Steam Raildriver User Feedback Wanted Please

Hi folks,
We've had Raildriver in the game for quite some time now. It was awesome to have it come in and it's great that most locomotives and cab cars support it from day 1. There have been some exceptions to this and not all locomotives are actually supported.

I would like to gather everyone's feedback so that I can take a consolidated set back through Ambassador & Beta channels on your experiences to see if I can get a little traction on improving it in the future.

For me the main thinks I like are

• Ability to control nearly every train
• Immersive factor of using levers and buttons instead of keyboard, mouse or controller
• The fact that it can be done well e.g. the Just Trains Pacer

The things I do not like are

• Lack of hysteresis when reading levers and switches which means levers jiggle almost constantly and wipers and lights change their switch positions seemingly at random - I want hysteresis introduced in the core to stabilise the lever and switch readings so it does not need to be done loco by loco
• Lack of configurability - I want to be able to set which lever and button does what for a locomotive
• You can no longer see all locomotives and their buttons in the configuration screen thanks to DLC Manager - we should still be able to see and configure all of them
• Lack of consistency in the blue buttons means that I no longer use the blue buttons at all - I proposed a consistent button set ages ago that would have worked across all countries but it was deemed too much work - I accept this but if we could configure them and save the configuration so it could be shared this would be helpful (the .ini file save is fine for this)

I would appreciate hearing your thoughts good and bad. If you'd like to see something changed describe what it does now and what you would like it to do instead.

Paul

 

Good to hear from you, Paul.

I've been using the RD for many, many years and it's become indispensable, I never drive without it.

However, having said that, I have developed a combo of RD, mouse & keyboard which suits my style of play. Like you I find the blue buttons inconsistent though I do use a few of them ( master key, safety systems for example ).

By hysteresis I presume you mean a learning process from frequent use and you're right as it applies to lights plus the wiper switch seem to work differently for different locos. But then some locos have wiper switches that have 3 or more speed settings which the RD doesn't match. Same for headlights.

I do have occasional issues with the reverser which sometimes slips off or into neutral without any input, needing me to stop and restart the loco.

Last thing. I've never used the sound feature in my RD, never really worked. Does anyone?

Question: is the RD feature still in beta or are DTG done with it? I see occasional tweaks, mostly to do with localization but no real changes.

 

Well, hope they are not done with it, but question this since RailDriver is totally broken in TSW5. Can't use it on either the new or old routes imported in. I have been using it for years, and like you Crosstie, use a hybrid approach with my keyboard and mouse. For now I am sticking to TSW4 and hope DTG gets this sorted so I can use the new build, TSW5, and its routes.

 

Back when raildriver was anounced to work with TSW2, we was told that yes everything will be customizable at some point, Were now 3 versions deep and we still cant, coincidentally, they have removed the beta tag from the raildriver, despite it being worse than ever!

In TSW5 the levers have a mind of there own, same with the radial switches, (Radial Switches have always been a bit funky in TSW).
A workaround for the phantom movements, is to recalibrate the Raildriver, but when recalibrating, DO NOT pull levers to their full endpoints, it kinda fixes the issue to some degree.

As were all aware, the raildriver is a bespoke bit of kit, and its not cheap. I would think getting proper raildriver support would be on Sir Matts to do list, seeing as he has one (But doesnt bother using!)

Come on dovetail, we deserve better!

 

Ah, don't have TSW5 yet, thinking of taking the plunge this weekend so that's not good news.

If any of the moderators are reading this, perhaps they could give us some response.

Paul? Have any input? ( When the earth turns down under ).

 

I have the same problem with Raildriver on TSW 5 but its ok with TSW 4 .
I also think the problem is with TSW 5 as its the same if i play the game with the keyboard.
They always break something.
does anyone get the hill start message on the class 390 keeps coming on.
Gary

 

Yorkshirelad, I tried the calibration with not moving the levers to there full position and did not seem to help in my case. Still the levers have a mind of their own with my throttle, for example, moving from idle to notch 2 and back while I was loading passengers. This is a complete mess and I sure hope Matt let's us know what DTG is doing to correct this.

 

I noticed the same hill start message popping up incessantly on the 390. It appears if you right click on the throttle when in neutral you enable the Hill start feature when using the keyboard. On the Raildriver it appears to continually trying to apply hill start when idling on in neutral. The driver is very unstable seeming to be very sensitive to any variation in signal. It worked very well in TSW4, but in TSW5 it is very sketchy. Maybe DTG JD or Matt can jump in here and acknowledge the problem and comment on efforts to correct.

 

It's simply broken in TSW5. TSW4 it was fine with the usual quirk's.

I do hope Matt and his dev mates address this or TSW5 will be the last step in the franchise for Raildriver users.

 

Alas my fellow raildriver brethren, we are a very small section of what is already a small section of the wider player base, I can't honestly see them actioning any fixes anytime soon!

 

I was a long time Raildriver skeptic, but have come around, and find myself playing TSW exclusively with it. I still have plenty of reservations about it along with the high price tag for what you're getting, but I can't find myself ever going back to using controllers or K&M.

It needs a complete overhaul in terms of customizable control schemes. I highly recommend Roman72's Raildriver remapping mod, as I find it absolutely essential for German and Austrian content, and should be the standard for how they're mapped when it comes to content in that region. Dovetail should take notes, and allow users to upload presets such as that to the creator's club, or some sort of UI to allow mapping to that degree. There is plenty of potential there, and it is mostly unrecognized, which is a shame. I know there are employees who use it as I see the Raildriver on the table for many of their developer diary videos, so hopefully they can address some of this at some point in the future.

 

Have you calibrated it? It needs to be recalibrated for TSW5.

 

The hill start is the brake lever jiggling as it seems to be tied to that.

 

To answer the question about hysteresis - its an engineering term often used in electronics where you're converting analogue to digital although it does have other meanings.

Basically each lever and switch on the Raildriver is a non linear potentiometer which is a device that changes resistance (as in ohms not strength) as it moves through an axis. Converting the value from a potentiometer to a digital value is not as simple as seeing the lever is at 25% of the travel so I'll convert it to 25/100. Potentiometers drift in resistance continuously.

So if we read a lever - lets keep it simple and read the reverser centered at 50% so its in the neutral position on the RD label then for arguments sake this 50% yields 125 ohms. Sometimes that 125 is going to be 125.0, sometimes it will be 124.8 sometimes it will be 125.4 etc. The Raildriver is polled periodically and it converts the analogue resistance reading to a number. Arguably the Raildriver should be doing the conversion better but it doesn't and it leaves it to each game to do it. Generally the games use the Raildriver.dll so its not an issue but TSW does its own thing.

If we read it 5 times per second we get 5 different values (124.8, 125, 124.9, 125,2, 125.4), so the lever in game changes position or jiggles. The way around this is to look at the previous 5 values if they were close to the current value then just make the current value the average of the last 5 so 124.8, 125, 124.9, 125,2, 125.4 would become 125.06. When we read it again we again average and again replace the value. We would only change the value if the value has significantly changed.

Paul

 

I don't play TSW without a Raildriver. I actually acquired mine back around 2006 for use with MSTS, but the whole experience wasn't that good, so it got chucked in the loft after a bit. I got back into simming with TSW3 (completely skipped TS Classic, as it's now known), at first using the keyboard, but once I got my Raildriver out, I've never looked back.

It definitely has its limitations as a result of not being able to map to every loco out there properly:

• Lights and wiper switches I rarely use now because there can be more than 3 positions on a loco, and even if there aren't, the position on the Raildriver may not match up with that on the sim. For example, if the sim loco has off -> bright -> dim in clockwise order, the Raildriver is just set to follow the sim, so that where on the controller labels it has off -> dim -> bright, that's not honoured in the sim and setting to dim on the Raildriver sets bright on the sim. What would be really good is if the sim honoured what the Raildriver is labelled to do, even if that's non-linear (i.e. moves the switches in the sim directly to the corresponding setting). And if the sim loco has multiple settings (e.g. off -> dim -> left -> bright for example's sake), it ignores the more esoteric settings and uses the 'common' ones that Raildriver has labelled mappings for (somewhat goes hand in hand with the above).
  
• The reverser is another one that is more limited in the Raildriver than on some sim locos. Modern British trains now seem to have an 'Off' or 'Setup/Recovery' position on the reverser, meaning there are more than the 3 possible positions that the Raildriver lever properly rests at. With something like the 710, I think, I have to nestle the lever part way between its traditional 'Neutral' and 'Forward' positions to engage Forward drive. I don't know if that's healthy for the Raildriver device but it seems ok. Again, it would be good if TSW took a more informed view of the Raildriver's capabilities and decided that Neutral on the controller would just map to Off on that particular loco, and if you needed Neutral, you could override with the mouse or a keyboard.
• The only blue buttons I use are the top left one as I know that's the 'Escape' or Pause Menu key, and the left and right d-pad ones to open/close doors. Otherwise, they're completely wasted on my Raildriver. I normally play with it in the middle, keyboard to my left and mouse to the right (thank heavens I've a desk wide enough). A consistent control scheme would really elevate my use of the device if it made me go to my keyboard less.
• More minor one, but getting to the top throttle notch on the sim loco is sometimes a challenge as my throttle lever on the Raildriver doesn't seem to quite go as far as the game thinks it should, so I have to rock it a little to reach that top notch on the loco. Still a bit of work to do to accurately interpret the controls, I think.

But there are positives:

• Throttle top notch issue aside, the throttle and brake levers generally work, and I really enjoy using them.
• Opening the doors with the d-pad works nicely.
• Using the Alert button button is great for safety systems as it's so easy to whack vs finding the right key on the keyboard.

Regarding sound, I sadly have lost the power adapter for my Raildriver in the intervening 15+ years of storage, which is needed to drive the subwoofer. I'm a bit nervous about finding a generic replacement in case the voltage emitted isn't quite right and the device gets fried. Raildrivers are so expensive now that it's not worth the risk, and I've heard mixed reports on the sound anyway (I drive a lot of electrics on TSW, so it would be useless for those).

Back to support, I can't believe that DTG have totally given up on it. Lindsay had one behind him in the Dev Diaries videos for TSW5 - would be a bit odd if they were planning to secretly kill off support (those videos will have been carefully choreographed). The TSW5 issue is likely a bug of some sort, but it's a real shame as that's now going to stop me from even upgrading with the Starter Pack until they fix it (though of course I'll still 'Add to Library', I just won't use it) since Deluxe Edition has now become a Black Friday or Christmas sale purchase for me, assuming they've hopefully brought WCMLS up to standard by then.

Given that accessibility in terms of supporting a wide variety of controllers is a (very just) mission for Matt to enable people with any range of limb and hand difficulties to play the game, I hope that the Raildriver can be reoriented in the code as 'just another controller' (albeit a fairly complex one) on top of a general controller API - that should make it simpler to support in the long term. The optimist in me says that's already happening and it wasn't quite bug-busted for release.

 

The tool tip for hill start pops up when you right click on the throttle/brake handle when it us in the idle position either way it is annoying

 

Yes, several times.

 

Well, the throttle also jiggles, and the brakes can't be released on some locos never mind it jiggling.

 

Really useful that the RailDriver issue with TSW5 has been highlighted here - thank you all. I use TSW exclusively with RailDriver so I’ll be holding off buying TSW5 until it’s confirmed that the RailDriver issue has been addressed.

 

As I said in a previous post, DO NOT pull the levers to their full end zones, otherwise you will still get issues.

 

I have been experiencing all of the same issues with the Raildriver in TSW5 and I have calibrated it twice and still makes no difference what so ever. I find the loco so far to be worse is the Pendo it keeps snapping my reverser into neutral and it's annoying as you cannot move.

Just to add I never experienced. these issue in TSW3&4

 

There is no new RD issue with TSW5 its exactly the same as 3 and 4 so go ahead with your upgrade. Remember you can do it free from the 17th until Oct 17th.

 

That is just a poor implementation of RD on the Pendo Michael Newbury - the exact same thing happens on other locomotives, its just more annoying on the Pendo because things like the reverser change on you while you're driving which causes all hell to brake loose.

 

This was advice I used to give to but I found it varies by RD and by temperature so I stopped giving the advice .

 

The lever behavior was the same in 4 - you can see it in a lot of my previous streams I don't think its worse in TSW5.

 

Hi Steve there are no plans that I am aware of to kill off Raildriver so stomp that rumor to death . The only recent locos that don't use it are the Expert 101 and its cab car. When I asked Lukas about it they just ran out of time to get it done properly and they did not want a partial implementation for such an advanced locomotive.

As for the power supply I think you can still buy them from PI Engineering but any center positive 12VDC 1A supply will do the job. I do not run with the sub woofer because it irritates my family so I use headphones with the game.

Paul

 

Which is what I did and it does not help.

 

I was thinking about buying a raildriver so this thread is food for thought and pause.
Any official word from DTG about the state of play on this?

 

Over in the Troubleshooting thread Jamie has replied to the Rail Driver post over there and will pass the problems on to the team.

 

We really need ( and deserve) a response from DTG. Many of us are holding off buying/ playing TSW5 while waiting for a fix.

There seems to be a " right-hand/left hand " problem here. Lucas says one thing and Jamie says another.

 

I dug my Raildriver out of the cupboard as I still have TSW4 installed as well as TSW5. I can confirm that it is definitely not working the same way. In TSW4 everything works as it always did not great compared to TSC, but still working pretty well. In 5 as everyone is saying, the controls are not staying steady. For example in a 350 service, just sitting in a station with the brake at 50% it was fluctuating between 23% and Emergency. At the same time the wipers were going into intermittent and off. All the time getting messages on the right hand side of the screen for all of the changes.

Not sure what can be wrong as on the calibration screen everything is staying steady. As the calibration screen is ok, I assume that the actual interface is working ok and it’s the game interpreting the data incorrectly.

The raildriver is going back to the cupboard until this is fixed.

 

For anyone who has held a controller in their hand, this is what we call "dead zone" (or "dead band").

 

Thanks, but based on this thread that doesn’t seem to be everyone’s experience unfortunately.

I appreciate the reminder about 17th Oct though. If there’s no confirmation by the 16th that it’s been addressed, I’ll have to take a decision. I’m only really interested in Preston-Carlisle (although without the question mark over the RailDriver I’d probably have got the free upgrade then paid for Euston-MK) so no rush. However, if I miss the chance of the free upgrade on the 17th I’m not sure if I’ll then end up having to pay for the upgrade and then pay for Preston-Carlisle, or whether buying Preston-Carlisle will mean I get TSW5 upgrade free.

 

Hey, you can have your cake and eat it. All you have to do by 17th Oct is claim TSW5 - you don’t have to install it. Claiming it doesn’t do anything to your TSW4 install, either. So claim it tomorrow, but keep TSW4 installed, then move over to TSW5 when this has been ironed out.

 

Ah, great, thank you. I will take your advice and enjoy my cake.

 

Agreed it would nice to get an update regarding the issue and when it will be fixed.

 

I totally disagree with this statement. I never had the throttle jump around in TSW4 as is does in TSW5. Did a run with the 66 on WCML and had the same hunting or jumping throttle as the 390. Fired up TSW4 and ran a 66 run with the Raildriver behaving normally. So it isn’t exactly the same inTSW5 as it was in TSW4 for me.

 

I never had any issues myself in TSW 3 or 4 with the raildriver something changed and hoping that it gets fixed.

 

I've tried the RD with and without CobraOnes utility and I can't get it to work either way, I have exactly the same jumping about issues using either DTG's preset or CobraOnes.

Unplugged it for now and have returned to K&M.

 

Well, after several re- calibrations, my RD is operating normally, at least with the 390 and 350, although the reverser has slipped into neutral once or twice, a problem I've had with previous iterations. Throttle is stable, door controls and alerters are fine. Still get that " hill start " pop-up though.

 

I re-calibrated my raildriver for the 3rd time tonight and like you had slightly better performance with the 390 Hill Start constantly clicked away. I also had slightly better performance with the ICE 411 DB then the last time had constant clicking from the controls.

 

Glad to read from you again and a good incentive with this thread, paul.pavlinovich !

I think I get the new iteration of TSW today or tomorrow and will provide feedback, I never play without RD since I aquired it (this was when the RD implementation was there for the first TSW loco, wow how time flies ...) and since Romansu72 is doing this mods I feel a little bit insurgent again. The levers are correct for German locos, the "blue buttons" have a totally logic sheme and most important - that scheme is the same for all of RD mods so it makes sense to learn them once and never have to look again
I haven't (and I don't plan to) reverse engeneered but, not gonna lie, it changed my perception of the RD implementation and calmed me for the whole TSW4 thing

Regarding calibration I'll come back to this thread, too - I usually calibrate once and that's it. But yeah, I have had problems with "jumpy" lights and wipers from time to time.

 

I have finally managed to get my Rail Driver which I have used since MSTS days working in TSW5.

It came right after I accessed the Advanced Settings from within a route from the Pause Menu (like it says in that Important Note in the setup).

In the Video “How to Calibrate Your Raildriver Controller” right near the start (I know it says TSW4 but forget about that) it shows the procedure.

I started by putting all the Controls in their Neutral or Off position then calibrated the first lever.

Before moving on to the next lever I placed the calibrated lever in its neutral position and carried on calibrating the rest using this procedure. Just like the video shows.

Now I am not sure that this will work for you as I may have fluked something but mine is now working and I am staying away from any Rail Driver Settings for a while. I am happy.

I have tried several routes over the last day and the levers and switches are working like they were in TSW4 apart from getting random messages on the right of the screen like advising that the wipers are off when they are. Have not tried any of the buttons as I seldom use them.

 

Yes, I can ignore the pop-up, but that constant clicking is really annoying.

 

Agreed it was starting to drive me nuts.

 

The video you describe is by trainsimulatordriver. However, in his tutorial on the WCMLS driving the Waterloo tube train on YouTube recently shows him having the same problem with his RD of which he is a big fan.
My RD arrived from the States this week and is waiting at my neighbours for when I get home on Friday. I hope things have improved by then.

 

Interesting.

Mine continues to run in TSW5 just like for TSW4 since I got it going. Must have fluked something. It’s no better no worse.

It has now been OK for 55 hours TSW5 playtime.

I have not installed any mods or made .ini file changes and I am using DX12

Be interested to know how your install goes.

 

I got back home and after reinstalling TSW5, and unboxing and setting up my new Raildriver, got to calibrating the RD for both TSW4 and 5.
I followed the calibration as per video in both and guess what? No problems in both 4 and 5!

I am however having issues with graphics in TSW5 at Ultra settings, some of the colours seem way too bright and off putting. 4 is less so. going to look at updating graphics driver and see what happens.

Just need to get used to the RD now after using an X Box controller, looking good so far.

 

I loaded CobraOne’s Raildriver and joystick interface and have greatly approved my Raildriver experience. I have used his Raildriver interface in TSC for several years and have found it to be a solid product in that simulation. Best part is you can customize your Raildriver experience.

 

I did a run on the new LIRR route today with the M7A, and it was constant throttle clicking whenever I got to neutral. I also did a run with the NEC NY Trenton route, and the brake lever also showed twitchy behavior.


Extremely annoying, and I don't recall having this sort of issue back with TSW4. It seems like they must have tampered with the deadzone in TSW5 to make it more sensitive. Hopefully this gets addressed or reverted back because this is really messing with driving input.