Arrival And Departure Times

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by Shaun123, Jul 16, 2022.

  1. Shaun123

    Shaun123 Well-Known Member

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    Hello,

    Maybe one for Matt and Joe but why recently have arrival and departure times, to the second of that make sense rather than half minutes.

    For example an arrival time at a station of 13:07:21 and a departure of 13:07:51, it’s not really accurate for me and wouldn’t happen in reality, especially the UK working off half minutes!

    It’s a recent change in the Sim so we can’t we go back to arrivals and departures at 13:43:00 or 13:43:30 for example? Is there some new limitation?
     
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  2. It makes sense if a train was due to depart at 09.00 and the driver closed the doors at 08.59.51. It does say on most stations that the driver will close the doors several seconds before departure.

    A arrival time of 08.59.51 doesn't though. Or maybe this is to allow the driver to stop and open the doors for 09.00
     
  3. Shaun123

    Shaun123 Well-Known Member

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    But in terms of the “timetabled” time it’s not accurate at all!
     
  4. vyncwr

    vyncwr Member

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    There's no need to look for logic here. It's a computer calculated time to save development time. That's all. Like in the good old days of MSTS when you made an activity, and timetable was calculated by the editor.
     
  5. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    However in MSTS Activity Editor or one of the third party utilities you could round the minutes up to make more sense. TSC also allows you to do so when creating a timetable run. Surely it's not beyond the wisdom of those designing to timetables to place an algorithm which will do this, even when the AI is populating the times.
     
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  6. stujoy

    stujoy Well-Known Member

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    The times the AI trains comes up with when simulating the runs now get put into the actual finished timetable. It never used to be like that even with AI derived timetables which have been the norm in TSW for years. It could be a peculiarity of a particular core update that nobody has been able to solve or hasn’t had the time to look at yet, or the timetables break down now if rounded times get put in. Hopefully they can rectify it soon because it is annoying and daft to have such specific times.
     
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  7. lcyrrjp

    lcyrrjp Well-Known Member

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    Given the number of people who have raised this issue, I’d hope DTG will fix it soon. However, at the moment they’re doing the opposite - systematically working through the routes messing up the timetables one by one. I don’t know what the problem is with picking up a timetable of the era and inputting the times.
     
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  8. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    The issue is that any time they change anything to do with the physics is messes up the timings, so they then run their "auto generate timetable routine" but haven't always included the "round it up to the next half minute" part, so you end up with "leave at 14:37:12" which is obviously an issue as it doesn't seem to happen that way in real life
     
  9. vyncwr

    vyncwr Member

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    It's not too complicated I guess to round it up, but the complexity of the timetables might makes it lot of work. I mean it's not just one "activity" it's all of the runs in 24 hour.
    It sounds complex, but hey that's what we paying for it shouldn't be a problem.... So it's complex yeah, but the whole simulation is, it's not that the most complex thing in it.
     
  10. AirbourneAlex

    AirbourneAlex Well-Known Member

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    Ever since the recent updates to TVL, NTP, GWE and IOW, those routes now have this 'messy' timetable format. Would really appreciate an explanation on why this happens and why we can't get the 'old' timetables back (without it breaking anything else)? Hopefully it doesn't involve re-writing an entire timetable just to round up the timings.
     
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  11. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    Not sure it could be called easy either, because of how the signalling / dispatcher works in game
     
  12. lcyrrjp

    lcyrrjp Well-Known Member

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    But if they use the real life timetable, and the trains can’t keep to time, then the physics on the train are wrong. So they need to correct the physics, not the timetable.

    I’d use the timetable as the ‘check’ that the physics aren’t miles out.
     
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  13. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    No disagreeing, only saying what happens in game. You also have to account for players not driving as per real life, and how AI reacts
    AI physics is very much "cut down" from player physics, hence why they accelerate like rockets and brake like they've hit a wall
     
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  14. lcyrrjp

    lcyrrjp Well-Known Member

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    I suppose if the AI trains arrive at each station early and await time, it doesn’t really matter too much. The key is that the timings are achievable by the player-driven train, if driven to a reasonable standard.
     
  15. Joethefish

    Joethefish Staff Member

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    So this was addressed at the end of the latest roadmap stream which I've linked a time here for you. :)
    https: //youtu.be/iZTAEB_g4i4?t=4757 - please remove the space between the : and / to use the link and timestamp.
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2022
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  16. Callum B.

    Callum B. Well-Known Member

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    FYI, timestamps don't work when you use the embed feature as the information gets chopped off.

    Cheers
     
  17. Joethefish

    Joethefish Staff Member

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    Thanks, that's quite annoying. I've split the link so it should hopefully work now.
     
  18. moelkertje

    moelkertje New Member

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    I don't know how timetables work in the Uk but in the Netherlands we arive and depart 'op de seconde/on the second'. This way it's possible to run more trains on the same tracks. The departure boards on the platform would show a rounded number but the drivers and train managers see the 'on the second' time.
     
  19. Joethefish

    Joethefish Staff Member

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    The departure boards here also round the numbers to the minute but the driver sees the time rounded to 15 seconds. Though that is rear and usually more rounded to the nearest 30 seconds.
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2022
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  20. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    When I was using Trust and latterly Integrale in the Control to do VSTP schedules, we could only round to full or half minutes.
     
  21. lcyrrjp

    lcyrrjp Well-Known Member

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    Thanks Joe. I really appreciate the response. However, the only route I’ve seen on which something close to the real timetable has been used is your superb BML timetable (I only buy UK routes so apologies if a real timetable has been used on a route from elsewhere). All the other routes (including preservation crew updates) seem now to made by leaving the AI to work out the timings, which creates a really poor timetable. I’m very confused by how it can be said that the Liverpool - Crewe timetable is in any way based on reality, when the timings are so massively far out from the real ones from 1958, as demonstrated in this thread:

    https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/spirit-of-steam-scheduled-running-times.55795/

    It would be really useful to know if DTG are aware of how far out (and unachievable) the running times are on SoS, and whether there is any possibility of them being corrected. Thank you again for your response and help.
     
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