[Genma Saotome]

Goku, on 07 November 2017 - 02:18 PM, said:

Genma Saotome, check new version. Lots of (all?) your last suggestions implemented.

64 bit?

Nevermind, I found it.

[Jovet]

Eldorado.Railroad, on 04 November 2017 - 09:03 PM, said:

Over time, I have come to the realization that enabling DM in OR results in severe performance penalties.

I suggest one's mileage varies and is dependent on their tier of computing equipment. And also "severe performance penalties" is a bit subjective, just like "low frame rate" is. What is poor performance for one person or machine might be fine on another.

[James Ross]

Goku, on 07 November 2017 - 03:47 PM, said:

Did KUJU route builders just lowered the DM terrain a lot to avoid white voids in their routes or it is MSTS RE bug when viewing DM?

I'm sure lowering DM terrain is advice I've seen before, but can't currently find any references.

[Csantucci]

Goku,
this http://www.elvastowe...0-distant-mtns/ is the thread that was used during development of the DM under OR. There is some info which could be useful to you.
As you can read, the OR DM developer Jijun Tang lowered the height of the distant mountains by an amount that for a certain phase was also parametrizable in the menu options.
Looking at the code it seems to me that James Ross fully removed this lowering.
I'd suggest that when creating the DM you lower their height by an amount definable in the settings. When later the feature will be settled, this parameter may be fixed and removed from the settings.

[Genma Saotome]

For years and years the advice shared by route builders was to drop DM by 20m. Sometimes that wasn't enough, sometimes it was too much. IMO what James was talking about makes more sense than dropping the DM... certainly more sense than having OR add its own drop to what the route builders have done.

When did James introduce that DM feature? I tried to reproduce the image I shared and I could not. I'd like to check the date of the screenshots I have that show the gap.

[Csantucci]

There are two ways out:
- create DM terrain files with lowered altitude data in the RE so that it is not needed to lower DM terrain in OR
- create DM terrain files with unchanged data in the RE and lower DM terrain in OR.
As the OR code was modified by James in release 1757 dated september 15th, 2013 , removing the DM terrain lowering (at least so it seems to me at a first glance - James, pls. correct me if I'm wrong), only the first solution, that is the one I have suggested in my previous post, is viable.

[Genma Saotome]

On further review I determined the white gaps I observed were a result of mixing a developer specified DM drop with DM not dropped.
 dm.jpg (32.84K)
Number of downloads: 2

The silver DM tiles have been dropped 40m. The red DM tiles have not been dropped at all.

That is my mistake and it means I have a lot to do to fix it. That said, due to the many steps one needs to take when creating DM tiles it is the kind of error that is very easy to make. If you don't review all of the DM tiles in Mosaic (drag a mouse across all of the tiles and assess the altitude value shown for each) you'll never know what exactly is going on when you see a gap, nor how to fix it.


There is one feature that would make the display of DM tiles better and that is to include the water layer (if any) from any near terrain tile that occupies any portion of the same area of a displayed DM tile. The value add is for larger bodies of water. As things are now we have to paint the water into the DM terrtex art and it's never going to look right given the fact the shader for water isn't invoked. Even at a considerable distance the painted water looks wrong.

[James Ross]

Genma Saotome, on 09 November 2017 - 10:08 AM, said:

When did James introduce that DM feature? I tried to reproduce the image I shared and I could not. I'd like to check the date of the screenshots I have that show the gap.

• X1519 - DM terrain added
  
• X1523 - DM terrain lowering added at ~25m
  
• X1527 - DM terrain lowering changed to ~50m
  
• X1535 - DM quad tile support added
  
• X1757 - large terrain update, quad tile support added, DM lowering removed
  
• X2013 - soft blending of terrain into DM terrain added

[Goku]

Where in OR code is QuadTree support? It's weird for me why OR supports only 1x1 and 2x2 Tiles (+separate x8 option, so + 8x8 and 16x16).
Editing all tile sizes is something difficult, but viewing all sizes seems simple.

[Garry]

I am wondering what is the purpose of lowering DM terrain. Is it to account for the curvature of the earth? If so, it needs to drop about 30 metres at a distance of 20 km. Obviously as the DM terrain gets further away this drop should increase.

But how does this match up with near terrain which is made on a flat earth? If the Open Rails viewing distance is set to the maximum of 10 km the most distant terrain should have a drop of about 8 metres, but this is not modelled. So at this distance the near terrain appears 8 metres higher than reality, and if a drop of 30 metres is applied to DM terrain there will be a step where the 2 types of terrain meet.

The curvature of the earth is most inconvenient for us modellers, not only does the distant earth fall away, but we work on square tiles, and even if we ignore the curvature, we are wrong because the northern tile boundary should be shorter than the southern (for northern hemisphere routes). Sometimes it pays not to look too hard, and be grateful for what you can deal with.

Garry