AURAN and the winter-scenery

[vandijk]

I like Trainz and winter-scenery. I think an important feature is missing in Trainz already for years: choosing a button for the winter-season, with the
snow-scenery as a result. Of course there are fine snow-textures for the
builders, but it would be great to change the default (summer) scenery to
winter in one click. Other simulators have this option (MSTS and KRS) so why Trainz not? I would appreciate, if AURAN releases a patch, it gives me more
pleasure. I hope more users support this request!

 

[john259]

For the user, this would be great.

Technically, it is impossible.

The colour of every part of object in Trainz is decided by its creator. That includes all the ground textures, buildings, vegetation, tracks and rolling stock. All of those would have to be changed, and changed in a way that retained a realistic appearance, not just made white all over. That would be a gigantic task if it was done by the creators, and even then the program would have to switch between the summer and winter versions of every asset. Adding a winter effect on the fly by the program at runtime would be well beyond the current state of knowledge of computer graphics (AFAIK) and certainly involve astronomical amounts of processing.

A very small number of locomotives have a facility to select different liveries. In theory that system could include a version covered with snow, but only if the creator took the very considerable time and trouble to include it.

John
(Unless anyone knows different, of course....)

 

[vandijk]

John thanks for your vision. I understand, the basic problem is the
programming-structure of Trainz ?
As a user (with less knowledge of programming-backgrounds) I see for example the snow in Kuju's (KRS) and it looks great, so I thought with the
release of TS2009: why not developed for Trainz?
Perhaps AURAN will think it over again!

 

[john259]

I haven't seen how it's done in KRS but I'm curious to know how they've achieved it. With these programs there's always more to learn so maybe they've devised a clever solution.

In Trainz, as I understand it, it's not just the programming, it's the entire concept of having assets with 3D meshes and 2D textures. It would need a winter version for every texture of every asset.

John

 

[Captain_Collins]

In theory it could be done, by replacing entire groups of objects/textures with one snowy object/texture e.g all textures replaced with snowy texture, all trees replaced with one snowy tree type, all track replaced with one snowy track etc etc etc.

This would go some way to creating the desired effect.

 

[JCitron]

In theory it could be done, by replacing entire groups of objects/textures with one snowy object/texture e.g all textures replaced with snowy texture, all trees replaced with one snowy tree type, all track replaced with one snowy track etc etc etc.

This would go some way to creating the desired effect.

This is pretty much how MSTS worked. Each route has a complete seasonal sets of terrain tiles and objects including trains textured for the different seaons.

The way Trainz operates is more efficient because all objects get loaded from the same library instead of having duplicate sets on the hard drive of everything for each route. The disadvantage of this method is of course not being able to have the different seaons load up on the fly.

John