Email from N3V Games that HD Terrain is coming soon.....

[fjbicrf]

As the title says, I received an email (I'm sure that most of us did) from N3V Games that HD Terrain was coming soon. Anyone know when that might be?

Really looking for to the HD Terrain as it is supposed to render more efficiently than 5M.

Fred Bray

 

[wreeder]

Your timeline indicates that you are paying for Trainz Plus, why not download the beta and try it for yourself?

Based upon a fury of activity recently, I would say something with TRS22 is coming very soon. Maybe TRS22 Platinum with the ability to run routes with HD terrain that were made in Trainz Plus.

 

[pware]

Before you get too excited about HD terrain (and it certainly is more impressive than 5m terrain) it does have some limitations.

These include:-

1. You can only have 16 textures per baseboard (but they can be a different set of 16 on different baseboards). This is a limitation caused by your system hardware (CPU/GPU/etc) and not by the Trainz software. Other HD games have the same limit, or an even lower limit, on their ground textures per "tile" or baseboard. If more than 16 textures are present in a baseboard then the additional textures will be replaced by those already present.
2. Converting an entire route to HD will increase its file size by about 5-6 times. One user reported that after upgrading a large 10m resolution route to HD it went from 350MB to 2.3GB which is too big to save as a .cdp file.
3. Currently there are boundary issues when some baseboards are converted to HD and neighbouring ones are not. Hopefully, this will be resolved.

The HD betas have improved since the first one was released and new features have been added such as multiple water effect layers each with their own colour palettes.

 

[1611mac]

I suggest: Go to the TRS22 Trainz Plus beta forum and start reading.....

 

[amigacooke]

Before you get too excited about HD terrain (and it certainly is more impressive than 5m terrain) it does have some limitations.

These include:-

1. You can only have 16 textures per baseboard (but they can be a different set of 16 on different baseboards). This is a limitation caused by your system hardware (CPU/GPU/etc) and not by the Trainz software.

If earlier ground resolutions allowed more textures than 16, how can it be my system hardware?

 

[pware]

If earlier ground resolutions allowed more textures than 16, how can it be my system hardware?

I would ask if those earlier ground textures were using a resolution of 10m or 0.125m per grid? But to repeat part of the answer from Zec in another forum - https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?171956

In regards to the 16 textures limit in general; this is unfortunately a limitation of hardware not software. A lot of people forget that the hardware in computers is finite; and that does mean that we need to build Trainz around working with the hardware that exists; and within the range of the system specs we support (including the detail settings being set appropriately of course). Unlike a lot of games we are able to offer a lot of flexibility when it comes to route creation, and content creation, but it's still incredibly important to work within the limitations of existing hardware. This does mean that some things will have limits, even if other methods may not have, or may have had different limits on them.

As an example, Unity Engine allows only 8 'terrain layers' (their term for terrain textures in this case) per tile. Some game engines don't impose a limit, but instead expect developers to limit themselves to ensure that they don't cause stability/performance issues. However as Trainz is a game in itself, rather than a game development suite, we need to impose suitable limits on some areas to avoid causing performance issues directly. This is why we have LOD requirements, don't allow 'free for all' on texture sizes, etc.

 

[johnarran]

"that does mean that we need to build Trainz around working with the hardware that exists; and within the range of the system specs we support"

I think the clue here is 'range of system specs'. The bigger the range then the bigger potential market.

Just a thought.

 

[amigacooke]

I would ask if those earlier ground textures were using a resolution of 10m or 0.125m per grid? But to repeat part of the answer from Zec in another forum - https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?171956

It seems like there is a trade off, for the higher ground resolution N3V have to implement restrictions somewhere else. It also appears to be a blanket restriction, to allow lower performance systems to be included. I wonder if it's the case that higher specs of computers could support more textures, but that could cause inconsistencies.

 

[pware]

I think the clue here is 'range of system specs'. The bigger the range then the bigger potential market.

Up to a point. The problem then becomes one of creating a "game" that works well over a range of specs that is growing increasingly wider.

I wonder if it's the case that higher specs of computers could support more textures, but that could cause inconsistencies.

Interesting question. There could (probably would) be a significant backlash from users who did not have or could not afford computers that would meet the minimum specs required for HD with 64 textures (or whatever the current non HD limit is). The risk here would be pricing the "game" out of the reach of consumers, current and potential. That happened in the move from 32bit to 64bit when T:ANE was released and all users who had only 32bit systems were limited to TRS12 and earlier.

A similar situation may/will arise when ray tracing comes to Trainz. You will need a capable (i.e. expensive) GPU with adequate power in your system to run it. N3V have already mentioned that they are looking at introducing ray tracing into a future release.

Progress, as we all know, comes with a price and it hurts those who cannot afford that price.

My thoughts.

 

[johnarran]

That's the point I was making Peter. Minimum spec for TRS22 is Win8, 8GB RAM, GT430 and 40GB free HD. Maybe it's time N3V upped the minimum spec and then maybe we could have more than 16 textures per baseboard.

Do any of us still run on Win8 with that hardware?

Not trying to get into an argument here or put anyone down with a lower-end PC, but demanding software needs hardware with a little bit of grunt.

Best suggestion I've seen so far was by G.M. in another topic, which was to allow then end user to set limits (or words to that effect).
I think some will be disappointed when HD version is finally released, for one reason or another.

John

 

[DmitryKz]

Hi.
I did not find anywhere information about the hardware system requirements in order to be able to use HD terrain feature in S20.
In particular, what should be the minimum video card.
Please clarify this point for me.

 

[pware]

My minimum GPU on an old laptop is a GTX1050Ti and HD terrain works on a beta of Trainz Plus running on that. It was "state of the art" years ago when I bought it.

 

[Paul_Bert]

My minimum GPU on an old laptop is a GTX1050Ti and HD terrain works on a beta of Trainz Plus running on that. It was "state of the art" years ago when I bought it.

My old desktop has an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and it runs the beta with everything maxed out very well. So far, I am pleased with the performance of the HD Terrain configuration on both of my computers.

 

[terry_g]

Related to messages from Auran not HD Terrain – have others noticed that the 'home' page announcements on the Forum don't have anything since 2021?
Have they forgotten we are here as quite a bit has happened since 2021.

 

[wreeder]

Well, since Auran as a company hasn't existed since 2008 when they went bankrupt, that is pretty good. N3V is a totally different company that simply holds on to the old Auran domain names.

 

[grazlash]

A similar situation may/will arise when ray tracing comes to Trainz. You will need a capable (i.e. expensive) GPU with adequate power in your system to run it. N3V have already mentioned that they are looking at introducing ray tracing into a future release.

Most if not all games with ray tracing allow the user a range of settings, usually OFF LOW MEDIUM or FULL.
With regards to specs, the game still needs to run effectively with the minimum specs for TRS22 as advertised on the store, even in Plus. That is where the limitation on textures would be felt most severely. I would expect that the minimum spec of the next version of Trainz will be somewhat higher.
cheers
Graeme

 

[DmitryKz]

Guys, thanks for your answers. I have a GTX 1660 Super video card, but for some reason I could not get the route with the HD terrain. After your answers, I tried again carefully and everything worked out. Thank you.
I still have one more question — in the launcher I cannot select DirectX 12 for Renderer, only DirectX 11, although my video card supports DirectX 12. What could be the reason for this phenomenon? Glitch, bug?

 

[pware]

for some reason I could not get the route with the HD terrain. ....What could be the reason for this phenomenon? Glitch, bug?

One possibility is that you are not using a beta version of Trainz+. Your post did not list your version. The HD terrain only works in the beta builds, not in the retail builds.

Routes created by the Trainz+ betas have a build number of 5.3 and will not load in the retail version which loads routes with build numbers up to and including 5.2.

 

[DmitryKz]

Oh, yes, mea culpa — I didn't indicate that I tried converting the route into HD version in Trainz Plus Steam build 122403.
Perhaps I did not see the result of the conversion due to the fact that Shader quality option were set to 'Standard'.
Later after I saw your posts here, I set all the settings to the maximum and empirically found that the HD Terrain on my computer works when choosing the Extreme Shader quality.

 

[wreeder]

DirectX is simply a set of graphic and sound functions created by Microsoft to allow software to access hardware features built-in to graphics cards without talking directly to the hardware. This is an improvement on the old DOS days where every program had to support every graphic card and sound card with custom drivers you chose from within the game. While your card may support DirectX 12, Trainz does not at this moment. Some versions of DirectX have been very successful like 9.0c and 11 with hundreds of thousands of programs using them. Others like DirectX 10 was a complete failure. The jury is still out on DirectX 12 and I think it is foolhardy for N3V to be wasting resources toying with implementing it in Trainz. No more than a few hundred programs are using DirectX 12 these days largely due to its poor performance on Nvidia cards that represent about 80% of the market. Add to that that Nvidia has developed its own set of advanced graphic programming routines available to programmers that are optimized to run on Nvidia hardware which greatly outperform DirectX 12 routines and there is even less need to support DirectX 12.