Just briefly – my theory on how the controls work is correct. Certainly diesel and electric are controlled from different memory locations – but it’s a bit more complex than that.

For example, you can see my code below driving the default MSTS Tokyo-Hakone route with the standard electric set (which has an EP brake as well just like the BSet).

What does appear to be the case is that it is done  by control type not locomotive type. i.e. my code will control the Series 2000 default electric loco, but not the Series 7000 (as the series 7000 has a combined power handle/brake setup). So what we need to do is write the interface to handle all the different types.

Driving the default electric set.

The weather here has been rather awful the past few weeks, with temperatures exceeding 35C. This coupled with a number of comments I have received have encouraged me to concentrate on the interfacing part of the simulator – i.e. the code that allows external control of MSTS.

My intention is to create a generic API for MSTS that programmers can use to interface any number of devices into MSTS.

To this end I have considerably tidied up the VB code and modified it to make it easy to add new functionality – primarily by ensuring all the memory addresses are maintained in global variables, rather than just ad-hoc as it was before 🙂

Below are a couple of screenshots of me driving MSTS entirely “keyboard free” using the VB “MSTS_CONTROL” app. At this stage I only have throttle, brake, “zero brake pipe”, amp gauge and brake pipe gauge controls, but I’ll add the remaining ones in shortly. I will then expose all the functions (as a dll) which will complete version 1 of the msts_control library.

MSTS being controlled "keyboard free"

MSTS being controlled "Keyboard Free"