Railways – The pain of a perfectionist

[SANTIMEL]

Goal

Correct mistake.

Situation

If the rails are laid at a minimum distance from each other, so that it becomes possible to move from one track to another. Then the asymmetry of the railways is manifested, diagonally:




Ps.: I don't understand why moving from one path to another is in the game at such a great distance.
After all, in real life, moving is done at a much shorter distance.

[picklock]

Devs have already reworked the rails.

See Friday Facts #377 - New new rails

This should solve some of your discomforts.

[SANTIMEL]

Devs have already reworked the rails.

See Friday Facts #377 - New new rails

This should solve som of your discomforts.

It looks great (b ᵔ▽ᵔ)b

And what are the developers waiting for? Why is it not being implemented?
Do they want to coincide the release of innovations with the release of space travel missions?

[Illiander42]

And what are the developers waiting for? Why is it not being implemented?
Do they want to coincide the release of innovations with the release of space travel missions?

Yes, they're holding all the breaking changes for the 2.0 release.

[FuryoftheStars]

Games are limited compared to real life. For example, this one can't just do arbitrary curvature radii (ie, let the player pick their own) for 2 reasons:

1. Each curvature radius would require a set of entities to be made.
2. The game can only allow a maximum of 3 path choices from any one junction (left, straight, & right), otherwise this causes problems with manual driving navigation.

As such, the devs had to pick a radius that felt balanced to them. What we have now is what they happened to pick.

Also, whenever I see people post pics like that and say "look how close they are in real life", I don't think they understand just how much distance is really between those railways.

Here in the US, rails are typically "standard gauge" sized, meaning 1.435 meters between the inside edges of the rails. And according to this, in the state of Pennsylvania at least, the minimum allowed distance between the center point of parallel railways is 4.115 meters

Clearances between Parallel Tracks

• The minimum distance between the center lines of parallel tracks shall not be less than 13 feet, six inches, (13'6") for main tracks and not less than thirteen feet, six inches, (13'6") for yard and side tracks.

(13'6" is approx 4.115 m)

This means there's approximately 2.68 meters between the outside rails of each railway, or 2.68 tiles of in game space.

Now yes, because of the curvature radius the devs picked, we're actually at 4+ (technically 5, I think, as I think I measured in game rails as having an approx 1 m gauge at one point), but again, game restrictions, and as has been mentioned, this will be solved for 2.0 to where you can have them right up against each other.

[MeduSalem]

[...] where you can have them right up against each other.

... which is kinda stupid anyway if we think about it.

Because you cannot even place signals in between there if the rails are this close next to each other. So I doubt people will even make much use of the possibility in practice. ^^

[FuryoftheStars]

[...] where you can have them right up against each other.

... which is kinda stupid anyway if we think about it.

Because you cannot even place signals in between there if the rails are this close next to each other. So I doubt people will even make much use of the possibility in practice. ^^

Yup (although you could for dual track RHT ), but then you have folks asking for signals to be placeable right on the tracks instead of beside them, again pulling out the same pics as this OP did as justification.

[Illiander42]

[...] where you can have them right up against each other.

... which is kinda stupid anyway if we think about it.

Because you cannot even place signals in between there if the rails are this close next to each other. So I doubt people will even make much use of the possibility in practice. ^^

The big win from the 2.0 rails is the ability to do crossovers for 2-tile spaced rails, where currently we can only do them cleanly for 4-tile spaced rails.

[MeduSalem]

Yup (although you could for dual track RHT ), but then you have folks asking for signals to be placeable right on the tracks instead of beside them, again pulling out the same pics as this OP did as justification.

True. The ability to do it will likely build up to become its own precedence case with people demanding signal placement to change for that reason. I will be laughing when I see the first suggestion thread about it. ^^

The big win from the 2.0 rails is the ability to do crossovers for 2-tile spaced rails, where currently we can only do them cleanly for 4-tile spaced rails.

Yea, for the people who will switch over to 2-tile spaced rails that will be a benefit. ^^


Personally I already made the decision that I will continue to use 4-tile spaced rails for the most part because otherwise you can't fit Roboports in between. But that said thanks to the geometry changes the crossover for 4-tile spaced rails looks much nicer too than currently.

[FuryoftheStars]

Yup (although you could for dual track RHT ), but then you have folks asking for signals to be placeable right on the tracks instead of beside them, again pulling out the same pics as this OP did as justification.

True. The ability to do it will likely build up to become its own precedence case with people demanding signal placement to change for that reason. I will be laughing when I see the first suggestion thread about it. ^^

Oh, they already have: viewtopic.php?f=71&t=99340

I'm pretty sure I've seen more than that, but can't find atm.

The big win from the 2.0 rails is the ability to do crossovers for 2-tile spaced rails, where currently we can only do them cleanly for 4-tile spaced rails.

Yea, for the people who will switch over to 2-tile spaced rails that will be a benefit. ^^


Personally I already made the decision that I will continue to use 4-tile spaced rails for the most part because otherwise you can't fit Roboports in between. But that said thanks to the geometry changes the crossover for 4-tile spaced rails looks much nicer too than currently.

Yeah, I had the same exact thoughts. There are some areas where I close them in, but then I don't have the need to allow track switching in those cases, either.