Show the actual passenger walk-in path for testing/debugging

[modern bear]

Hi, it would make my work much easier if we were actually shown the actual path the passengers are going to take. Especially when going in tight corners or very long distances, or walkways with big curves.

What I think would be the easiest solution, is to simply draw arrows exactly like when creating a custom pushback route.

The problem is, that passenger barriers will not show if the distance between individual waypoints is low enough. For example when I need to get the pax through a very tight corner, so that is not helping me in most cases.

[lucid harness]

Is not really feasible because. opposite to the Pushback route, which is performed by a single vehicle, so the arrows simulate exactly the path for the tug that is currently visible in the editor, passengers path are followed by many passengers, each one having different walking characteristics, like the length of their stride and their walking speed, which all affect the calculation to turn around corners, and they are also randomized. In addition to that, the walkers path have the passengers randomly spread around the "Thickness" in multiple lanes, so adding all these variables together, it makes impossible preview an useful path like the Pushback, which is instead 100% predictable.

The only possible solution would be, instead, previewing with actual passengers, which will at least save from having to exit the editor and perform Boarding/Deboarding, but I guess that any change to the waypoints would likely cause a rebuild of the whole line.

[modern bear]

Understood, but if previewing it would be too hard to implement soon, those arrows would at least be something.

[lucid harness]

Please re-read what I wrote: arrows are not only way harder, but they would be unreliable. Actual passengers is less complex and more useful.

[modern bear]

Understood, but since you are not able to count for those things in the current editor, then it doesn't really matter

Just to be clear, I am merely asking to connect walk-in waypoints with arrows. I don't need all the possible offsets to see where each passenger could go. I would be more than happy to just get arrows connecting the middle parts of each waypoint

[lucid harness]

That is precisely why simulating an actual Boarding would be a way more accurate way of previewing this.

[modern bear]

And I am saying, that arrows would work, in case that preview functionality would be too time consuming for you

Because couple of days ago, I was doing a new GSX profile, where I had to make significant distances between some waypoints, so it was pain to see whether the people would still go in a straight line

[lucid harness]

The arrows alone wouldn't mean much if they didn't show the thickness too, so they would be a replacement not adding much more than the current barriers.

A simulated crowd walking the actual paths would be useful, instead, to check precisely the issues that usually happen for which you want to edit a path for, like turns around waypoints.

[modern bear]

Of course that simulated crowd would be better in all aspects. The solution above is an easier workaround which could potentially be achieved faster.

And yes, thickness would be needed to, so potentially just offset lines next to the arrows.

[lucid harness]

The easier workaround would be a waste of time, assuming the final solution would be showing actual passengers, which is clearly better in any case.

And the "offset lines" to show thickness would multiply x3 the Simobject count required to show the path, since it's not as if we can just "draw lines": we need to create an extra simobject for each single arrow, plus extra objects on both sides to show the width: it's not that hard to reach the simobject limit with a long custom pushback route, it would be even easier with a long walking path with lateral lines added, while with actual passengers, it would be the same than in a normal Boarding, and it's easily controllable (if it happens) with the Passengers Density slider.