[Traindude]

I for one would love to see animation tags and hierarchical conventions deviate from standard MSTS practice.

For example, many third-party models have parts that are animated proportionally to the speed of the vehicle, but are labelled as "WHEELS". This screws up the axle/wheel count in the consist information in the extended HUD Consist Info section (SHIFT+ALT+F5). For example, on midneguy's brilliant CB&Q heavyweight coaches, there are animated "WHEELS" that represent axle-driven generators. When viewed in the Extended HUD, instead of the wheel count being "6-6" like it ordinarily would, it's "6-2-8".

Deviating from prior MSTS conventions would potentially allow better animations for things like articulated locomotives, idler axles within a rigid frame (no "BOGIE" required) and other things...

[Weter]

Yes.
We have jealousies, animated as wipers, cooling fans, animated as wheels/rods... All these looks ugly.
8-axle tankers needed to be configured as locomotives with 1watt power to have animated gear.

[superheatedsteam]

Thank you Peter and the team for all your work on this enhancement.

 gpz, on 22 February 2023 - 02:34 AM, said:

[*]The accepted animation tags: should we keep the MSTS ones or define new names.

Will defining new new names cause duplication for existing tags. 3D cab views have more than external models.

http://www.elvastowe...post__p__280752

 gpz, on 22 February 2023 - 02:34 AM, said:

[*]LODs are to be internal, external or either. (See some relevant comments here.)

I can see the advantages and disadvantages of both but if I had to pick one then it would be external. Would this allow overriding the LOD settings of any glTF model?

Cheers,

Marek.

[gpz]

 superheatedsteam, on 23 February 2023 - 07:54 AM, said:

I can see the advantages and disadvantages of both but if I had to pick one then it would be external. Would this allow overriding the LOD settings of any glTF model?

I can think of something like that in the anyobject_LOD00.gltf for the root node an "extras" field could be defined, where the LOD configuration could be set, when to show the anyobject_LOD01.gltf, _LOD02:

"extras": { "OPENRAILS_screencoverage": [ 0.5, 0.2, 0.01 ] }

or

"extras": { "OPENRAILS_distancelevels": [ 200, 500, 1500 ] }

[Genma Saotome]

Curiosity here... would the new format allow modelers to craft large steam locomotives as a single model instead of the MSTS practice of dividing it into two?

[gpz]

I try to fit the new format into the existing systems as seamlessly as possible, only adding new game logics where absolutely necessary, so at this stage there will be no such improvement, but this is definitely something to keep in mind.

[Genma Saotome]

 gpz, on 22 February 2023 - 11:30 PM, said:

Dave, yes, sure, just give a copy to me, and I will take a look on that, and also if the loader faces any bugs, I will correct them (the loader part). The larger the test suit, more reliable will be the result! If after the gltf export you can view it in the Windows built-in 3D Viewer, that's a good start. It should look quite similar in the game too.

Peter, I converted all of the texture inputs to .png, including those w/ alphas and the resulting .gltf and .glb files failed in a viewer. When I removed all textures from the model both file types displayed correctly. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[gpz]

It might be the images path. Would you please open the gltf in a text editor and check the paths? One limitation I know of is the paths cannot contain the "../" string.

[Traindude]

 Genma Saotome, on 23 February 2023 - 12:41 PM, said:

Curiosity here... would the new format allow modelers to craft large steam locomotives as a single model instead of the MSTS practice of dividing it into two?

That is what I am hoping for too. My Challenger test model proves that, in terms of making articulated locomotives a single-piece model, the bits and pieces are there, but we just need to "fill in the gaps" so to speak.

[gpz]

Actually it would be challenging to bring this together. But I surely needed a test case for that. Would it be possible that you tried to export your most challenging locomotive to gltf for me in one piece? I could try to see what can be done, but this for sure would not go into this actual PR.