[CGW121]

An idea for the route editor.

One of the things I have noticed is a lack of utility poles. It would be nice to click one spot, move to another spot, click again and the poles appear at a user set interval. I would think it would be easier than the gantry function that is used now.

[Genma Saotome]

CGW121, on 01 December 2012 - 10:11 AM, said:

An idea for the route editor.

One of the things I have noticed is a lack of utility poles. It would be nice to click one spot, move to another spot, click again and the poles appear at a user set interval. I would think it would be easier than the gantry function that is used now.

Not meaning to dismiss the request but to point out an equivalent MSTS feature: You can do that now in the MSTS RE with a trick I learned from Nalle (who built the WP 3rd Sub route we all admire): Create bogus Tsection.dat entries (use roads)... one very short length one for the telephone pole and another (or several if needed) for a fixed length run of wires -- say 33.3m. Having defined your two shapes in the tsection.dat file you can now place them as if they were tracks -- one snaps to the other... the poles are vertical and you change the pitch of the wires just as you do track. Create tsection entries that look like road crossings -- 3 way, 4 way. Curves, OTOH, are problematic; You have to build the shapes with different radii just like you do roads and tracks but it's not an insurmountable task. When done use route ritter to convert them all to static shapes.

[CGW121]

Genma Saotome, on 01 December 2012 - 10:45 AM, said:

Not meaning to dismiss the request but to point out an equivalent MSTS feature: You can do that now in the MSTS RE with a trick I learned from Nalle (who built the WP 3rd Sub route we all admire): Create bogus Tsection.dat entries (use roads)... one very short length one for the telephone pole and another (or several if needed) for a fixed length run of wires -- say 33.3m. Having defined your two shapes in the tsection.dat file you can now place them as if they were tracks -- one snaps to the other... the poles are vertical and you change the pitch of the wires just as you do track. Create tsection entries that look like road crossings -- 3 way, 4 way. Curves, OTOH, are problematic; You have to build the shapes with different radii just like you do roads and tracks but it's not an insurmountable task. When done use route ritter to convert them all to static shapes.

Which is why I thought of that. quicker and easier. Also with a click feature you can string poles up where they do not follow roads

[railguy]

Though it has been mentioned many times, the ability to have dynamic weather in OR, and program such weather into an activity, would really be wonderful. While I am neither an artist nor a computer programmer, I am an amateur climatologist and weather observer, and I have been giving some thought about how dynamic weather could conceptually be done and I would be glad to share that with the OR team. The technical aspects to program it I'm sure would be a challenge, but it would take the sim to a new level of realism that no train simulator has been able to reach.

I am very impressed with what the OR team has already accomplished and I have real faith that what is coming in the months/years ahead from them will really be impressive. Thanks to them for all of their hard work and dedication.

[Genma Saotome]

railguy, on 02 December 2012 - 10:12 AM, said:

Though it has been mentioned many times, the ability to have dynamic weather in OR, and program such weather into an activity, would really be wonderful. While I am neither an artist nor a computer programmer, I am an amateur climatologist and weather observer, and I have been giving some thought about how dynamic weather could conceptually be done and I would be glad to share that with the OR team. The technical aspects to program it I'm sure would be a challenge, but it would take the sim to a new level of realism that no train simulator has been able to reach.

James Ross would be the guy you want to talk to as he's done many of the environmental features.

For my own wishlist in this regard:

• Fully separate precipitation from tertex (e.g., Snowing w/o snow on the ground; Snow on the ground w/o it snowing).
  
• Activity based weather adjustments by time of day (e.g., when it's 3:45pm, increase cloud cover by 10%).
  
• Random occurrence of changes to overcast (e.g., "roll the dice" once every 75 minutes).
  
• Random occurrence of precipitation when overcast hits nn% (e.g., "roll the dice" once every 75 minutes).
  
• Rain object textures (e.g., 20-30% opacity black overlay makes textures look wet).
  
• Rain/night object textures (loshine roads).

[wacampbell]

Here's some of mine:

- multilayer textures including ambient occlusion and lighting maps
- procedural vegetation
- progressive terrain detail
- splat texturing on terrain
- working train-order operations
- animated water
- automatic detection of duplicate meshes and textures
- smoke emitters from static objects

[railguy]

Genma Saotome, on 02 December 2012 - 10:41 AM, said:

James Ross would be the guy you want to talk to as he's done many of the environmental features.

For my own wishlist in this regard:

• Fully separate precipitation from tertex (e.g., Snowing w/o snow on the ground; Snow on the ground w/o it snowing).
  
• Activity based weather adjustments by time of day (e.g., when it's 3:45pm, increase cloud cover by 10%).
  
• Random occurrence of changes to overcast (e.g., "roll the dice" once every 75 minutes).
  
• Random occurrence of precipitation when overcast hits nn% (e.g., "roll the dice" once every 75 minutes).
  
• Rain object textures (e.g., 20-30% opacity black overlay makes textures look wet).
  
• Rain/night object textures (loshine roads).

One of my thoughts is to divorce weather from the seasons--seasons are good for establishing the ground textures for a time period, e.g., autumn leaf color. By the way, it would be great to have discrete Spring textures to go along with the other seaasons. For example, California can be very green and lush in late winter and early spring, but can turn quite brown in summer. Date-specific sun and moon position, along with length of day--all adjusted for latitude--has already been implemented in OR, so that is not a concern. Weather events and patterns, though, can vary considerably by locale, and should not be "hard-coded" to a season. For example, severe thunderstorms can occur in the depths of winter in the Deep South, while blinding snowstorms can occur in the High Rockies in July.

With dynamic weather, one could, for example, start an activity at Shelby, Montana on the Maris Pass line on a sunny, warm spring day. Progressing westward, one could encounter increasing clouds, with rain beginning at, say, Blackfoot, turning to heavy snow by the Summit, changing back to heavy rain at Essex, trancending to light rain by Columbia Falls, and to broken overcast at Whitefish. Having the ability for the activity creator to set weather change/transition triggers for the various weather variables along the route, or by a time schedule, would allow such dynamic weather to occur. Time-based templates could even be created, then saved as a "weather template."

Simiarly, one could be in one place, let's say a switching activity occurring at Cut Bank, Montana on the Marias Pass route. The activity could start at noon with scattered cumulus clouds. By 2 PM, cumulus congestus clouds could approach from the west, transitioning into dark cumulonimbus clounds (thunderheads) by 3 PM with a heavy thunderstorm with lightning, rain and some hail; thence followed by a clearing sequence. By treating each weather characteristic, (upper, mid, and lower cloud types; wind direction and speed; precipation type and intensity; etc.) as separate variables, one could program a sequence of weather events. Since the various variables and events occur over some length of time--at least minutes to hours, I don't think (computer experts weigh in here) that it would overburden the CPU with processes. The hard part would be developing the various textures and figuring out how to smoothly transition them. I compiled a list of 18 weather variables, some discrete (e.g., low cloud type), or continuous (e.g. surface wind speed) that theoretically could be used to build almost any cloud, precipitation, fog/haze/dust/smog, and wind (upper or surface) wind condition. By adjusting the discrete and continous variables, one could create all kinds of weather and weather changes in an activity. How cool would that be?

[Genma Saotome]

railguy, on 02 December 2012 - 11:33 AM, said:

The hard part would be developing the various textures and figuring out how to smoothly transition them. I compiled a list of 18 weather variables, some discrete (e.g., low cloud type), or continuous (e.g. surface wind speed) that theoretically could be used to build almost any cloud, precipitation, fog/haze/dust/smog, and wind (upper or surface) wind condition. By adjusting the discrete and continuous variables, one could create all kinds of weather and weather changes in an activity. How cool would that be?

I agree that it would be very cool. I've no idea how anyone would create all the different cloud types tho.... For what OR does right now with the dry overcast is fairly accurate for high coastal fog (The weather report for the SF Bay Area, from Mid May to Mid September, is some minor variation of temperature with "blah, blah, blah, high coastal fog burning off by mid day, blah, blah, blah").

[eric from trainsim]

Genma Saotome, on 01 December 2012 - 10:45 AM, said:

Not meaning to dismiss the request but to point out an equivalent MSTS feature: You can do that now in the MSTS RE with a trick I learned from Nalle (who built the WP 3rd Sub route we all admire): Create bogus Tsection.dat entries (use roads)... one very short length one for the telephone pole and another (or several if needed) for a fixed length run of wires -- say 33.3m. Having defined your two shapes in the tsection.dat file you can now place them as if they were tracks -- one snaps to the other... the poles are vertical and you change the pitch of the wires just as you do track. Create tsection entries that look like road crossings -- 3 way, 4 way. Curves, OTOH, are problematic; You have to build the shapes with different radii just like you do roads and tracks but it's not an insurmountable task. When done use route ritter to convert them all to static shapes.

Some of you know I've been working on a utility called WorldFileHacker, which allows me to use an approach halfway between this hack and gantry placement...

The main function for WFH is to add what I call Companion Objects to the world file based off the XYZQ of a selected parent shapefile, with the option to ignore the angle of the parent object.

The app works great for bridgework --- I use Scalerail 20m and 30m Brg-N sections when laying track, and then come back and add the girders, walkways, piers and/or trestles after the fact. It's how I created the ore dock approaches at Escanaba in Packerland, and built the parallel Kennedy Expressway in the CNW Harvard. I also did a full-blown flyover interchange for Milwaukee when that was still in scope for Packerland.

More discussion and screenshots are available here:

http://www.trainsim....ld-File-Editing)
http://www.trainsim....FileHacker-(WFH)


What I've done for power poles is to use a stock set of wires in 50m increments, and then lay down a road type I wouldn't normally use (e.g. the various JP's) where I want line poles. With WFH, I do a first pass to place the poles (ignoring slope) and then a second pass where I accept the slope. Last, I blow away the road sections. Curves are indeed an issue, but with trial and error, you can figure out lengths that fit certain curve radii, and then just F4 the rotation manually. I had to do a lot of that when building the flyover interchange, as my bridge sections were straight...

It's a workaround, and I'd much prefer something more intuitive as what was described below, but I fear it would have issues trying to follow terrain. Using the road sections gets around that, and allows me to more correctly determine where and how the wiring follows the terrain...

[railguy]

Genma Saotome, on 02 December 2012 - 05:55 PM, said:

I agree that it would be very cool. I've no idea how anyone would create all the different cloud types tho.... For what OR does right now with the dry overcast is fairly accurate for high coastal fog (The weather report for the SF Bay Area, from Mid May to Mid September, is some minor variation of temperature with "blah, blah, blah, high coastal fog burning off by mid day, blah, blah, blah").

Actually, most of the cloud types have already been created (except for the cumulonimbus "thunderhead"--that's a tough one) in one variation or another of the How In The World or Kosmos environments, so it can be done. Triggers, movement and transition would be the tougher part, but not undoable, I would think.

One other wish that I have for OpenRails (that would require locomotive cabviews specifically designed for OpenRails) would be a cabview where the point of view is movable, with operable windshield wipers and visible precipitaiton hitting the windows. TS2013 hss this (and I think the scrapped MSTS2 was supposed to; and I believe that at least one MSTS model-builder had built cabs for MSTS2 with these features) and it really does add "weather realism" to the sim.