Elvas Tower: Route-Specific Precipitation Textures and Fall Speed - Elvas Tower

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#1 User is offline   PerryPlatypus 

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Posted 25 December 2017 - 10:41 PM

I have been playing around with the snow flake texture to make it much smaller and grayer. The only thing left to make it look very realistic to my eyes is to slow it way down, like to 30 or 40 percent of the current speed.

Problem is, I have no idea where to look to change the speed of the flakes. I fear it is buried deep in the source files, which I have zero experience with.

Either way, I think it would be a big benefit if we can start to have features like these customizable. Rather than adding another item in the menu, I think this ought to something we can make route specific. Custom PNG files for the snowflake and rain drop could be placed in some folder in the route (I'll leave that up to the developers to decide) and an item in the TRK file could define speeds for rain and snow fall. This way a route creator could create what they think looks good for their own route and distribute it that way without the need for the end user to overwrite their files for the main program. The same should apply to the sky dome files, starmaps, etc. as well (the option to be route-specific).

On top of all this, I do hope an overhaul of the precipitation in the game will come eventually. It is really an immersion killer to jump from one end of the consist to the other on a mile long train and have precipitation suddenly gone. Ideally, precipitation should be able to be spawned mid-fall in a random configuration, rather than when jumping to a new spot, having to wait for all the sprites to spawn individually from the top of the snow height box. I am aware that you can extend the size of the precipitation box, but extending the precipitation box length and width beyond 500 meters seems to make for a really unrealistic appearance, as you can now see thousands of shimmering snowflakes or rain drops in the distance, when in reality you should only see flakes or drops up to a few hundred feet from the camera before they fade into non-visibility.

Thank you again to the developers for continually improving this game! :) The below video shows my edited PNG file for snowflakes (much smaller and grayer color), but to get a realistic fall speed I am running at about 40% simulation speed since I don't know how to manually change the fall speed. I have the precipitation box set to the smallest size possible to not have thousands of shimmering distant flakes. Also, this is at full precipitation intensity, and I would prefer to be able to go even heavier.
https://youtu.be/O--JyTuQDG4

P.S. For each of my posts on here, I am using the forums as a means to see if this is something the developers are already working on before adding it to the Trello board.

#2 User is online   James Ross 

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Posted 26 December 2017 - 03:41 AM

View PostPerryPlatypus, on 25 December 2017 - 10:41 PM, said:

Either way, I think it would be a big benefit if we can start to have features like these customizable. Rather than adding another item in the menu, I think this ought to something we can make route specific. Custom PNG files for the snowflake and rain drop could be placed in some folder in the route (I'll leave that up to the developers to decide) and an item in the TRK file could define speeds for rain and snow fall. This way a route creator could create what they think looks good for their own route and distribute it that way without the need for the end user to overwrite their files for the main program. The same should apply to the sky dome files, starmaps, etc. as well (the option to be route-specific).

I strongly disagree with making these things customisable; please continue to provide suggestions and we can make Open Rails better for everyone. :)

View PostPerryPlatypus, on 25 December 2017 - 10:41 PM, said:

On top of all this, I do hope an overhaul of the precipitation in the game will come eventually. It is really an immersion killer to jump from one end of the consist to the other on a mile long train and have precipitation suddenly gone. Ideally, precipitation should be able to be spawned mid-fall in a random configuration, rather than when jumping to a new spot, having to wait for all the sprites to spawn individually from the top of the snow height box. I am aware that you can extend the size of the precipitation box, but extending the precipitation box length and width beyond 500 meters seems to make for a really unrealistic appearance, as you can now see thousands of shimmering snowflakes or rain drops in the distance, when in reality you should only see flakes or drops up to a few hundred feet from the camera before they fade into non-visibility.

Yes, it's on my list. There was recent work to make the precipitation box customisable which, unfortunately, I don't think helps enough. We do need to have another look at how precipitation works so that we can do more intense storms (rain or snow) and fix the issue with camera jump.

View PostPerryPlatypus, on 25 December 2017 - 10:41 PM, said:

Thank you again to the developers for continually improving this game! :) The below video shows my edited PNG file for snowflakes (much smaller and grayer color), but to get a realistic fall speed I am running at about 40% simulation speed since I don't know how to manually change the fall speed. I have the precipitation box set to the smallest size possible to not have thousands of shimmering distant flakes. Also, this is at full precipitation intensity, and I would prefer to be able to go even heavier.
https://youtu.be/O--JyTuQDG4

Would you be willing to provide the snowflake image to Open Rails under the GPL license? I can easily change the speed of falling at the same time.

#3 User is offline   PerryPlatypus 

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Posted 26 December 2017 - 11:53 AM

View PostJames Ross, on 26 December 2017 - 03:41 AM, said:

I strongly disagree with making these things customisable; please continue to provide suggestions and we can make Open Rails better for everyone. :)


I agree that there should be some good global files for all routes, and I guess snowflakes and rain drops could be one of them... However, I have achieved a realistic look in my linked-to video because I adjusted the snowflakes to a darker color which relatively matches the color of my snow TERRTEX. If a route builder uses blindingly-bright snow terrtex, then my snowflake will possibly look to dark.

Until we have the option to select multiple types of cloud cover, then I think at least clouds and starmaps should be customizable. For example, I have used a modified starmap with some northern lights on the north end of the map for routes I have up in the northern US and Canada, but of course this is completely unsuitable for routes closer to the equator. The only way this could be dealt with would be to have the northern lights as a whole separate layer as made by the OR developers.

Additionally, precipitation fall speed should be able to vary considerably. There can be very light snow fall like I showed in my video, or much heavier, faster snowfall, yet with the particles looking like snow and not rain.

View PostJames Ross, on 26 December 2017 - 03:41 AM, said:

Would you be willing to provide the snowflake image to Open Rails under the GPL license? I can easily change the speed of falling at the same time.


I am certainly willing to provide it. :) I am wondering if this only a temporary fix, though. You will notice that I achieved the effect by drastically shrinking the size of the flake, and making it a gray tint (it also has more gradual bleed edges). I wonder if having the flake only a small part of the image size, with a huge transparency all around it, will be a waste of resources? The optimal solution here would be for you guys to reduce the hard-coded size of snowflakes to 33% of their current size, then I can supply a PNG that is about the same size as the one provided with Open Rails, but with the better looking bleed edges and gray color. I should be able to go back to a 64x64 PNG as well since I can keep the snowflake larger in proportion to the total image size. I was running the sim at 44% simulation speed in my video. I can also supply the snow to rain transition PNGs, but I might hold off on that until you guys decide whether you will shrink the snowflake and raindrop hard-coded sizes first so I am not wasting effort only to have to resize them all again. I also have attached a modified raindrop which I have reduced considerably in size, but I am still working on making those look a bit better. Similar to snow, even at full intensity the rainfall with my smaller particle sizes does not look heavy enough.

Another important bug I found: Using ORTSliquidity in activity weather events does not seem to be changing the precipitation speed? So if my activity starts out with clear or rain, and I later change liquidity to 0 (fully snow) the snow is still falling at the same speed as rain! (unless this has been changed since X3845, I am admittedly a bit behind on updates)

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#4 User is offline   railguy 

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Posted 26 December 2017 - 05:19 PM

Snowflake size is, in my opinion, a bit large in the current OR configuration. Years ago, there were some customized very small snowflakes built for MSTS that could also be driven by the wind (as I recall, by revising the angle of fall to almost horizontal and by changing the wind velocity in the .env file). It made for some very realistic blizzard conditions. The downside was that the numerous small snowflakes were a real drag on MSTS performance.

Ideally, clouds,smoke, snow, and rain should be driven by wind speed and direction in the sim. That would add greatly to realism in OR. If the current delightful weather change events available in OR could have wind speed and direction included, the effects could be truly outstanding.

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