I was wondering if anyone knows how much of a performance hit automatic numbering like ARN causes? I am curious because I have not really seen too much of this feature used on rolling stock and I really like this feature. Ultimately, I am looking for bethgons that have changing numbers and I have found a very limited selection. The only ones I know of are the ones at RRMods but when I loaded them up in Surveyor they are all whitewashed. I am sure this is because of my video card and I can't upgrade because this is on a laptop. There are some great bethgons models by CloakedGhost that work great but don't have the changing number feature. Before I pursue editing the models to include the feature I want to know whether it is ever worth doing. If the performance hit is large then it is not worth the time. Thanks
Automatic Numbering
- Thread starter digiext
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johnwhelan
Well-known member
You need to add six planes to the mesh for the numbers and texture them. Each extra texture adds the equivalent of 200 polys so roughly speaking it adds 1,200 polys plus 24 polys for the number planes assuming one on each side. I have some done this way and I have some done using six different texture groups, you get six different numbers but without the performance overhead. There is a slight performance hit by using texture groups in this way the lowest cost way would be to clone the wagon say six times then adjust the texture (reskin) to have six different numbers which means it is possible to place two wagons next to each other have the different numbers. This sort of reskinning is fairly simple to do and doesn't need permission if its for your own use.
Basic reskinning with gimp http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trainz/Basic_Reskinning_for_beginners
I'd use PaintShop Pro and just adjust the hue or lightness to make each look a bit different.
Cheerio John
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ARN does impose a load, but the load is insignificant provided only a limited number of rolling stock assets have them. If you start running lots of ARN equipped cars though, you are going to run into problems. It is not just the extra polys and graphics load, the script itself becomes cumbersome if it is trying to remember the identity and location of hundreds of ARN equipped assets.
When my Clovis2 route was in beta one of the sessions had hundreds of ARN equipped hoppers and nobody could get the session to run successfully, and for most testers it crashed fairly quickly. Slave_Driver kindly supplied a non-ARN version of the car for the session and with everything else identical every-body's problems went away...
Andy
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