Does anyone know why it always feels like the train is going faster when your'e at a normal view - for example if you're in the cab and you zoom in with the mouse, it suddenly feels like you're barely moving. I assume this is an optical illusion and that the game isn't actually slowing down, but I've not been able to figure out why!
It's just a trick of the perspective. One of the ways you would gauge your own speed or that of something approaching you is how fast it appears to get bigger in your field of view. As it halves the distance between you it apparently doubles in size. Imagine you are watching a train traveling at 60kph approaching you on a straight section of track from two kilometres away. It takes one minute to halve the distance from when you first see it (cover the first kilometre) then thirty seconds to halve the remaining distance (500m), 15 seconds for the next 250m, 7.5 seconds for the next 125m apparently doubling in size each time. Narrow the FoV (zoom in) and, of course, the train looks closer. Take a two power zoom for instance, and simplicity, which makes everything look twice as big. Watching the same train then because you know what a train is and roughly how big it is consciously or not your brain is telling you it's a train (correct) and it appears to be about one kilometre away (incorrect of course and you can tell yourself that but the visual cortex hasn't evolved to interpret zoomed images). Keep watching it and it will take a minute to double in size appearing to be 500m away apparently at 30kph when it has actually covered twice that distance. Something like that anyway.
