[Tony]

Watch out Guys she's going to blow.

[rfranzosa]

I apologize if this has been asked before, but does OR plan to include more than two exhaust sources per loco? I'm thinking EMD FTs, zephyrs, some Baldwins, etc. with 4 stacks.

[rdamurphy]

 rfranzosa, on 25 February 2014 - 01:00 PM, said:

I apologize if this has been asked before, but does OR plan to include more than two exhaust sources per loco? I'm thinking EMD FTs, zephyrs, some Baldwins, etc. with 4 stacks.

Actually... It works now. You can add as many as you want. The code loops through the .eng file looking for the Exhaust parameters, and it's never been coded to stop at two...

Robert

[timmuir]

 rdamurphy, on 25 February 2014 - 05:31 PM, said:

Actually... It works now. You can add as many as you want. The code loops through the .eng file looking for the Exhaust parameters, and it's never been coded to stop at two...

Robert

Reading this, I immediately went to the engine file in my Ma & Pa doodlebug #62 and was going to add the other four diesel smoke effects into the code to try this out. The 6 effects were already written in, so I opened it up in OR and sure enough, there it was, six exhausts! Cool! :lol2:

[markus_GE]

Looks superb, Tim. But aren´t you suffering from quite some drops in framerates? THis is my only rant about the new exhaust, that with three or more locos in view, FPS drop, dramatically at times...

Nevertheless, :sign_rockon:Open Rails!

Cheers, Markus

[timmuir]

Markus, I didn't get a frame rate hit with the doodlebug, but I sure did with the SP SD's pictured above on the Feather River route, especially when the smoke covered the whole screen!! Lots of smoke is always a frame rate killer, even in other sims and games.

[rfranzosa]

 timmuir, on 25 February 2014 - 07:16 PM, said:

Reading this, I immediately went to the engine file in my Ma & Pa doodlebug #62 and was going to add the other four diesel smoke effects into the code to try this out. The 6 effects were already written in, so I opened it up in OR and sure enough, there it was, six exhausts! Cool! ;)

Open Rails 2014-02-25 07-11-09.jpg

Hey Tim,

I just want to understand your comment. You said the six exhaust smoke effects were already in the eng file. Does that mean that MSTS simply ignores anything over 2? It doesn't crash?

Thanks

[markus_GE]

 timmuir, on 26 February 2014 - 07:39 AM, said:

Markus, I didn't get a frame rate hit with the doodlebug, but I sure did with the SP SD's pictured above on the Feather River route, especially when the smoke covered the whole screen!! Lots of smoke is always a frame rate killer, even in other sims and games.

Obviously I´m too much of a train-fanatic to have known that... though it seems obvious to me now, that ORTS is not the only victim of smoke attacking performance ;)

Cheers, Markus

[timmuir]

 rfranzosa, on 26 February 2014 - 07:42 AM, said:

Hey Tim,

I just want to understand your comment. You said the six exhaust smoke effects were already in the eng file. Does that mean that MSTS simply ignores anything over 2? It doesn't crash?

Thanks

Yes, Rick. It would seem so. The six exhausts were written in the original eng file back when Chuck Zeiler was still helping me with such things in the hopes that somehow they'd all work, but never did. I had totally forgotten about the fact that they were in the file.

@ Markus: The remark about smoke impacting frame rates in other games is from my past experiences while playing a couple other games on an older computer, such as Call of Duty 2 and others...

[rdamurphy]

It makes sense if you think about it. Each smoke "particle" is a six sided dynamically drawn shape, with textures, that has to be tracked from "birth" to "death", and they also move about randomly, and directionally. I suppose I could figure out how many are in the screenshot of the smoke apocalypse, but to use a technical programming term: There's a heckavu LOT of them!

Robert