Ever since the suspension physics had been introduced, I've always found it looking a bit exaggerated and cartoony (especially with motion sway). I'm also wandering why the suspension is only up and down and not side to side like in real life. I miss this tilting (or wobble) behaviour when going over junctions in like every train I operate..
Agree. Sideways sway just as common if not more so than vertical bouncing. And older Mark One stock tended to oscillate on the centre bogie pivots like a sideways seesaw.
Any swinging, swaying, bouncing, rocking and rolling motion of locomotives and cars has to be done by scripting Newtonian physics into the Simugraph. First of all, suspension physics need to be added. Then some kind of interaction between curves, switches, crossings, track unevenness. Third there has to be damping and vehicles should move independently of each other, plus the player's 'head' needs to move, responding in a natural way, delayed and compensated. Seems very complicated to me, and we all know the quality and state of scripting by DTG, weather, occlussion, faults, announcements ... They are already in way over their heads and adding more will only add to the mess?
Technically speaking, I can see that most of the necessary elements have been put in place. Except, the sideways inertia hasn't been accounted for.
There was obviously lots of positive feedback about the fun way pacers bounce up and down so of course why not go for fun over realism and make all trains bounce up and down rather than swaying as they do in real life. Frankly if buffet trolley mode ever comes in I don't think players will be selling many cups of tea or coffee although serving would certainly be an interesting challenge each time the train goes over a speed bump.
Makes for a new challenge or game mode: trolley lady/gent/person serving hot cocoa, tea or coffee (define hot yourself, not based on real experience) to passengers in the window seats, or any seats, on a carriage doing the rock and roll, LOL.
Tiling movements from the suspension system are there. The problem yet is, there are basically no impulses from the track/bogies to gain such a movement at all. Only way it works yet somehow is to run on a 100% rough track setting, what might be set here and there but definitely not on main line tracks. And it is dependent on the loco/train and its suspension setting. Grab a BR218, put it onto massively uneven tracks and you will see some tilting movement from the suspension too. What is absolutely not there yet is the sinus related suspension reaction. So the bogies Y axis movement. It has settings for that but it works badly. The main body tends to drift away from the bogies to one side then. So it is set to a high stiffness and low damping to not move at all yet.
The " bouncing " of the 142 on Blackpool was exaggerated to an unrealistic extent. Any suspension effect should be muted as it is in real life. I've been traveling on trains my entire life and I've rarely experienced very much sway and bounce, except when going over switches and junctions.
I find the class 101 sway fairly realistic, yes there is bouncing but also some hunting as well. I believe later in life these units could have quite a rough ride close to their top speed of 70mph on 60ft jointed track. I haven't been on a pacer for quite some time (think the last one was on one of the Stockport-Stalybridge runs), but I seem to remember they 'nodded' most when braking.
I don’t think it’s exaggerated that much And let’s not forget the way the track is set up in game and its conditions irl also play a factor
My goodness you're right. It's not over- exaggerated in the game. No wonder passengers hate those things.
The Pacers remember didn't even run on bogies, they had direct-mounted axles like the buses they were.
I use fixed axle railbuses for commuting as well, and its level of comfort when running over 40 km/h junctions indeed is similar to being pushed down the stairs. However, what is noticeably missing in the game is this (as Maik pointed out why):
Sitting directly over the wheels on the approach to a station that was points heavy and jointed track, well your arse got a royal pounding and your spine vacated your body through your skull......
Riding in a Pacer is akin to being in the pouch of a Kangaroo riding a space hopper in the tumble dryer
So glad I avoided Pacers by not really travelling by train til the last year or so really (now to bring down 150s )
Pacers had descent ride quality in my experience (not amazing but certainly not living up to the rep people give them) especially on welded rails. I can't see the links posted above but I'm assuming they were taken on poorly-maintained jointed track.
One of my favorite phrases on British TV is to hear someone say the word " smartarse. " Cracks me up ( oops ).
Yeah so further to what I said above - the first one was taken on the Oldham loop (now part of the Manchester Tram network), and the other was on the Preston-Ormskirk line, which was notorious for poor ride quality especially on pacers (not sure if it's better now) - on both you can very clearly hear the joints between the rails. Contrast it to this, on welded track - yes, there's sway and bounce but nowhere near as much and anything severe is concentrated in short areas - typically level crossings and crossovers. The train would've been doing about 65-70 at the start of the video (line speed is 70 IIRC).
I take the train to/from work. Go over a bridge that makes the train jerk to one side. That's in a Class 158. Now just imagine if it was a Pacer, which it very much used to be used to be.
101 has nothing like the realistic amount of hunting. I used to ride them to work and 117's, 119's, 120's and 123's all have the same characteristics. Running fast between Maidenhead and Twyford, plus Twyford and Reading they were all very lively.
