FSRail
By Peter Werlitz (31 August 2000)
Some patience and an intense study of the documentation are necessary
to learn how to use the program however.
The railway now grows rail after rail. Even active barriers, bridges
and stations can be added, also highways and roads. A huge selection
of rolling stock makes the scenery active. A central switch tower
coordinates all movements. You also can add complete little towns
with rows of houses, and the normal design tools of the flight
simulator allow to use many more prepared or self designed objects.
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were completely amazed when we first met FSRail. Every
model railway enthusiast can now use Microsoft Flight Simulator to
build his model railway, unlimited in size and absolutely realistic.
Peter Werlitz has tested this product extensely, you can read the
result here:
On one hand, FSRail is a tool to add moving roads and trains to your
sceneries--no more airports without road or rail connection. On the
other hand, FSRail is planned for building model railways. For the
first time the railway designer has a chance to build a model of a
real railway to scale in a realistic landscape without any space or
material limitations, and can reach any point of his design.
Let me emphasize first that the program comes with a very intense
documentation, which proves to be valuable for working with the
FSRail editor. Also the dialogs in the program provide you with
further help. You can build your model railway in the FS98 and in
the FS2000. For beginners I recommend to start with FS98, since the
elevated mesh of FS2000 makes the first steps more difficult.
Samples of design objects.
You start by selecting the middle of you scenery, fix the borders and
enter them to the program. You do not have to make these big, the
borders grow automatically together with the railway. Now you take,
like with real model railways, your rails and switches and attach
them. A high precision numerical algorithm takes care that the rails
match precisely.
Samples of design objects.
While a lot of objects are moving, the frame rate is astonishingly high--even FS2000 can be used. For this, a 400 MHz processor is recommended, and I recommend to switch all clouds off.
Also for the pure scenery designers, FSRail is a useful tool. Now it is easy to build highways and railways near to airports, and to make them vivid.
These images (and the ones at the end of the text) show the wealth of
detail of trains, bridges, railways and highways. Even a big dead end
station can be realized with FSRail.
When I saw FSRail the first time, I couldn't believe what I saw. This software from Burkhard Renk gets the most of dynamics out of the flight simulator.
Summarizing, FSRail is a recommended add-on for every flight simmer and model railway enthusiast.
FSRail was tested on the following system:
