Proposal for sound handling and momentum integration

[William Brillinger]

Proposal for sound handling and momentum integration - October 4, 2015

Do you support this proposal as presented?  Or would you like to see revisions made?
Please post suggested revisions in the comments.

See the attached PDF for details of the proposal.

For reference, our goal is to be able to re-create the effects seen in this video:

You can read the Proposal in this PDF

[William Brillinger]

Please everyone, register your vote - yea, or nay. ??

[Archive]

Originally posted by TS on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

Hi Bill,

It all looks good. Probably the only thing I would change is the
throttle percentage. We should be able to set our own power levels for
each notch if we wish, not just when 8 is reached.

I just spent a good portion of the last day studying how LokSound
control the logic for their sounds and it's impressive. I would suggest
it's good reading and studying (get the programmer software and one
of their sound projects like the EMD 567 for the FT, both freely
downloadable. a guide on LokSound is here:
http://www.dccsound.com/loksound101.htm) for anyone interested in
controlling sound.

Tim
Land of OZ

[Archive]

Originally posted by William Brillinger on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

Tim,

I thought of that, and it was in the first few drafts of my proposal,
but I concluded that combined auto & manual notching really covers that
for the most part, given that you can override the automatic notching at
any time. It is important however to be able to set the point on the
throttle that notch 8 is reached.

I'm not opposed to including it, but I am concerned that such complexity
will consume valuable program memory.

Does anybody else feel that setting the percentages for each notch is
needed?

- Bill

[Archive]

Originally posted by LK&O on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

I am in favor of the items on your list with one possible exception. When operating in Combined Auto & Manual Notching mode I'm not so sure I would want to keep re-enabling manual notching after each time the controller cancelled it due to my throttle movement. Overriding my manual notch setting due to throttle movement is fine, just resume manual notching from there. Notching mode choices would be Full Manual, Combined, and Full Automatic.

[Archive]

Originally posted by William Brillinger on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

Alan,

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about needing to re-enable manual notching.
The way I see combined notching working is this:

You're working a heavy train:
    momentum is set to 10 seconds for high throttle responsiveness:
    notch 8 is set at 80% for the sake of easy numbers

    Engine is idling, you're ready to move
    Set notch 2
    Roll the throttle a bit to slowly begin moving
    Set notch 8
    Slowly work the throttle up 60% (your desired speed)
    Set notch 3 ( the train is up to speed and not working very hard)
    Train is going too fast, you roll the throttle down to 45%
    (notch & sound does not change because you did not go below 30% which is notch 3)
    Train is now too slow, you increase power to 50% - Notch auto increases to notch 5 (you needed the power!)
    Train is up to speed, manually set back to notch 3.
    Time to stop... optionally set notch 1
    slowly work the throttle down to zero. If notch 1 was not set, then the notching will decrease with your power reductions.

You're working a light train:
    momentum is set to 10 seconds for high throttle responsiveness:
    notch 8 is set at 80% for the sake of easy numbers

    Engine is idling, you're ready to move
    Roll the throttle to 20%, sound increases with your movement
    Set notch 1 cause you're coasting.
    Roll the throttle up to 30% - auto notch runs up to 3, you needed the power.
    Set notch 1 cause you're coasting.
    Roll the throttle to 0% to stop.

So the throttle movements would only cancel the manual setting if you passed the threshold (up or down) according to the notch that was currently chosen.

Do you have an example of how this should be different?

- Bill

[Archive]

Originally posted by kpack05 on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

I'm good with the proposal as it stands.  It will probably need small tweaks as we start to use/test the new features.  But I think what we've come up with is a good baseline and should take care of most of the things we want.

-Kevin

[Archive]

Originally posted by jacob.damron on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

Bill:

I'm in favor.

Jacob

[Archive]

Originally posted by Shawn Hogan on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

Bill,
I like your proposal as it is. I'm not running much in the way of diesels these days. I have an old soundtraxx IR throttle I run my diesels with and its kinda cool to notch up the prime mover but only have the train crawling.
With your brake function proposal: if you hold the button down until the train or loco stopped, would it stay stopped until you took some other action? Say touching the brake again or touching the speed button?

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a Rail Pro user(yet) but my brother and I (count 2 separate layouts here) are planning to go with Rail Pro once we have our layouts a little farther along.
Shawn

[Archive]

Originally posted by William Brillinger on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

The Brake features as I propose them currently are only a sound effects.
- Bill

[Archive]

Originally posted by Shawn Hogan on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

In that case do the momentum settings override the throttle action? In other words if I throttle up or down fast the train speed will change more rapidly than if I use a moderate or slow throttle adjustment.
Shawn

[Archive]

Originally posted by William Brillinger on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

The throttle, under this proposal, would not override the momentum settings.

Like Kevin, I think I would prefer to have total control over the speed by hand and so I would set my momentum low - which would smooth out speed transitions, but not prevent fairly quick transitions when needed.

In my original proposal drafts I covered a throttle balistics option, but it was apparent that it was redundant in the light of combined auto and manual notching.

so... setting the momentum high will allow you to run your train off the end of a siding

imo, the RailPro throttle is so fine that there really is no need for a heavy momentum setting if the sound can respond appropriately.

- Bill

[Archive]

Originally posted by picturemaker22 on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

Bill,

I'm in favor of your proposal as of Oct 3. I have always felt that the present notching effect really lacked realism.

Mel

[Archive]

Originally posted by boydw7 on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

Bill,
I am in favor of your proposal.
Boyd

[Archive]

Originally posted by bnsfrrfan1 on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Oct 3, 2015

Fully in favor of this proposal!