If you link your couplers (and any other connection between wagons like the andquot;accordeonandquot; type passageways) to you bogies (ie. include them in the andquot;bogieandquot; groups of your hierarchy) they do turn with the bogies in curves. I found out – after receiving this tip from the experienced modeller MSTrainStop (see his work in the library) – that this setup increases the realism of the cars in curves tremendously.
I never had the problem until now ’cause I built European models only. Now I came across a DMU that has a Scharffenberg-coupling similar to the American couplers. Now my problem is I never saw a techdoc or tutorial how to make a working coupler. I did a search on the web but found nothing. Even on train-sim.com I’ve been unsuccesful. Could anybody who has the know-how point me in the right direction?
Sorry for bothering you. I just had a closer look at the American couplers in the sim and discovered that they aren’t animated in any way. Thea are built very short and simply move with the car, i.e. in bends they tend to run out of touch. There is nothing new to learn. It’s not very realistic but what else is new.
It’s the graphics part I’m interested. The couplers have to make some kind of stiff connection and this has to move with the cars in bends etc. How do I tell the sim that this is a coupler and this is the other coupler, connect them, make the connection stiff and move it tangential with the cars in bends?
Also, there is a description of the available parameters in the Techdoc andquot;Eng_and_wag_file_reference_guidev2.docandquot;, page 4.
What do you mean by andquot;working coupler?andquot; andnbsp;The [i:mxe7t77w]model[/i:mxe7t77w], of course, is just graphics and has nothing to do with how the units actually couple together. andnbsp;All you need to do is define the coupler type, etc. in the .eng/.wag file (I usually swipe the code from a default model with similar coupler type), define the size correctly in the .eng/.wag file (I think these values are the lengths/heights [i:mxe7t77w]excluding[/i:mxe7t77w] the couplers, because I think you define in the coupler lines the lengths of the extended/compressed couplers), and define the bounding box in the .sd file (again, [i:mxe7t77w]excluding[/i:mxe7t77w] the couplers).
Then, try it, and tweak until it looks right <!– s:-) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="
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You’re right, they are unfortunately not animated. andnbsp;I’ve never really had any problems with them andquot;coming apart,andquot; as you can design your model and the corresponding lengths/parameters in the .eng/.wag file to avoid this in most places. andnbsp;The problem I [i:2t0y702i]do[/i:2t0y702i] have though is when the slack runs out, and the cars start to run together (such as when coupling, braking, etc.), the couplers will appear to run [i:2t0y702i]through each other[/i:2t0y702i]. andnbsp;Most of the time, it’s really only obvious from certain angles, but it is annoying nonetheless.
I guess animated couplers were one of those things, seeing as how this is a first version, that were left out mostly for the sake of performance and efficiency. andnbsp;While it would be a nice touch, it would seem that the sim has enough calculations to do without worrying about the position of each coupler. andnbsp;But, one could argue that it has to calculate the amount of slack anyway, so just base the coupler animation on that calculation. . .
No bother Hannes andnbsp;
My thoughts behind my first question were hooked on the possibility of animation mostly because I hoped to have found a way for creating European coupler similes. But there there is now way to do so without at least one animation step.
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