Atomic Systems

Taking advantage of the new patch from MT which makes the signals brighter.

Very nice.
What are you using to get the sky like that as it looks far better than even the MT patched enviroment.

JR

Stunning

JSReeves86 wrote:Very nice.
What are you using to get the sky like that as it looks far better than even the MT patched enviroment.

JR

Thanks. I used Kosmos to get that sky. It can be found in the UKTS library.

That really nice, but MSTS Still doesn't have the ability so that you can see signals farther away than about 0.2 mile.

Brilliant Shot Though!

Cheers

Ali

I've found in the signals that I've built (which is the same thing that MT have done now) that they are always brighter in view 4 and so you can see them better, but in views 1/2/3 they appear to not be as bright.

There is a way to make them very bright, but unfortuantley there's some conflicting thing with the alpha on the trees created by a forest marker, and the trees behind it disappear leaving a 'square of alpha' as such in the trees.

Rich

That really nice, but MSTS Still doesn't have the ability so that you can see signals farther away than about 0.2 mile.

Brilliant Shot Though!

Cheers

Ali

Ali,

This is not strictly true. I am using MT's signal upgrade and at night time can see the signals up to 0.6 miles before reaching them.

Steve

trains2 wrote:I've found in the signals that I've built (which is the same thing that MT have done now)

Do you know what we've done ?

Yes

I downloaded it and had a look.

Good, can you explain it to me ?

With pleasure.

By making the size of the lense in the texture smaller, so that it doesn't take up the whole of the alpha square, combined with making the radius in the sigcfg.dat file bigger, means the lense is mapped over a larger area and for some reason becomes visible at greater distances. The smaller you make the size of the lense in the texture and the bigger you make the radius in the sigcfg.dat, the further away you will be able to see the lights.

The only flaw with this is when there are forest markers placed. Forests are just 2 textures of a tree formed in an 'X' and multiplied as per density. Annoyingly the alpha in the forests is just normal Alpha (non-DXT) which means that anything with any other type of alpha put in front of it will 'block out' the trees as such, with the size of the alpha box in front of it, i.e. the signal lense texture. If the forests were done using Alpha (Trans) then we wouldn't have a problem. So therefore the size of the texture for the lense is limited to the width of the signal head, so that it doesn't cause problems with the forest markers.

Maple Leaf Tracks first introduced this a few years ago with their signal patch, as seen here: http://www.mapleleaftracks.com/free.html. However they didn't seem to spot the 'squares in the forests' and when I implimented the patch on London - Southampton and later Dorest Coast, the problem came up and we had to abandon the idea (for DC at least).

Rich

Ah, and now the "for some reason becomes visible at greater distances" bits got you stumped then, so you don't really know how its been done !

I think I do, but thats what I pay people for, to do the clever bit !

buffy500 wrote:Ah, and now the "for some reason becomes visible at greater distances" bits got you stumped then, so you don't really know how its been done !

I think I do, but thats what I pay people for, to do the clever bit !

But that is how MSTS works, not how you achieve it. One doesn't need to change anything to get that bit to work, just as long as you can do it. My knowledge is on getting things like that to work, not necessarily why they work, that is something for the chaps who dig deep into the core of MSTS to find out about. Everything and anything to do with signals is contained within the sigcfg.dat file and sigscr.dat file (and associated textures/shapes of course) so if you have a good knowledge of these and how they work then you can do anything with signals!

phat2003uk wrote:
Taking advantage of the new patch from MT which makes the signals brighter.

That's one of the best shots I've ever seen.

Brilliant atmosphere, and yes, the signal lights are nice and bright too.

Great how the rails are illuminated. IMO that effect is sometimes difficult to recreate.

Thanks all for the comments!