PC [app] - Thirdrails Live Map Tracker & Multiplayer Radar

Well, they’ve turned folder naming into a modern art form
Stay tuned, a new release is coming by the end of next week, featuring improved version detection and some pretty cool new radar features.

 

You're right, DTG has innovated in its file and folder organization. I don't think they'll win any awards for it .
Thank you for your prompt response to improve ThirdRails. ThirdRails is a must-have for our hobby. Rgds from France

 

Installed it yesterday. Works great,easy way to learn a route seeing where you are and also logs all your runs.

 

Tried it for the first time, playing TSW6 on Steam with -HTTPAPI enabled. Can't get it to work, something as simple as clicking Track won't show my current in game location, no matter the country - although I can see that it can somehow still detect what rolling stock I am playing with. Anyone with the same issues?

 

Do you see your train on the map display. Also, when you go into settings/TSW, do you see your API key?

 

I can see the API key just fine, but no train on the map display.

 

You can send the developer a message on his Facebook page and he responds quickly.

 

That is weird. Do you get an error?
Where do you see the rolling stock?

Feel free to contact me via email (beentrain @ gmail.com), messenger or forum DM so we can investigate it better and try to get you on the radar.

 

I hope you don't mind if I reply here - so that maybe it can help others in a similar situation?
I do not get an error as far as I can see - just no map display at all. And regarding rolling stock - I assume this is retrieved directly from the service I enter in the program, rather than the program being able to "see" what rolling stock I am driving?

See below:

 

Looking at your screenshot, everything seems fine, the loco is shown, so the API is working.
There’s one known situation where you might not appear on the map immediately: when starting up ThirdRails and/or the TSW timetable scenario. Depending on the startup order, ThirdRails can sometimes miss the very first location update. I’ve had this occasionally myself, and I believe it happens when you start ThirdRails first, follow and then start TSW.

All players briefly appear at a default “home” point (in Chatham) before the scenario becomes active. If that switch is missed, your marker might not show until you start driving, when driving it should then jump to the correct location automatically.
Could that be the case for you?

After driving, you can also hit the Center button in the HUD radar panel to zoom in on your position.

 

Annoyingly, as of today, the station network layer automatically enables any time I click follow on my user icon on the HUD map. I find this visual clutter far too distracting, but as soon as I disable it it unselects me to follow, and once I click on myself to follow it turns on again. I've had to stop using thirdrails until this can be solved.

Hopefully it's as simple as deleting one of the local files to remove it as an option?

 

Thanks for reporting this!
The station network layer wasn’t supposed to appear in the current release. It is something we are developing for the upcoming release 9.2.
I have corrected this server-side, so it should now behave as intended.

The station layer introduces a virtual network of stations on the map. This will unlock some cool new features like automatic schedule execution and announcements when you’re running a timetable, and freeroam guidance with waypoints and radar announcements when you are riding without one.
Clutter on the radar is indeed a concern, therefore we made the radar panel sizable so that you can give it more room, and we will add settings like “show station labels”.
As with everything in ThirdRails, it will be optional so you can tailor the radar to your own driving style.

 

Thanks! Makes sense that it was an unintended consequence of something unfinished on the server side.

I appreciate the idea of additional data layers, and might have use for it sometimes, but yeah, it showing up unbidden when I am trying to have a minimalist minimap gives a bit too much sensory stimulus when I want to keep that to a minimum to focus on driving the train.

But it makes sense it being impossible to toggle off if it wasn't even supposed to be visible yet. I guess I got a sneak peek at WIP developments!

 

Does anyone know if third rails and Winzartens Route Annotations Weather API play well together?
I have the latter locked and loaded working great, now want to add in third rails.

 

I'm running them both together with no issues. Two great add ons. I use a second monitor to view the Third Rails screen to avoid cluttering the main "Driving View".

 

LOVE using them together. Hopefully, one day, we could see weather radar reflectivity/satellite overlay on the map to really tie them together.

 

Well I have added OpenWeatherMap precipitation, cloud, temperature and wind layers.
It’s not full reflectivity or a real satellite overlay, but it’s about the best you can get from the free options out there.
Still adds some nice atmosphere to the map though!

And about tying the apps together, I stumbled across some annotations XML files the other day and my first thought was:
Hey, that could be shown on a map layer pretty easily…

 

Oh, that's incredible! Just ran to check it out, and I see all the options here. Is there a way to change the opacity though, cause as it currently stands, it's nearly impossible to see it, and it's not possible at all to differentiate precipitation type. Also, is this live precipitation, or does it correlate to the time that's set in the sim?

 

Unfortunately OpenWeatherMap weather layers are served with fixed low opacity in the tile itself.
F.e. see this tile: https://tile.openweathermap.org/map...10.png?appid=3f5ab59e65fd52337a0fc3541e8f492d

They are pretty much live (I believe a few minutes delayed), OWM doesn’t offer historical tiles in the free plan.

This was pretty much the only free option I found. Have seen providers with animations and all, pretty cool, but not for free.
It is a first step, I keep it on the radar!

 

That's ok!! But, wow. I'm so impressed, and it already adds a lot. The clouds are a lot easier to see when you use a darker map, so that's very useful for choosing a route that has big changes in that regard, but I will for sure stay perched for updates. Great work!