Shape File Viewer 2.1

[lateagain]

...err that wasn't quite what I had in mind

Without getting too technical about aspect ratios and image diagonals and to put it in simple photographic terms....

Your current 45 degrees is about the same as a "standard lens" (50mm) on a 35mm camera. It's generally held that the perfect focal length for a portrait lens was an 85mm lens which has an angle of view of about 29 degrees. This is reckoned to be the perfect angle for portraits because it is nearest to the basic angle of view of the human eye, and therefore to be free from any distortion. Obviously the human eye has periferal vision....but I said to keep it simple The angle of view also affects the way we see near and distant objects in relation to the subjects plane too.

Can you have a go at creating a 29 degree camera and try a 3/4 shot of the same consist Paul? Just so that all the theory I'm spouting can be seen in practice. It should keep the perspective of the consist more viewable instead of tailing off into infinity. Any narrower angle will cause a distortion, which is why telephoto lenses are great for effect in railway photography but the view is distorted from that of the naked eye.

If it's easy to do you could have a whole "wardrobe of lenses" and have the angle of view switchable but I think the 29 degree one would be very helpful in checking the relative scale of stock for example. I recently rescaled a whole bunch of containers in the library which the author stated he wasn't happy with the scale of. It would have been great to be able to check this in 3/4 view (I used the Orthoganal projection and scale tool to do it) but comparing the consist with an actual photograph helped fine tune this. Having to load it into the sim to get a cam view of the right angle was a real pain in the .....

Geoff

[decapod]

The view angle is set by a slider from 10 to 140 degrees

Here is 29 degrees...

[lateagain]

Paul as usual you surpassed all wishes

Great stuff!

Geoff

[fadedGlory]

Hi Paul!

Any chance of that button that would let you scroll through an entire directory full of shapes, rather than having to use the file selector every time (and starting from 'AAA' each time...)?

fG

[decapod]

A next/previous shape option was on my list. Someone at TS.com mentioned it a few months ago.

[mikesimpson]

Hi Paul!

Any chance of that button that would let you scroll through an entire directory full of shapes, rather than having to use the file selector every time (and starting from 'AAA' each time...)?

fG

Hi FadedGlory,

You can already do that with the version of Paul's Shape file viewer which ships with Route_Riter.

Just select a batch of .s files, click the Graphics Tab/View .s file button, and you will see the first shape. Click the close screen X in top right of the SFV screen and the next one will appear and so on.

Mike.

[mikesimpson]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the beta, I have tested the trainlib.ocx with RR and it appears to be completely backward-compatible as you said.

Thanks for that.

Mike.

[decapod]

It looks like I'm going to run out of time for 2.1.
The scene loading will have to wait till 2.2 and I'll release 2.1 shortly with most of the changes listed in this thread.

final beta testing has started today.

[fadedGlory]

Paul,

Thanks for sending me the link to the beta version, I've downloaded it and the option to scroll through all shapes in a directory works fine. As a minor improvement, could this be done with the mouse scroll wheel in addition to the Alt-arrow method? Many shapes seem to have different default positions so in practice one needs to work with the mouse to fully view each object, or view it from the best angles. Scrolling with the mouse wheel would be easier than having to switch between mouse and keyboard.

If this is too difficult to implement, don't worry, the way it is now is already a great help!

I will be travelling over the next few days so will probably have little time to test any of the other features, but in any case I want to thank you for having implemented this particular suggestion.

Cheers,

fG (Jur)

[decapod]

Thanks for sending me the link to the beta version, I've downloaded it and the option to scroll through all shapes in a directory works fine. As a minor improvement, could this be done with the mouse scroll wheel in addition to the Alt-arrow method?

Unfortunately there's no support for mouse wheel in the tool I used to write it (VB6)

You can double click on the list to load files as well.

Another option may be to store one or more camera postions (Ctrl+number), then use Alt Arrow then press a number.

Arrow keys by themselves can also be used to change the view angle.

[jraaby]

Sounds great Paul,

Having the CPU usage lowered will be very handy for me - at the moment my computer can't handle switching between Photoshop with 2048*2048px textures and Shape Viewer very easily (unfortunately I'm repainting models from 2002 with one texture for the whole thing so big textures are necessary).

Jens

[decapod]

It definitely helps - the image is only redrawn if you change the view, so cpu is zero most of the time.
Animations are restricted to about 60fps which also helps.

[Timcourt1]

Nice one Paul, it works well for me at this end, BTW I have sent you a set of models with aliased files and loads for you to play with.

Tim C