PC Raildriver Support In Tsw2 - Complete List

That’s on 37 used in Western Cornwall route.

 

Yes my RailDriver throttle jumps on almost every Route. It's in Beta status so I hope they resolve the issue. One thing that helps is when you calibrate, don't take the throttle to the max or minimum calibration limit, but back it off just a little at each limit. Also note if it is jumping around during calibration.

 

Hi Guys!

On "Hauptstrecke Rhein Ruhr" I cant use Raildriver in 422 or 425.
What is wrong? Could somebody check this please?

 

425 is not yet supported. 422 works only on Rhein-Rurh Osten. So you will have to wait for preservation updates for this to be fixed.

 

Ok, thanks! Would you update your list? ;-)

 

Cotax The Luzern - Sursee line is missing, the 523 supports RailDriver... ^^

 

Hi Jasper - regarding the rail driver on the 523, can it be looked at again please? Currently as soon as you put it into dynamic brakes it sets to around 45% at the lowest setting. Or atleast it does on mine

 

Have you recalibrated it?

 

I have no issues with any other route so why would I recalibrate it when Im happy with how it is set up for 99% of the locos?

 

Just worth a check.

 

Printable key labels at https://docs.google.com/document/d/...ouid=111514735588177976561&rtpof=true&sd=true

Updated to include
TVL Class 101
TVL Class 08
TVL Class 20
TVL Class 31
HSC ES44AC
HSC GP38-2

Enjoy

Cotax you're right, I've had that for a while and you can thank Moggy for bringing that suggestion in for the 101 - we'll see what people think - there are three people in beta with Raildriver and you can rest assured we give feedback
VGK each locomotive has its own implementation and scripting - they can do different things loco by loco with the levers and switches

Paul

 

Every core release its worth recalibrating. It loses the config sometimes.

 

I really wish DTG would program the raildrivers buttons in some sort of country wide order (better still, give us a raildriver button remapper like the keyboard remapper)

I know that around the world different trains have different switches and controls, i.e. half the switches on an american train are not found on english or German trains and vise versa, but i'm thinking that all english trains should have the controls that are shared across all trains on the same buttons on the raildriver, same with the German and american trains.


I only drive the German trains, and most of them have door controls that are similar,
A rotary switch or lever you turn to select the side you want the doors to open on, then a seperate switch you use to actually open the doors... the doors on the side previously selected open (you move the selector switch to point downwards to open both sides at once)

Then you move the door selector to the upwards position, and push the open / close switch the opposite way, and the doors close.

Some trains have this working on the raildriver, but using 4 individual buttons on the main set of buttons along the bottom of the raildriver, i.e. the Steuerwagens (driving trailers / dosto's, 766 /767's)

One of the loco's... the 182 has these controls on the 4 way pad... left and right move the door side selector switch around, up and down operates the open and close switch... perfect.

Then we have trains like the 146, 143, 112 etc that have a rotary door side selector and the white switch for open / close, but they only work with the mouse,
on the raildriver the doors are on the left and right buttons on the 4 way direction pad... you press left, left side doors open, then you have to press left again to close them

Why can't we have all German trains door controls on the 4 way pad, left and right turns the door side selector, up and down operates the open / close switch,
The have this with the EMU's that have 3 buttons for doors, again on the 4 way pad, left for open left doors, right for open right doors, down for close doors.

Then we can have the 3 PZB buttons on the same 3 raildriver buttons across every German train, in the same order, same with other shared switches like cab lights, gauge lights... why do they have to change buttons on the raildriver depending on which train is loaded.

Yes there are some switches that are only on certain trains, but about 80% of them are shared across all the trains in the same country.


sounds simple, but there must be a reason why each train has different buttons assigned to the same functions??!!?? .


It is also 'annoying to me' that there are functions the raildriver buttons can do that can't be done with keyboard presses, again the door control thing, all we have is 'Y' for open / close left, and 'U' for open / close right.
With the door selector moving around and the open / close button operating (3 or 4 times in a row) on it's own as you press the keys.

 

Trouble is the RailDriver was modelled on a US train so if you have a UK or a EU train the RD isn't going to be perfect. But I do strongly agree that we should have configurable buttons at least, it seems ages ago dtg intoduced the RD.

 

ahh yeah, i'm kind of cheating and building my own 'Euro RailDriver' because of that very reason, my levers all go the right way for a German train, even the brake levers are coupled. and can be uncoupled by pressing down on the dynamic brake lever, they auto re-couple when they are level again,

And i split the combined power/dynamic brake lever into 2 seperate levers when needed, so i am not stuck using the 1/3rd of the combined lever's travel for power.



The buttons are not working yet in the 'replacement PieHid64.dll' that is reading the levers, but hopefully if i can get hold of the guy who wrote the .dll that allows an arduino to be used instead of a raildriver, and get the buttons working,
but i will then need a lot of code in the arduino program to swap the button assignments around for each German train i drive, due to the way DTG have programmed the raildriver buttons to be different for almost every train... for some reason.

 

That looks brilliant mate.

 

Great update today. Did a quick test, it works!

• DB BR 204 - YES
• DB BR 425 EMU – YES
• DB BR 422 EMU – YES
• DB BR 155 - YES

Guess what. Europe routes are now fully RD supported

 

That is great news,

I notice that they said that a lot of German loco's have ''Updated Rail Driver button mapping in line with convention''

Anyone know what this convention is?

i thought it would mean that each train that shares similar controls would use the same buttons on the raildriver.

i.e. all German locos could use the same raildriver buttons for PZB actions... the Wachsam, Frei and Befehl buttons.
But the BR101 has the raildriver pzb buttons in a different place to the dosto's and other trains.

Also the BR101 and a few other trains now seem to have that big up/down button mapped to 'Gear increase/decrease' ??!?!

Dunno why my screen shot went yellow instead of orange.

 

Well I could only guess what that convention is. There are some buttons similar (Pause, Timetable, Cameras, Safety Systems on) and the Alerter has that situation-awareness (PZB Wachsam/SiFa) ...

I think you would maybe come to some results when comparing Paul's button sheets before and after update or an Developer could shed some light on that

 

Updated the Raildriver key labels to include steam and those that appeared in today's big update

Usual link
https://docs.google.com/document/d/...ouid=111514735588177976561&rtpof=true&sd=true

Paul

 

so, the button assignments are still all over the place,

What really bugs me is not just the PZB buttons being in different places, but the door controls for German trains.

Some loco's / dosto's have 2 buttons for moving the TAV / door release rotary switch around, then 2 to operate the door open/close switch,
then others have just the open/close left and right buttons.



i'm likely alone here... what i'd love to see is the 4 way D pad and that 2 way button next to it used for doors.

On German loco's / dosto's that have the rotary door side selector switch... which has 4 positions, use the 4 way D pad,

Pressing left, turns the switch to release left doors,
pressing right turns it to release right doors,
press down turns it to release both left and right doors,
and press up to move it to the close / top position.

Then the 2 way switch next to it is the door open/close switch.

Then you don't have to move the view in the cab to watch the rotary switch moves to the correct position when you press the 2 buttons that moves it left and right on the raildriver.

For multiple units that have 3 push buttons for the doors, again use the 4 way D pad,

Left opens left doors
right opens right doors,
and down closes them.

 

My printable labels for Raildriver can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/...ouid=111514735588177976561&rtpof=true&sd=true and now include

• GWE Class 43 HST
• GWE Class 66
• GWE Class 166
• 
  
• • TSW2 – NTP Class 40 Domino
  • TSW2 – NTP Class 40 Disc
  • TSW2 – NTP Class 45/1
  • TSW2 – NTP Class 47/4 BLU

As released in the upcoming patch.

 

Today was a big update - aded full RD support to NTP and GWE! All UK locos are now RD supported Nice job!

Only 3 US remaining and then this thread can be closed forever!

 

What a great day

 

i guess we can only hope that there will then be updates to reasign the buttons in a logical order,

like all German trains have 3 PZB/LZB switches, so why are these 3 buttons located in different places on the raildriver... and backwards to how they are in the train (i.e. wachsam is on the right, befehl on the left, but on raildriver buttons that is swapped)

 

Great news. Well done to those at DTG who did this. Driving is so much more immersive using RailDriver.

 

I have been waiting so long. I hope when I get round to giving this a go it will be worth it. Thanks DTG, just a shame it took so long. Thanks Paul for the labels.

 

I haven't played TSW2 for so long now plus I have had a major PC upgrade but I have reinstalled everything and was looking forward to get back into TSW2 now that the GWE upgrades are here I did have to start from scratch although I don't mind.

Loaded game up and calibrated the RD and went into the GWE and started on the tutorials it then put me in a 52, wasn't expecting that but no problem, going through the controls it would not let me select Forward. Reverse worked and other stuff just not Forward. Has anyone else came across this?

 

I just tried dhekelian and mine works ok with the GWE Diesel Legends 52 BLU. See this video

I have found in the past when things like this happen it usually means I messed up the calibration or the temperature has changed a lot since calibration. Raildriver is overly sensitive to change. I'd suggest recalibrating and giving it a go again.

The only other thing (and I show it in the video) if the throttle moves (and this happens by itself with RD sometimes) then it will lock the reverser in whatever position it is in. It doesn't have to be far off zero for this to happen.

If it still doesn't work, try moving it as far as you can with Raildriver then try your keyboard or mouse to move it the rest of the way - if that works then there is certainly some kind of issue.

Let me know how you go.

Paul

 

******** Boring stuff below, no real help, just explaining why the raildriver is so sensitive to calibration *********


This going out of calibration thing is due to the levers on the raildriver operating the potentiometers directly (with springy thin plastic rods)
you can see this the most with the wiper and headlight knobs during calibration, the green calibration lines hardly move when you rotate the knobs from one extreme to the other,
and also when calibrating the levers, the green 'read value' line does not travel the full length of it's outline.

A standard potentiometer has about 280 degrees of rotation, so to get full movement when directly connected to the potentiometer shaft, the light / wiper knobs should move from about 7 o'clock to 5 o'clock,
But those 2 knobs only move from about 11 o clock to 1 o'clock / 60 degrees max. and the other levers are not far off this.

The result is the voltage range from the potentiometers is rather tiny, this voltage range is how the computer knows the positions of the raildrivers levers,
a full 280 degree movement would give 0 to 5 volt between ends.
with the 60 degree movement, it's more like 3 to 3.5 volts between ends.

So the raildriver is maybe reading half a volt difference between a lever being fully off and fully on.

Hence any issues with levers in game moving erratically, first thing you need to do is re-calibrate it,
The heat from summer is enough to make the plastic levers grow enough to throw a calibration out that was done in cooler months... even calibrations done in the middle of a hot day, and used during the cooler night can throw the readings out.

And it's also why they suggest you calibrate some levers by pulling the lever back from the end stop slightly before pressing the 'calibrate' button, this ensures you have enough movement of the springy plastic rods that are the levers to move the potentiometer far enough to tell the computer the lever is fully at either end of travel.

 

A reminder, the custom liveries on Arosa still do not have RailDriver support, although the original livery does.

 

Been having a few problems with the RD mate, seems a bit weird as it had always performed really good before. I still had that 52 problem and the reverser but managed to overcome it through yours and others suggestions. Then I wanted to do a 166 scenario 'Down the Line' and the buttons and levers were all misbehaving. The lock door button on the RD would not work, press down. I had to tap the open button again which was odd. Then I couldn't get it in Throttle 3. it was either 2 or 4. Then the reverser was again all over the place. I went back to the calibration screen and did another calibrate. Got back to start scenario and the train would not accelerate.

Restarted again had acceleration and brake problems. Are you supposed to calibrate for each Loco? Mind you I am doing that at the moment and still it seems all over the place. I never had these problems before with the RD, seems very strange. Is there a way to reset the driver for the RD?

 

Some of the scenarios (especially older ones) watch for keypresses or controller activity and do not "see" Raildriver as having done something or worse don't let Raildriver do something. Those have been getting gradually cleaned up (mostly as I or Moggy report them).

You don't need to calibrate for each loco, I would suggest calibrating as the weather changes over seasons - winter and summer for example as it does expand and contract a bit.

Throttle can be a bit, well iffy at times - for whatever reason that particular lever sometimes has weird behaviour when the others don't. I have occasionally wondered if that lever is different internally. I find the same sorts of issues in TSC, Trainz and WOS so its not unique to TSW. Weirdly it never happens in RUN8 so I suspect they've done something clever that they don't share.

Paul

 

Being a tiny bit picky, the pot as it rotates changes the resistance, it would depend on how its set up in the circuit if you read voltage or current - there is a tiny chance they could be variable capacitor pots which are measured differently again. I've never had the urge to take mine apart to find out .

You're absolutely right that the rot does not rotate very far on the end of the lever or switch throw and I reckon you're also right about the plastic changing by heat.

Paul

 

i think the throttle lever issues are at least partly due to them programming in a large dead band in the middle,

When you look at the raw data coming from the raildriver, the throttle lever has about the largest range of them all, but they then go and mask about 1/3rd of it's travel in software (the part where the lever moves over between brake and throttle positions)
If you play about and try and calibrate it with the distance between the throttle and brake sections in the middle rather than each end of that centre bit, to get more in game lever travel, you'll get the brakes being applied as you are still in the lower end of normal throttle range and weird things like that.

You'll also notice that on some trains the movement on the in game lever jumps in stages, so you can move the raildriver lever smoothly, but the in game lever will jump say 0 - 14%, then to 23%, then 35% etc, get to the end of travel, and it'll be at 100%, then coming back it'll be a different percentage it jumps coming back down the range.

I know the original raildriver .dll's translated lever movement into keypresses, makes me wonder if that's still kinda what's going on in the piehie64.dll that TSW2 is using,

I wish we could get true analog (well, better than 8 bit analog to digital conversion anyway) control like we have in TSC, but DTG seem to think everyone is happy with using a keyboard or raildriver.

 

Is the Rail driver working on the BR612 throttle/brake as intended? The lever is sprung, and as such when using keyboard you have to hold down the key to increase power and release it to hold. The rail driver throttle holds for a second then releases making changing the combined control impossible for me. Did I miss something?

 

Sadly the 612 RD support is lacking. This is one of very few locos I still use the keyboard for when driving. I don't know if it's the result of the limitations of the raildriver or just poorly executed .

 

Aha thanks. Would they be better off using the range rocker switch perhaps. I use this on the TSC class 86 with it's sprung tap controller.

 

Yeah if we ever get the ability to map ourselves that's definitely an option I'd consider tbh.

The G6 also has the same throttle set up and whilst still not 100% is a better set up IMO

 

i haven't driven the BR612 with my controller yet, i kind of hoped they'd have mapped it so that when you push the throttle lever fully forwards it will be like holding down the 'A' key on the keyboard down to keep increasing the power,

Then it's upto the user to pull the throttle lever back a bit to get out of the 'increase power' zone,
same with it at the other end of the range for dynamic brake apply,

Sounds like they have made it auto spring back in game like releasing the keyboard key every time you press it, so you need to keep rocking the lever back and forth? bod that sounds awful.



As a work around, using the raildriver throttle lever just for the linear section, and the range switch (as bescot suggests) to do the up n down increasing / decreasing bit would be much better?




But really we do need to be able to map the levers and buttons on the raildriver how WE want it, not how the devs think we'll like things.

Everyone has different ideas on which controls are more or less important to them,

I.E for me, on the BR143 i think it's daft wasting 2 buttons on the raildriver for the pantograph select switch, a function you only use once per trip and only if doing a cold start !!...
you'll already be in the engine room to operate the battery switch with the mouse, so why not operate the panto selector switch with the mouse too.

Then have a switch that is actually used when driving assigned to those 2 buttons... like the 'conditional program' and 'delete program' switch.



Basically we need a nice long list of every control that actually works in the cabs, and we choose which ones we think are useful to us and assign them to the keyboard and raildriver buttons that we want,

i.e. there'd be like ~100 control functions to choose from (most of which atm can only be operated with the mouse) but we choose the 40 or so that we use all the time to map to the raildriver buttons for that particular loco class.

 

If we really can't have the ability to map the rail driver ourselves then we really need DTG to have some meaning full dialogue with its RD player base over what works for us and what doesn't, what is ok to be left and what needs to be revised. Whether that's via a questionnaire or virtual player forum.

 

The thing that gets me is with the levers, i find it's a waste to have an analog lever for the direction SWITCH in anything but steam trains,

i think i read that they used the direction lever as the gear selector lever on the UK class 101 DMU,
this kind of thing needs to be done a bit more,

i.e. most german loco's need 5 levers (AFB, Power, Air Brakes, Dynamic Brakes and Loco Brakes) but there's only 4 (5) lever and 2 rotary analog controls on a raildriver.
then they go and waste one of those analog levers by assigning it to the reversing SWITCH, a control that has 3 or 4 fixed positions which could be assigned to a pair of buttons to cycle through them (maybe one of the up/down toggle buttons like the range button)


Then there's the combined throttle and brake lever, which is a problem for all but D/Emu's that use that single lever control type,

if i was designing the raildriver, i'd have made the throttle lever with a clip in restrictor plate,
with the plate in place you get the notch bit to go past to give the dead zone between throttle and brake halves of the lever, but with the plate removed, you get a single throw lever like the others.

Similar to how there is a 7th axis on the raildriver, but it's that damn 'bail off' thing where you move one of the brake levers sideways, which is ignored on anything but american trains.

but really the problem is that the raildriver is aimed at the american market, and for some reason they never thought to come out with a more euro friendly version...
tho in reality this is just a problem because TSW2 only supports raildriver for true analog input, give us analog joystick input and it opens up a whole host of other controllers... throttle quadrants, hotas sticks, home made controllers etc.

 

Bjr à tous excellente idée d’avoir mis à disposition un fichier .pdf à ce jour le F40PH-2CAT qui n’est toujours pas supporté par RD et la série de [Caltrain MP36PH-3C] (je n’ai pas tous les DLC, sur les 39 que j’ai seulement le F40PH-2CAT, n’est toujours pas supporté) mais sinon presque toutes les machines et rames sont supportées donc ce serait un minimum que dans TSW3 toutes les rames et motrices le soit aussi!!!

Bonne chance à tous et rendez-vous le 02/09/2022 pour un premier avis sur cette nouvelle version qui suscite déjà une grosse polémique avant même de connaître les vraies modifications, changements, optimisations, corrections de bugs... etc, donc de gros problèmes en perspective.
Cordialement et à bientôt, tof

 

Raildriver support is in abysmal state. I dont know if it is because controller itself is bad with its potentiometers or it's DTG way to handle raildriver controls. It is unprecise. Every time I need to move controllers I need to check on screen in what position throttle actually is! And this makes using raildriver pretty much useless. With some US locos if you want to apply throttle position 1 it is almost impossible without constantly trying move lever up and down! This is beyond frustrating!

With almost any other simulation game you can use ANY direct input device. Why cant we use normal joysticks or other controllers. Even in tramsim I can bind my flightstick to control tram. And that game is made with same engine as TSW. There are no excuses for this.

 

That's exactly my biggest complain with the sim right now. I'm loving TSW3 so much, the lighting improvements really enhaces the whole experience and makes it a lot more immersive, while RD is just the icing on the cake.

It's a pity that the notches of the throttle on US locos messes up the driving experience by making ghost key presses and changing the lever position constantly, forcing the user to have to move the lever up and down until it guesses the right position. It's truly frustrating indeed.

I really hope the RD support leaves its current beta stage soon and we can finally use the throttle seamlessly without having to worry about the awful notches, as smooth as the independent brake is for example.

 

Yes, after I downloaded EA, I had a tough time with RD, on all 3 routes but especially on the C4 and Dash-2 throttles/ dynamic brakes.

I re-calibrated 2 or 3 times and it seems to be much better, but I have the feeling that the RD beta has plateaued and not in a good way.

 

I remember when I first bought the RD, it was Matt raving about it and how it is supported and will continually be improved which convinced me to give it a try. I did have fun with it in TSW2 a long time ago but now you are constantly re-calibrating it and it still messes up so much in fact I have gone to a controller.

 

I bought a RailDriver brand new, tried it out for a bit, and was terribly unimpressed with how imprecise the controls were. It sat unused for a few months before I sold it off.

Cheers

 

Was the RD ever updated with new hardware internaly or does it still use 10+ year old tech? I imagine a 90 year old guy putting this together in his shed and writing everything in Basic (nothing wrong with that, but not for a expensive (but cheap components) consumer product).. Anyway, still waiting for Directinput support, probably never going to happen since DTG is pretty silent about it, but that's offtopic.

 

Idem, j’ai abonné désormais RD tant qu’il ne sera pas totalement jouable c’est à dire à mon avis JAMAIS, aprés il faut dire aussi que ce n’est pas un contrôleur de très haute précision(pas de système de crans, ce qui fait que vos commande sont flottantes, boutons fragiles et imprécis... etc, un contrôleur à la précision très médiocre pour ce jeux !!!) malgré un prix élevé plus de 200€, donc désormais je suis repassé au clavier/souris, pas vraiment le choix, c’est triste quand une amélioration arrive elle est systématiquement contrée par des conflits avec d’autres fonctions, un peu brouillon tout ça !!!