[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Just my humble 2021 pleas for what I see as some of the biggest things missing from ORTS at the moment. I understand the Development Team works extremely hard on ORTS day in and day out, have massive tasks underway, and does it all as a labor of love. I can't even properly convey the amount of thanks you guys deserve for doing what you do.

Thank You !

As we all know - route development is still our biggest choke point limiting a more popular and accepted embrace of ORTS by the train sim community at large. It literally takes YEARS to create a good route therefore very few people take on the task or see it through to fruition - for those that do - I salute you. Anything we can do to make the task of Route Building easier would pay real dividends on the number of routes we actually see completed. More routes offers us a better chance to capture the imagination of new people and with new people we should see new talent - hopefully in both the content creation and ORTS development aspects of our Train Sim.

Number one - "Splines" Yes - Splines, Splines Splines, and yes Splines. Those magic little shapes like telegraph poles, sidewalks, roads, street markings, fences, power lines, and even foliage - that with a series of clicks stretches as long as you want - magically traversing up and down the terrain all by itself. You can create miles of the stuff with a few clicks - even poles with wires attached. Talk about speeding up route development !!! If I recall correctly from past conversations - in order to accomplish "splines" in ORTS - Goku with TSRE and the ORTS Development Team needs to work together - and for whatever reason that seems unlikely. Has anyone considered a plan around this insurmountable hurdle ?

Number two - "Forest Regions" - we need the ability to create forest regions as irregular polygons - instead of being restricted to those darn rectangles. In addition - we need the ability to define mixed forest regions with a variety of objects so we can stop having to stack rectangle upon rectangle to get a believable forest. We should have the ability to define each of the multiple items in the forest regions by scale and density proportion. That way - once we have a particular mixed forest region defined the way we like it - click a few points in TSRE to define the coverage area - set the density - and you're done. This will make it easy to have forests of a uniform density throughout the route. This will save countless hours of work over the way we have it now.

I'll end with these two - as if we had these features - I think it would VASTLY improve the speed and efficiency in which we could create routes.

Just my two cents - thanks for your consideration...

Regards,
Scott

[R H Steele]

Good suggestions, I've read about both of these additions many times. You should consider posting this at Goku's TSRE Forum .

[eric from trainsim]

Dynamic snow.... add a terrain-aware obscuring of the terrain by X cm per hour... eventually covering up rails until a train passes would be even better.

Forest regions with defined corners vs a square are a must along with being able to define the seeding as random or in rows like a tree farm or corn.

[Genma Saotome]

I've been suggesting a snow feature for, oh, 10-15 years (who were those guys who sold their MSTS replacement to the UP? I first pitched this idea to them). It is this: A second set of terrain tiles to represent winter snow that is slightly higher that the original terrain. Backup the original tile data, slide the snow copy into \tiles, and go about plowing the snow away from track and roads with the cut terrain function available in both KUJU's RE and Goku's TSRE. Add snow textures and bingo, a winter wonderland.

It's not an ideal solution -- the snow level would be the same everywhere -- but it should look a lot better than the few mm look we get today from textures.

On the game side what's needed is a utility that will lift terrain a specified amount in a copy of the relevant files (perhaps Route Ritter can do that), a \Snow folder added to \Tiles, and a modest software change indicating when to use those new files. IMO having it's own on|off toggle is better than simply using the current snow seasonality so as to separate snow on the ground from current precipitation. IOW being able to choose snowing over clear ground, snowing with snow on ground, and clear skies with snow on the ground.

I rather doubt it would be too hard to code.

[Genma Saotome]

I'll add a plug for Camera Sets. Aside from the usefulness of an editable camfig, having 1-10 sets of 1-10 cameras each is something no other train simulator has. Who wouldn't like a set of tracking cameras where you can choose the starting position and when you want jump to another? And it doesn't need a route editor to implement.

[Genma Saotome]

scottb613, on 13 February 2021 - 05:58 AM, said:

Number one - "Splines" Yes - Splines, Splines Splines, and yes Splines.

FWIW, procedurally generated content is a more correct name, some of which may fall on a spline line, such as utility poles, some over an area, such as a forest or a tessellated crop. It sounds interesting only to the degree that it remains possible for user produced content to be worked into the route in addition to any canned features.

[Niknak]

Just a fairly simple request really - Would it be possible to amend the parameters that generate the log file, so that those of us running UK routes with swb 2 axle wagons don't end up with lines and lines of "A virtual wheel axle was added for bogie 1 of".... etc in the log file after running an activity? It doesn't affect the game of course but makes it harder to spot a genuine error message. Apologies if this has been mentioned before.

[NickonWheels]

And don´t forget splines for laying track.

[mopacfan]

Procedural track, but maybe that's a feature more appropriate for TSRE to have.

[R H Steele]

Genma Saotome, on 13 February 2021 - 09:34 PM, said:

I'll add a plug for Camera Sets. Aside from the usefulness of an editable camfig, having 1-10 sets of 1-10 cameras each is something no other train simulator has. Who wouldn't like a set of tracking cameras where you can choose the starting position and when you want jump to another? And it doesn't need a route editor to implement.

I've been following this suggestion for quite a while, I come to the opinion....Heck Yes...

Quote

Who wouldn't like a set of tracking cameras where you can choose the starting position and when you want jump to another?

Also, if my understanding is correct, each user could have their own configuration...suits all tastes.