Does anyone have Otto's speedtree fix?

[BraselC5048]

OTTODAD made a fix for speedtrees a couple of years ago, but his website where it was hosted was taken down quite a while ago, Otto has since passed, and I'm unable to find it anywhere else. It would be pretty darn helpful about now, trying to get some routes running smoothly. Does anybody have a copy? Thanks.

 

[clam1952]

OTTODAD made a fix for speedtrees a couple of years ago, but his website where it was hosted was taken down quite a while ago, Otto has since passed, and I'm unable to find it anywhere else. It would be pretty darn helpful about now, trying to get some routes running smoothly. Does anybody have a copy? Thanks.

No use whatsoever with anything other than 2010 and maybe early TS12, all it did was turn off the wind for an old Speedtree version. Not applicable in latest TS12, TANE or TRS19 which you can do within game now anyway, TS12 TANE and TRS19, you can turn it off Wind speed or rather set to zero in Environmental Settings. TANE and TRS19 use a completely different Game engine and different version of Speedtree so it at best will do nothing and at worst screw up your Install needing a re-install.

I used to have it but deleted as was no longer required for anything.

 

[BraselC5048]

Ah. Um, thanks. I see the problem is elsewhere. Namely speedtree shadows. (TANE). I can't turn them off without turning all shadows off. The shadows are there even if shadows are set on low. Is there a way to disable tree shadows separate from shadow quality?

 

[JAGG]

What about does-cast-shadows config tag?

 

[clam1952]

That would work however would mean editing every speed tree and builtins can't be edited.
Shadows shouldn't be causing much problem though if on medium or low unless the GPU is on the very low end of capabilities?

What exactly is the problem?

 

[BraselC5048]

Inexperience with TANE seems to be the biggest problem. Strangely, does-cast-shadows doesn't seem to do anything, and there aren't any builtin trees on the route I'm trying to run, and not very many (unique) tree assets. ??
I'm trying to run Rodgers Pass 1888 and there's a billion and a half trees, but it wasn't the trees exactly. Somewhat surprisingly, it seems the biggest graphics demand wasn't the number of trees, or tree shadows, but rather that there were so many overlapping shadows. (Many areas could easily have 4 or more shadows cast on the same spot. I had noted that shadows on high, 4x antialiasing and small shadow texture size was actually better than shadows low, 8x antialiasing and shadow texture size large. Normally shadow texture size isn't supposed to be that important. Using 2x antialiasing was a massive improvement, which I didn't expect.

Second, I didn't know that frame rates greatly improve after the first few minutes - I didn't check a setting that long. Or the "load session, quit game, play session again" trick. Doing that, it turns out I can set shadows on high, and with 2x antialiasing increase tree draw distance to normal and even increase the draw distance from 2500 to 3500 meters, and have it work perfectly fine running a train at 15 mph. Until I stalled out a train that should be heavy on a 4.5% grade on a 2.5% grade. (Are there any changes to basic train physics between 09 and TANE? Or was it just my rather lousy driving of the helper?) And it seems shadows look pretty bad on steam engines at anything less than high, mostly due to "self shadowing" issues. (Can self shadowing be disabled?)

When it comes time to run Rollins Pass, which is rather scenery-sparse in the high Rockies (pass elevation 11,500 feet), I'm hoping for a 10 km draw distance, and high tree/scenery draw distance. I hope. (I'm tailoring graphics settings to the type of route.) We're good here!

One other thing - when making a freelanced route, separating towns by greater than the maximum draw distance is a pretty good idea, right?

 

[clam1952]

Does cast shadows works with normal assets, forgot that SpeedTrees are rendered by the Speedtree engine so a different set of rules apply.

Disabling PhysX can help with frame rates, it's never worked properly anyway, the traditional method works for smoke if PhysX is disabled.

If things are taking a long time to load fully, in the developer menu, select Run TrainzUtil command, type prebuild in the box, then OK, doesn't take too long, that will cache the assets you have installed so things load quicker.