Out of curiosity and to help a friend to decide if Rocrail is the way to go, I browsed the documentation some time ago. I don’t like what I found about speed.
1. The program assumes that the speed curve is a straight line.
2. The speed is given in % of the decoders/engines/trains max speed.
3. The scale speed can be measured and shown but not stored in the program.
I hope I have missed something since a lot of Rocrail users are pleased with the program.

Personally I don’t want to mess with CV programming. Setting of prototypical max speed and that is it.
About point 1. Most of my H0 engines had a curve and not a straight line given by the values in the decoder speed tables.
About point 2. A speed restriction of 40 (%) would result in about 32 scale km/h for an engine/train with max 80 km/h. For a train with max 160 km/h it would be about 64 km/h. An engine with a curved speed table would probably just crawl.
About point 3. Other programs, like Train Controller and iTrain, stores the measured speed in the program per engine/train. You are supposed to do that for all trains and enough speed steps (forwards and backwards) to build the programs speed tables, Then, and only then, the program has full control over where the trains are at any given point in time. For instance all engines can be stopped at a given distance from a feedback point.

Hi blid,

I am not sure if I have understood the key point of your question, However, let me give some kind of answers to your second set of questions.


No, I leave them as they come off the factory.

I set my locomotives to run at maximal prototypical speed with Rocrail's cruising speed (V_Cru), by default 80%. This lets me run them a bit faster if I feel an urge for more speed. I assign the values of the other speed settings (V_Mid, V_Min) to whatever values that give the most reasonable behaviour. Note that due to Rocrail's BBT feature, it will apply a linear interpolation between V_Mid and V_Min when slowing down a locomotive for full stop. The deceleration of the locomotive decoder does the rest.

Yes.

I add that Rocrail has a locomotive calibration feature, but I have no experience on it.

Hi Blid
- on a regular Block, the best is to install 2 sensors: the last 22 cm (HO) before the signal called IN is there to stop in front of a red signal (go from V_mid to V=0) and the rest of the block (1 to 2 m) is called ENTER. It slows down the train from V_route, down to V_mid.
- on a bidirectional block you may have 3 sensors: 22 cm IN sensor, 22 cm ENTER senor at the other extremity and SHORTIN for the rest section in-beween. Of course for the other direction the same senors are used but with a different assignation: ENTER, SHORTIN , IN become IN, SHORTIN, ENTER.
- of course ANY block may have only one sensor. It works very well but the stop location is not as precise (otherwise, better than a cm)
- other sensor locations: near a uncoupler for triggering at the right moment: either at one loco length away from the uncoupler on a through track or before a buffer on a siding track

There is a choice to be made regarding speed and acceleration / deceleration delays
- a slow running loco (goods trains) has more inertia than an express train so the faster a train, the less inertia.
- when adjusting the speed you may make another choice: to have a maximum speed equal for all locos. That way you may on Rocrail impose speed restictions in percentage of that max speed which translate in km/h speeds on your layout.

What is done by the dfecoder and what is done by Rocrail
- inertia (acceleration, deceleration), speed curve, maximum speed are to be set on the decoder
- Rocrail allows defining 4 speeds for each loco (V_max, V_line, V_mid, V_min). Any block or zone may impose a speed either related to a loco-related speed or to a percentage of the v_max speed of the loco

Cheers
Jean