BVE Cornwall: Current WIP

The Hymek is now ~90% complete


Needs a little tweaking on the textures (Cab windows, one missing grille where the bodyshell joins the roof), plus adding of handrails and horns.

I also have the photos for D7017 in two-tone green, and they're on the list of things to edit.

I'll be releasing this as public domain at some stage later, but please drop me a line if you want a copy before I get around to doing this.

Edit: Just as a note, this is again thanks to the Bury Hydralic Group at this year's North Norfolk Railway Diesel Gala.
Thanks guys

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Very nice. A drivable version would be immense!

Sorry, no drivable Hymek for the moment, I didn't get enough cab pictures to do it properly.

On that subject though, this is currently in the workshop:


Points to anyone who can guess what class this is, although I hope it's rather obvious from the shape
(Yes, there are large lumps missing, but look at the front)

No idea how long it'll take to finish, especially as I need to build a whole bunch of plugin functions to support this loco's unique features.
No external either, although that's much faster than a cab

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Built the main traction controller and air brake handle today:


Still requires texturing on the cylinders rather than using solid colors to make it look absolutely 100%, but getting the basic shapes right is the current priority.
Even from this image, there's still a whole bunch of stuff missing (Vaccum brake controller, horn lever, several buttons....), and I haven't even thought about the stuff on the secondman's side yet, let alone the cab superstructure

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

hi chris this look like a western class 52, i do hope so.cheers jack

Hole in one, glad someone's watching

A whole bunch more work on this today, and the cab now looks like this:


Again, there's still plenty of temporary textures and bits missing, not to mention animating everything!
The plan is to animate basically *anything* that moves in the driver's field of vision.
Every label is readable too, although that may be considered overkill :O

FWIW, this is primarily based upon a large number of pictures I took in the 'B' end cab of D1010.

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

very exciting.

It looks good, Chris.

So, all nearly all the major bits are in place on the driver's side:


Next job is the side windows and vacuum brake handle, followed by the rather sparse set of gauges on the secondman's side & the rear of the cab plus seats.

Animation of all of these bits will be almost surprisingly easy, but then comes the harder job of sorting out the plugin, and building the external.

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Wow, good job on that!

So, this is a short video showing the cab in motion.
The cab windows have been redone (About 3 times....), and I'm afraid it's still got the temporary textures and some missing bits, but it's a lot further forwards than it was


Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

This was a relatively quick job this evening:


The 81xx looks rather good in black
Textures for this were based upon a bunch of photos from 4247 at the Bodmin & Wenford Railway- One good thing about GWR locos is that practically everything was built to a very similar pattern, and so all this needed was the moving of a few rivets here and there!

I'm going to clean a few areas on the model up a little & improve some of the animations before posting this as a variant drivable 81xx, this time I think with a rake of coaches.
I'll also retrofit both this and the original 81xx with BVEC_ATS, so both should work on alternate operating systems as designed

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Done a lot of work on the Western. The startup sequence now looks and sounds like this:



Startup sequence at the minute (No AWS as of yet):
HOME- Turn on battery isolation switch.
END- Insert master key.
Forwards- Select forwards direction, & DSD beeps trigger.
INS- Cancel DSD.
Neutral- Select N to start engines.
3- Press and hold key 3 to start engine #2 (Rear engine)
2- Press key 2 to toggle engine selector to engine #1. (Needed as otherwise we end up with '00s of keys....)
3- Press and hold key 3 to start engine #1 (Forwards engine)

Next job is the AWS self-test routine that should be familiar to those who have driven UK stock before.
There are also a whole bunch of bits that need animation, which I haven't quite got to yet (Volts/ change gauge, some switches etc.)

Either way, I hope you get a sense of the work that's going into making this one right

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Great, Chris!

Nice one, Chris! Pity it's too heavy for my branch line.
Have I got to build Gloucester to Bristol next??

Yep, definitely

Things are actually coming together now, but will take quite a while longer to complete-
I've now got the plugin running just about everything I want, but I haven't started on the engine sounds yet- These will be controlled on an RPM basis from the plugin, I'm not touching the train.dat implementation.
Similarly, I'm aiming to have the turbocharger spool up and down in the appropriate parts of the rev range. Most of the code for this is actually now there, just requires a lot of sound editing!

I've also nearly completed the cab, and have done some basic initial work on the external. A couple of images:



I'm not completely convinced by the cabfront shape in the second image, but I'm rather having problems getting it to look 'right'; Oddly curved bits are definitely not OpenBVE's strength!
(I'm hoping it'll look a lot better when 3D models are added to the headcode indicators and lights, which both stick out of the curve)

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Most of the external is now complete:


I'm still not 100% happy with the top initial roof entry and the nose shape, but it's somewhere about as good as it's going to get

I'm now working on the sounds and plugin hacking, but it's coming together!

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Lot of work gone in, looking very interesting.
Should the skirts be a wee bit darker to match the body sides?

That was a minor lighting bug, never noticed that
(If you use custom normals on 90% of your verticies, inevitably, you'll miss some, and the lighting will be different....)

This video has primarily been made to show off the engine RPM dependant power sounds, but also shows a much more complete cab:



Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Woohoo, sounding great!

Interesting stuff Chris, would I be right in saying that your plugin is basically changing the 'pitch' of one of your .wav files according to the revs ?

It’s changing both the pitch and the volume of the main motor loop sound
This works as follows:
0-25% RPM (600- 850) Pitch increases 25%, volume increases 10%
25-50% RPM (850- 1100) Pitch increases 25%, volume increases 25%
50-75% RPM (1100- 1350) Pitch increases 25%, volume increases 10%
75-100% RPM (1350- 1600) Pitch increases 25%, volume increases 10%

As noted in the video description, you should also be able to hear the turbo spooling up/ down at 1200 RPM, and this has the appropriate effect on the engine power output!
 
I’d quite like to add an additional two loop sounds so that there’s one for each of the torque convertors, like this:
1. Idle
2. Speed upto 30mph (Convertor #1)
3. Speed upto 63mph (Convertor #2)
4.  Speed above 63mph (Convertor #3)

Haven’t quite got that far yet though, and there’s still a decent amount of work to be done on the gearbox simulation before that happens- The most important missing function is ‘Tooth on Tooth’
I'd also quite like to add failure modes for the torque converter (Tied in with 'Tooth on Tooth' obviously; http://www.westernchampion.co.uk/loco-d1015-technical.php ), turbocharger and both engines.

Don't even want to think about trying to get crossfade working either, that will be a pig....

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Will this sound model be configurable or will this be a specific train plugin?

If it shall be configurable and also suitable for electric traction motors (be it OHL/third rail, be it dieselelectric), mind there are also vehicles (triphase AC) which play a tone scale at low speeds before switching to discrete frequency variation at higher speeds.

Short answer is that *at the moment* this isn't configurable. Whether this will change I'm not sure; AFAIK I'm the only person to ever even consider this

To elaborate a little:
Varying pitch and volume with motor speed is relatively easy to implement, but requires a relatively specific set of parameters for any given motor.
I could relatively easily implement a generic 4-step version of the pitch/ volume changes in my previous post with configurable RPM bands etc. that could be loaded from the configuration file, but it's nowhere close to perfect, and I'm not sure it's flexible enough to start thinking about anything really complex.

Frankly at the moment, I'm in uncharted waters!
Whilst I've attempted to build generic classes that are reusable across different diesel engines ( https://github.com/leezer3/bvec_ats/blob/master/Traction/Diesel/StarterMotor.cs https://github.com/leezer3/bvec_ats/blob/master/Traction/Diesel/Turbocharger.cs ), the vast majority of the code is in a loco specific class.

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Your coding work is simply fascinating. I guess plugins prove to be what keeps OpenBVE flexible and evolving long enough till someone tries and works on the program itself.