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TrainPlayer 3.1 New Features
April, 200
8

 

TrainPlayer/TrackLayer 3.1 is a bigger release than we originally planned.  It offers great new collections of layouts and cars, and handy new machinery for working with them.  We hope you enjoy it.


Premium content: Several great new collections of layouts were custom built for TrainPlayer by a talented group of railroad artists -- scenic renderings of some of our best plans, fully-tracked satellite photos of yards from all over the continent, a beautiful set of original plans developed in 3rd Plan-It by Peter Lloyd-Lee.  The package includes car collections -- detailed renderings of hundreds of cars and locomotives.  Access to the Premium collection requires a license.  For more info and screen shots, see the Premium Content page.

   
 

Choosers: A single style of dialog now takes the place of three previous ones, and adds many conveniences for selecting layouts, car collections, and sounds.  Files from all over your disk can be dragged in from Windows Explorer and organized in tree controls for easy navigation and browsing. Each chooser has a Web tab where you can browse and download files directly from the website.  A preview window shows thumbnails of layouts and car types, or plays sounds.


 

Snap: Version 3.1 becomes more useful for track plan design with the addition of several types of snap while drawing.  Snap to angle creates exact #4 or #6 (or your choice) turnouts; snap to parallel keeps yard tracks at uniform separation; snap to radius gives precise circles and curves.  Detailed on/off choices are available in the preferences.

Preferences: The Preferences dialog has been redesigned for enhanced friendliness, tossing some old clutter while adding new choices, reducing the number of tabs while organizing more sensibly.  Each tab has its own help page.


 

Track check: The Track Checker now gives you more information in a more useful form.  Output is given in a list box, and includes not just errors but data such as external links, associated files, and required car collections.  If you click on an error line, the layout zooms to that location and highlights the offending track automatically.  The Track Highlight dialog also has this new auto-zoom feature.

Track color: Now you can color individual track sections, or choose a color for new track so that you can draw a whole yard or mainline in the shade of your choice.  Some of the satellite layouts use different track colors to clarify complex multi-line yards.

Zoom: The Zoom menu now includes choices for quick zoom to percent sizes.  Or, to zoom to a specific area, choose "zoom on drag" and drag a rectangle around the area.


 

Export image: Generate a JPG (or your choice of graphic format) which shows track, grid, background and/or trains.  Output size and quality is adjustable.

Publish: New dialogs prepare layouts and car collections for publication -- gather the components, unify links and filenames, check for errors, copy to a destination folder.  We developed these tools for our own use, but they are handy for anyone who shares layouts and cars.

Help buttons: have been added to all dialogs, showing context-specific pages from the local help file.

Show/hide/delete trains: Now you can toggle display of trains, along with track, grid, background.  A new button in preferences allows you to delete all trains from the layout.

Rail display:  Now you can see two steel rails instead of just a single brown line.