[JeffBush]

There's a very interesting and important discussion initiated by Doug Kightly going on over at UKTrainsim with the above title... Here.. You might have spotted it...

The Open Rails team has been following the thread with great interest. While we haven't come to a conclusion regarding the best distribution method, we did want to provide the project with some technical guidance to avoid any dead ends.

Going forward Open Rails will continue to support the MSTS shape file (.s ). In the future, the Open Rails Development Team will specify and document a strategic format for describing shapes which may include an additional format beyond the currently supported shape file.

Regarding texturing, Open Rails will support the MSTS ace file (.ace) as well as DDS (.dds). The following guidelines are offered to help the community understand the performance impact of DDS encoding choices:

• For full fidelity, R8G8B8/A8R8G8B8 (no alpha/alpha). Maximum GPU VRAM usage.
  
• For best compression, DXT1/3/5 (no alpha/non-graduated alpha/graduated alpha). Minimum GPU VRAM usage.

We hope this provides the community with concrete technical guidance for this important community project while we work on the ideal distribution strategy.

The Open Rails team
...............................................
Jeff Bush
(newly minted) Head of Communications

[dantheman]

Ive just finished doing up US2TwoStHse1.s replacement. What do you guys think?




PS: I've filled this one out on the spread sheet.
https://spreadsheets...=CKGl0bkC#gid=0 (near the bottom)
:umnik:

[thegrindre]

I'm not sure my opinion matters much in this thread, but, that's a pretty good job, Dan.:(

Nice work!:rofl2:

Questions: Who's the leader on this project? Is there someone I need to see about doing one myself? Is there a list?

:umnik:

:book2:

[dantheman]

Rick. all you need to do as far as I can see is look at the spread sheet and take a shape (contact with Doug would be handy) and go for it. ;)

As for correspondence with Doug, Ive posted in the thread at UKTS

[thegrindre]

Thanks, Dan. Hey, post that UKTS link here, would ya, please?

;)

[longiron]

The link to the UKTS thread is here

The link to the Community Spreadsheet is here

[thegrindre]

Thanks. Got it.;)

;)

[railfanatic844]

I downloaded Open Rails a while ago and i LOVE it, only thing is that it has some bugs that need ironing out. First of all, the rolling stock doesnt stay stay on the track, i mean the locomotives did, and the first and last car did, but the others in between dont stay on the track. Secondly, the signals on the pocahontas division have floating stands that are supposed to be for ground signals. but all in all i know this is an ongoing project before a stable version can be released. I'm offering to be a beta tester as well.

-AJ

[longiron]

railfanatic844, on 17 January 2011 - 02:07 PM, said:

I downloaded Open Rails a while ago and i LOVE it, only thing is that it has some bugs that need ironing out. First of all, the rolling stock doesnt stay stay on the track, i mean the locomotives did, and the first and last car did, but the others in between dont stay on the track.

AJ-
Please start a new thread labeled "Bug Report v360 - "name of problem" . This will help the OR team track your problem. Please include the name of the rolling stock that is experiencing the problem and a screen shot of the mis-tracking would also help us to diagnose it. There were some tracking anomolies with some spline cars that are fixed in the current development version.

railfanatic844, on 17 January 2011 - 02:07 PM, said:

Secondly, the signals on the pocahontas division have floating stands that are supposed to be for ground signals. but all in all i know this is an ongoing project before a stable version can be released.

AJ-
The signaling for OR is still very much a work in progress for v360. We are aware of the many issues and are working on solving them.