Speed difference of vehicles on straight ways vs diagonal ways

[Toslan]

I was curious about the speed ratio between travelling across the map in diagonal to travelling in a straight line.

on with the races!
Both trains are of the same type and are running at same speed, on same track without stops.


Honestly I was surprised. I expected the diagonal train to be even slower.
But now I'll build more diagonal shortcuts (which I've been avoiding before).

Hope this helps someone else too.

[prissi]

This depends very much on pak set, as the diagonal length of vehicles were too long in older versions. pak64 will give the same time for the diagonal and the straight one. (I other words the metric of simutrans can be really weird.)

You can see if a pak set uses correct diagonals or too long by looking at the parameter diagonal_multiplier

Code Select Expand


# how long is a diagonal (512: faktor 2=1024/512, old way, 724: sqrt(2)=1024/724
# THIS WILL BE ONLY USED, WHEN THIS FILE IS IN THE pakxyz/config!
diagonal_multiplier = 724


Thus 1024 will make diagonals 1/2 (too short) and 724 will make them 2^0.5 (real length) and any smaller value will make them longer. To take the same time, thus parameter must be 512. But then the trains were too short. Thus 724 will give right visual length-

In terms of cost you will gain nothing by diagonals. The track wont be shorter (same maintenance).

[Toslan]

Thanks very much for the information.
Though the above screenshot was in fact made with pak64 (version from sunday) and seems to work with the right parameter.
It'd help me if I knew in which file to search for the parameter you mentioned (it's not in compat.tab).

Anyways, I wasn't trying to build cheap routes, but fast ones and trying to decide whether I'd gain some time by using the diagonals (which waste a bit more space in crossings) or if I could have the trains travel along a right triangle. That would be the case if your parameter were 1024, right?

[Toslan]

ok found it, it's in simutrans/pak64/config/simuconf.tab and the value is 724 as expected.

[prissi]

Ok, I was not clear. Timewise, diagonal is faster, but costwise not. If you set diagonal length to 512, then it would have timewise same. Only most vehicles would be too long in the diagonal view ...