Animating pantograph height changes

I'm doing upgrades on an old BVE4 route that has many transitions between tunnel and outside sections and that means overhead catenary changes height in all these places. However, I need to somehow vary pantograph height so it fits under the wire (another alternative is making tunnels disproportionally higher, but that'll make them ridiculously tall, I'm not even talking about other issues) and can't think of a way to do this. The best would be specifying catenary height in the route file in a similar fashion to brightness with a way for .animated files to retrieve it, but there's simply no such command. Any possibility to implement something like this?

It's possible using a plugin for this. When the train reaches a beacon the pantograph contact zone changes. But you must give a smooth animation.

It might be hard match the animation because openBVE pantographs doesn't work using nodes just like Trainz or Train Simulator series.

That's why using a plugin isn't a feasible option. We need wire height specified in the route file in a similar way to brightness, with interpolations between diffeent heights, and a function that returns that value in an .animated file. If the function will be able to return pantograph height at the point n meters from the centre of the car i as it goes along the route, animating that will be easy.

I cannot think of a nice solution other than using a plugin.
The plugin can output the data to a panel variable, and can be used as the ats[i] parameter in animated object.
Specifying data for a plugin is easy. Track.Beacon enables you to send anything you would like to the plugin at a specified location. You can easily specify datas like what is the height going to be and how long should it take to animate.
So a plugin need to be programmed for this purpose. It should be fairly simple to program as the functionality is simple. Or there might have been someone who have done that already.

This works fine until you need to use a different plugin for a different train and even if you make a separate module for pantographs only, it won't always work with DetailManager. Or the entire thing will just refuse to load like some plugins do and the whole thing falls over.

On the other side, pantographs with varying height are universal enough to be a standard feature, there are lots of routes with overhead power around and almost everywhere catenary gets lower in some places.

Delsin wrote:This works fine until you need to use a different plugin for a different train and even if you make a separate module for pantographs only, it won't always work with DetailManager. Or the entire thing will just refuse to load like some plugins do and the whole thing falls over.

On the other side, pantographs with varying height are universal enough to be a standard feature, there are lots of routes with overhead power around and almost everywhere catenary gets lower in some places.

The OpenBVE-DetailManager programmed by S520 worked quite smooth for me. And I made a hacky modification to it, which allowed both .NET assemblies and Win32 DLLs to be loaded at the same time. https://zbx1425.tk/nautilus/detailmanager.html
Anyway it is up to Mr.leezer3 to decide whether a new feature should be added or not. I can only suggest some solutions that works without requiring any modification to the current game. The plugin solution does not sound too troublesome, at least to me.

This has been asked before I'm sure, and no-one ever got around to doing anything.

Anyways, if doing this, we need to do it properly.

Initial thoughts for a draft pair of commands:
.PowerSupplyStart type; voltage; contactHeight; ampsAvailable

.PowerSupplyEnd type


Type:
A numeric type. Supplies a default set of properties for voltage, contact height and amps, which can be overridden by the developer.
0 - 25kv AC OHLE
1 - 1500v DC OHLE
2 - Third rail 750v DC
3 - 3rd / 4th rail 630v DC

Set these up as an event type, and allow access from both plugins and animated files, e.g.

Code:

TranslateXFunction = WireHeight[0]

Assume at this point that the array runs from front to back of the train.
By default, set pickup points (pantographs / collector shoes) on motor cars, overridable by train.xml

Hmm, this is a good approach, exactly what I thought of. Even takes care of what has to be handled with more complex plugins (like that Silverlink 313)

As a person who can't make or modify any plugin, i know your pain.

So, if i was you, gonna use Track.destination hack as pantograph state (only if there's no any track.destination function states used recently in the route). Let's say in normal or lower heights, use destination 0. For higher one, use 10. any between heights use destination 1 until 9. At the pantograph animated file, gotta use smiliar thing like this:

[object]
States = (pantograph parts at lowest position)
TranslateYFunction = destination * (height changes)

hope this works until someone find new input. good luck

This lacks one very important thing - smooth interpolated transitions. Pantograph should follow height of the wire, not just drop to x meters at some point. That's why it has to be defined similarly to brightness - there's height 1, height 2, and a linear transition between them. If we have these heights 20m apart and a car stops somewhere in between, the .animated function should return height corresponding to the current pantograph position (pantograph offset from the centre of the car has to be specified in it then for correct route position reference), so that, say, we have 5m wire at route position 120 and 5.5m at 140 and the car stops at 137 with the pantograph offset 7m to the back, it should rise to 5.25m.

Delsin wrote:This lacks one very important thing - smooth interpolated transitions. Pantograph should follow height of the wire, not just drop to x meters at some point. That's why it has to be defined similarly to brightness - there's height 1, height 2, and a linear transition between them. If we have these heights 20m apart and a car stops somewhere in between, the .animated function should return height corresponding to the current pantograph position (pantograph offset from the centre of the car has to be specified in it then for correct route position reference), so that, say, we have 5m wire at route position 120 and 5.5m at 140 and the car stops at 137 with the pantograph offset 7m to the back, it should rise to 5.25m.

Well, worked at this. Not really smooth as you want tho   



As in the description said, using Track.Destination hack only possible if applied on [Car0] object.
Anyway, I think we can use Odometer value for another tricks. But ONLY works if no change ends commands on your route, since value of odometer will return to zero if train move too far away in one frame . Gonna think later for how to use this trick.