[damo]

A few shots from a new route that appears to be quite well done and evokes a real Indian atmosphere...



Quite a nicely detailed bridge..










Cheers
Damo

[pnrailway]

Damo,

The scenery does seem to be very well done and looks like a number of the scenes I have seen of that far off corner of the world. The only thing that is missing compared to the actual photos would be more people. Thank you for posting.

Paul

[Fred]

Looks great. What route is it?

[Noisemaker]

The Indians are really getting detailed! Looks fantastic! I raced to get the Matheran 'toy train' route when it came out, as that one always amazed me in real life. They did a good job, but due to MSTS track and terrain, wasn't quite the realism I had hoped for. Plus the fact it required umpteen rolling stock downloads that were not really relevant, other than a few AI's to be barely seen at the base transfer station. And with all my computer woes and/or MSTS crashes because of that, the route did not stay on my machine too long. :thumbdown3:

And what are the act's like for this Damo? They wouldn't happen to have a 'Wasabi Run' on it would they? Basically the majority of Indian men get up at the crack of dawn and pile and cling on the trains to get to work. The wife get's up later and prepares their lunch at home. She set's it out by the front door, and these 'Wasabi couriers' pick it up. And if you thought Fed Ex and UPS was good, these Wasabi guys collect thousands, if not millions of lunches by 10am. Mark, and expedite them around India's cities. And by noon the Indian men have what looks like a paint can with their wife\s hot meal in it delivered to their desk or work area. Absolutely amazing how coordinated it all is. Day in and day out.

[damo]

Hi Paul, Fred, Noisemaker,
The route is NFR Route Guwahati-New Jalpaiguri v1.0 over at Trainsim.com. There are quite a few activities for it [not sure about a 'Wasabi rub! :shock6: ] but they generally need lots of rollingstock which makes for lots of traffic. I've downloaded a few Indian routes in the past and they sometimes took a little 'tweaking' to get them to run. The NFR runs straight outta the box and compared to the other routes I have run is a great improvement in scenery, etc. The bigger stations have people on the platforms but ideally I would like to find a way to have loads of passengers hanging off the trains. The other thing I've noted in real life on Indian railways is the general litter, etc that covers the tracks. I'm no expert on track textures but am wondering how difficult this would be to replicate?
Anyway thanks for looking and enjoy.
Cheers
Damo

[Noisemaker]

I'm tempted Damo, but all that rolling stock again, huh? But they certainly put a lot of work into it all, so would be kinda sacrilegious to run in Explore Mode without them. Think I had to 'tweek' the Matheran as well, so it's good to know this one is pretty solid from the get go. I too would love to see people clinging all over the train. but to do it in 2D like the Beatles 'Sgt. Pepper' cover I don't think would look good on the cars. And to do them in 3D and partially animated would be SEVERE on the poly count and would probably crash MSTS soon as it opened.

As to 'trash', that's a good question. Texturing the Acleantrack.ace's I wouldn't advise, as that would be too monotonous after driving on it for awhile. But Ron Picardi really spread the junk around on the PRR route with some good 3D 'debris clusters' of old bed frames, tires, bricks, etc. all piled together. Too much on the PRR I think, but have used them sparingly on my GTA route, and they certainly do add to the realism.
But I'm wondering about making and using a 'transfer'? It would have to be microscopic to begin with. But when stretched out over a large area - might look convincing?

Think I might give that a whirl. I'll keep you posted mate! :shock6:

[Fred]

 damo, on 16 May 2012 - 12:26 PM, said:

The other thing I've noted in real life on Indian railways is the general litter, etc that covers the tracks. I'm no expert on track textures but am wondering how difficult this would be to replicate?

Cheers
Damo

Hi Damo.

That seems to be my complaint about routes in general that do not run through deserts. They appear to be running through well manicured and almost formal park land. Don't get me wrong. These routes are fantastic and I am sure a lot of backbreaking work went into their development. What I want to know is where is the litter on the stations? Where is the litter on the road bed? When I travel through a rail yard I want to see ground that is so oil soaked nothing grows there even without ballast. Where are the pools of putrid water with clouds of mosquitoes floating over them? And finally, along with the deer hazard adjustment on each activity there should a washing machine/refrigerator hazard adjustment for overpasses(that is a good goal for open rails). :shock6:

[Noisemaker]

Well, sho much for that great idea. I thought I could actually get the pixels and sizing down to 8 and 4. But seems like the lowest TGAtool will convert at is 16 pixels So my Pop Art Masterpiece I entitled 'MicroGarbage' wound up looking like blobby paint spills with nuclear fusion going on in the middle at 100ft sq....

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc485/TheNoisemaker/MicroGarbageNOGO.jpg

Think India's had enough with 'chemical spills'. :shock6:

[damo]

Hi Fred,
I understand what you're saying about this sort of track detail. Unfortuantely I'm not as clued up as some experts on this sort of thing so I don't know if it's possible.

Hi Noisemaker,
Thanks for havin' a go mate. I might just have to muck around with placing various scenery objects about the place for added clutter.
As far as having the all rollingstock goes I don't download it all to run an activity; I make up a few consists I like with detail etc then use a program called CONVOI to change out the consists the activities call for for the ones I have created. It even works for loose consists.
I'll try and post some shots a bit later after I've walked and fed our two huskies.
Cheers
Damo

[Noisemaker]

I know there's good 'trash mounds' over at TS, and they come with a transfer ace as well. These are great for doing land fills and big urban dump yards. But probably TOO much for India. :oldstry:

I'll have to give Convoi a go. I used to use Activity Master. But trying to install it on this new laptop, I can't for the life of me find the stupid 'password' to do it? Around here somewhere. :bigboss: