Things you should know about MSTS, but obviously didn't!

[NiallGray]

Had one of those moments today when changing ground textures in RE.

Instead of pressing 9, which was the texture I wanted, I kept pressing the - key by mistake. Next thing I know it's night time!

Three to four years I've been using RE and did not know until today that the +- keys change the sun's position!

Anyone else had a similar moment recently where you discovered something and then thought afterwards "I should have known that!"?

[dave13]

Yeah only the other day I was seting up some ai tailights and wondered why they were not woking then I relised that
I should have put Control ( 1 ) Unit ( 3 ) Instead of Control ( 1 ) Unit ( 2 )
By the way do you know if you have to put Couple ( ? ) in when the ai lights are in the middel of the train to stop them comeing on?
Or do the not come anyway
Dave:)

[dennisat]

Three to four years I've been using RE and did not know until today that the +- keys change the sun's position!

That's especially useful when you're tweaking terrain. Moving the sun lower makes it much easier to see areas that need smoothing.

Dennis

[terrycunliffe]

Three to four years I've been using RE and did not know until today that the +- keys change the sun's position!

Where have you been?

To add to this, did you know that using this facility will cause the sim to crash if you've any animated objects on any of the loaded tiles?

[rickloader]

Oh yes! I have one! It is only recently that I learned that control or shift/control would restrain objects from rolling while setting their attitude in RE. Previously I had to rotate the object to face North-South before adjusting the pitch, rotate to its intended alignment, then back to N-S for further adjustment. Just placing 1 fence might take several tries before it could be accepted. Even now I shudder to think of the time lost because I was ignorant of the use of shift/control. May blessings and good fortune shine always on the poster of this Gem! Was it Terry or Mick? Afraid i don`t remember
Rick

[bigvern]

More on the lines of "Things You Knew About but Promptly Forgot"....

Can anyone remember what the undocumented command was to put the player train in and out of AI control? I do recall doing this in a number of activities when I wanted to retreat to the passenger saloon but can't for the life of me recall what keys I pressed!

NB: For the avoidance of doubt this is/was a function that could be activated in any activity and should not be confused with the introductory train ride.

[markpullinger]

Hi Vern, I think that is a bin command & it is on the numpad somewhere! sorry best I can remember.

[BobLatimer]

And while we're on the topic of "new" discoveries about MSTS, for years I've been standardising all of my MSTS stock (using Route_Riter) to Automatic couplings and Single Air brakes. Recently I've discovered that if you change some locos from vacuum to air using Route_Riter, they don't work quite right. The problem arises when the consist starts the activity in the assembled state, you uncouple the loco and then recouple. Sometimes the consist won't then move - the same effect as if you have mis-matched brakes.

It's only some vacuum locos that work like this. Some operate okay once converted to air brakes. The difference appears to be in the amount of detail in the vacuum brake sections of the .eng file.

I've yet to figure out exactly what's going on.

The other thing I'm trying to check out is whether there is a similar problem if all locos are converted to vacuum brakes, i.e. whether the Route_Riter conversion from air to vacuum produces similar problems.

Bob.

[ianmacmillan]

Switching to AI driver and back again is Ctrl and numberpad 2.

If you want to run an electric on a non electrified route first choose an electrified route and select the loco. Then choose the non electrified route.
The loco will remain selected and you can run it.

[bigvern]

Cheers for that Ian!

[rufuskins]

Indirectly related but if using ConBuilder 3.1.5 it will only deal with a maximum of 10000 ENGines!

When using it for some Class 105/106 consists it said that I had 10354 and therefore not all were loaded - presumably the last 354 within the Trainset folder.

Didn't say anything about a maximum number of WAGons!

Alec

[CrisGer]

Will the change of time of day keys work on Activities that have a set time of day? The reason i asked is that there is a very nice huge route for Italy but the two acts for it are both at NIGHT...which is frustrating as you cant see much at all. I wanted to try to change the time of day yet keep the act running...but as i type this i am thinking it wont work as it would throw off all the services and so forth. ah well, just a thought. I guess i could try to re time the act using RE..not sure if that will work either.

[casperdog]

Hi Chris
Try 'activity changer'. You can alter the start time of any activity. It also automatically changes the ai times to match the new start time.

Clive

[tubemad]

2 things from me, learnt last year, six years after I got MSTS!

1. I didn't know that if you stuffed up the departure time in AE and was later than the time you wanted it (so the arrival was stupidly early), you can just uncheck the station in the location list and check it again, and it will reset the time to 00:00 for that station only. Before I either re-did whole timetable or went into Activity Changer to fix it!!

2. Again, something I learnt last year, there is a deadman's 'Alerter' in the sim. I was driving a 73 at Eastleigh and wondered why every time I moved there was a 'beepbeepbeepbeep' and the loco kept grinding to a stop. I checked everything until I went to the options and saw the Alerter box checked (somehow) and now I know what it is...

Is this in the manual or have I obviously skipped that bit?!


Cheers,

James.

[NiallGray]

This falls into a 'DOH!!! I forgot about that!" category.

Last night I collated all old acts, services, paths, traffic for Glasgow Carlisle (ie those I did for v2 and and any aborted acts that were never finished) and put them on a spare machine to look at. I went through all my drives and usb sticks, and merged them all together.

I copied over the trains and consists I needed for the services and after fixing the paths, I got a couple of ideas for acts and began writing them.

When I went to test them, MSTS kept falling over when I loaded an act. For about 30 minutes it foxed me and I even re-wrote a path I thought was wrong. Then came the "DOH!" moment.

I found I had 900-odd consists and almost 100 acts ... and if you don't have trainstore, that isn't going to work!

Still, on the plus side, I found some old acts never released for v2, which I will update and release when v3 comes out.