I've got it, at last....

[peteworsley]

No, not the game, but the reasoning behind my number one pet (visual) hate - the F3 Driver's Aid - I've described it as bloated several times now, so I really must find a new adjective!

I was watching my nephews playing a car-racing game last night on their Playstation (Need for Speed, or something), and I suddenly realised that the Driver's Aid has been lifted, lock, stock and barrel, from such a game.

The evidence, m'lud:

1) You can only see 100yards ahead - thats all you need in a car racing game - as far as the next right-hander - your car can stop dead in 50yards anyway, so what's the point.... - and in a car, you don't get derailed by wrongly-set trailing points...

2) The display of traffic on adjacent tracks is not so that you can identify who is shunting the yard while you speed past - it's to alert you to overtaking trains, sneaking up on the inside.

3) The gradient profile being relegated to a sub-page - absolutely unnecessary in a car racing game.

The most important pieces of information to a train driver are the distances, the gradients, the signals, the speed limits, the stations and junctions - MSTS was far from perfect in that respect. The most elegant way of displaying this information would be to have a switchable rolling gradient display across the bottom (or top) of the screen, with signals, speed limits, stations etc superimposed on it.

Oops, I've just realised - it's been done before, by Steam Express Simulator - which just goes to show that you can learn from what has gone before - you don't have to reinvent everything - a feature of the human race in general, the young especially and software designers in particular.

I've commented before that this couldn't have been condoned by a Real-Life, or even a committed Virtual Driver during the much-vaunted consultation phase - I suspect it was missing right up until the end with the assurance that it would be added later. As release approached, someone said "...don't worry, I have a subroutine somewhere (showing my age!), which puts a box in the corner and lets you fill it with all kinds of irrelevent information".

So that, then, is my view of the F3 Driver's Aid - jaundiced, of course, but what the heck. Then there's the latitude and logtitude display....

I still hope that KRS succeeds - it just seems a shame that it has been spoiled by glitzy, unnecessary eye-candy.

Best wishes

Pete W

[rogertra]

Agreed, 100%.

Next signal aspect (colour), distance to next signal, distance to next stopping station, gradient and approaching gradient, current speed, current speed limit and, most importantly, distance to and what is, the next speed limit (Needs adding) should all be in one window, you should NOT have to click back and forth to find this vital info.

[Lad491]

Next signal aspect (colour), distance to next signal, distance to next stopping station, gradient and approaching gradient, current speed, current speed limit and, most importantly, distance to and what is, the next speed limit (Needs adding) should all be in one window, you should NOT have to click back and forth to find this vital info.

Whilst in some respects I agree with this (bring back msts ) I can understand that if you are aiming for realism, that information should be learned by the driver during training and should therefore been "seen" from the view ahead, not an advance warning.

I was surprised that they didnt go down the route (pardon the pun) of changing the amount of info you can see at different control levels. For me a good idea would have been to have all that available in simple format. You drive the route half a dozen times with plenty of advance information so you know where to slow, which route you will take etc. A training mode if you like. Once confident you could then switch to the intermediate level, maybe still have the stopping points shown, distance to next station, signal aspect ahead, but maybe not the speed limits as you should know them by now. Finally at expert level you shouldnt have the track monitor at all, driving purely as the driver does - out of the cab.

Flying ahead to change points is just about the most rubbish idea ive ever heard of, like that happens in real life

A missed opportunity I think. A good training system whereby you learn the route and drive with ever increasing degrees of complexity would have been a terrific idea.

[Neptune50006]

A missed opportunity I think. A good training system whereby you learn the route and drive with ever increasing degrees of complexity would have been a terrific idea.

Now that would be a good feature, and would make the game/sim so much more interesting.

[arabiandisco]

Agreed, 100%.

Next signal aspect (colour), distance to next signal, distance to next stopping station, gradient and approaching gradient, current speed, current speed limit and, most importantly, distance to and what is, the next speed limit (Needs adding) should all be in one window, you should NOT have to click back and forth to find this vital info.

The problem is that you need an awful lot of information, and the box itself would get really rather big if it was all on the one page, or would just be a box of text (most likely both!).

I do think that RSDL should have taken a cue from the"transparent" driver aids available for MSTS. And the inability to move it is just infuriating (if it does become movable, I'd like to stick it outside the game window when I'm playing in windowed mode)

[peteworsley]

The problem is that you need an awful lot of information, and the box itself would get really rather big if it was all on the one page, or would just be a box of text (most likely both!).

No, it wouldn't - take a look at Steam Train Simulator - it's a model of neat, efficient information display. It needs to be a strip, no more than an inch high across the top or bottom of the screen - switchable for those who wish to spend months learning the route

Best wishes

Pete W

[Potoroo]

I do think that RSDL should have taken a cue from the"transparent" driver aids available for MSTS. And the inability to move it is just infuriating (if it does become movable, I'd like to stick it outside the game window when I'm playing in windowed mode)

One of the UI suggestions I made in the RS forum's New Feature Proposals was that "All HUDs or windows (like the Driver's Guide) should be left-click draggable." Since RS say they're paying attention to every suggestion made over there it might be useful if more users spoke up about these matters in the appropriate place.

[ianm42]

The final irony is that is not available when you are driving inside the car - sorry, cab.

It is available in the cab view, but you have to press F3 again to get it. Each camera view seems to have its own setup of function key displays, so if you want all the displays on all the views, you first have to go to each view and press all the F keys.

[johndibben]

When I first installed RS, I agreed about the driver aids and still do although I suspect we all have our own ideas as to what would be best.

However, RS has cab zoom and better graphics which should enable us to drive by the signals without aids in a scenario which is far more realistic. Trainz has a cab zoom feature and signals and speed signs can be read way in advance of that in MSTS. RS signals are said to be too bright but this all helps driving without aids.

The F3 display is very good for shunting and it may be that for which it was intended? The red (clear) display might better be replaced by green to show a clear track ahead and the display becomes more useful if track joins are kept to a minimum.

We need to know the route if we want to drive a route realistically. I enjoyed the MSTS Cambrian route and took pride in being able to drive without aids and miffed at myself if I forgot a speed restriction or station I don't see it as a problem if we have to take the trouble to learn a route. It gives us a much better idea of the knowledge a driver is required to posess and therefore more like a real driver.

For many a trainsim might simply be downloading or buying a route, completing the scenarios and moving on but that's not much reward for those who spend months or years building them.

[pmorgancym]

REally though to learn the route it should be done through scenarios, after all you don't just send someone out in the real world to blunder along the route andlearn from his mistakes, well not unsupervised anyway. BLundering round on Free Raom, well there's no pressure no aim, it just seems pointless.

To push the simulator aspect, a carreer mode, where you pass through tasks of increasing difficulty, only prgressing through good performance would make the sim more playable, the culmination would be a final test the full route without aid and with strict pass/fail criteria, which could unlock a special scenario, unique loco etc.

As the otherhalf (an accomplished gamer) commented to me the other day, "Well it;s looks nice, but whats the point, what do you do?" well luv you drive around "And, do you pass do you fail?". THe "scoring" cristera that you get at the end of the scenario is pretty inadequate really, there's not much repeat value in the game at the moment.

[bigvern]

As the otherhalf (an accomplished gamer) commented to me the other day, "Well it;s looks nice, but whats the point, what do you do?" well luv you drive around "And, do you pass do you fail?". THe "scoring" cristera that you get at the end of the scenario is pretty inadequate really, there's not much repeat value in the game at the moment.

I was thinking that the other day, playing one of the 18 Wheels of Steel titles which starts you off in a small weedy truck but encourages you to grow your business empire. The perfect combination of simulation and strategy. A proper career mode in RS would have added much more otherwise it is all a bit abstract (this is by no means a failing just of RS, look how popular the FS Passengers add in is for FS2004).

[PaulH2]

I tend to agree that the display is bloated and missing some useful information (I do like the suggestion made here that the amount of detail be selectable). I did suggest to RSDL that the tabs be made "floating" so you can have more than one on screen at a time if desired.

Another problem with the F3 display is that it is not scaled properly in widescreen resolutions, making the bloating even worse as it takes up a far greater width on the screen than necessary (and looks horrible too). It also seems to stay far too big at high resolutions, my guess being that it is set to occupy a certain proportional size of the screen no matter what your resolution (thus the incorrect scaling in widescreen and overly large size in high resolutions). I have reported this (at least the widescreen issue) as a bug.

Personally, the guide looks to me more like it was designed to look pretty and do clever things, rather than from a perspective of providing useful information to the driver (as do several aspects of KRS, such as the lack of an "OK to proceed" sound), but it wouldn't take major changes to make it much better. One other feature I was dissapointed to see missing is that the displays can't be made translucent. It would have been (and still could be) pretty straight forward to add this under the currently sparse advanced graphics options for example.

Fingers crossed that this is on RSDL's list for future work...

Paul