[asullenger]

Hey fellers,

Is there anyway to make the exterior part of the locomotive show up in the 3d cab??
As it is, anything that you want to be seen in the 3D cab has to be added to the model and .s file. The problem is, it can only use one texture for the exterior parts. If you have several repaints of the same engine, you either have to have a separate 3D cab for each one, or go with the wrong paint.

I'm making a 3D cab for the SLI SD70ACe, and engines painted for BNSF,MRL, and several fictional heritage units. I would have to have 7 or 8 3D cabs to cover them all.

[Csantucci]

My personal opinion is that OR could be modified to show it, as some problems with superelevation have been solved. However I wonder whether this could cause problems to already available 3D cabs.

[asullenger]

Yes it probably could\would. I'd be willing to modify the cabs I made for it, but not sure the folks who have released theirs would be. It would be easy for me, since they are only on my computer, not so much for them I guess.

Something I didn't think about on the SLI model, is that I will have to make everything I want seen of the outside of the engine. Maybe another reason to think about it. If you could make just the cab for it, some modelers might start making 3D cabs and releasing them kinda like they do 2D cabs now

Maybe something to think about for on down the road??? And maybe folks could put out a patch for older releases??

Anyway, just something I was thinking about,lol.

[Eldorado.Railroad]

Csantucci, on 08 April 2017 - 12:55 PM, said:

My personal opinion is that OR could be modified to show it, as some problems with superelevation have been solved. However I wonder whether this could cause problems to already available 3D cabs.

Carlo,

I think what he is trying to ask about, is the possibility of using freight animations, extra pre-compiled shapfiles, to show the visible parts of a locomotive etc from inside the cab. This would mean that the 3D cabview file would have to allow inclusions of FAs like what is possible from the .eng file. Other sims allow this idea. Trainz as an example has the cab shell and the 3D Cab itself.

Steve

[asullenger]

No, he had it right. I just want to build the cab and let the exterior engine be seen where needed. That way you could make one generic cab to fit several different engines.

[Kazareh]

asullenger, on 09 April 2017 - 01:27 PM, said:

No, he had it right. I just want to build the cab and let the exterior engine be seen where needed. That way you could make one generic cab to fit several different engines.

That'd be a wonderful idea for things like SD units, GPs, and such. Especially 'common' units like the GP38, GP40, SD40, SD35, which came in about every 'flavor' of railroad known to mankind.

[ErickC]

I would think that it might cause problems with clipping and parts fighting for Z-buffer priority. I remember that I did my old cabs sans-nose and used the necessary split of my models to my advantage to allow the hoods to be visible in the cab, but the difference here is that the cabview is a 2D image with the 3D geometry behind it.

I've noticed another potential problem with 3D cabs, if parts of the locomotive are visible inside: duplicate textures. ORTS seems to only load textures in the CABVIEW3D folder in 3D cabs. This problem, however, is easily solved by placing a command to go up a folder in the texture filenames. The problem with your situation, as I see it, is that SLI locomotives come grouped in a common folder with discrete texture filenames. If each locomotive used textures with the same filenames, but were located in a separate folder, the solution would be as simple as inserting the "..//" command into the texture filename and placing a copy of the CABVIEW3D folder in each locomotive's folder. You would still need 8 copies of the same cab for 8 locomotives, but at least you would only need to copy the shape and cabview definitions (the cab-specific textures could have filenames directing the sim to a shared texture folder).

In real life, of course, if the external details varied between roads, so did the internals, so an accurate cab for a particular road's locomotives would probably need to be a different model anyway.

[mrmosky]

I am currently working on a 3d cabview for my steam tank loco. I started with the model of the loco in TSM, and then deleted all the parts that wouldn't be seen from the cab, so wheels, springs, underframe etc. I already had added some dummy gauges and levers in the cab, so when I ran OR, it looked pretty good already. Doing it this way also meant that the in-cab view was visually similar to the heads out view I already had. Obviously, I had to copy all the relevant loco ACE files into the 3d cab view folder. I need to now add working gauges and controls.
I am assuming that operation of the controls will not be possible using the mouse, as we do with the 2D cab view?
Geoff