Final Berk Teaser

In order to drive something like this...(on Rich Garber's excellent Ohio River & Western trackage) you need to know how to operate this...I understand the final NALW release is imminent. I can hardly wait, too!Rick

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RE: Final Berk Teaser, zachattack, Nov-02-02, 05:05 PM, (1) RE: Final Berk Teaser, csx7381, Nov-02-02, 06:05 PM, (2) RE: Final Berk Teaser, kwk100, Nov-03-02, 00:09 AM, (3) RE: Final Berk Teaser, jalsina, Nov-03-02, 01:03 PM, (4) RE: Final Berk Teaser, ricksan, Nov-03-02, 01:59 PM, (5) RE: Final Berk Teaser, jalsina, Nov-04-02, 08:10 AM, (6) RE: Final Berk Teaser, ricksan, Nov-04-02, 12:38 PM, (7) RE: Final Berk Teaser, jalsina, Nov-06-02, 06:41 PM, (8) RE: Final Berk Teaser, robertlearmont, May-05-03, 04:56 PM, (9)

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When can I get it? and where?
Zach, future railroad worker(I'm only ten)

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I need it too.Mike
Future Norfolk Southern engineer
(I am only eleven and living in Pittsburgh,PA)

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Whoa!kwk100,A Diesel drinking, piston clankin', air pollutin', smoke belchin' ten wheel buggy, from Seattle WA...

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LAST EDITED ON Nov-03-02 AT 01:05 PM (EST)

Rick,As I told you a month ago, your cabin is perfect, but there is something that could improve it, according to my point of view.If this was my cabin I would move the front window point of view so I can see the track in straight legs.
If you observe the side window relative to the rail and deck lines, it is asking you to turn the rails (deck) a few degrees clockwise.
Maybe it may (may be not) even require to displace the round instrument a little to the left (and the squared double manometer too), even if this means not being too accurate with the real cabin.What I mean is this from my work under development:However I have to add that Rick's cab is the very best I have seen so far for a steam locomotive and will prevail the standard for a long time

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Jorge,Thanks for your input. As you probably know (but others might not, so here goes), the Position variable in the CVF file controls what might be called the "angle of attack" of the cab view. The three arguments of this variable are the degrees of rotation about the X, Y and Z axes. In aircraft terms I think these are pitch, yaw and roll, respectively.OK. So the trick is to assign numbers to these arguments such that the cab aligns correctly with the external environment and the perspective lines both inside and outside the cab match up. Nowhere is this more evident than, as you say, in the side window. I believe you will find that when you run the Berkshire next to anything that is parallel to the running track - for example other tracks or buildings - everything is indeed in alignment.The reason why you don't see the running track from my cab has more to do with where I placed the point of view when I staged the cab scene. As you can imagine, I tried a lot of different angles. I chose this one because, simply put, I liked the way it looks.There's a potential problem with moving the point of view farther to the right - that is, directly in line with the front window (or whatever purists call it). Yes you can see the running track, but you should also be able to see part of the engine. I may be wrong on this, but I believe that means one has to build enough of the engine parts that will be visible and incorporate them into the cab scene. I believe MSTS does not show the model engine in cab view the way it does in Head-Out view (but again, I could be wrong). The problem I referred to happens when the engine runs at night. You would have to create a separate "night" version of the cab bitmaps so that the visible parts of the engine are properly lit (or darkened, actually). I know that some in our community have done this with diesel cabs. I chose not to go that way.Thanks for your compliment. Actually NALW will be releasing another cab of mine soon that I like better. It's in a completely different style from the Berk and Aso Boy. Look for it soon.Finally, very nice job on your own cab. Care to let us know what it is?Rick

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Rick,I respect your comments, but all depends on where you want the engineer to stand and what is his height . Your right side view suggests he's located closer to the fire doors so looking at the front window with some angle.
The fact is that engineers passed most of the time stuck to the side window, getting their head out to have a better visibility, or looking thru the front window when visibility allowed them (because of boiler obstruction).Anyway! The perspective lines confluence is what has to be respected.As of the external body, you can see it in my cab. I just took a picture of an external out-the-window view (set for a internal window position) and played to place the rails between the boiler and the smoke deflector.The cab work is now "stalled" as I haven't had much time lately and my jump in this thread happens after more than a week I did not visit train-sim.The cab is for a Spanish loco 240 Mastodont or what is the same a 4-8-0 (see several pictures below). Actually a Twelve-wheeler according to the Whyte system but some times in US and popularly in Spain named as Mastodont. While a large locomotive (and powerful 2,100 hp) it had a narrow boiler as compared to a Spanish Mikado (normally larger than a classic US Mikado)The 240 cab status is in "controls animation design" and left-right views are not yet done. I have problems with what I use (PSP7) to make the controls due to unwanted fuzzy results when I rotate objects to different angles than 90 deg (or multiple of 90).Regards
Jorge

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That's a really nice looking model, Jorge. You ought to post it on the Locomotive Design forum (unless you already have and I missed it).I use the same 3D modeling program for cabs as for everything else. Maybe it's more work that way, compared to using pure artwork, but the results are worth it. You can control the lighting and you can make use of things like bump maps and specular effects. The control objects move naturally and cast shadows appropriately. The left and right views are made simply by placing two more camera objects and rendering what they see.I didn't realize you were using a 2D model. You must have spent a lot of time making that image. Perhaps you could go back to your 3D modeling program for making the animated controls. You wouldn't have to worry about matching the background since you can simply alpha away anything that is not part of the actual control. Just a suggestion.Rick

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Rick,It wasn't my intention to make an announcement of the 240, but you asked about it , so this is why I am not posting in the loco forum. Ultimately I will do it when I am close to release (here and in the Spanish forum). I don't know when I will finish the cab and there are still 3 or 4 items to look at in the model and the eng file. Sound is finished.
I just don't have time to finish the cab. I have real life occupations that steal my time and I believe that this model design will last forever.BTW, while this is a Spanish loco I have designed it with the railway standard width so it can be used in any standard route.And yes, it's a 2D image, but I happen to manage PSP7 pretty well. That front cabin image has currently 37 layers. I manage pretty well shadowing and light direction. It took quite a long time to make it because of the high density detail. Most of the objects and their shadows are in the same layer, but some objects are in a layer and the corresponding shadow is in another layer so I can change the projection shape for non parallel object/surface.Most of the layers are there to be sure something doesn't get wrong. In that case only one layer is deleted or editted.You method using 3D modeling looks more complex because you have to do both, modeling and painting the textures for the 3D parts.Jorge

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How about the reverser?
The one on the right is real.

Robert Learmont
Future and Current BNSF Engineer (I'm only 12 years old but drove some real BNSF locomotives and plan to work for a railroad when I grow up.)

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