[ATSF3751]

Hey everyone,

Now I know what many are thinking really another post about this? Well I have given it some thought and I would really like to get a team together and just see what it would take to get Open Rails implemented into EU5. The screens shots that were posted of MSTS equipment in UE5 environment is really entreating and gives me hope that it can be done.

All I want to do is some research and see how much interest there is in this concept along with seeing if it would be possible for this to even happen.

I know there is interest in this idea but I would need help from others who are interested in this concept to help with at least research on UE5, ones who are familiar with the program and hopefully some backing from the community and ORMT. It would be great to at least start by getting some more screen shots of equipment in UE5 to see how it looks.

I may be fighting an uphill battle with this but it's worth a shot and figured to at least try.

Brandon

[cr-stagg]

ATSF3751, on 20 December 2023 - 12:36 PM, said:

Hey everyone,

Now I know what many are thinking really another post about this? Well I have given it some thought and I would really like to get a team together and just see what it would take to get Open Rails implemented into EU5. The screens shots that were posted of MSTS equipment in UE5 environment is really entreating and gives me hope that it can be done.

All I want to do is some research and see how much interest there is in this concept along with seeing if it would be possible for this to even happen.

I know there is interest in this idea but I would need help from others who are interested in this concept to help with at least research on UE5, ones who are familiar with the program and hopefully some backing from the community and ORMT. It would be great to at least start by getting some more screen shots of equipment in UE5 to see how it looks.

I may be fighting an uphill battle with this but it's worth a shot and figured to at least try.

Brandon

What is UE5? Or is it EU5? And where are the Screenshots?

[R H Steele]

cr-stagg, on 20 December 2023 - 02:55 PM, said:

What is UE5? Or is it EU5? And where are the Screenshots?

Here Charles, Wayne Campbell's post #85 --- he has since removed the screenshots.

screenshots

[ATSF3751]

I knew it was in the forum I started and I figured Wayne had deleted the photos I did save them to my PC but not sure if I should post them!

[wacampbell]

I pulled them from the 'Future of Open Rails' thread since they weren't relevant and were causing problems. But I am fine with you reposting them here.

[ATSF3751]

wacampbell, on 20 December 2023 - 03:27 PM, said:

I pulled them from the 'Future of Open Rails' thread since they weren't relevant and were causing problems. But I am fine with you reposting them here.

Thank you Wayne! I was going to post them but wasn't sure if I should and wanted to start a new thread to see if we could gain some traction with this idea! I know it may be a long shot and a long uphill battle for many but I think UE5 would be good for Open Rails to consider. Sure it may not be the answer but it may give us an idea of what we are missing with Open Rails.

Here are the shots that were deleted! Thank you for letting me re-post them just to show others what the capability can be! Now I am not saying UE5 is the answer for Open Rails or that we need to go this route I am just wanting to show what is possible and what Open Rails could possibly be missing out on!

I am also not trying to start any controversy with this thread I am only seeing how much support there is for UE5, if it is possible, and to see if there is any traction going forward with Open Rails to shoot it into this direction as a whole.

Being that UE5 is also an Open Source Platform give us the edge and would not cost us any money to go this route.

[Jack@Elvas]

Brandon, it's not an uphill battle if you're willing to do the work yourself.
As you successfully show concepts working, you'll attract more and more people to your cause.

A good starting place would be downloading openrails and seeing if you can get it to compile and build.
After that, maybe look at the rendering engine, figure out how data goes from files on disk to a 3D image on screen. (Specifically the landscape, and tracks)
At that point you could then try to recreate that same action - loading files from disk, and rendering them in another engine like Unreal.
This to me is the big hurdle.

Unreal makes it fairly easy to create a 3D environment from within unreal, but I don't know of any Unreal games that use external data structures at runtime to generate the 3D world.
In short, you need to figure out how to get something into unreal, without pre-loading it at design time in the Unreal Editor.

If you're able to figure out how the world is rendered in OpenRails and you can figure out how to render the same world in Unreal, and you can do so with any route. I think you'll gain quite a bit of attention.

[Jack@Elvas]

Brandon is there more information you can share on those images? Are those yours?

Questions I have:
- Is everything we see from MSTS, or did a person build a diorama scene in Unreal Engine using a variety of digital assets?
- If only specific assets were brought from MSTS, which ones, were they?

[ATSF3751]

Wayne who is part of the Open Rails development team actually posted the images first so they are originally his images he posted in The Future of Open Rails thread on Elvastower. He has given me permission to use the images on here to showcase what UE5 is capable of. From my understanding is the locomotive and cars are from MSTS but the rest of it he has designed in UE5.

I am sure Wayne can explain more in detail on how he created everything and imported the locomotive and cars into a UE5 environment. I have decided to download UE5 myself and start messing around with it to figure out how to it work. I also have the OR source files downloaded on my PC as well.

Not sure if I will be able to figure it out myself as it may take some other expertise to help me out with this so called project but with what Wayne has shown there is capability out there.

Brandon

[wacampbell]

Jack@Elvas, on 20 December 2023 - 03:41 PM, said:

Brandon is there more information you can share on those images? Are those yours?

Questions I have:
- Is everything we see from MSTS, or did a person build a diorama scene in Unreal Engine using a variety of digital assets?
- If only specific assets were brought from MSTS, which ones, were they?

Yes I built these as diorama scenes. Most of the models are ones from MSTS that I had the source code for, and ported over to UE5. These include rolling stock, track, signs, buildings, catenary, road etc. The exception is the vegetation and terrain textures, which are free assets from Epic. The original objective of my post was not to say UE5 is a good choice for a train simulator. But instead to demonstrate that our old MSTS models stand up well when displayed using modern graphics methods.