I was driving an Edinburgh - Markinch HST on Fife Circle today, and, while stood at Haymarket, I looked at my schedule for the next section - 26 minutes to Kirkcaldy which, the HUD told me, was 12 miles. "Hang on..." I thought. That's an average of less than 30mph over a section on which the line speeds enable an average (I estimated) closer to 60mph - and I know from experience these HST runs are quite tightly timed. Mulling over this as I departed, I kept an eye on the distance to Kirkcaldy as we started out from Haymarket and sure enough, it didn't seem to be going down. I began to have my suspicions and a moment later they were confirmed - the distance to Kirkcaldy changed: now it was 13 miles! It appears that the distance to the next station on the HUD is not the distance the train has to travel to get there. It's the straight-line distance - as the crow flies! On most routes this doesn't jump out at you so much, as the difference between the two is not huge, but on Fife Circle the presence of the Firth of Forth means it's a long way around from Haymarket to Kirkcaldy. In fact, when I looked it up, it's 25 miles rather than 12 miles. I assume that this is a DTG issue rather than a Rivet issue, and that it applies to all TSW routes. What a useless piece of information to give a Driver - the straight-line distance to the next station! The actual distance the train will be travelling is pretty critical if you're going to drive realistically - i.e. aim to arrive on time, rather than just driving "as fast as you can" and potentially arriving several minutes early. In fact, I think I'm right in saying (although I personally take no notice of score) that you lose points for running too early. Any chance of this being corrected, I wonder, so that the distance shown to the next station is the actual distance the train will go? Incidentally - now I think about it - I'm pretty sure the distance shown on the HUD to the next speed restriction is actually the distance the train will go. How odd to use different measures for the two things.
For some reason it has always been shown as the crow flies, which is why routes like Clinchfield or SPG the distance to go can actually increase as the line curves around. Complete nonsense really, surely the programme is capable of calculating the actual rail distance - it can do it looking ahead to signals and speed limits so why not locations and objective markers?
DTG have previously stated that changing the straight-line distance counter to one that follows tracks is not feasible due to the amount of memory it would take to compute the distance. However, that statement is over 2 years old, so I think a revisit may not be a bad idea.
I suspect part of the problem is you would need two different bits of logic for the objective markers, one for on rail, and one for on foot (e.g. objective markers somewhere within a station).
Arosalinie as well - the distance increases as you approach Litziruti from Arosa, due to the switch-backs on the track
Yes, this anomaly was questioned way back when SPG ( or Heavy Haul ) was first launched. Objectives are measured as the crow flies, but signals by track distance. Since it hasn't been corrected after 6 years or so, it's unlikely to change now. It would be useful to have an ETA for stations or other objectives like in previous sims, but for that you'd need track miles to such points. Using a GPS system does it correctly to Grandma's house in the real world.
It’s not even ‘as the crow flies’ as it is a much more simple straight line that will go through any hills that are in the way. A crow can’t fly through the ground, unless it transforms into a mole for those bits. For the mountainous routes the actual line would almost all be under the terrain. The ‘as the crow flies’ phrase has always bugged me for this reason and also because crows don’t even fly in straight lines. It’s just a perfect straight line measurement from the player character to the objective in TSW, no need for animals to be involved . Anyway, those are my useless thoughts. I’m so used to this behaviour now that it would be a bit of a shock if it changed. I was pleased when the signal distances were changed from also being measured from the player and became measured from the leading edge of the train in the direction of travel, as that vastly improved reversing manoeuvres as at least you know that you are close to a SPAD now. I think that changed from TSW2 onwards as I recall. Everything was measured from the player in TSW2020.
It's ironic then that Train Simulator has always calculated distance by the track with no memory issues whatsoever. The fact that signals and speed limits are calculated by track in TSW also makes me wonder if DTG are being completely honest, or if TSW objectives are so badly designed internally that they really have to be a straight line to not cause memory issues.
It's a real pain, it also does it in training centre. Difficult to learn the braking curves when the distance to station keeps going up as you get closer, then down again
Come on now, no need to be facetious at my expense. Everyone understands the meaning of " as the crow flies ". It's a metaphor for the most direct distance between two points. If you don't have a better comment than " crows can't fly through the ground ", then perhaps don't comment at all.
Bingo!!! If the route is not a straight line it becomes a problem. On the GWE you don't notice it because Paddington-Reading is quite straight. But already on the RSN, at 3.4km from Hagen you start to move away until you get to about 6km and then you get closer again (it's called a curve). We have had this "bug" (technically it wouldn't even be a bug: they are fixing it by inserting intermediate -straight- distances) since the launch in 2017.
The most annoying one is when you are trying to find a stopping point in some manually operated sidings. You wonder why it will only go down to about 2m before rising again and then you realise the stopping point is on the adjacent track
