Lake Balaton route, Template being worked Options

[dgionet]

Hello to all,

It has been a while since my last post and have appreciated some time off from any template making. Also I have been busy with my photographic work lately with some train-simming in between. I have enjoyed re-using some routes but not as much as usual. In Early May, I happened to find by pure luck a route released just a few days before finding it and I loved it, enough to jump back in and make a template for this beautiful route.

Hungary's Lake Balaton route goes mostly along Balaton Lake in Western Hungary and is one very popular touristic area. It is
about one hour's drive from Budapest, its capital. The prototypical route goes from Székesfehérvár to Keszthely, South, covering 80 miles of mostly single track main line with 7 miles of double tracks near Székesfehérvár. Our fellow Hungarian MSTS builders are masters in making beautiful routes while maintaining a reasonable FPS rate despite the detail. The builder's pseudo name is Diesirae.

NB and SB templates are finished and have started fine tuning the whole package. A major problem I have been able to overcome was the FPS inside Székesfehérvár. My FPS went as low as 3 FPS, even with low graphic sliders. With 22 freight sidings and many platforms present, half of the 22 sidings were labeled Industrial sidings and the rest Yard sidings and have been evenly spreaded inside the area to allow AG to de-activate some of the railfill options, making the FPS rate a little higher while keeping the rest of the area with some railfill cars and enjoying a higher FPS while still allowing some railfill inside the Székesfehérvár area. For those with more powerful computers ( mine is a 3.2GhZ single core), dual core or more, you could be able to move inside Székesfehérvár reasonably without such drastic measures but may have to adjust the graphic sliders anyway.

The downloads will be about the same as the ones used with the Mura 2 and Jaskisér-Nagybereg templates.I am also monitoring progress for two oncoming Hungarian route updates, the Del-Dunantul ( maybe version 3) and Alföld (to version 6).It is not for tomorrow, it may be a while before seeing the updates. I may decide to jump in making some templates for them in the future. Time will tell .

A couple of AG-generated activities have been successfull and will continue testing. In the meantime here are some shots from the route and AG activities.

Will update later.
Exiting Székesfehérvár going South


Fonyód


Along Lake Balaton near Fonyód


Fonyód


Székesfehérvár


Inside Fonyód


Triple meet at Balatonszentgyörgy


The huge and complex rail network of Székesfehérvár

[dgionet]

Hello to all,

Progress update:

The number of AG finished activities are climbing and I am finding some issues that have been corrected. So far, I didn't have to use neither the manual switching nor the Permissive signal issue of AG. Two things needed some modifications. Some of the paths were re-drawn to have all traffic and player paths redirected to Keszthely and not have traffic paths to Savoly since the recent updates involved extending track in the area where some of the paths originated or ended and caused broken paths. I have found out that the area is still under development and gets unsceniced just before Savoly and after. A major issue in Székesfehérvár: 6 sidings had to be scrapped and needed to reorganize the other surrounding sidings to have some work for both directions. The switch leading to all the above sidings, when trying to turn ended with a crash every time. It can be, wheter it leads to an unfinished path, as experienced during construction of the Midland Valley route template, or the actual area may not be dedicated to have work inside, although these sidings are marked. One positive note to this: it will increase slightly the FPS inside the area.

Also to point out that 20 maps have been done and will be part of the package to help in work selection.

Some pictures of the route's activities

Keszthely


A meet along the lake


Working inside Fonyód


Near Balatonaliga


Inside Lepsény preparing a meet


The meet with the Intercity train from Budapest



Will update later