[OPEN-SOURCE] Machinery Modelling Toolkit

[BoredEngineer]

@Freakazoid!;512010

I think the best way to have the wheels of the locomotive (or any of the train cars that it is pulling), would be to have the wheel-sets attached to a block/box. This box would be separate from the main body of the locomotive, but it would still need to be linked to the locomotive. I think having each wheel-set have it’s own pivot points would allow more realistic movement while moving on track, because instead of having the locomotive move along a Spline based on a single pivot point, you are having each wheel-set do so.

I still don’t really think that the wheel alignment would be overly demanding on the engine, and it’s not overkill really. Somewhere down the line, someone will need something like this (a train thats movement needs to look believable enough that it won’t break the suspension of disbelief), and either there won’t be one and they don’t know how to code one in, or we will still have what we do now and it will still look terrible.

I honestly don’t know how the physics of a trains are more complex that that of a tank. Honestly I think a tank (or even a hovercraft) demands more physics input and performance then a train would. Tanks can move along a multitude of terrain types (bumpy, smooth, rocky and so on), but trains can’t do that really. That have to go where the tracks go, and you can’t lay train tracks on rocky terrain until you clear a path of level ground to start track laying.

Then wheels have to be moved along the splines? It’s a chicken and egg problem. Connecting wheel to bogie and bogie to locomotive won’t automagically solve it.
One approach is to calculate location of boggies first, in relation to each other. Then find their rotation from how wheels should be located along the rails, for example perpendicular to spline direction and then somehow calculate location and rotation of locomotive.
Second approach is physics based where you have to imitate friction of wheels with the rail and calculate the rest from there.