Elvas Tower: Forest Regions in ORTS - Elvas Tower

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Forest Regions in ORTS Rate Topic: -----

#1 User is offline   Guilford309 

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 11:09 AM

Not sure, but anyone know the reason why the forest regions in ORTS, seem so far pushed back as shown in my screenshot below? When placing the forest regions in, I typically have them close to the tracks as possible without the branches spilling onto the railroad tracks. However, when I run ORTS versus viewing them in the Route Editor, they appear, pushed back, as if the railroad crew cleared them instantly..
Is there a way around this?

http://i.imgur.com/TvazuSB.jpg

#2 User is offline   markus_GE 

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 11:22 AM

AFAIK, this behavior has been programmed into ORTS with the purpose of reducing trees growing on the tracks. The rationale is, that the ORTS team doesn´t know the algorithm MSTS uses to distribute the trees over the forest region, thus, they needed to build their own algorithm. No, that algorithm doesn´t distribute the trees in a way that lines up with MSTS. Some route-builders, however, placed their forest objects over the tracks, and just moved them around so there were no trees on the tracks in MSTS. In ORTS, however, that won´t work, due to the above reason. Thus, ORTS just plants the trees a little farther back to avoid trees on the tracks.

The way around would be to have the forest objects overlap the tracks in RE for making it look good in ORTS. Yet, they will then also overlap the tracks in MSTS.

Cheers, Markus

#3 User is offline   c36dash7 

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 12:23 PM

One of the issue referred to, has to do with some earliest Routes ( and this would include one portion that was integrated to the TriState Route ), where the Builder had some forest region bounding boxes, either just-about covering trackwork, or at times, even the bounding box clearly crossing over top of the tracks ( with the trains somehow "sneaking through" some "lucky" tree alignment that would allow for it) . Such ( earliest ) forest blocks, also caused some serious "ghost-like" type of visual "artifacts" , even more so when forest blocks were overlapping and / or "stacked on top of each other" .

I am not making any specific suggestions, other than , Developers for Open Rails, should not feel pressured to cater to what eventually have to be called "dysfunctional" intricacies of some of the earliest Routes ( and saying this in all due respect , as some of those are truly excellent, but those early pioneers also had to step over every possible "MSTS landmines", so that we all can move along , and avoid errors made in the past ).

And / Or, attempting to make Open Rails, 100% "backwards-compatible", may also be stepping backwards, as well, and "best judgement" , on their part..., has to be expected, and accepted .

Going full circle with this, Shawn , if you truly want to make your Route "Open Rails compatible", it would be your own responsibility, to make adjustments at the Route Building level. I am currently addressing , for example , some differences related to rendering of transfers, with Open Rails, and incorporating such into my Route Building work, already .

Jean Brisson

#4 User is offline   markus_GE 

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 12:30 PM

What about an option in the options menu to flip between the current behavior of forest objects, and an "MSTS Style" that fills the boxes right to their boundaries? The advantage would be that this way, if you know trees are on the tracks on this and that route / part of the route used by an activity, you just go switch to the current behavior, and otherwise can have trees everywhere where there are trees supposed to be. :curiousPC:

Cheers, Markus

#5 User is offline   Guilford309 

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 01:37 PM

Thanks for the replies guys. This actually comes to a disappointment for me, with ORTS, being it's the only possible way I can even run MSTS all together.

I had planned for this route to be ORTS only as well, but if I am forced to jump through hoops for it to look correct in ORTS, it seems almost like I am jumping through the MSTS hoops once again...

I would hate to have all 183 miles of track, or a vast majority of it, with the forest regions being directly over the trucks in the Route Editor, just seems messy and cluttered honestly.. Especially if I need to go back and make edits to the area, as well as have buildings and other objects placed in, or removed.

#6 User is online   SVRy_Steve 

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 02:43 PM

I have to agree, MSTS is going, going..... OR should allow either the option, or preferably just the accurate location of trees to the bounding boxes in the RE. I know they won't place the same, but trying to get plants/trees located accurately near the tracks is presently a royal PITA!

Steve

#7 User is offline   Genma Saotome 

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 04:15 PM

View Postmarkus_GE, on 16 April 2014 - 11:22 AM, said:

AFAIK, this behavior has been programmed into ORTS with the purpose of reducing trees growing on the tracks. The rationale is, that the ORTS team doesn´t know the algorithm MSTS uses to distribute the trees over the forest region, thus, they needed to build their own algorithm. No, that algorithm doesn´t distribute the trees in a way that lines up with MSTS. Some route-builders, however, placed their forest objects over the tracks, and just moved them around so there were no trees on the tracks in MSTS. In ORTS, however, that won´t work, due to the above reason. Thus, ORTS just plants the trees a little farther back to avoid trees on the tracks.

The way around would be to have the forest objects overlap the tracks in RE for making it look good in ORTS. Yet, they will then also overlap the tracks in MSTS.

Cheers, Markus


Actually, IMO the purpose of doing it this way was to shut up all the bitchin & moaning that came from people who had trees growing in the tracks because OR used a different random distribution of planting than did MSTS.

I think OR should have left it alone and told people to wake up their brain and get into RE to adjust the forest rectangle... a very modest change in size would have fixed things. The way it is now... can you get the forest to go any closer to the tracks?

Correcting issues like this should never be done in the code when it can be fixed in the route.

#8 User is offline   Lindsayts 

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 05:01 PM

View PostGenma Saotome, on 16 April 2014 - 04:15 PM, said:

Actually, IMO the purpose of doing it this way was to shut up all the bitchin & moaning that came from people who had trees growing in the tracks because OR used a different random distribution of planting than did MSTS.

I think OR should have left it alone and told people to wake up their brain and get into RE to adjust the forest rectangle... a very modest change in size would have fixed things. The way it is now... can you get the forest to go any closer to the tracks?

Correcting issues like this should never be done in the code when it can be fixed in the route.


For what its worth I agree with the above. Its not OR's fault if someone has done a route with forest objects over the track and it should render the bounding boxes as they are. The actual problem needs to be solved at the route editor level.

Any modifaction to OR to step around MSTS's route editors weakness's should be given much serious thought before it put into the code as taking it out again when OR has its own editor could easily have a few unintended side effects.

It would be worth reminding people that OR is a work in progress, putting in unnecesary functions that will need to be removed later should be resisted as it means more work for the developers that is not in the long term required.

Lindsay

#9 User is offline   Guilford309 

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 05:25 PM

Have to agree with Dave on this one. Leaving it alone would have been the much better option, specifically seems majority of the time I am in the RE anyways.

Tinkering with the box right now, so that it spreads right across the tracks. Hopefully they are closer, if not, then I guess my route building will have to come to a complete stop.

Why not use MSTS? Simple, MSTS does not run correctly on my laptop, it freezes within 3 mins of play time, and the graphics rendered look horrible compared to what is seen in ORTS.

#10 User is offline   conductorchris 

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 06:18 PM

Another route instead of an option (which new users won't think to check) would be some attribute coded into the route itself to tell open rails it doesn't need to be backwards compatible with this route.

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