openBVE Help and Information.

Incidentally, since I replaced the X-City South executable installer with the .7z archive, downloads have been just as frequent as before, and I’ve had no more requests for help with installing the route than usual (and I don’t get many requests for help usually); indeed someone who was a newcomer to train simulation kindly informed me that they’d managed to install openBVE, BVE4, and Cross-City South with help from the guides I’ve prepared. So I’m assuming that most of you are managing fine with the installation process. 🙂

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Posted in openBVE | 8 Comments »



Jaunty Jackalope and openBVE

Posted by admin on April 25, 2009 at 8:42 am

Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” (which is a Linux distribution for any dear readers who may not be particularly au fait with the wonderful world of operating systems…), has just been released. With this version, it’s possible to install a seperately packaged, unofficial version of openBVE maintained by Paul Sladen (currently at v1.0.2.0; the » official openBVE « release is at v1.0.3.0 at the time of writing) via the ‘Applications’ > ‘Add/Remove…’ menu item (I haven’t used Kubuntu in a while and I’ve forgotten what the equivalent in KDE is). A specially prepared, public domain version of the Cross-City South route (v1.31.03) is also installed automatically when openBVE is installed via this method, along with a reduced functionality (plugin DLLs don’t work on non-Windows operating systems), public domain version of the class 323 which Steve over at » trainsimcentral « also kindly donated.

X-City South v1.31.03 is just a cut-down version of the public release available from this site, with the copyright files removed and alternative backdrops added, and fewer route files; I prepared it so that openBVE could be considered for inclusion in Ubuntu’s list of installable open source applications, as for a game engine to be accepted, it requires some equally permissively licenced game data to be supplied with it. Eventually the Ubuntu X-City South package should be identical to the official X-City South v1.4 package once it’s been released, and I hope to send any updates to Paul so the Ubuntu version is kept up-to-date; by implication, X-City South v1.4 will be entirely copyright free as well. Any copyright material, like the Birmingham New Street announcement audio files, will be available as an optional extra only.

After installing the latest ATi Catalyst drivers (and, at last, my Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphics card finally works with Ubuntu), it was nice to see openBVE running in Linux myself, and with decent framerates too. The framerate in the first screenshot of XCS v1.31 was 80 fps (90 fps in Win XP), and in the third screenshot, showing XCS v1.4, 17 fps (20 fps in Win XP). The latter screenshot actually includes more animated trees than will feature in the final XCS v1.4 release though, and in-cab, I was seeing up to 30 fps):

openBVE v1.0.2.0 running in Ubuntu 9.04--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.2.0 running in Ubuntu 9.04--click to enlarge openBVE v1.0.2.0 running in Ubuntu 9.04--click to enlarge

I admit there was also some momentary fascination after I turned on Ubuntu’s “Extra” visual effects option which enables hardware accelerated graphical effects to be applied to windows, and watched my X-City South v1.4 development route carry on running at 25-30 fps while I distorted and bounced the poor helpless openBVE window around the desktop (sorry I wasn’t able to capture a screenshot, just a low quality video still):

openBVE v1.0.2.0 running in Ubuntu 9.04

I may be finding that framerates are just a bit lower than in Windows XP, but they’re still good and I enjoy using openBVE in Ubuntu instead. The application’s forms all rendered nicely although the loading and error dialogs remained visible once the SDL window was created; I’ll carry on testing it and see if I notice any other issues.

Any Windows users who might be considering trying openBVE on Ubuntu, should remember that plugin DLLs don’t work natively on non-windows operating systems, so various functions in BVE 4 trains like TPWS won’t work. For this functionality to be available in Linux, you’ll need to use openBVE with Wine instead, which isn’t quite as easy to set up (I haven’t personally had time to try it yet, but as shown in this » YouTube video of the Northern Line « for example, if you do go to the trouble, it’s well worth it).

Information Icon Edit (1st May ’09): I have tried and succeeded in getting openBVE v1.4.0.1 running with Wine and Mono 2.4 for Windows in Ubuntu since this entry was published, and it was quite easy after all. See the comments for more. 🙂

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Posted in openBVE | 11 Comments »



E-mail problems

Posted by admin on April 20, 2009 at 10:34 pm

Information IconI’ve discovered that anyone who has tried to contact me via my older .co.uk e-mail address since the start of April will have been unable to send mail to me. Hopefully if you’ve tried to e-mail me using that address, you’ll have received a Delivery Status Notification e-mail reporting SMTP error 550: “No Such User Here”, and then thought to check my Contact page for my newer e-mail address. But if not, please try to contact me again. I’ve now fixed the problem with the older address–it would seem that at some point, I accidentally deleted the e-mail domain forwarding rule which copies mail sent from the .co.uk domain to the .net domain. Quite how I managed to do this, I know not, but the rule has been reinstated anyway. Oops… Emoticon

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Posted in Site News | 2 Comments »



Cross-City South 7-Zip trial

Posted by admin on April 19, 2009 at 7:55 am

In what may or may not prove to be a popular move, I’ve replaced my beloved NSIS executable installer within which the Cross-City South route was previously distributed, with a 7-Zip archive instead (and the other Cross-City add-ons have also been repackaged). I’m doing this as a trial to see how users cope with installing the route using a compressed archive manager instead of an installation program. I’m not willing to package the route using the more popular but less effective .zip format, as the resulting filesize is much larger than the .7z equivalent–the Cross-City South .zip version comes to a massive 32 MiB, while the 7-Zip archive comes in at 13.5 MiB, which is a little smaller than the installer it replaces (which figures, as both were compressed using the same LZMA compression method). All archives by default, have either the ‘Railway’ or ‘Train’ folder as the root folder within the archives, so you can always choose the same destination path when extracting the contents, and so there’s little doubt as to which folder the contents are supposed to be extracted to.

Okay, so I’ll miss using NSIS to package my add-ons as it was a very flexible installer creation tool, but more seriously, openBVE is intended as a cross-platform program, and executable (.exe) installers only work natively on Windows and not on other operating systems, which is unfair to non-Windows users wanting to use the route, or indeed those who have their add-ons installed in a non-default location. openBVE’s developer has also stated that add-ons released in installers aren’t considered to be openBVE content at all (and I can’t be happy if X-City isn’t considered to be openBVE content), so one way or another, distribution via compressed archive is the way of the future for openBVE, and I hope you’ll all be able to adjust to this change. If absolutely necessary I may reintroduce the executable installer alongside the .7z archive, but I’d prefer not to if possible.

There are no changes to the route itself (with v1.4 on it’s way, updating the old version isn’t really a good use of my time), however to prepare yourself for Cross-City South v1.4 and other openBVE add-ons in future, you can head over to the » Cross-City South download page « and try out the compressed archive installation method instead. I’ve also added new content to the » openBVE Help and Information « section of the site, which includes a couple of screenshots of what we can all look forward to with openBVE in the near future, along with step-by-step instructions to help with the downloading and installation of the Cross-City South .7z package for use with openBVE, along with recommended settings, and so-on. I’ve also slightly updated the » BVE 4 Help Section «, and you can also view an updated version of the » Cross-City South/Class 323 Tutorial « tailored for openBVE.

openBVE Help and Information
openBVE Help and Information
BVE Help and Information
BVE Help and Information

Information IconEdit: I’ve made a couple of amendments to the openBVE Help page and the Cross-City South download page, as they contained some unclear instructions and mistakes–sorry! I’ll continue to update them if necessary.

If you have problems installing the Cross-City South via the compressed archive method instead, I’d really like to hear about your installation experiences. Please feel free to add comments to this blog entry if you have any problems (no registration required, just click the ‘x Comments’ link below), or e-mail me. If there’s no feedback, I’ll assume you’re all managing just fine. 🙂

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Posted in openBVE, Site News | 8 Comments »



openBVE v1.0.3.0, homepage relocation, and Train Editor

Posted by admin on April 19, 2009 at 7:50 am

A new version of openBVE, v1.0.3.0, was released a few days ago; head over to the » official openBVE homepage « to download the latest stable release. Several changes have been made since v1.0.0.0, including:

  • Cross-City South users will find that the 323’s door indicator and guard’s buzzer now work when the cab is entered at Redditch (and similar issues with the LU Northern Line and Tokyo Metro Ginza Line are resolved as well).
  • The external views now have their last used position remembered, which is especially useful in the F2 view, for example if you want to ride inside a carriage as a passenger. The F3/F4 external view camera is positioned relative to the track rather than your train, which means the camera will stay in the position on the route where it was last used. The F4 drive-by camera position, when reset, is also intelligently placed further ahead of your train as it’s speed increases, or nearer as the speed decreases.
    Tip: If you want to position the F3 camera back at your train’s location again, just press the Numpad 5 key, and similarly, do this to reposition the camera ahead of your train when in the F4 drive-by view.
  • A default set of Points of Interest is automatically created at station stopping points on routes which lack this openBVE feature already. Press the Numpad 7 and 1 keys to switch between these POIs.
  • Users (but preferably not developers 😉 ) can now also disable the warning and error messages that appear when add-ons containing errors are loaded.
  • Some BVE 1 trains perviously accelerated too slowly at high speeds, leading to reduced maximum speeds; this is now corrected.
  • Various other changes have also been made, see the » Changelog « for more details.

After ongoing problems with previous hosts, the openBVE homepage has also been relocated, and now shares a home with » Trainsimcentral «. This server should provide much greater reliability. The new URL is http://openbve.trainsimcentral.co.uk.

Also, a new Train Editor tool has been released, which makes editing train.dat files suitable for openBVE trains much easier; e.g. configuring train characteristics, previewing acceleration curves, editing motor sound curves, and setting openBVE specific options. You can download the tool here: » here «.

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Platform Generator utility released

Posted by admin on April 19, 2009 at 7:45 am

Alan Wheeler’s new Platform Generator (Plat Gen) tool was released recently; head over to » eezypeazy.co.uk « to download this handy utility. The program creates a variety of photo-realistic customised platform segments, allowing route developers to choose the surface and side textures, create platform ramps, curved platform lengths at various radii, and more. The generated objects are placed via the .Freeobj command rather than the .Form commands. Here’s a screenshot of one of the resulting platforms at University station on the Cross-City South v1.4 route:

openBVE/Cross-City South v1.4 screenshot--click to enlarge
openBVE / Cross-City South v1.4 plus 323 screenshot

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Posted in openBVE | 2 Comments »



openBVE v1.0 is here!

Posted by admin on March 24, 2009 at 12:26 am

openBVE LogoAfter 347 days of development, openBVE version 1.0 has now been released! Personally I think this is an incredible achievement–not only that openBVE has been created in the first place, but that it’s been created in such a short space of time, considering the complexity and difficulties inherent in undertaking such a project, some of which I’ve become familiar with while following the development of the program and helping to understand some aspects of BVE Trainsim’s behaviour. Congratulations michelle. Emoticon Smile

Head over to the » official openBVE homepage « to download the latest in the stable branch of openBVE releases. Whether you’re a developer or a user, if you only use BVE Trainsim at the moment, now would be a good time to enter the world of openBVE.

michelle has also added some additional documentation to help you find your way around the program, which you can read here: » Using openBVE «. For BVE Trainsim, I found myself having to create help pages to guide newcomers through the installation and use of BVE, so hopefully I won’t need to go to such lengths any more, as these are very comprehensive, step-by-step instructions. However, if any of you still have problems installing openBVE, or using the Cross-City South with the program, let me know and I’ll see if I can assist. Depending on feedback over the coming weeks, I’ll see if I still need to work on the “openBVE Help” section of this site with regard to add-on installation, although I’ll certainly update my Driver’s Guide and Class 323 Tutorial soon.

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openBVE v1.0: Are we nearing the end of the journey, or has it only just begun?

Posted by admin on March 24, 2009 at 12:24 am

Question IconWell, that’s partly up to us. michelle has published an in depth article in which she sets out her vision for how openBVE could evolve in future, along with various ideas and plans which could pave the way to v2.0, which you can read here: » The potential future of openBVE «. But without our input, discussion about future direction, or sufficient interest expressed in these ideas, some of these developments may never happen… It’s possible to see what an incredibly flexible solution could be created in future, allowing for far more than is currently possible if an extensible, modular design and plugin based architecture is developed; e.g. detailed simulation of any safety system without having to rely on built-in approximations, plugins which can load different file formats, or customisable physics plugins allowing better support for more diverse applications such as maglev or even bus simulation, and much more, while still supporting legacy BVE add-ons.

To summarise, openBVE version 2 could (and remember this is all speculative at the moment) bring some much sought after functionality, such as true support for passing trains, parallel traffic and so-on, enabled by having more than one functional track (although this wouldn’t be a network of tracks which can be switched to and from at runtime, at this stage–this is something for the distant dream of version 3). Driving back and forth along a track could be better than in v1.0 as signalling could be functional in the reverse direction as well. 3D cabs with interactive controls, perhaps manipulated via the mouse, could be implemented. Weather plays an enormously important role on the real railway, and version 2 could bring us rain, snow and thunder, without having to “cheat” with pre-defined sound samples or creating scenery objects to create such effects, as I’ve done thus far. Wind simulation could result in altered performance characteristics of trains as well, making driving more challenging. Better Sun and Moon simulation could be provided as well, with realtime day/night transitions occuring, showing off openBVE’s illuminated object capabilities, especially at twilight. Then there are improvements to how add-ons are obtained and managed; currently this is messy where BVE is concerned and intimidating to the beginner, and all this could change with version 2, where a directory of add-ons and download locations could be referenced from within openBVE, with add-ons perhaps installed automatically via the user interface. A Level of Detail (LOD) system could be implemented, which might be enormously helpful on more geometrically complex routes, like Watford Junction to Rugby, or with more detailed exterior car objects perhaps.

Sounds fantastic doesn’t it? However, no feature is guaranteed to be implemented; indeed openBVE version 2 itself is not guaranteed to be developed–it depends on our level of interest, and our willingness to help.

This vision of the future is only likely to materialise with our support, so if we want any of this to happen, we–developers or users–need to make sure that we make known our interest in openBVE’s future direction and talk about it, express our intent to use these new features if we want them, and then experiment with new functionality as it emerges; in other words, take part in the project. This way, michelle knows what the community actually wants, she doesn’t waste her time implementing functionality which isn’t going to be used, and problems and pitfalls can be discussed or resolved before too much work is done. If you have any thoughts about this path to version 2, then you can post your thoughts in » this forum thread «; don’t post a wishlist though, consider the options already outlined in the article, and decide which are important and worth pursuing, and then, these can be prioritised and discussed. I’ll add my own thoughts later as well. Drop any comments on this blog too if you like, as I’m also interested in what you think is important or worthwhile.

Lets not miss out on a potentially wonderful opportunity here–we have someone in our midst who not only has a vision which could benefit us all, but also the ability and willingness to implement that vision, and it would be highly regrettable if our community lost this opportunity while it’s available to us. My concern is that if we don’t look to the future now, we may end up settling for what we’ve got in openBVE v1.0 (or even BVE 5 when it’s released), and then in a few years we’ll wish we had something better, only to find that it’s too late and michelle has moved on to other fields where I’ve no doubt her talents would be appreciated, or we may find that mackoy no longer works on BVE Trainsim either, in which case we’ll wish we could have done more to keep michelle motivated. Alternatively, we can actively create and shape the future of our hobby together, and demonstrate that it’s worth michelle’s while in continuing the project onwards towards version 2, or even beyond.

Of course I know that there aren’t many of us developers around, but surely between the relatively few of us (along with an increasingly enthusiastic user base), we can contribute enough to enable openBVE development to continue and evolve into a free trainsim we could only have dreamt of a few years ago, and as the program gains functionality, hopefully pick up new developers and programmers along the way?

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Cross-City South v1.4 Progress

Posted by admin on March 24, 2009 at 12:22 am

I am sorry for the lack of updates during the past few weeks. This is partly because more of my time has been taken up by non-railsim related stuff during the past month, but also because I’ve completed most of the experimentation as far as XCS v1.4’s animated objects are concerned now (I have to stop somewhere otherwise I’ll never finish it), and what remains to be done isn’t especially newsworthy in comparison–mainly adding what I’ve already shown throughout the route. I also can’t imagine that any of you would be particularly interested in reading about that sub-folder I renamed two days ago, those trees I added to a set of ground objects, or that exciting search through my archives to find a photo of a class 323’s seating?! Emoticon Wink However, the project is going well, and I should have some more news soon.

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Posted in openBVE | 4 Comments »