I notice from the free form camera and you go to a crossing way ahead and they activate way before a train come like minutes before when it should be around 20-30 seconds before a train reaches a crossing. I know they use a crossing script for them but they all use the same script and it’s a bigger problem in slow parts of the route. Does anyone ever time them to see how early they activate? Even if your train is long the crossings go up in the middle of a train until the rear gets in the activation range. Is there no way to keep the crossings on throughout the whole train?
I would imagine it's triggered by passing a light or ramp somewhere as there aren't track markers I know of The crossing clear signal would be timed from when the front loco has passed so will open after a given time irrespective of the sped of the consist or the length of it... Would be hard to write a consistent script that works in all instances when the unknowns are many, and to be fair the person up the front doesn't notice (indeed cannot see) what's going on behind them when they're driving so what the crossings are doing isn't all that important
But what about watching from a camera angle? I know the crossings use a script for setting up activation distance when the bell rings and the lights flash to where there’s an activation distance when the gates lower and they have an distance scripted once a train passes over so they come up at the right distance and if that’s a problem that they open when a train is far away but in reality they open just after a train clears.
What about it? The effort you're asking them to go to means that some people can occasionally watch a level crossing work. That's the way they think about these things because it costs money (aka time) to undertake this work I don't know whether that's a fixed distance for individual crossings or whether it's triggered by the loco passing the light just before it so hopefully someone else can answer that one As I say, I believe they have a timed script that activates when the FRONT item in the consist passes (so either the front loco or the first car in a MU). I say this because that's how AI is scripted. The physics only apply to the first item in the consist which is why they speed up earlier after passing limit boards etc
