Atomic Systems

Following the comments on the amount of line side tree planting on Western Mainlines...


I've been making my own observations during recent train and road journeys from Cardiff - and comparing them to what I see in TS.

The Cardiff - Newport section of WM is slightly spoilt by the amount of planting - in reality there is very little. What there is a lot of is weeds, scrub, old railway clutter, and where tidied up, lots of relatively open space...

This open space is quite noticeable on many parts of the road and rail network. Winter storms and tree fall disruption has prompted a major onslaught on trees near infrastructure. The result is even more open areas.

Now, the point of the post - why the non-prototypical usage of some many line side trees in TS (Riviera was the first culprit that I clocked).

Clearly it helps screen wider areas that would otherwise need scenery, but as an (amateur) route builder, I fear it comes back to two key difficuencies of the sim:

1) the awful 8m terrain grid - the ugly angular surfaces (or replacement embankment lofts that can't be textured) need to be hidden

2) the terrain textures / procedural flora / vegetation assets don't provide a suitable type of ground cover to reflect what we see in the real world...

I'd be interested in everyone's thoughts on this. The "old" railway had an army of employees to keep the infrastructure in order, and for some areas such as mountains, moorland etc, tree lined routes aren't appropriate!

Why assets have been used is really a question to ask the route builder, but I agree the grid sizing does make for areas that need masking. However,

rkk01 wrote: 1) the awful 8m terrain grid - the ugly angular surfaces (or replacement embankment lofts that can't be textured) need to be hidden

2) the terrain textures / procedural flora / vegetation assets don't provide a suitable type of ground cover to reflect what we see in the real world...

lofts can be re-textured, the .Xsec file act just like a conventional .GeoPcDx file in respect of pointing to which textures are used. Terrain textures can be mixed and matched, created and edited, to put together a palette suitable for the needs of the route/route builder and vegetation assets can be re-worked. Now we start looking at route buiders also being reskinners, which isn't everybody's cup of tea--collaborative route building may be the answer there, use the right tool for the job kind of thinking. Of course there'll be times when producing retextured assets just won't work and you've outlined an area the game is lacking in---old *rubbish* clutter to take the eye away from the shortcomings of the terrain.

The skill with vegetation is judging when to stop so you get a nice balance of coverage and performance.

As Western Lines was mentioned, I'll use it as an example but it's only one of many routes that over lays trees to the extreme. 10 x 3D tree lines where 3 would suffice, 10 x single 3D tree's where 2 would do, 3D trees used in the distance 'hidden' behind 2D trees and 40 x 3D bushes to cover a small road bridge embankment. If all these trees are within a tile or two of the driver, they all have to be loaded, hence why so many 'Dump' files when the PC runs out of resources.

I've said for a while that I've liked DTG route builds of late because they seem to strike a balance to me. Maybe it is because I drive scenarios from in the cab, I'm not flying in a drone looking over hedges to see what is a kilometer from the track. I prefer the line of sight approach even with vegetation close to the track. I've often found that even in a cutting or on an embankment you can achieve decent cab view cover for the terrain with very few vegetation assets. Unfortunately, when you are building from above, and particularly using Google Earth, that bank always looks so bare but get down to ground level where you'd be speeding past at 80mph or so, you hardly notice the jagged terrain as it's masked by only a couple of banks of trees.

As ever, it is each to their own. Some build that way, some don't, some like to drive routes like that, some don't. Me, I prefer a route where I can knock my settings up so the close scenery looks nice and sharp without hitting performance, especially in this sim where loading lag has always been a factor.

pjt1974 wrote:The skill with vegetation is judging when to stop so you get a nice balance of coverage and performance.

I'm in a similar situation with my route. There's an area south-east of Bakersfield that's known for its many square miles of orange groves. Using 2D trees, I've extended the groves 1500m or less from the tracks, but the groves bring the game to a crawl (there are several thousand trees in the scene). I suspect this is due to alpha stacking, which would be problematic for most any game, and the 2D trees can't be "trimmed" to the alpha edges, as Railworks demands that view-facing objects have no more than 2-polys.

I just haven't found a balance or an acceptable solution. Too bad the asset blocks don't support straight rows, else I wouldn't have to build my own blocks (linked child objects). I'm not sure though this would help with alpha stacking.

Some of the best vegetating I've seen to date has come from 'fakenham' who seems to get the line side and open space representations spot on.

jetstream wrote:Some of the best vegetating I've seen to date has come from 'fakenham' who seems to get the line side and open space representations spot on.

A very skilled artist indeed.

It has to be remembered that I imagine that takes Fakenham (he may be able to tell us how long) a great deal of time to get such fantastic looking tracksides,something that may not be really appropriate when working under commercial time restrictions.

jetstream wrote:Some of the best vegetating I've seen to date has come from 'fakenham' who seems to get the line side and open space representations spot on.

fully agree the balance is spot on.