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Post by chiefjackyt on Sept 3, 2019 11:44:01 GMT
lur.boards.net/post/4916/threadAt the end of this post, Eddie says 'Roll on Wednesday'. Could this mean a planned release date of tomorrow? What do you all think?
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Post by Xavier on Sept 3, 2019 11:54:11 GMT
No it refers to Alan's next stream.
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Post by Eddie on Sept 3, 2019 12:18:02 GMT
I'm a secret lemonade drinker.................. Wish I knew what PNB meant though........
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Post by Jimi on Sept 3, 2019 12:31:46 GMT
Chief - there are multiple activities planned pre- and post-release. Alan's "first look"live stream last night was the first. It also gave us excellent "external field test" of the install procedures and the route/trains.
We are now fixing/testing the few tiny issues we discovered. Next Alan is creating some YT videos, hopefully available by Wednesday - that's the goal. Thomas Harrison has also asked for a pre-release copy so he can stream/video.
We also have something very special planned for Saturday. And then you'll know the release date - which will be imminent.
Post-release there is the Open Days at the LT Museum Acton Town, starting on Sept 28th. You just might see us, and the VDL, there...
So please hold your breath a little longer. We want to ensure the quality and operation of the installer and route/trains are spot on. And we need to give a couple of well-known TS streamers the opportunity to do their thing.
This brief wait will be worth it.
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Post by Eddie on Sept 3, 2019 12:38:55 GMT
It now appears that Alan is planning another live stream on Sunday evening too.
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Post by Jimi on Sept 3, 2019 12:45:47 GMT
And Alan's stream of last night on Twitch is now posted:
VDL Phase II stuff starts about 30 minutes in...
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Post by Peter C on Sept 3, 2019 13:22:49 GMT
Wish I knew what PNB meant though........ "Personal Needs Break", it's a railway term and Alan uses it because, you know, railways. -Peter
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Post by chiefjackyt on Sept 3, 2019 13:26:33 GMT
Wish I knew what PNB meant though........ "Personal Needs Break", it's a railway term and Alan uses it because, you know, railways. -Peter I’ve always wondered what it meant and couldn’t find it online anyway, thanks
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Post by Peter C on Sept 3, 2019 13:41:42 GMT
Can I just say to everyone who has worked on the route so far - Well Done! I said it a lot during the livestream yesterday and I may have said it on another forum. You really deserve a lot of praise - D78 stock, C69, '73, Standard, Met Electric locos, Met Steam locos! Wow! I wouldn't be able to make one part of one of those, let alone all of them and have them all fully work. I hope you get the route released soon and that you can show off to everyone how good it is even more. -Peter
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Post by Jimi on Sept 3, 2019 14:15:45 GMT
Much appreciated Peter! This is the first chance the team has had a chance to sit back and look at what we've done. And to see it through other folks eyes is informative and very rewarding. Keep an eye on our Info topics. Much planned for this week...
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Post by patrick on Sept 3, 2019 14:37:07 GMT
The C Stock and D78 looked great can't wait to drive them
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Post by Eddie on Sept 3, 2019 15:21:05 GMT
I must say thanks Peter for your kind comments, it is really rewarding to hear from members with their impressions from last night. It was actually the first time I've ever watched a live stream, so I must get out more.......it felt like a live gig to me. I was exhausted afterwards, but exhilarated too. PNB.............yep I've needed a few of those in the past. Usually without a lot of success in town. Huge shortage of public lavatories, especially if you drive a cab.
As a London Cabbie for over 35 years a lot of the appearance of the route is down to knowing exactly what the various areas look like, mainly from the road but with the aid of Rw Decal (Big Thank you to Jim Nobkkins, for one of the best tools ever released in TS IMO ) I was able to place everything just where it was IRL.
Most rewarding moment for me was when Alan panned away from the S7 leaving Putney Bridge Station and said "Now that looks like London in the summer"....... Yes, we even put in the Majestic Wine shop because I went past it every day on the way to town and home again. If you have a look at Parsons Green Lane for example you'll see the road looks pretty much like it does IRL. So that "look" that Alan referred to was no accident. I laboured over every area in order to get that "look". At Wimbledon for e.g I was quite pleased with the result but got criticised for getting the staggered platform for the Croydon Tram wrong. Trying to rebuild that corrupted the tracks.bin and hosed all our new signals. So there was nothing for it, but to go back 5 builds and start all over again. You don't see all that grief when you look at a finished route. Being part of a team is what drives us on. Don't let the side down, keep your chin up. Now it all seems worthwhile. Thank you guys.
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Post by Peter C on Sept 3, 2019 16:32:02 GMT
I must say thanks Peter for your kind comments, it is really rewarding to hear from members with their impressions from last night. It was actually the first time I've ever watched a live stream, so I must get out more.......it felt like a live gig to me. I was exhausted afterwards, but exhilarated too. PNB.............yep I've needed a few of those in the past. Usually without a lot of success in town. Huge shortage of public lavatories, especially if you drive a cab. As a London Cabbie for over 35 years a lot of the appearance of the route is down to knowing exactly what the various areas look like, mainly from the road but with the aid of Rw Decal (Big Thank you to Jim Nobkkins, for one of the best tools ever released in TS IMO ) I was able to place everything just where it was IRL. Most rewarding moment for me was when Alan panned away from the S7 leaving Putney Bridge Station and said "Now that looks like London in the summer"....... Yes, we even put in the Majestic Wine shop because I went past it every day on the way to town and home again. If you have a look at Parsons Green Lane for example you'll see the road looks pretty much like it does IRL. So that "look" that Alan referred to was no accident. I laboured over every area in order to get that "look". At Wimbledon for e.g I was quite pleased with the result but got criticised for getting the staggered platform for the Croydon Tram wrong. Trying to rebuild that corrupted the tracks.bin and hosed all our new signals. So there was nothing for it, but to back 5 builds and start all over again. You don't see all that grief when you look at a finished route. Being part of a team is what drives us on. Don't let the side down, keep your chin up. Now it all seems worthwhile. Thank you guys. You are very welcome. I have tried making loads of routes for Train Sim in the past (almost all fictional) and I can say how difficult it can be. When I look at a route, I must admit, I assume it was easy to put together - but being able to hear your stories and see you change and improve things along the way has shown me how hard it can sometimes be. Well done on Wimbledon - that sounds really difficult! Experience in the area can always be helpful. If you know what the area should look like, you can make it quicker and with more detail. I like the amount of detail you have added to the route. I hope that, should you continue extending the route in the future, you keep up the standards you have set yourselves! Well done. -Peter
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Post by Eddie on Sept 3, 2019 23:42:44 GMT
There were plans to extend the South Circle to Whitechapel East, and put in the rest of the H&C to Hammersmith too, but crucially this would need the resurrection of RW Decal by some intrepid volunteers who have got the programming code from Jim. I'm not that hopeful, so that leaves us where we are for now. What I call the "Pretty end of the District".
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Post by chiefjackyt on Sept 4, 2019 15:39:31 GMT
There were plans to extend the South Circle to Whitechapel East, and put in the rest of the H&C to Hammersmith too, but crucially this would need the resurrection of RW Decal by some intrepid volunteers who have got the programming code from Jim. I'm not that hopeful, so that leaves us where we are for now. What I call the "Pretty end of the District". Does RW Decal not do the same thing as the Google Maps overlay, or is it just that it’s higher quality?
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Post by Xavier on Sept 4, 2019 15:45:25 GMT
There were plans to extend the South Circle to Whitechapel East, and put in the rest of the H&C to Hammersmith too, but crucially this would need the resurrection of RW Decal by some intrepid volunteers who have got the programming code from Jim. I'm not that hopeful, so that leaves us where we are for now. What I call the "Pretty end of the District". Does RW Decal not do the same thing as the Google Maps overlay, or is it just that it’s higher quality? You can draw on decals to highlight features such as the paths of tracks underground and it's better for consistency and maintaining route alignment since the route started long before GE overlay was implemented.
It's not all hopeless with the demise of RWDecal and back-issues of GE but the workaround method takes considerably more time.
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Post by Eddie on Sept 4, 2019 16:19:24 GMT
Without starting a new thread I'm presuming you mean using route markers for track paths etc. I have all the gradient information. It would take a whole lot longer. We can't use the Google Earth overlay in our route because it is not aligned due to Route Origin mistake that cannot be corrected now. My fault back in 2007. I got the lat/long/ of the start the wrong side of the greenwich Meridian. That was a long time ago, but RW Decal still worked faultlessly. GE overlay doesn't.
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Post by Peter C on Sept 4, 2019 16:29:01 GMT
There were plans to extend the South Circle to Whitechapel East, and put in the rest of the H&C to Hammersmith too, but crucially this would need the resurrection of RW Decal by some intrepid volunteers who have got the programming code from Jim. I'm not that hopeful, so that leaves us where we are for now. What I call the "Pretty end of the District". OK - thanks for that. I tried using RW Decal and I decided that it wasn't worth bothering with, purely because it was a bit old and hard to understand (for me). But it is nice to see what you can do with it. -Peter
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Post by Eddie on Sept 4, 2019 16:35:34 GMT
There were some important settings to get right in RWD but once you'd calibrated it properly the quality of the images it put on the terrain was remarkable. I used to enjoy watching it grab corner markers and rotating, compressing, deleting blue prints etc. It was an incredibly powerful tool to use , but required a good understanding of how to set it up to get the best results out of it.
No release tonight folks............. we have a timetable for that and there is more planned foir the weekend. We are still refining the build as we see bugs come to light during these streams. So this is kind of like live Beta testing. You'll all get a more solid bug free build as a result. One thing we want to avoid like the plague is having to issue patches on a daily basis after release.
So please bear with us this week guys.
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Post by patrick on Sept 4, 2019 18:09:59 GMT
Hopefully the stream will start soon...
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Post by Peter C on Sept 4, 2019 18:18:46 GMT
Don't worry Pete, no pressure, at least compared with trying to type an answer to a question Alan has asked and getting spelling errors......... not easy. We don't mind answering questions about any aspect of the route or stocks. OK. I know - Alan isn't known for his typing skills! If you are happy to answer questions about the route and stock - can I ask - will the C69 have as many features as the D78? Also, do any of the stock included have any sort of texture upgrades? Finally - just wondering, not being condescending (I actually quite like it) - how did the addition of adding in Gloucester Road Picc. platforms come about? It looks really good! -Peter
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Post by Peter C on Sept 4, 2019 18:19:48 GMT
Hopefully the stream will start soon... Yeah... Sometimes Alan starts a bit late. Nothing has been posted on the Facebook group so I'm assuming we'll be getting a stream tonight! -Peter
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Post by Darren on Sept 4, 2019 20:10:46 GMT
Don't worry Pete, no pressure, at least compared with trying to type an answer to a question Alan has asked and getting spelling errors......... not easy. We don't mind answering questions about any aspect of the route or stocks. OK. I know - Alan isn't known for his typing skills! If you are happy to answer questions about the route and stock - can I ask - will the C69 have as many features as the D78? Also, do any of the stock included have any sort of texture upgrades? Finally - just wondering, not being condescending (I actually quite like it) - how did the addition of adding in Gloucester Road Picc. platforms come about? It looks really good! -Peter Hi Peter. Yes the stocks do have a texture upgrade for the cabs. The C69, Standard Stock, battery locos and 73TS have photo realistic textures for the cabs. Unfortunately, I could not get any photos for Sarah Siddons so it's a bit of make do and mend. I'm currently working on a D78 photo realistic cab upgrade. The C69 will have just as many working features as the D78. Richard, who is our stock modeller and I both use 3D Canvas which is coming to end of life I believe. We feel a bit too old now to learn a new 3D modelling program like Blender and all the more modern features it may hold for train simulator. I don't bake the textures for my cabs as they come ready baked by natural light on the photos. The extension of the tube to Gloucester Road came about just to give the 73TS a natural environment to run in. The team were also trying out some new skills that may be required for deep tube simulation.
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Post by Eddie on Sept 4, 2019 20:24:13 GMT
Another great stream from Alan tonight. Wherry lines first then a good run on the VDL showing off the night lighting. As Darren said the C69 is just as feature rich as the D78, in fact if you include the brake test switch on the offside console, even more. It doesn't have a raisable weak field flag though. When they refurbed these WF was left permanently engaged.
What Darren meant by trying out a deep tube simulation was that in fact the Piccadilly tunnels came about because we were going to be working on a recreation of the Northern Line. Richard created those splines for it. So it was an opportunity to try them out and see how they looked along with deep tube platforms. We got the tube from Barons Court to Earls Court and decided one station was not enough, we just had to put in another........................hence Gloucester Road. Great fun to drive. We really hope that someone who has expressed the interest creates the rest of the Piccadilly route with it. We've arguably built the hardest part.
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Post by Peter C on Sept 5, 2019 16:13:24 GMT
OK. I know - Alan isn't known for his typing skills! If you are happy to answer questions about the route and stock - can I ask - will the C69 have as many features as the D78? Also, do any of the stock included have any sort of texture upgrades? Finally - just wondering, not being condescending (I actually quite like it) - how did the addition of adding in Gloucester Road Picc. platforms come about? It looks really good! -Peter Hi Peter. Yes the stocks do have a texture upgrade for the cabs. The C69, Standard Stock, battery locos and 73TS have photo realistic textures for the cabs. Unfortunately, I could not get any photos for Sarah Siddons so it's a bit of make do and mend. I'm currently working on a D78 photo realistic cab upgrade. The C69 will have just as many working features as the D78. Richard, who is our stock modeller and I both use 3D Canvas which is coming to end of life I believe. We feel a bit too old now to learn a new 3D modelling program like Blender and all the more modern features it may hold for train simulator. I don't bake the textures for my cabs as they come ready baked by natural light on the photos. The extension of the tube to Gloucester Road came about just to give the 73TS a natural environment to run in. The team were also trying out some new skills that may be required for deep tube simulation. Thanks for the response. I like the effort which is being put into this and that you are going back and updating things! I am really looking forward to the C69. An excellent train! The Picc. to Gloucester Rd. is a great addition. The station tunnel bore is the right size as well. Well done once again! -Peter
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