Freddie wrote:
The jerks you're seeing in NL would likely show up if you ran a graph of the roll points. I know Lake Compounce's Wildcat had those issues before GCI redid it. It's masked in a real ride by the wood tracks and wood framed trains being able to flex in the transition, whereas in NL you're on a fixed path so any imperfections in that path are obvious.
Now, why didn't I think of that? That will save me a lot of time with all the other curves.
Freddie wrote:
In any case this is some great work. It's cool that you're taking the approach of building based on the bents vs the centerline which I don't think very many people do. I've done it with a few things and it's a ton of work but I do like the outcome in the long run, although I get in the habit of not finishing anything. If you wanna PM me that would be cool, I have a decent amount of experience in this type of building (although I handbuild straights and FVD++ curves in NL1 and then port it over) and a pretty good understanding of structure/bent spacings. Could probably learn a good amount from each other.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by building based on the centreline, but I felt that since the blueprints were in front of me I didn't have any excuses for lack of precision and going by the bents was the best way to achieve as much accuracy as possible. The most frustrating thing has been getting the number of nodes correct in the turns, as when I put the mathematically calculated node spacing in, that's not what NL2 renders. A good example of this is the high front turnaround. Spacing is calculated as arc of the curve, times pi, times radius, divided by 180, which gives the length around the curve, and then divide that by the number of bents on the blueprint. For the high front turnaround, the nodes should be spaced 7.25 feet apart. Instead, I have to use an 8 foot spacing, otherwise I get 15 or 16 nodes around the turn instead of 14. I've also noticed that if you get NL2 to generate a long straight section, say 200 feet, with a node spacing of 10 feet, there is a point fairly on in the section where bent spacing stops being exactly 10 and becomes 10.0395 or some small decimal like that. It seems NL2 is careless with its calculations. To combat this I've created straight pieces of various lengths in a separate park and then adjusted the node spacing manually and set the nodes to strict. If I don't, then I get pieces of supposedly straight track which drift sideways along their length and whose bent spacing isn't even. Tedious but necessary.