Raildriver Sound Problem And Axis Accuracy In Tsw 2

I realise that the Raildriver implementation in TSW 2 has only just been enabled and is declared as in "beta", so I wondered if my two issues have already been covered somewhere. I did a search on here but didn't find anything about my problems.

I'm just getting back into Rail sims with my recently purchased TSW 2 so I got my 2 year old Raildriver controller out of its storage box and gave it a go. It is working, and I have calibrated it, but I'm quite disappointed with its interaction with TSW 2. The direction and throttle/brake axis are very vague, quite noticeably with raildrivers plastic "gates" in the lever slots. Trying to select "EP Hold" for instance, seems to vary in position up and down in the physically short arc during the game.

Also, the sound through the Raildriver is severely distorted, bad enough with the effects, but it makes any speech completely unintelligable.

I don't think my raildriver hardware is faulty though, because when then I tried my TS2020 with it, it has perfect sound, and the vibrations from the woofer really add to the immersion. I must admit though, that the normal windows background sounds through it are also garbled, so it's only clear through the TS2020 driver software.

My PC is quite "high end" because I use it mainly with flight sims, and is running the latest W10 with all updates etc. so I don't think it's caused by my setup.

 

Regarding vague movement of the throttles: Try to change to USB Port if, during calibration, you notice that the "bars" are "jumpy". Helped for me. Furthermore have a look at paul.pavlinovich 's Video about the calibration process - helped me to be happy and utilizing all the "throttle path"


Regarding sound: Your PC might have 5 outlets for sound on the back - connect the raildriver with the one for "bass" (most of the time black or orange, not green) and raise the gain on the backside of the RailDriver unit and inside of windows volume mixer (TSW 100%) - I've read that this helped but don't use it for myself (too much wires - I remove and setup the RailDriver daily because I work from home and sometimes need the space ;-) )

 

Thans for the reply Hyperlord.
I'll try a different USB port, though I've already tried a different computer already, and had exactly the same result, TSW 2 garbled, and TS2010 perfect.
Thanks for Paul's youtube link. I had spotted the trickier parts of calibration (bail etc) via the instructions in the raildriver addon for TS2020, but Paul's suggestion of setting the throttle max and brake off just slightly back from the max travel of thier sticks was a new one on me, so I'll try them.
It is still "jumpy" around the middle ranges of the throttle/brake lever and the auto brake lever though. Maybe it's because of the simple carbon potentiometers rather than hall effect sensors, though again, the TS2020 drivers are nice and steady. My main suspicion is that the TSW 2 beta driver is maybe too sensitive for the hardware.
I have actually looked inside the raildriver and it's an unusual mixture of sophistication and crudity. The quality of construction, PCBs, and wiring is very good indeed, but the flimsy plastic linkages and pivots and potentiometers on the main axis controllers are quite disappointing, below par to even the cheapest of modern PC joystick hardware.
I'll also try your suggestion of using the bass jack.

I suspect that the majority of TSW 2 raildriver users don't bother with plugging in the sound jack at all, as it then simplifies things further by not needing the external mains power supply. It's a shame though, because though it seems unlikely, the Raildriver idea of fitting a big woofer speaker inside the case with a heavy steel baseplate works quite well in giving vibration feedback through the handles, a clever way to provide tactile feedback from a simulation by just using its sound output. You can feel the throbbing of diesels and the clickety clack of the rail joints in TS2020.

 

Hi anorak I agree with hyperlord that Raildriver should be connected to your sub-woofer port as the speaker in the Raildriver has a high pass filter. That doesn't explain why it sounds nice with TS2020 and not TSW2. You're not the first person to report that - I don't remember who it was but someone else in this forum was talking about it. If you plug an external speaker into the audio port you're using for Raildriver does it sound bad too? I personally don't use the speaker at all because the family object, especially if I'm running a diesel .

Raildriver was designed in 2001 for MSTS and does not appear to have changed in design at all since then - it was probably joystick state of the art 20 years ago! I'm kind of amazed that mine still works - I got it when I worked in the USA and I left there at the end of 2002. I cannot think of another USB 1.0 device from that age that will work with Windows 10.

The movement of the levers is better in some trains than others which is a bit disappointing because it means the hysteresis and filtering is being done in the train implementation. What the base implementation in TSW2 needs is hysteresis and filtering. Anyone with programming for embedded hardware experience will tell you hysteresis is the number one thing. When someone pushes a momentary-on push button in what they think is once the switch most likely activates many times.

The pots are a similar story, as you travel through the range of the pot either the hardware or the software needs to filter it, as the pot moves if you read 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 9934.2, 0.4, 0.5 then chances are 9934.2 was rubbish and needs to be ignored. If you measure the pots you'll find their cheapies and are not linear when you measure them with a meter. As you travel you might read 0.1, 0.2, 25, 25.1, 25.2, 75, etc. The implementation needs to take that into account as well. Now in each example I've shown the numbers always going up but if you watch with a meter you'll see things like 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.25, 0.35 etc. That needs to be taken into account as well. Ideally all this would happen in a USB driver from Pi Engineering but there is no Raildriver driver as far as I know. To make it worse I would expect the behaviour changes depending on temperature and humidity to some extent as well.

The TSW2 implementation has improved since it first came out so there is hope for the future.

 

Thanks for the detailed technical explanation Paul, all quite understandable.
My few further thoughts:
Raildriver does not work natively in Windows 10, it doesn't appear in the devices list, so the TS2020 addon prog does the interfacing, as does the latest implementation of TSW 2, (albeit badly so far !)

I guess it's the hysteresis that's causing the problems with the wiper and lights rotary switches in TSW 2 as well. When you switch from on to slow then fast and dim to bright TSW 2 shows the state as rapidly flickering between those modes, so they're unusable too, and yet presumably they're just three position rotary switches, not pots.

I'll try plugging in a pass through speaker as you suggest.

I'd give up on it if my only experience was using it with TSW 2, but it always has and still does work perfectly with TS, and the vibration feedback from the woofer is such a good idea from whoever thought of it, even though the big diesels do rattle around the house a bit, as you say !

 

It did work out of the box in Windows 10 for me and is shown in Settings->Devices and also in the Device Manager

Maybe some 3rd Party software is interfering :-\

 

Oh it knows its there hyperlord and it reads the name from the device but I don't think there is an actual driver. On mine it shows the generic Microsoft Input device driver

Took me a while to find it too.... one of the down sides of streaming is I have wayyyyy to many input devices

 

Here the sound of woofer not work too...

 

Well that certainly explains why they jump about in TSW 2 Matt.
As you say, why on earth did they do it that way I wonder ?
It makes them totally unusable in TSW, even after careful calibration, the moment you move one of the switches it flickers on and off for several seconds. Hopefully the rush hour update might include some sort of smoothing, as has been so succesful all these years with TS2020.

 

Worse yet they often interfere with the other pots too