[vince]

Goku, on 01 November 2017 - 10:17 AM, said:

It was always limited to selection ..................................snip..............................
Changing second texture will be possible only in terrain shader editor window.

Hi Goku,

Okay, I understand the Remove All Gaps will act only on gaps in a selected (blue outlined) subtile. Thank you for helping me understand.

regards,
vince

[jared2982]

Goku, on 29 October 2017 - 01:26 PM, said:

If you need two sizes, it's the same work like any size.

I don't say it can't be done, but for me there are more important things like new tracks and procedural objects and procedural terrain textures. Everyone will use that and almost no one uses LO_TILES, so the choice is obvious.

I don’t know about you and others but almost every route on my system has the DM tiles / LO_TILES. Most of my routes are located in valley and mountainous regions and without these tiles the terrain beyond 2000m would not be visible. OR also has an option for DM in the options menu. While I can see where creating these tiles would not be a priority I do see it as a feature that should be included in TSRE for it to be considered as full featured RE for OR.

[Goku]

Ok, I will think about DM in the future.

[Csantucci]

I second Jared's words and I'm happy you are considering DMs. Consider also the quite widespread case of plains with mountains in the far background. We have here the Pianura Padana (Po plain), but there are also many cases in the USA, where there are flat desert or country areas which have on the background the Rocky Mountains or other mountain ranges. In such cases DMs are the only solution.

[Genma Saotome]

Csantucci, on 03 November 2017 - 12:47 PM, said:

I second Jared's words and I'm happy you are considering DMs now. Consider also the quite widespread case of plains with mountains in the far background. We have here the Pianura Padana (Po plain), but there are also many cases in the USA, where there are flat desert or country areas which have on the background the Rocky Mountains or other mountain ranges. In such cases DMs are the only solution.

Quite true.

Something else to consider: Almost all routes created in KUJU's RE limited their tile coverage to what could be seen when MSTS was running an activity -- one tile adjacent to the corner the camera was located. Open Rails allows up to 5 tiles and the difference can be remarkable. Unfortunately 5 tiles on both sides of your track path is quite a burden to rendering, tho very modern CPU's, especially if overclocked, can deal with it.

This rendering problem should not be a permanent problem tho; If OR can find a way to replace .xna with something that can do multiple threads to the GPU it could pump near terrain thru one thread, DM terrain thru a second, all other scenery items thru third, and all rolling stock thru a fourth. That could result in rather dramatic improvement in performance making a wider coverage of all terrain feasible for most new routes.

Add to that the 100km view distance OR allows for distant mountains (DM). Again, that is not the norm today and even with multu-0threaded rendering might not be the norm in the future but some combination of much greater-than-msts extended near terrain and DM will become the norm. In my own experiments with this issue I've found a shorter near terrain and farther DM seems to result in better fps than any other combination greater than MSTS distances, no doubt because each DM patch covers an area equal to 256 near terrain patches*. At 1 draw call per patch that 256:1 difference can really make a difference in fps.


* A change OR could consider now is to check for a world file before choosing whether to render near or DM terrain. That would allow users to set the near terrain view distance further out while avoiding the cost of rendering every tile within that span when many will not have any objects on them. In those cases I'll wager DM terrain would serve rather well. IOW we'd see near terrain and the objects on it when looking forward or to the rear of the train while more DM terrain appears closer to the side.

[Goku]

I think that the white voids between standard terrain and DM terrain are not easy to fix.
MSTS probably uses the simplest way to not render DM terrain where standard terrain is. It simply uses different clipping planes for standard and different for DM, for example standard 0-2km and DM 2km-100km.

https://www.reallusi..._the_Camera.htm

It is super fast and easy solution but the software doesn't know about the boundary between two terrains, so rendering curtain to prevent white void is not possible.

What solution OR uses?

--

If we want to draw a curtain, we need to render DM patch by patch. And there is a problem, because if MSTS DM has 16x16 tile size and only 8x8 patches, it is not possible to draw DM terrain patch by patch because one patch covers 4 standard tiles.
Will OR work with 16x16 patches on DM tile (like standard tile)?

Quote

* A change OR could consider now is to check for a world file before choosing whether to render near or DM terrain. That would allow users to set the near terrain view distance further out while avoiding the cost of rendering every tile within that span when many will not have any objects on them. In those cases I'll wager DM terrain would serve rather well. IOW we'd see near terrain and the objects on it when looking forward or to the rear of the train while more DM terrain appears closer to the side.

I think it's better to implement dynamic terrain LOD. Even MSTS has something like this.

(difference between TSRE LOD disabled terrain and MSTS LOD enabled terrain):

https://i.imgur.com/NXNgBPX.png

And video showing how terrain LOD works: https://www.youtube....h?v=edK13PurkeQ

[Csantucci]

Goku, on 03 November 2017 - 01:18 PM, said:

Will OR work with 16x16 patches on DM tile (like standard tile)?

Yes it does, as also MSTS does. The Bernina Freeware route is built this way.
Here the standard terrain map:
 Bernina.jpg (350.15K)
Number of downloads: 11

Here the DM map (same scale):
 Bernina_DM.jpg (642.04K)
Number of downloads: 10

A DM tile is 8x8 times bigger than a standard terrain tile, and the same is true for the patches.

I chose this solution (by the way creating the terrain files was quite complex, with part of the operations done manually) and used 1" DEM data to get more realistic terrain elevations, and I am very happy with the result.
I hope you will implement the creation of DM tiles of this type.

[James Ross]

Goku, on 03 November 2017 - 01:18 PM, said:

MSTS probably uses the simplest way to not render DM terrain where standard terrain is. It simply uses different clipping planes for standard and different for DM, for example standard 0-2km and DM 2km-100km.

I seem to remember reading that MSTS uses a curtain, rendering the distant terrain into a flat image that is projected beyond the view distance/clip plane of the normal terrain.

Goku, on 03 November 2017 - 01:18 PM, said:

What solution OR uses?

Open Rails renders the distance terrain into 3D space, just like normal terrain, but rather than clipping the distant terrain at exactly the normal terrain viewing distance, we clip 500m closer, and then reset the depth buffer before rendering normal terrain. We also clip the normal terrain in the shader (not the face-clip method you mentioned), by adding a fade-out at the appropriate distance from the camera (this means we get a curved clip which looks nicer IMHO). All this means the normal terrain is overlapping the distant terrain, no matter the actual elevations, and you should only experience gaps if the distant terrain does not come close enough to overlap with the normal terrain. I don't remember how routes tend to be constructed in this regard though.

Here's a scene from the MSTS in-box route Hisatsu Line (activity Low Fuel) with and without the normal terrain:

https://james-ross.co.uk/temp/Open%20Rails%202017-11-04%2009-41-24.png

https://james-ross.co.uk/temp/Open%20Rails%202017-11-04%2009-40-45.png

[Genma Saotome]

James Ross, on 04 November 2017 - 01:46 PM, said:

All this means the normal terrain is overlapping the distant terrain, no matter the actual elevations, and you should only experience gaps if the distant terrain does not come close enough to overlap with the normal terrain.

When I add (or extend) DM to a route I make sure all of the original near terrain tiles are also represented by DM tiles... and yet i still see white gaps at times. What could cause that?
 Clipboard0755.jpg (254.18K)
Number of downloads: 4
I don't recall the view distances set when I took this shot but I suspect it was near terrain out to 10000m and DM terrain out to 100km.

[Eldorado.Railroad]

James Ross, on 04 November 2017 - 01:46 PM, said:

I seem to remember reading that MSTS uses a curtain, rendering the distant terrain into a flat image that is projected beyond the view distance/clip plane of the normal terrain.
Open Rails renders the distance terrain into 3D space, just like normal terrain.....

Over time, I have come to the realization that enabling DM in OR results in severe performance penalties. In the HUD at least, it is clear that a whole slew of tiles are being loaded when a greater DM viewing distance is selected. As a result this really kills frame rates when using quality dynamic shadows. So it appears that the curtain method of MSTS was really the performance saver at the time the software was written, whereas loading/displaying more tiles to achieve the same effect is not.