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JWNoctis3 years ago

Re: Derailment

I think it could use some deliberation, of simulating exactly how much of such....irregularity.

After all there's another simulator (which I would not name here) out there right now that had made it a massive selling point - which I had personally found to be somewhat distasteful, but don't let that get in the way - while most other train sims I know of (and flight sims as well) would simply freeze or terminate the simulaton on detecting such out-of-bound condition, and some other tangentially related rail signalling sims have made a policy out of not simulating accidents, which is much easier to accomplish there.

And there's much difference as well, between jumping off the track over a faulty set of points at low speed as (very) occasionally happened back in the day, to numerous occasions much worse and too unpleasant to name.

So, what's the plan here?

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Lapioware3 years ago

The rationale for implementing derailments is to have visible consequences for mistakes (speeding, slamming brakes on loosely coupled stock etc.) instead of just abruptly halting the simulation. Basically having the train grind to a halt with appropriate sound effects and clouds of dust, but nothing more spectacular than that. Having a wheelset drop on the ground and bump over sleepers could create an interesting visual feedback in the cab, given the physics modelling of the bogies and driver head.

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JWNoctis3 years ago

Thanks for the quick reply!

And yes, it sounds good - Except there won't be much of grinding to a halt in a high-speed derailment, witness accounts of real-life occasions of which had included words like "somersault" - To be fair, that was an occasion of animal strike with traction at rear, rather than any driver error.

A combined approach might bear consideration, at some point.

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Lapioware3 years ago

The custom physics engine I'm using doesn't really support leaving the tracks, so in case of derailment the vehicles will stay more or less upright and won't stray too far from the rails. Definitely no running down the embankment, falling off a bridge or anything like that.

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