Solid guides in switches and street-running parts of SLRR between Oculea and Tuliptree
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AlettaMondragon Resident
There are several SLRR guides that remained solid for many years unnecessarily in the regions Oculea, Calleta, Sweetbay, Columbia and Tuliptree. Even though the SLRR standards don't require guides to be solid for a long time now since train scripts use llSensor() and llSetPos() to detect and follow guides in a non-physical way that does not need collisions, most of the guides even on the street-running part of the railroad in this area are solid. Some are being switched back and forth between phantom and solid by incorrectly working switches and sensors, others are always solid because they were never set to phantom.
There are several destinations for road vehicles in this area and otherwise the roadway can be used by them, the only obstacle in the way of road vehicles is the solid guides that prevent left turns, U-turns and branch line guides completely block the way of road vehicles at certain points. There is absolutely no point of using solid SLRR guides anymore, so having them anywhere on Heterocera's railroads (Bellisseria railroads were already built with phantom guides except for a few trouble spots) but especially in railroad crossings and street-running parts is nothing but disruptive.
In detail:
The switch at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Oculea/242/32/35 works properly but the railroad crossing sensors at both ends of the crossing make the guides solid for several seconds, so if a road vehicle enters the crossing right after a train passed, it will get stuck in the still solid guides. Turning the guides solid for the passing train is pointless and unnecessary. The sensors should only activate the crossing barriers and not affect the guides.
The switches at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Calleta/186/209/35 , at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Calleta/182/126/33 and at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Calleta/208/78/33 work properly.
The switch at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Calleta/248/49/33 makes all active guides solid and makes all Alternate Guides phantom consistently. It should only change the names of the guides between Guide and Alternate Guide, but they all should stay phantom all the time.
At http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Columbia/65/248/33 the main line guides of the switch are phantom but the branch line guides are all solid, the switch doesn't affect this so the solid guides should simply be set to phantom.
From http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sweetbay/47/6/33 to http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Columbia/76/240/33 several guides are solid except in some properly working switches.
The switch at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Columbia/89/229/33 works properly and its guides stay phantom regardless which way the switch is set, but from this point to the end of the railroad all guides are solid (except about three pieces) all the way to http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Tuliptree/153/166/31 where the last guide is not only solid but named "end" instead of "Guide", so you can't pull in to the end of the platform with a locomotive here. Depending on the type of vehicle it will derail or get stuck when reaching the last, improperly named guide. The last guide should be named Guide and not "end".
It would be appreciated if you could inspect all guides, sensors and switches at and between these marked locations in this area to make sure guides will be and stay phantom at all times, and also appropriately named Guide when active and Alternate Guide when inactive in switches. Thank you in advance.
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Hrdtop75 Deluxe
Hi there AlettaMondragon Resident, I can understand the issues you have with the guide system in the southern part of Heterocera Atoll, sometimes I like driving from my shop in Tuliptree opposite the Virtual Railway Consortium to my other shop in Spangle and I agree the guide does make driving on the shared sections very difficult. ( Not as difficult as the sim crossings at the moment (angry face )).
There is a reason why the "Guide" is Physical and that has to do with one of the first auto trolleys that ran the Atoll, these days a hand full of people still run physical trains and one of the premium gifts from the lab (Premium Rail Handcart) is also Physical. This is also the same reason why the Switches change physical / phantom.
As for the Guide named "End" these were part of the old trolley system as well. There are also guides out the front of every SLRR station called "Buffer Stop" These rails are named like this for the old Trolleys that ran on notecard location.
The reason why we keep a rail at the end of the track named other than Guide is so that the Phantom trains searching 20 meters in front for itself knows when to stop or flip. (No object named Guide in search arch X so now we flip.) When we don't use this option vehicles tend to travel to far away to return to the rails or worse ends up in someones ban lines.
In a perfect world your not going to keep everyone happy with this situation.
However there are ways to fix some of the issues.
- Instead of naming the End rail "Guide" Hows about extending the rails at the of the station and moving the Buffer back. This wouldn't work at Bhaga but I'm sure I could think of something.
- Height of Guides, as a train builder I hate making the same train for multiple different height guides. It does work well in Bay City but could you imagine changing the height of all the guides on Heterocera Atoll. Big Task. And I can tell you that the only way that is going to happen is if they make me a Railroad mole.
- Phantom Guides, as I was saying earlier there are a hand full of people still using Physical trains, this would prevent them from enjoying the full SLRR experience.
Myself, I'm happy with Phantom Guides and Switches but please leave the last Guide as "End or Buffer Stop" to prevent over run issues.
OR...... do we ask for a road to go in by the side of the section of SLRR?
AlettaMondragon Resident
Hrdtop75 Deluxe The one I have marked in Tuliptree that is named "end" is not after the platform but right at it, and then there is an actual buffer stop, so yes there might be need for a prim called "end" under the buffer stop, but definitely not 20 meters ahead of it as it is now.
As for the physical trains: I would hope they are modifiable so their users could convert them to work with non-physical SLRR scripts. I can't see the reason behind less functionality in a road-rail section for most users just so in case one person in every 5 years might run ancient content there it could still work. Of course only until it derails at the first phantom guide, as a lot of them in that area are phantom, and throughout most of Heterocera.
That being said I did take this to Support as Abnor requested and I was reassured this issue was added to a queue of fixes to be done, with no ETA whatsoever, so it seems all the three remaining physical train users in SL can still enjoy the solid guides for some time.
A
Abnor Mole
contact support
Thank you everyone :)
For all specific requests regarding the SL Railroad (switch requests, reports of broken or problematic switches/guides, etc.) please submit those requests through a support ticket. :)
https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new (Issue Type> Land & Region > Other Land)
AlettaMondragon Resident
Abnor Mole Really? Then Guy or Wendi will reply "The SLRR is the Moles' domain, we at Support generally don't interfere with that."
Qie Niangao
I haven't seen any opposition to this, having asked in a group notice to Virtual Railway Consortium, so I doubt there's a reason to worry about old "bumper" trains using physical guidance, specifically in these locations where rail shares right-of-way with a road. Hence, I'd recommend making guides and switches phantom all the way to the end of this line in Tuliptree, and also the very short section of SLRR that shares the end of Route 3 in Tussock. (I updated all VRC guides and switches in these two locations to be and remain phantom, but of course the main line needs LDPW attention there.)
SLRR switches in Bay City have always remained phantom so I inspected and they have the full complement of scripts as in "standard" SLRR switches that swap phantom and non-phantom Guides. In VRC Tussock and Tuliptree switches, then, I commented-out one line in the "NONPHANTOM" script as the only change to keep the guides phantom. At the moment VRC still distributes the old standard switches, same as in the Leafminer Mole Mart, but there probably should be some update here, in notecard text if nowhere else.
Starbuckk Serapis
This was completed in Columbia, Sweetbay and Calleta by a ticket request a few years ago due to the shared rail/road. One guide on the 215,15 siding in Calleta (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Calleta/194/82/31) was missed but for the most part its completed.
Solid guides were made for a time long passed and just create headaches. All should be converted to non-physical.
Update: Everything west of Columbia switch 132 is still solid
AlettaMondragon Resident
Starbuckk Serapis I believed that as well that they have turned the guides phantom long ago in the area, but lately several people complained about the solid guides again, that is why I went through the whole thing to inspect each guide, switch and sensor. It looks like they only made guides phantom in those few switches that I marked as working correctly, so maybe that was their response to the ticket years ago.
Marianne McCann
I could be wrong on this (and I am perfectly happy to be), but I
believe
those were left non-phantom as a lot of older rail systems need a physical guide to operate. I'm not sure if this is still an issue, or how much content might be broken in the process tho. I'll leave that to those more in the know.AlettaMondragon Resident
Marianne McCann As far as I know all rail vehicles that people use now do the sensor-based non-physical movement, solid guides were only needed when rail vehicles had two big skids on their bottom and slid on guides with them physically. And always derailed. The whole concept is obsolete so keeping any solid guide would be like not moving on to EEP from Windlight because some content (like old Windlight presets) would break. But we did the EEP upgrade. Also, since a lot of guides are already phantom not only in that area but throughout Heterocera, if anyone tried to use one of those ancient collision-based trains it would derail the moment it meets a phantom guide, so referring to them in any way is pointless.
Daria Linette
As a user of both road and rail vehicles, this modification falls so much under Common Sense to me that I'm amazed it has not been done already.