Transport Tycoon Forums

I was wondering if there have ever been any thoughts on visualizing planned routes.

For example: I click a train or a vehicle to focus on. Then I click a toggle button to visualize the route it has planned directly on the ground.
Are there any thoughts or even solutions for this?
I know I can see the reserved path until the next signal, but it would be nice to visualize the fully planned route for what it has found now. Also for cars or ships this would be a nice feature.

And otherwise, suppose this would be a new little project. Would it be something that is feasible to implement?
I have development experience, but I haven't dived into the openttd source yet ever.

Thanks for thinking along!

I don't believe there is a solution to this right now, as OpenTTD does not compute the planned route. Vehicle will decide which route to take at the junction, not in advanced.

As for a little project --- if you are fine that the route may not be accurate (the OpenTTD pathfinder do take a red signal as one of its criteria), it's probably not very hard (idk, never touched the pathfinder code). Otherwise, you probably need to write an entirely new pathfinder. Modifying the existing pathfinder will be incompatible with existing game, as a lot of game rely on this behaviour (e.g. select the free track from a very busy multi-track main line)

As ino correctly pointed out, the train adapts its route all the time. Surely, something makes it point in the right direction in the first place, so it could be possible to highlight the Anticipated Route, as long as one is aware it could change depending on traffic. I haven't really considered this a desired feature before, but hey!