[Gman347]

Not specifically as a result of this thread, but I was recently wondering if anybody uses Kosmos? It looks like a worthwhile addon. Or is it not what it appears to be?

[Genma Saotome]

There are two different features sets in this discussion: changing atmospheric conditions is one... lots of ideas in these posts. The second is what does it look like on the ground? The two are related but not fixed together: You can have falling snow over bare ground... snow covered ground under broad blue skies. Has it rained? Things are darker if they're wet.

I would think it would be pretty easy for the OR Options window to have one series of exclusive radio buttons for seasonality, an adjacent set for the effects of recent precipitation -- dry, rain, snow, and a third set for current precipitation conditions -- dry, rain, snow again. These simple control a couple of steps in the code: which directory to look for textures for static objects and terrain... and what to do with screen sprites (none, rain, snow).

Later on he same selection can be built into the activity editor. Note that the two can be done at serially at completely different times by different people.

This lets us pick:

• Summer
  
• Rain wet appearance
  
• Clear skys

or

• Winter
  
• Clear ground
  
• Snowing

or whatever.

Yeah, it does need a directory added for Rain and populated with textures... it isn't a big deal (and I've been doing rain textures for models for some years now and darker for wet looks good).

[Genma Saotome]

 jared2982, on 06 November 2013 - 06:12 AM, said:

How about snow that collects over the tracks?

Set up a directory called \Dry Tiles and put a copy of your route terrain into it. In the actual tiles directory, use Route Ritter (or some other utility) to lift the terrain some distance... couple of inches, couple of meters, whatever is right for the route. Get into RE and set the terrain window parameters to a narrow band... perhaps 15m wide. Start selecting tracks and dropping the terrain to track levels. When you are done, create a directory called \Snow Tiles and move all those newly edited terrain data into it.

You now have two sets of terrain: normal, dry terrain and another that's snow packed. Got a winter scenario? Delete everything in \tiles and then copy/paste into it all the files from \Snow Tiles. Time for summer? Repeat the process only use the files in \Dry Tiles as your source.

Other than the ugly task of dropping terrain for every track and road it does give you an easy way to get what you want.

[railguy]

If the weather dynamics could be programmed by the OR team, that would be great. It's the dynamic weather "concept" that I'm pushing. To be clear, the REX weather module is more than just a weather engine (e.g., displaying realtime weather for the lat-long location where the player is). REX also presents a plethora of weather textures--clouds, precipation, light, lightning, wind effects.etc.). The player can choose whether to allow the REX program to "select" the weather regime to reflect what is currently going on at a particular location, or the activity designer or player can develop a weather scenario where the weather dynamically changes over time, location, or both. That latter option is what intrigues me. Imagine running an activity on, say Seligman 2 BNSF. The train leaves Needles in warm, breezy, but clear weather. Moving east, the train crew can see storm clouds developing and hanging up in the mountains between Seligman and Flagstaff. By the time that they reach Crookston, rain is falling--turning into snow as they proceed east. By Flagstaff, they are in a full-blown blizzard. As the train moves farther east, the snow tapers off, then stops. By the time they reach Winslow, a hard wind is all that is showing of the storm. That would be prototypical weather for that area in winter.

Or, how about a train eastbound on the east side of Marias Pass running into a severe thunderstorm (that they see forming when they are still miles away) around Cut Bank, complete with thunder and lightning. That would add a whole new dimension of realism to the sim. FSX and REX prove that it's possible, and, from what I've read, they do it without putting a huge hit on computer resources. I still think the concept is worth investigating, no matter how it finally might get implemented. As I recall, dynamic weather was identified early-on as one of the goals of the OR sim.

As to Kosmos, I used it in MSTS from the time it was introduced. There are some very good sky textures that were developed for Kosmos, but they were not dynamic. I "tweatked" the .env file of one of the Kosmos snow environments to make a raging blizzard with the snow going almost horizontal. I miss that one in OR.

[James Ross]

 captain_bazza, on 06 November 2013 - 03:00 PM, said:

Re dynamic weather in MSTS, who remembers Kosmos?

Kosmos isn't so much dynamic weather, as taking full advantage of the features in MSTS to animate and make reasonably good-looking conditions IIRC. You can define in the .env file which way and how fast the clouds move, for example (and maybe even multiple levels of clouds?), and animated/moving water textures too.

We don't support most of that in OR, though I'd be happy for someone to add it. However, we also need to be looking at ways to create better environments than Kosmos managed with MSTS, which I think is where this thread's pointed.

 railguy, on 06 November 2013 - 06:53 PM, said:

If the weather dynamics could be programmed by the OR team, that would be great.

Yeah, that's what I want. There is a certain tension between the route and the game on who gets to visualise such things, though; OR currently has its own sky/sun/clouds but uses the route's water. For Kosmos support, it'd need to be almost all route images. But to go one better, it'd need to be all OR images. I'm honestly not sure what the right balance is here.

[ED_4]

 captain_bazza, on 06 November 2013 - 03:00 PM, said:

Re dynamic weather in MSTS, who remembers Kosmos?

Cheers Bazza

Remember it? I use it all the time. Every time I add a route in MSTS. On goes Kosmos to put in the environments I like best. I never stick with the stock environment that came with the route. That's just a matter of personal taste. ;)

I do wish that you could do that with OR. Like at least be able to adopt or convert all those environments that Kosmos is able to put in MSTS.

[captain_bazza]

FYI:

Jak Fearon's Kosmos is available from UKTS, two files kosmos10.zip and patch kosmos101.zip. There are also kosmos environments and tutorials.

Cheers Bazza

[ED_4]

 captain_bazza, on 07 November 2013 - 02:55 AM, said:

FYI:

Jak Fearon's Kosmos is available from UKTS, two files kosmos10.zip and patch kosmos101.zip. There are also kosmos environments and tutorials.

Cheers Bazza

Kosmos is also in TrainSim.com's file library, along with a few environs for Kosmos. So UKTS isn't the only place that has it.

[rdamurphy]

James, PM sent...

Robert

[disc]

I think real time weather is not necessary, until real time traffic will be implemented ;)