Immersion while driving suggestion to the TS team.

[SkylineBoy]

Yes that would be nice, also rubbish along the lineside around surburban lines as people don't care where they throw there rubbish, but can not see it happening DTG don't really go for realism, not much extra has been added to TSW which is one reason I have very little interest in it, there is a lot more that can be added to TS as seen by third party developers.

You mean like all of the lineside rubbish that litters many of the recent DTG routes?

[david1]

You mean like all of the lineside rubbish that litters many of the recent DTG routes?

Yes they have made a bit of a start, but a lot more is need to make the routes look more real the odd supermarket trolley on the embankment lots of plastic bags ect. might be far simpler to get Network rail to do a cleanup of the real lines, rather than DTG to add realism.

[AndiS]

You simple see that we are looking at a product that is more than 10 years old.
First, scenery was all set in stone.
Then, they introduced scenario-specific scenery.

Now what is lacking is a nice interface to place scenery for a range of scenarios. Adding certain stuff in all your daytime scenarios just to avoid having it in the night time is certainly boring.

I guess you can do some reuse by copying over scenery tiles from one scenario to another, but as always in such cases, extra care is required and you can only do it on a per-tile basis. Could be flexible enough if the special vignettes are spare enough. I.e., if there are just a few items per tile that are added for a scenario, then targeted reuse would really be feasible. But you need some book keeping as a route builder to keep track of what you want to copy from where to which scenario.

[AndyB1972]

I wondered if using a greater variety and density of static (as opposed to AI) models for humans, animals, vehicles, etc would provide a compromise between greater immersion and resource drain? Would it follow that if the objects were only static, they would be less resource-intensive (possibly easier to model) which in turn might allow for more of them to be used in a route? For me personally, when it comes to a sense of immersion, even when they’re not walking through walls, wading knee-deep in concrete platform or stepping in front of my train, the current crop of AI passenger models does very little to enhance my experience anyway and I’d gladly swap the lot for static objects that were more varied and appropriate to the scene. I suppose the effect I’m thinking of is that of a well-constructed model railway layout. Perhaps not to everyone’s taste or expectations of today though…

[rkk01]

Grime

[749006]

It would be good if DTG just changed a few things which spoil the visual effect

That Kuju Bus which appears in a lot of routes, spotted it on the Hagen - Siegen, and is passable in the London area but then when you are elsewhere it just looks stupid and it's oversized.
Maybe replace it with a generic coach as that would be a lot better and not stand out as much

And the Zombie passengers who walk around the place going thru building walls and anything else
Lets have seated passengers instead - those that move towards or from trains just seemed to be spawned and then disappear

Peter

[AndiS]

I wondered if using a greater variety and density of static (as opposed to AI) models for humans, animals, vehicles, etc would provide a compromise between greater immersion and resource drain? Would it follow that if the objects were only static, they would be less resource-intensive (possibly easier to model) which in turn might allow for more of them to be used in a route?

Static objects will cause less impact on the performance than animated ones, but maybe not as much as expected.

Human bodies have lots of vertices compared to other clutter items, so even static items of this class cause some rendering effort.

The main problem is that each figure comes as a separate asset. So you easily up the asset count with a few populated platforms.

Distant models of cars will have fewer polygons but filling the streets with them will again badly increase the asset count.

You could form groups (if you are the original modeller) but it is very difficult for both cars and passenger to prevent such groups from being very obvious.

Individual scenery for scenarios demands flexibility and that is always linked to lots of individual assets and the associated performance hit. That is not to say that you cannot find nice compromises for most places. This is just to say that it is not simple.

[tnleeuw01]

Grime

Yes. Please.

It seems KUJU assets have more grime and rust than current day assets!

--Tim

[gptech]

It seems like the discussion has now moved to all routes rather than those produced by DTG. Usage of assets such as buses, cars, people are all determined by the route, or scenario, author so *annoyances* on many routes have nothing to do with DTG, other than they being responsible for making those assets available of course. Make a call for the reskinners/tweakers amongst us to look at these oft forgotten assets, even have a go yourselves if what you'd really like isn't available.

[749006]

My comment about the Kuju double decker bus applies to virtually all Kuju/RSC/DTG routes set in the UK and even the Hagen-Siegen route
I know of a reskin that changed that bus from the Red/White in to a Green but it did not stop the amount of times it was seen on the routes.

I would happily just delete the thing but it exists in so many files now.
If DTG were to update it to something of the right size and shape - the current version does not even have doors.

I had tried to use one of the buses in the UKTS Freeware Library but I did not know how to or if I could just swap it.

Peter

[gptech]

I know of a reskin that changed that bus from the Red/White in to a Green but it did not stop the amount of times it was seen on the routes.

Do you mean as moving scenery on roads? The road's files would need editing to mix things up a bit more.

Which UKTS bus took your fancy?

[749006]

I know of a reskin that changed that bus from the Red/White in to a Green but it did not stop the amount of times it was seen on the routes.

Do you mean as moving scenery on roads? The road's files would need editing to mix things up a bit more.

Which UKTS bus took your fancy?

These vehicles look a lot better than the default Kuju - http://www.uktrainsim.com/filelib-info. ... leid=26550
But I don't think they could be used as a replacement?

Peter

[gptech]

But I don't think they could be used as a replacement?

Paper trail time.....

looking at just the Kuju 2 lane heavy traffic road (I expect other roads from later routes to follow suit, but call for vehicles that may be a copy of the Kuju vehicles, located in that route's Asset folder--basically the term 'default Kuju bus' (to be specific) could be inaccurate)

The file is:

..\Assets\Kuju\RailSimulator\scenery\Procedural\2L_Conc_Heavy_1970s.bin

Which vehicles run on it is contained in this line:

Code: Select all

			<TrafficManagerBpID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Traffic_2L_Heavy.xml</TrafficManagerBpID>

The heading TrafficManager should give a clue as to what it's purpose is.

Opening that file gives us a further bunch of files to consider:

Code: Select all

			<VehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="69520736">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle01.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="16705152">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle02.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="15520328">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle03.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="15890136">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle04.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="23460392">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle05.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="26020672">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle06.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="15646096">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle07.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
			</VehicleModel>

Open the first in the list (Newc_York_Vehicle01.bin--for .xml read .bin) and we see it points to

Code: Select all

			<GeometryID d:type="cDeltaString">Kuju\RailSimulator\Scenery\Vehicles\[00]BATH_TEMP_WP33_03</GeometryID>

which is the "Vehicle Car Green 1950s"

OK, how do we get an Arriva bus in there?

Work backwards now, create a new Newc_York_Vehicle..... .bin file, pointing to the Arriva bus. Dead easy to do, just copy Newc_York_Vehicle07.bin and rename that copy to Newc_York_Vehicle09.bin (08 is already present)

Change the

Code: Select all

			<GeometryID d:type="cDeltaString">Kuju\RailSimulator\Scenery\Vehicles\[00]moped_01</GeometryID>

line to point to the Arriva bus:

Code: Select all

			<GeometryID d:type="cDeltaString">PeterKiggins\Models\Scenery\Enviro400 Arriva\[00]Enviro400</GeometryID>

Now add the reference to that new file to the TrafficManager section in Newc_York_Traffic_2L_Heavy.bin:

Code: Select all

			<VehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="69520736">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle01.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="16705152">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle02.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="15520328">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle03.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="15890136">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle04.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="23460392">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle05.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="26020672">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle06.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="15646096">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle07.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
				<iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel d:id="15646096">
					<BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Scenery\Vehicles\Newc_York_Vehicle09.xml</BlueprintID>
				</iTrafficControllerBlueprint-cVehicleModel>
			</VehicleModel>

Note that it's not the Arriva bus itself you're pointing to, but the file that then points to the Arriva bus.

I've no idea how important the Newc_York_Vehiclexx naming is, not whether you need the Provider/Product pairing of PeterKiggins/Models enabling so experiment yourself(selves)

Anyway, it works....Arriva bus as moving traffic on that particular road....

[749006]

Once again Gary the ease, to me, that this can be done by yourself is quite impressive

My idea would be for DTG to implement it as the chances of working out all that stuff in my head without making the usual c@ck up is very slim.
I might give it a go at some point.

Thanks for looking

Peter

[gptech]

My idea would be for DTG to implement it

DTG can/will, and rightly so, only link to assets under their control so unless they supplied an Arriva bus (or buses, as each route--remember they're sold as being self-contained--would need one) the only way to *improve* things is to do it yourself, Let's assume though that they produced an Arriva bus, how long until we'd be having this same conversation about too many Arriva buses on the roads and could they be swapped for a different operator?

...the ease, to me, that this can be done

It comes from being methodical Peter---everything in the game is controlled by .bin files so once you identify where to start the rest is just following that paper trail. Nothing wrong with guessing where to start either!