[cjakeman]

 Genma Saotome, on 16 August 2021 - 09:53 AM, said:

Probably not. It's entirely a route builder feature and so each person that uses the feature will have their own ideas of what to do with it. Best thing for the manual would be to tell people to review the readme for the route to see what particular value, if any, to set when running the sim so as to block certain classes of objects.

I would like to re-visit this World Object Density one more time.

Legacy routes have used categories 0 to 10 and Dave has shown me an example where a route builder has used values > 10 to contain visual tools (e.g. labels) to help with editing routes. This looks very valuable.


I have prepared a Pull Request to set the control to provide:

0 - 99 categories for objects to show the player.
100 - 199 categories recommended for route builder's tools which the player doesn't want to see.

The Manual text will read:



I'm expecting the change will have no effect on existing routes but make it easier for route builders from now onwards. Does this seem reasonable?

[Genma Saotome]

WRT the display limits, I think it would be good enough if you gave us 25 for real things and 25 for tools. Double that to be very, very generous. I think 100 for each is too much and offhand I don't know about TSRE.

[Genma Saotome]

WRT auto-tune... never thought it would be of any benefit to me. I set view distances on a route by route basis depending entirely on how much terrain I want to see. That tends to be shorter in high mountains and longer in flat areas, limited only by how many tiles are actually present.

For my own Cal-P route -- flat foregrounds, mountains in the distance, I have 5 tiles on either side of the tanks and 100km distant terrain. It looks great.

I know performance is an issue for many end users and have often wondered if a change to rendering terrain would be useful by batching up into 1 draw call tile patches with identical textures.

[Laci1959]

Hello.

Maybe a table that includes these recommended settings per hardware.
Basic video card + 4G RAM + 6G RAM, ...
4g video card + 4G RAM + 6G RAM, ...

It would help many users.

I'm just thinking out loud.

I already learn a lot here by reading the posts. And by trying to implement the new features.

Regards Laci 1959

[cjakeman]

 Genma Saotome, on 24 August 2021 - 03:42 PM, said:

WRT the display limits, I think it would be good enough if you gave us 25 for real things and 25 for tools. Double that to be very, very generous. I think 100 for each is too much and offhand I don't know about TSRE.

Thanks for the feedback.
I'll try 0-49 for real things and 50-99 for tools.

[cjakeman]

Pressing on now with another control on the Experimental tab.




The Manual reads:



"Increase or reduce the level of detail" - Can anyone explain how this works? The code wasn't very easy for me to follow.

I believe that a visual object may be represented at more than 1 level of detail. If far away, then the less detailed version would be shown. Does this bias bring the less detailed version into view at a reduced distance? So with less detail, the CPU has less work to do, but the object appears less sharp?

Is that a fair understanding?

And why would you increase the level of detail above normal? Surely the extra detail would be too far away to perceive?

[Genma Saotome]

The increase feature might work by adding distance to the model's LOD values and thereby "fix" the too-short decisions made for many older models.

Maybe.

The other possibility is similar but applied when the view distance is extended beyond 2km and you want to see what is out there.

IMO if this is all about fixing the old models it might be better to add a new parameter to the .sd file, something like AddDistance(nnn) and have the loader do the math.

[pschlik]

 cjakeman, on 27 August 2021 - 10:49 AM, said:

And why would you increase the level of detail above normal? Surely the extra detail would be too far away to perceive?

You might think, but some old stuff gets noticeably low-quality even when it's not very far away. Old content was made for computers with less power and fewer pixels, throw the same stuff on an HD display and it just won't look as good as it used to.

Also, the reduction in quality becomes very visible when zooming in by reducing the field of view. Increasing the LOD bias is a simple way to counteract this. It's a pretty bad way to do it though-I know this is off-topic, but it would be very nice if Open Rails worked like many modern game engines do and considered not only the distance when determining what LOD to use, but also consider the perceived size of the object. If the object looks bigger on the screen, a higher-quality model should be used.

Eg: It doesn't matter if this coal gondola is 2,500 meters away. Because it takes up most of the screen, it should be rendered at higher quality than...this. While at this distance it looks fine with a normal zoom level when zoomed-in this is not acceptable.

https://i.imgur.com/2eLy5FD.png

[cjakeman]

Thanks for helping me out with these answers.

If I changed the Manual to read:

Many visual objects are modelled at more than one level of detail (LOD) so, when they are seen at a distance, Open Rails can switch to the lesser level of detail without compromising the view. This use of multiple LODs reduces the processing load and so may increase frame rates.

Lowering the LOD Bias setting below 0 reduces the distance at which a lower level of detail comes into play, and so boosts frame rates but there may be some loss of sharpness.

Raising the LOD Bias setting above 0 increases the distance at which a lower level of detail comes into play. This may be useful to sharpen distant content that was created for a smaller screen or a wider field of view than you are currently using.

If your content does not use multiple LODs, then this option will have no effect.

would that be a fair summary?

Have I got it the right way round?

[pschlik]

That should be the right way around (above 0=more detail, below 0=less detail), and I think that description is significantly more useful than the description currently in the manual (which barely explains what the option does at all!)