Switzerland in BVE... ? A revival !

Hello everybody,

It's been quite a long time...
I've published my route "Les Taux - St-Julien" in 2005. As most of the creators around, I gave up quite easily on working for BVE after a few PC crashes and quite new opportunities in life too. Oh, and probably "growing up".

After 7 years, I just couldn't find my BVE works in any backup. Quite frustrating, right ? After a desesperate appeal, a few fellow BVErs gave the line back to me.
As the line was reflecting (...hmm, is that english...?) the young me, I am definitely not so happy of the work I've done. Thanks God giving us some break these weeks, I'm able to work on a new version of Les Taux - St-Julien.

The version will be fully - and only ! - openbve compatible. It will (finally...!) loses its japanese poles (thanks to Laurent), include new realistic platforms, swiss signals, better quality trains (thanks to Hervé !!), an improved scenery, and a couple of surprises...

Enough said: Here is a screenshot - the only screenshot.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Take care,

Julien

Good luck with that Julien! It will be good to see the new version. I wasn't on the scene when the original one was about so it will be all new as far as I'm concerned.

Thank you, Graymac !

I guess that's usual: the more I am working on it, the more I want to do... We'll see what it becomes soon.

Anyway, I have some issues with signalling - if anyone could help ?
In Switzerland we do have main signals and also what you would call in english "advanced" or "approach signals" - it's defined by BVE by the command Track.Relay (or SigF(6) if you don't want thoses japanese ones !).
Swiss signals are made and placed all over the line (YaY). ...But ! For some odd reason, the relay do not seem to care at all if there is a pretrain in the next section. Of course, it just ignores the train and only "see" the next signal, which is green for the pretrain: as a result, as you can guess, the Relay, instead of telling me to prepare to stop, tells "Just keep accelerating, you'll meet the pretrain, but who cares anyway ?!"
Okay, more seriously: Does anyone knows how to fix that ?

Another thing: In Switzerland we also have something that could be more or less compared to the "fog repeater" you have in the LU: It's basically a signal that tells you if you have to stop or not at the signal that is quite close to you but that you can't see / hardly see (because of a curve, signal too far from the station, etc.). So it's just another type of "track.relay". The fact is, AFAIK, we can't put more than 1 type of relays in BVE (It seems to ignore my try to add a "SigF(7)" ) - Is there anyway to do it ?
Maybe with the beacons - I'm not so sure as the track.beacon command and everything that goes with that is quite new to me - and the official doc doesn't seem so helpful about it.

Thanks a lot !

There is a great need for some documentation on signal building and beacons, in language which a practising object/route builder can understand.
I also have some issues with signals made as animated objects and finding answers is difficult.

JLegrand wrote:Maybe with the beacons - I'm not so sure as the track.beacon command and everything that goes with that is quite new to me - and the official doc doesn't seem so helpful about it.

Beacons are used to convey information to train plugins.

I guess we need to add these signalling limitations to the great to-do list.

@JLegrand - the behavior you described is perfectly correct! At least for all signalling systems I know, and as far as I could see in the few times I've been to Basel/Bale it's true for swiss signals as well. The distant signal ("Vorsignal" if you speak German) does not fall back to "expect danger" when it's passed, it is directly and only connected to the next main signal ("Hauptsignal"). If there's only a distant signal or relay signal ("Vorsignalwiederholer") between you and the next train, then either you have authority to proceed on sight only (speaking in ETCS terms, it would be SR I think, I haven't been to ETCS schooling yet) and you have been informed there is or might be a train there, or the signal box personnel did some things very wrong, or, more probable, it's you who did something wrong and shouldn't have passed the last main signal at all

JLegrand, we have a similar signalling system in Hungary, so I thought I'd tell you how I do it.

First of all, I will use the German terms Vorsignal and Hauptsignal. Vorsignal is the advanced signal or pre-signal, Hauptsignal is the main signal.

I don't use the Track.Relay command for Vorsignals, I use another Track.SigF command, here is how.

Code:

.SigF 1;1;2.8;0,.Section 2;2;4,.Freeobj 0;210;2.8;0;0,

The second argument in the .SigF command is 1, which means the signal refers to the next section, not this one. This way the Vorsignal refers to the same section as the Hauptsignal.

Now in Hungary Vorsignals have yellow and green aspects, they don't have red aspects. Yellow means proceed but prepare to stop at the Hauptsignal, green means proceed and expect the Hauptsignal to show a proceed aspect too (eg. green or yellow, but not red). This descripion is simplified but serves our purpose.

So, this means I must set the Vorsignal to only show yellow and green. This is where the Track.Section command is useful. The first argument of the .Section command in the example is 2. This means the signal will be yellow if the next section is occupied by a train. The second argument is 2 as well, so the signal will be yellow if the next+1 section is occupied by a train. The third argument is 4, which means the signal will be green if the next+2 section is occupied by a train.

The freeobject is just the signal pole, I use Signal.Signal(n) commands to create the signal lights.

You might want to take a look at these:

• the Route.Signal command
  
• the Signal namespace
  
• the Signalling section (Track.SigF and Track.Section explained here)

Thank you for your replies.

@ Phontanka - Maybe I wasn't clear enough: I already know how to use the Track.SigF and sections - what disturbed me is how relays were managed by BVE.
For some reason I just didn't think about using the non-used yet "Track.SigF(1)" or (2) instead of trying to add another relay (SigF(7)) for my signal repeater - Thanks for that !

@ Quork - So you're a DB Lokführer ! That's great ! We might be international colleagues sooner or later =).
Thanks for this informations about the relay - that make sense (now...!) (Vorsignalwiederholer is much more precise - love Deutsch for that, I should definitely improve mine one day...).

Enough said: back to work ! Update coming soon...

Here is two new pictures of the WIP 2.0.
You can see a glimpse of a few new features - the screens says enough
I won't show you everything in the pictures of my work as I want to keep a few surprises for the release...

Looks superb!

Thanks !

3 new screens of my work these 2 last days. Here you can (finally !) see typical SBB railways buildings. The first screen show an early WIP new scenery before "Parc de Gambeta". The two other screens... Well, you can guess if you used to have the first version of my line .

I cant see any pictures.jckhinks

They're there. It takes a few seconds for them to show. If all else fails try these links:

http://www.imagup.com/data/1171741125.html
http://www.imagup.com/data/1171741089.html
http://www.imagup.com/data/1171740473.html

thanks for that graymac.jckhinks

@JLegrand - fantastic shots - having never been to your wonderful country (yet), am I right in thinking that trains in Switzerland run on the LEFT??

Great work,

John

Thank you !
Yes, that's correct John ! It's the same in most parts of France and in Belgium.

I've added new scenery between Vevet and Taurets, here are the screens:

Between Vevet and Martelet (I'm not totally happy with the rocks, actually. I was too lazy to make 3D models, I should do it...):


Merdignon station:


I've decided to remove what was supposed to be the old station of Lavaux: So unrealistic ! Instead, I've made a construction site for a suburban station of Jonction de Lavaux, which makes much more sense.


Last but not least, you can now find the project on BVE France. The description is only in french *for now*, but you can also find a map of the line: http://www.bvefrance.fr/projets-francophones/ltsj

Hope you enjoy these. If you have any suggestions, I'll be glad to hear them .

I've been working on the countryside part of the line.

Here is Volvère station: on the right side you can see a refurbished late XIXe century building, on the left the "RV05" standard elements (?) for local train stations.




What was really missing in the line was some kind of History, and therfor some medieval buildings. Ladies and gentlemen, here is La Chaux !

Yes, that would be nice of you

Just a screen that shows the work of Hervé (3d model) and myself (for the textures) on the trains. Also you can guess a few other things that will be featured for the release.

Looking forward too this incredible peice of work.

Wow keep it up and as dexter said it shall be a nice route.

Just noticed that I've not published any screenshot of the reworked Jonction de Lavaux. Here we go




Also, I've been quite busy reworking the entire St-Julien railtracks. I'm almost done with the scenery. (Let's say I'm done, otherwise I'll never finish it... )




Just a word about performances: With my quadcore 2.8ghz, 4go SDRam and HD6670, I get a steady 60FPS for the whole line, except when arriving in bigger stations (40-60FPS). The main issue might be St-Julien as I get around 16-27FPS, and its only with 1 static train... ! I'll see after some tests if I have to remove some tracks, make a "low spec" version, etc.

Great job!

It's a beauty!

Thank you !

I've added a few new screens on the webpage of the project.




More important: Here is a probably interesting before-after comparison...
http://www.bvefrance.fr/projets-francophones/ltsj/comparaison