Will Dtg Ever Dig This One Up?

Diggers.... we're here again. My own personal campaign of movement and life within a route. Each time a new route releases I marvel at the amount of life free static equipment padding a route out. Now I absolutely appreciate that they are there at all however why o why are they still not animated.

Remember that really ancient sim that enabled you to drive a train, TSC, well this relic from the Jurassic period has diggers with moving booms.

Appreciate with all the other bits going on its not priority but there's 11 diggers so far I've counted that at Altoona yard and not one of them moving. I've enclosed the below to demo what they should do. Anyone else have any thoughts on lifeless yards?

 

Also has track workers who wave back at you

 

When you sound the horn as a sign of acknowledgement

 

Isn't this the perfect thing that dioramas were made for?
Could easily have a working site next to a line with diggers, dumpers and operatives even if they actually get no work done (don't think DTG would want a full site diorama showing various stages of construction)

Same goes for line side crews who could be doing switch maintenance, repairs, tree / vegetation works etc

 

The dioramas, these are another thing I've highlighted on several streams and posts which remains unanswered since Dresden and BML. Would be interesting to see if anyone picks up on any in SOS. That will give us an idea whether like night lighting it's another feature discreetly toggled off

 

Night lighting was a bit different, because they got a second party team in to go through all the surface attributes on the route and set them up for better reflection, allowing the darker skies whilst keeping things in game visible.

 

Would not be appropriate Cumberland does not have a beach :

 

I'm not sure if these help. I couldn't seem to find any sensible forklift ones however there is a forklift game on Steam so guess there are youtube videos of them in operation. I guess the models in game are ok now, just be nice to see them animated, booms, or spinning around etc.

 

No work being done? Thats realism right their. I'm pretty sure construction works have competitions for who can get paid the most, for the longest time, for the minimum work!

 

I very much like the idea, but I worry that any animation would just be a loop that continues no matter the time of day. Most of the routes don't light areas like construction sites properly for night work and an unlit (or barely lit) digger moving around would break immersion in my opinion.

There are 2 ways to solve this;
- Make sure either the digger itself, or the construction site has lights that keep work area lit up. If attaching lights to the digger is doable, then it would look really good at night as it moves around. Cars don't emit light (for performance reasons because there are so many of them) so we miss out on much dynamicism in night lighting currently.
- Have the digger start and end operation during over the course of the day. If it reduces the memory usage you could attach the animation to the lighting system. So once so that lights going off in the morning triggers the animation to start looping, and when they turn on in in the evening it stops. It's already there as a trigger for world elements.

 

I like your idea. I think initially I'd just be happy seeing some sort of life with the things .