[charland]

Morning All,

After seeing a couple of shots Shawn posted that he took in OR the other day and seeing his question about forests now being pushed back from the track a bit too much I've been thinking about what should be done about that.

While creating the original DAR route it was brought to my attention that while forested were working fine in MSTS the same forest regions may or may not be planting trees in the middle of roads or in buildings. At the time OR was in it's infancy and not being a programmer myself I thought it was something that would eventually be corrected... well, turned out to be a bit more then that and finding the exact same algorithm that Microsoft used for their forests is pretty much impossible.

When placing houses along rural roads it's much easier to place a sparse forest along a stretch of road, then place a few houses in between the trees, the DAR route id full of areas that were created this way. It's easily done in MSTS because you can see what the result is going to be as you place things, but have no idea what it would look like in OR. It's going to stay that way until OR comes up with their own editing suite and people can start building route in OR and not have to use MSTS again.

I'm thinking it would be much better if OR went back to putting trees in the forest region boundary box and not automatically moving the box away from the right of way. Trees do grow next to the track and is some instances grow over the tracks (plenty of places where the trees are cut away from the tracks at ground level but the canopy covers the tracks fifty or sixty feet about.

This might mean that older routes might have trees sticking in the road or in structures where they weren't intended, anyone like myself who builds routes will have to keep that in mind and avoid placing forests over roads and structures. If you open an old route in OR and find this sort of thing, just going to have to live with it. Some day we'll be building routes in OR and then be able to go back to knowing where the trees will be and placing objects around them.

So, please OR, let the trees go back to where they were, close to the tracks where trees grow,

Paul :-)

[SVRy_Steve]

Well said Paul!

If older routes have a tree out of place or on the tracks, this is annoying, but the route is still compatible with OR. New routes deserve the ability to place things precisely where needed. Right now it's guesswork and a lot of back and forth from the RE to OR.

I suppose, if it's possible, OR should default to proper placement, with the ability to check a box and go to "Legacy" placement or something.

Steve

[charland]

Hi Steve,

To get a "legacy placement" they would have to know and use the same algorithm that that Microsoft used and that would eliminate the problem to begin with!

Paul :-)

[SVRy_Steve]

I guess I should have stated, the "Legacy Placement" would be what they are using now, inset from the bounding box and back from the tracks. Default would place the trees in and to the edge of the bounding box. I realize the trees won't be placed in the same locations as in MSTS.

Steve

[James Ross]

charland, on 18 April 2014 - 05:22 AM, said:

So, please OR, let the trees go back to where they were, close to the tracks where trees grow,

I don't understand where people are continuing to get this incorrect understanding... OR hasn't moved trees away from the track since at least version 1478 in March 2013, over a year ago.

What OR does instead is push trees back from the edge of the forest region. I do not agree with this either - it's blatantly the wrong thing to do. I'm putting the forest code on my todo list.

[charland]

Morning James,

The first time I saw this was a weeks ago, so have no idea when it started. Thanks for putting it on your to do list, people like myself will just have to pay more attention where their forest regions go!

Paul :-)