Scenery vs driving experience

[haddock1000]

Hi everyone,

just been looking on the screenshots forums, and something crossed my mind.

Which is more popular? Driving experience, or scenery quality?

IMHO i think that a mix of the 2 is best, with a bit more high quality driving experience to keep the frame ratwes high, and to stop any stuttering.

what do you think?

thanks,

dkchaddock

[bigvern]

I'm currently weighing this up for my Mallaig route.

Are people really that bothered about loads of bushes and weeds everywhere or would they prefer me just to get on and get a good basic representation of the route up and running?

And users are going to get fed up with seeing the same bush and tree objects poking out the ground anyway!

A great deal also depends on the time and resources available to the builder or indeed the route being built - if you're doing a 110mph main line then that 2 miles you just spent a week placing scenery will pass by the user in just over a minute! On the other hand a 25mph branch line probably needs a bit more attention to the lineside detail.

[mikesimpson]

Hi Vern,

There are no trees or bushes on your route, just windswept heather and wild haggis running around

[zlindku]

Hmmmmmmmm probably good subject for a debate.

My preference is for a "good" driving experience, to be able to really feel like a driver from the past(i have managed to achieve the in MSTS in the SA hills route). As long as the railway details are good I find the scenery as in most of the better MSTS routes is quite adequate.
This though is to a great extent is up to what the author wants to do and the capabilitys of the editor. The editor from RS appears to be a fair step forward over the one in MSTS in most respects especially in the ease of selecting and placing objects.(I have had little expierence with the MSTS editor)
And you simply cannot put the same level of detail in a 300 mile route as you can put in a 10 mile route and both have there place.

Note: it will probably be impossible for quite a few years (if ever) to do a really life like scenery so you must put up with a lower level of detail anyway.

Lindsay

[RussellW]

On a fictional route, the author is obviously free to optimise any way he/she wishes (and hopefully lets us know).
On a route purporting to be based on a real line, I personally think the most important factor is the extent to which the route looks/feels like the real thing. In this respect, I think geography (3d landscape, hills, rivers, main geog features) as well as track layout, stations, etc are more important than the density of trees, bushes, clutter. A "real" route should be recognisable to someone who has been there, or even better, if you visit the real place after running the sim route! Driving experience then becomes a matter of the author's skill in keeping the frame rate up and consistent after implementing the route as best they can.

[bigvern]

The KRS editor is every bit as time consuming as the MSTS one and far more labour intensive than Trainz where, if you were copying a large area of forest and terrain texture you could select both and paste on a fresh area. You could rotate the selection during placement and the items would auto settle at the correct height. In KRS you need to reselect after pasting, rotate the objects then hit the J key to conform to the land, oh and if you've already laid a water decal you have to be careful that doesn't get selected and adjusted in the process.

KRS has no forest object similar to MSTS which allows large areas to be filled with trees or bushes. Laying roads and fences is extremely fiddly and not helped by the bug which has crept into the tool with Upgrade One whereby it most often throws a wobbly when you click the mouse and creates numerous short sections under the cursor. Try deleting those when there's a water decal underneath!

No, KRS has brought very little improvement to the School of Route Building. DEM importation is kind of a plus but we already had that via external programmes for MSTS (Demex, TS Tools) and Trainz (HOG, Transdem) the drawback being that Transdem etc. allow you to overlay the OS map on the route for a precise guide. Terrain texturing is a 'mare - by default altering the landscape puts a rock texture on anything over about a 40 degree slope which then has to be painted over to get rid of it. It is next to impossible to smoothly "blend" the supplied textures, in the way that TRS will let you build up a pattern drawn from three or four individual textures and even if you could, there seems no way of creating a palette off stage then copying and pasting those on areas of the route as required.

[AndiS]

As others said before, a low-speed route will be short and will have lots of scenery. A high-speed route will be long and will definitely need to have less scenery detail because a) the route builder needs to do more miles per working hour and b) the user will race through it which puts some strain on the computer & game to get all the items loaded and displayed at the rate of a HST.

The difficult routes are those which see both local freight trains and HST.
Otherwise, the ratio between user time spent on a mile and builder time spent on a mile would be the same, roughly speaking.

For the reasons Vern gave, KRS seems to lend itself to branch lines. The choice of RSDL for their upcoming "demo route" (read show-off/mark setting addon) supports this assumption. One could even theorise that from a market strategy point of view, this is a clever thing. MSTS X will come with "lots of rail" (sorry World on Rails), FSX contributes mature technology for autogenerated remote scenery, so the high-speed routes will more or less build themselves. All the route builder will have to contribute is some custom-made station buildings and bridges. Racing along in an HST, "lots of houses" at the correct location will be a fair enough representation of most cities along the route. At the same time, branch line enthusiasts will rightfully criticise the imprecision of the default trackage, and the dull look and inappropriateness of the default (automatic) scenery. To improve on that, about as much work might be necessary as for building from scratch in KRS. So KRS may well be competitive as a tool for branch line building, while all those how love doing lots of miles only once or twice will run for the "million miles in the box" offer and no one can hold them back.

[JAGuar8]

Well, if trying to recreate British authenticity, undergrowth is the name of the game! MT's Great Eastern used this to great effect - plus, there is the fact that, where foliage is dense enough, you can cut back on detail further away (i.e. buildings further from the tracks that you won't see through the trees/bushes anyway).

It's always about finding the balance, obviously, but I personally much prefer realsitic scenery, otherwise you feel the route you're driving could be anywhere. And where's the driving experience in that? We keep seeing lots of screenshots where people are really experimenting far and wide with fantastic arrays of scenery (which is great! ), but the most important element is getting just enough line-side detail to make it look authentic from the driving position - e.g. so that scenery goes just as far as you can see from the particular point on the track. In a deep cutting is always going to be easier

I don't know about others out there, but I'm not so concerned about being able to cut away from the train and explore the miles of scenery (that is draining FPS!), even if it is great work.

Look forward to more opinions on this...

Kind regards
Joe

[AndiS]

I don't know about others out there, but I'm not so concerned about being able to cut away from the train and explore the miles of scenery (that is draining FPS!), even if it is great work.

Look forward to more opinions on this...

Oh, since you asked, I for one love to see the train from the outside, and not too near, so have a better view on it.

Basically, you buy such a programme for many different reasons:
- taking the driver's seat
- watching a train, following it on its route
- designing and watching complex railway operations (more local)
- creating routes
- creating 3D models and enjoying them (and showing them off) in the game.

The nice thing about simulations is that you can combine the first two, more or less. (You can also combine the others.) My favourite is taking the challenge of driving a steam engine under interesting conditions, and still enjoying a free view on the scenery and the train, as time permits. Just hanging out in the cab and waiting for the next signal to come into view is not all I want to do in my sparetime and the view from the cab window is often inferior to other viewing positions.

I just did not mention it above, as I feel that the 5 (or more) camps sometimes feel a bit bad about each other, calling each other "model railway enthusiast" and "would-be driver", and other things.

For me, personally, it boils down to slower trains being more attractive for me anyway (like heavy freight trains), the lower speed helps with the framerates, too. And it leaves time to look around. With the above branch line vs. height-speed line distinction, I lean towards the former, sometimes exaggerating the load a bit for the greater fun, but then again many branch lines are a bit steep anyway, so your train will still fit into the stations and not look out of place. Just make sure it is all loaded and your wagons are the biggest that fit the genre and the engine is not the strongest, and you can have hardcore engineer challenge combined with lovely scenery. That's my way out of the dilemma.

[AdamsRadial]

I very much go with the scenery first, driving experience second. I like to recreate long-gone routes of which very little survives. Some railways closed before Beeching, and before anybody had even begun to think about preservation, and have quietly vanished; cutting being filled in, embankments being leveled by the plough. All that remains are a few photographs taken at convenient stations and crossing points, and in between those spots the line might as well have never existed. Now, with some DEM data and a bit of persistance, I can recreate the solitude of Knowlton or the bleakness of Richborough Castle, trundle along the line until I've seen enough, and then stop the train and look around. I'm not too bothered about frame rates because when you're on foot the hard disk has no trouble keeping up:)

I think that quite a few people have lost sight of the fact that both RS and MSTS allowed a degree of freedom, unlike BVE, where you were stuck in the cab.

With a bit of clever work burying tracks a few inches beneath the ground, I see no reason why RS couldn't also extend to giving people the chance to take a tour through a village in a horse and cart. There was a trotting Burro in MSTS I used for a similar experiment.

[RSderek]

Hi,
My personal project is a station hub with track running off a few mile in 5 directions.
The whole area will be as close as I can make it.
It will be dense with scenery.

As for seeing the same bush/tree, I intent to make hundreds of different ones.

regards
Derek

[Acorncomputer]

I like the freedom that RS gives me to add as little or as much to a route as you wish. I have chosen to add quite a lot of content to my route which uses many of the detailed default assets supplied with RS such as trolleys outside supermarkets, wheelie bins in front gardens and people walking down roads or pavements using the separate platform matrix. You will find sheep in the fields and if you zoom up the top of a nearby hill, you will find a bench to sit on under a tree where you can watch the trains go by in the valley below.

Although RS may be perceived as just a railway simulator to some, to others it has provided an easy to use world modelling tool in which the railway can be just a part of the experience and not necessarily the main reason for it.

It does not matter much if you want to build long routes with little scenery, if that pleases you then RS can deliver. If you like steam or slower routes with more detail then RS can deliver. If you want to run your own yard then you can design, construct and then operate your yard - RS can deliver that too. You can model rolling stock or scenery for others to use or even just build nothing but use the ever increasing pool of routes and assets available to enjoy yourself.

Quite simply, RS can be whatever you want it to be, there is no right or wrong way to use it. Its future strength will lie in the practical application of this flexibility with the diversity of routes, rolling stock and scenery that become available based on the different approaches taken by both private and commercial contributers.

My own view is quality and not quantity so small but detailed routes are my aim but this is just what pleases me. You can all do whatever you want as well.

I would like some of your new vegetation Derek as brambles are starting to take over.

Happy simming

Geoff Potter

[markjudith]

I prefer shorter routes with KRS and think it is well suited to steam era, hangin' out of the cab and pulling away from stations and blasting under a bridge is very atmospheric. If you like to drive steam KRS has got the right 'feel', if you like to watch or shunt trains of any era, again it's great but if you enjoy 'driving' more modern traction then BVE is the the sim to play with. My mate drives the real thing everyday and plays BVE in his spare time!!! He thinks it is the best sim for 'driving' realism, Sound, movement and operating systems..yet detail is basic, because the sound, movement is so good and your concentrating on 'driving' you put up with the basic detail, because you don't have time to admire the scenery as much especially on a high speed route. Some route builders can make BVE look better than KRS...but performance is terrible.

I think just enough detail around the lineside to give the right 'look' and keep frame rates up at reasonable speed, but more detail in areas where you are likely to stop, signals, stations, yards etc so you have plenty to look at when you do. If some folks have trouble in more densly populated areas they can go to those locations and thin them out if they so wish without having to depopulate the whole route.

A route which models just a station/yard area is great...a bit like a model railway....so you can shunt/prepare accept and dispatch trains is great but much more suited to TRS I think...as you can set up two portals and have passing trains all the time but be able to stop any one of them and route it into the yard ready for you to shunt if you wish...then send it on it's way when your done. This would be nice for KRS if the portals worked in the same way...not sure if they do.

Mark

[nwallace]

Hi Vern,

There are no trees or bushes on your route, just windswept heather and wild haggis running around

Mike you have just given me an idea, but I don't think I can accurately model a haggi, nor am i aware of the documentation for creating a moving object (like the boat or plane [which is horribly small close up, i really wanted to drive past an airport and have the plane taking off]) and I'm not sure it will allow the optional route of changing the animation to the haggi rolling down the mountain if you set the path with the short leg on the wrong side.

[bigvern]

We definitely need some more scrub and low bushes - gorse, bracken, long grasses etc. It would also be handy if these were available in a lofted variety so they could be offset from the track (and save time in laying large sections).

Edit:
And presto, the gorse appeared (actually i think Derek was smiling all along and had that one up his sleeve... ).