[Genma Saotome]

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That's an intriguing idea...having a "history" ( for want of a better word ) sprite above a locomotive..."Alco S2 built 1947 retired 2011" ... or whatever. I'd think that with all the interest in history -- hereabouts -- there would be some favorable movement towards something like this.

IMO paint schemes is what will vary the most over the years, tho some will also see physical bolt-ons.

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Perhaps its' day will come.

I rather doubt it.

[Laci1959]

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Nobody was interested in doing anything with the idea.

Maybe because he didn't meet him. I just met him for the first time. I tried to find some information about it, maybe an explanation, but nothing.

[Aldarion]

I certainly am interested in doing something with it.
I have a lot of locomotives with different paint schemes during the years they were in service. I even have a locomotive class in wich I have all the numbers of that class depicted and although they always had the same livery, they had a number of harware upgrades, or physical bolt-ons.
And it's the first time I come up with this comment section...

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

In Flights Sim - alternative textures, sounds, and configurations are handled by subfolders inside the models main folder with dot extensions that are chosen via the central config (ENG/WAG).

So for a 737 - it would be:

• Texture.american
  
• Texture.united
  
• Texture.southwest
  
• Texture.jetblue

• Sound.genelect
  
• Sound.rollsroyce

It's such a BETTER way than having to hardcode this information in the shape file. One config handles all variants.

Regards,
Scott

[Aldarion]

well. I think we can do that with inc files!
Never tried get and include statment to call for a shape file though!

[scottb613]

 Aldarion, on 27 October 2021 - 02:39 AM, said:

well. I think we can do that with inc files!
Never tried get and include statment to call for a shape file though!

Hi Folks,

Yeah - Peter just referred me to an example with his Niagara - he had two "ENG" files - the first ENG file being in the "OpenRails" directory of the model - was really nothing more than an include file with some freight animation parameters - which is read first due to the OpenRails directory priority - which in turn called the ENG file in the normal location with all the other usual parameters including the shape definition.

It should work - however - still not as good as Flight Sim - where a single shape can be used for many texture sets. I think you would still need many shapes collocated with respective texture sets.

Regards,
Scott

[Aldarion]

ah yes, thats right. If you have new liveries then you need a new hape file just to call on the ace/dds.
Not like flight sim.
And that is why i have a locomotive class directory with 350 MB for now, with just two different meshes, for 21 locomotives with 5 textures for mesh.

https://i.ibb.co/VMkb4X4/2500.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/YpjwPjW/01520line3.jpg

[Genma Saotome]

The root of the matter is easily understood: the .s file contains only a very small part of the information used in-game when presenting the shape; Only texture file name, it's material type, and LOD data are in the .s file. OTOH the game also needs everything in either the .eng or .wag file to make things work. What's that ratio... 1:99? And what do we always do but change the texture file name and we want to change the LOD values.

I have always thought we need a place to document the substitutions for those two and the logical place are the .eng and .wag files. Similarly all sorts of information can be added, as you see in the example I showed above.

From 5 years ago: http://www.elvastowe...__1#entry208272

[conductorchris]

Dave, I like the way you are thinking there.

The closest thing we've got, and something I have done something with is the TSREKeywords paremeter. Whatever you put amid the parenthesis will be included in searches in the TSRE consist editor. I keep the name reasonably brief and then add everything I can think of in TSREKeywords.

Christopher

[Genma Saotome]

 conductorchris, on 27 October 2021 - 01:29 PM, said:

Dave, I like the way you are thinking there.

The closest thing we've got, and something I have done something with is the TSREKeywords paremeter. Whatever you put amid the parenthesis will be included in searches in the TSRE consist editor. I keep the name reasonably brief and then add everything I can think of in TSREKeywords.

Christopher

Please post an example.