Atomic Systems

all questions are theoretical

1. whats the maximum polycount for ts to run smoothly? ( ie everything on screen at any given moment. objects scenery track locos carriages etc etc.) the reason i ask is If i have the 'outside view camera' zoomed very close in on the loco ONLY it that the only thing that TS has to worry about drawing? If this is so is it feasible to build a highpoly loco with say a poly limit of 15000( only guessing ) but only visisble upto 25 meters. then as I pull out further say to 50 meters the polycount is down to 10000 and so on. Yes I know thats what LOD is for but im just checking. So if i'm clever enough i can build a really detailed loco/object in 3D and as I pull the camera out replace some of the details by textures and hopefully you cant tell the difference. which leads me onto my next question.

2. How many 'levels' of LOD can you have? is there a set number? ie 25m 50m 100m 250m 500m 1000m and so on. Or can I do my own with levels in between. I know this will be a lot of work but I think it would be worth it.

3 Can you have a 'bump map' in TS ( for those of you not in the know a bump map is a 'transparent map' which bends the light on object so it looks like there is a bump or hollow on the object when really there isnt. )


erm I think thats about it for now i'm sure i'll come up with a few more soon

MSTS does not support bump maps, maybe MSTS2 will, but that is pure speculation.

MSTS will look at all objects in the cameras viewing angle, but should determine quickly that it is obscured, so hopefully it should not get as far as the graphics card, but again this is conjecture, as only Kuju know how they have written the game engine.

LOD distances and quantity are user definable, but the more levels you have, the bigger the model .S file gets, which will cause its own problems. Rolling stock and locos beyond 100m are so small on screen that you can almost get away with a simple box. Only large buildings benefit from LODs at greater distances.

The following shows three LOD models of a van, the first is up to 20m, the centre one is up to 40m and the third is beyond. These distances are shorter than those I used for the final release, but were used to make the differences visible. It does give an idea of what amount of detail is needed at each distance though. The poly counts are 942, 652 and 36 (yes 36!)

Hope you give it a try as i would love to see one of your top notch locos running in the sim .

The CO-BO would be a nice one that you were working on a while back .

cheers

steve in ozz

I was thinking of doing a co-bo for my next project, if you are still doing yours I'll not bother 'cause I'm still a bit . at this!!!!