10m or 5m resolution

[fjbicrf]

Greetings,

I have previously created my routes using 10m resolution. I am considering using 5m resolution for a new route. Can both be used in the same route? How much of a performance hit is 5m compared with 10m? Once the HD terrain is available, can a route created with 10m or 5m be converted to HD?

Fred Bray

 

[JCitron]

Yes, you can convert an existing route, one baseboard at a time, from 10 meters to 5 meters, and you can take that route and convert that to the new high resolution terrain.

Keep in mind that if you do this, the route will be larger due to the amount of terrain data and performance may drop off due to the higher amount of polygons your computer needs to process and render.

If you do convert an existing route, don't do this to an already textured area. The reason is the textures will lose their coordinates and become squares that align with the grid. I made that mistake back in the early days when this first came out and I ended up ripping out baseboards and redoing that section again.

 

[schweitzerdude]

Since the OP is starting a new route, I suggest using 5m resolution for those baseboards that have track since typically those baseboards will become more detailed as the route progresses, and 10m resolution on all other baseboards. JCitron is correct that going from 10 to 5 or 5 to 10 on a given textured baseboard will require retexturing, but with the copy/paste tool it's not all that time-consuming to redo your default terrain textures.

 

[pware]

going from 10 to 5 or 5 to 10 on a given textured baseboard will require retexturing

Fortunately, that problem appears to have been resolved when converting from 10m (or 5m) to HD resolution. I just converted an entire textured route from 10m to HD (upgraded in a single step using the new Trainz Plus beta) and I have not (so far) noticed any problems with the texturing, but the route size is now 5x larger.

 

[fjbicrf]

Thanks for the feedback. So if a route is converted from 5m to HD is five times larger, a route created at 5m would be twice as large as the same route created at 10m......

Fred Bray

 

[pware]

My route conversion was from 10m to HD - 65MB to 326MB. I cannot say for certain what a 5m to HD conversion size change would be. The exact size change (5x in my specific case) may also depend on other factors.

The HD terrain is a learning curve but I can already see the possibilities.

 

[JCitron]

My route conversion was from 10m to HD - 65MB to 326MB. I cannot say for certain what a 5m to HD conversion size change would be. The exact size change (5x in my specific case) may also depend on other factors.

The HD terrain is a learning curve but I can already see the possibilities.

My 326 MB route became 2.3GB!

It looked nice though, so there's a tradeoff and the performance wasn't bad. The only issue I had was smudged textures in an area that was an imported old TransDEM route import with ca. 1950s style US Topographic map on it with all the bright colors. Another area with the ca. 1970s style US Topographic map on it with its more subtle coloring, translated well with few texture anomalies.

If we're going to use high-resolution terrain and also use TransDEM-generated routes, we're going to have to use the map-tile objects instead of the textured terrain to avoid the smudging.

 

[PC_Ace]

I took a fairly detailed w.i.p. route of about 50 or so baseboards using a mix of 5 and 10m grid styles that weighed in at 37Mb on disk before conversion - and 185Mb afterwards - almost exactly 5x the original.
I'm really happy with the results, however. There were a few baseboards that exceeded the new texture limit of 16 per bb, but I couldn't tell which upon examination of the listed affected baseboards.
There are some known performance issues and a few bugs that will be resolved soon, so I am confident that from here on, all my future route development will be using the HD framework.
Really love the new capabilities, especially for cuttings, fills, gully and stream creations; the ability to create credible looking ditches and drains, etc.
Also looking forward to a rework of the water effects creation tools, as these will further revolutionise Trainz superior world creation capabilities.

 

[pware]

There were a few baseboards that exceeded the new texture limit of 16 per bb, but I couldn't tell which upon examination of the listed affected baseboards.

I had only 1 baseboard with 16+ textures but, like you, when I examined the listed baseboard I could find nothing out of the ordinary.