Open Rails - Roadmap to the Future

We are now on our fifth major release of Open Rails software in the past 24 months and it marks a milestone in the development process. A lot of progress has been made on MSTS compatibility including addition of Work Order information, F6 & F7 display of consist, yard, siding, and platform information, tunnel cut outs, working doors & mirrors, and much more. This release also includes the first phase of our independent physics model for diesel electric, electric and steam engines that provides more prototypical experience. You can find a list of all the new features in our User Manual or on Revisions page of the Open Rails web site.

This release also continues our commitment to "openness" with a companion download of the source code for the community's inspection of Open Rails software. For those in the community who understand C# and XNA, this provides a view into the internals of Open Rails software. We are continuing the policy of not accepting contributions from the community to the source code without prior approval by the Open Rails project team. We do this not to limit the community's ability to contribute, but rather to ensure both the contributor and the Open Rails team is not duplicating effort, is not attempting a task that has dependencies that are changing, or is in a direction where the Open Rails team believes is NOT in the "best interests" of the project.

Looking ahead for the remainder of 2011, we are continuing to move from Realism to Independence:

Continued refinement of our next generation physics model for adhesion, traction, engine components and their interaction with the 3D world

The physics underlying adhesion, traction, engine components and their performance is now based on a world-class simulation model that takes into account many of the major components of diesel, electric and steam engines. As confirmation of our physics model, the Open Rails team is working with a number of Universities and international Railway companies to adapt Open Rails for use in their training. We will be working to finalize the parameters and file formats to include new upgraded Open Rails capabilities, while existing MSTS content will continue to utilize the current Open Rails physics that matches the current MSTS physics model.

Completing the majority of the MSTS compatibility items

There are a handful of task left to complete our work on MSTS compatibility. We'll be focusing on completing all the cab controls and gauges, dynamic events (Location, Action & Time), Microtex texture support, and finally hooking the steam and smoke effects to our completed physics model. While this list does not include every feature and capability within MSTS, we believe that it covers the major items that the team believes are the most important. We are always open to community suggestions for additional items.

New formats for model building to free content creators from the constraints of MSTS limitations.

While we didn't get as far as we'd have liked during the last development cycle, the Open Rails team is actively working on delivery a foundation for creating higher quality content than what's available via the MSTS infrastructure. Up first is support for DDS textures that provides better graphics and potentially provides even better performance as video cards & XNA can natively handle DDS format. At this time there has only been very preliminary discussion of beyond the current shape (s) file format.

Deliver the next generation signaling, interlocking and dispatching system.

We've made good progress on this feature; however, not enough to include it in the current download. Seeing the early prototype, watching the software come together is exciting as it will address many of the challenges associated with running MSTS activities. The development team is targeting next month to begin internal testing of the functioning prototype.

Deliver a prototype for an independent Open Rails WORLD EDITOR

The team is actively discussing the design and architecture of an independent Open Rails WORLD EDITOR. There are a lot of decisions to be made: tile, mesh, texturing, track, roads, interactives, distant mountains, tessellation, and occlusion to name just a few. Our design objectives are:

Create, edit, modify and export a new Open Rails train simulator route and activities
Provide a reliable and stable program to create, modify and update Open Rails route file formats
Provide an interactive UI to visualize, manipulate, and modify route elements - tiles, mesh, landscape, scenery, track, signals and other route elements.
World Editor shall provide a process to convert existing MSTS routes to OR route file format. Once converted to OR route file format, the route can only be run in Open Rails.
The OR World Editor shall provide the ability for community members to develop plug-ins to the software to extend its functionality. Therefore, API's or other functions should be documented and exposed for 3rd party access. Plug-ins shall offer the ability to customize functions and World Editor UI via 3rd party plug-ins.
The World Editor should provide a technique to combine individually created OR routes into larger routes.

We have an ambitious roadmap ahead of us. We are looking forward to an exciting remainder of 2011.

Your Open Rails team