About the future of VirTracks

[LinqToException]

As is evident by the slow down of updates over the past few months, I've mainly lost interest in SimRail due to various reasons that I don't really need to put into the public, and recent interactions on the servers have just justified for me that the game, ultimately, is not what I've been looking for.

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Therefore, VirTracks will close down on Monday, 15th of January 2024.

I would like to thank all those that have been using VirTracks, reported issues, suggested features, or promoted it in one way or another. Despite not having advertised it publicly, it had a decent user base that wasn't too overwhelming, yet proved to be challenging for me from time to time. And I am sorry that those who liked it will lose access to it.

The earliest bits I can find for it were made on Januar 1st 2023, but I think it was in development for a week or two before that. It was mainly made as an alternative to the official EDR, with two main improvements that I wanted to make:

1) It should have all necessary information to route a train visible at first glance. No fluff, just a boring table. 2) It should, optionally, help you with tracking trains in case you have neighbors that don't report trains, or report it too late. My go-to example was KZ with the AI in KO, which always meant you had trains waiting in front of your entrance signal.

So, basically, it was just that I wanted a better overview over the dispatching situation, and neither the in-game EDR nor the already publicly available applications could really scratch that itch.

I think those two goals were achieved rather well. After some time, more and more features were added, including train tracking, a history mode, a map, and the last experiment was the dispo view, a time/distance-ish diagram. I wanted to make a platform that allows dispatchers to make informed decisions about the network's general state, their station, and how they can, or cannot, dispatch, and while it has its rough edges and definitely could use improvements here and there, I believe it went okay.

FAQ

Can't you just let it run?

In theory, yes; practically, no. VirTracks is in need of multiple framework updates, which ranged from trivial to probably-not-quite-so-trivial, and I'm just not willing to invest the time into a hobby project that I'm not going to use anymore. Even if I could maintain basic functionality, it would probably slowly drift away from what is useful, or just become flat-out broken if/when the API changes (again).

Can't you open-source it?

In theory, yes; practically, no. VirTracks is pretty much the living definition of "legacy" or rather "historical reasons" kind of software. It has confusing internals that even I struggle and/or just flat out don't understand (anymore). It was built to work in my usual hosting environment with the services and infrastructure available there, which is not something that I can easily share.

The code itself would need a major refactoring or at least cleanup before any open-sourcing could begin, and even then I would need to check to make sure that I'm even allowed to opensource it, as bits of it have been generously provided to me by friends. In short, this is more effort than I'm willing to put into it.

Ignoring OpenSource, can't I host a local version of it?

Same answer, no. VirTracks' deployment is rather... special. There's no convenient registry floating around that you could simply pull the binaries from. Plus, I'm absolutely not willing to provide support for that scenario, because it was never designed to be used that way.

Is there a chance that VirTracks will continue/re-open in the future?

In theory, yes; practically, unlikely. I've spent over 500 hours in SimRail, and I don't even have any interest in Polish railways. A year ago, there was a somewhat vague idea that one day, there could be fan-made content that would extend this into (for me) more interesting areas of the world. However, with recent announcements, I feel like this is probably a pipe dream and at this point I would be surprised if any kind of editor, besides a SP-scenario editor ever truly finds its way to the public. And as such, my interest is basically dead.

In the unlikely scenario that SimRail does make a turn for the better/more interesting, I'll probably revive VirTracks in one way or another.

[LucasBLN]

I am truly shocked and saddened by the shutdown of the VirTracks on January 15th. This tool has been invaluable to me, significantly influencing my decisions as a train dispatcher in SimRail. It's disheartening to see such a useful resource go. If you have any suggestions for alternatives with at least a function of tracking a trains actual departure and showing it's delay, I would appreciate your input.

[LinqToException]

I'm sorry, but thank you for the kind words.

VirTracks was the only tool, as far as I know, that tracked trains the way it does. All others I've briefly looked at were mostly stateless (i.e. did not remember where a train is, or was), or didn't do much with the data they have collected. I believe, but I'm not sure, that it was also the only tool that didn't rely on GPS data to track trains, but rather used a signal/distance approached system, for better accuracy.

[DKFN]

Was fun chatting with you when we made both our EDR's at the same time Zamu, VirTracks is great and it was very fun trying to implement what you did achieved and I hope you had a good share of fun doing likewise the orther way.

Have fun on Railroaders and see you soon one day maybe ! :)

[DazrahT]

"I wanted to make a platform that allows dispatchers to make informed decisions about the network's general state, their station"

You achieved that, virtracks was my go to, it did what I needed it to do and presented the information in a way I liked!

Thank you for providing us dispatchers with an excellent tool for actually dispatching with, and many thanks for taking on and implementing a few of my suggestions also, I'm certainly going to miss its simplicity and usefulness.

All the best for the future Kind Regards DazT