Does Inserting More Spline Points In A Spline Degrade Performance?

[gisa]

Hi All,


I'm in the process of building a route, and recently learned a very handy trick (that I can straighten splines using the "rail straightener" in the tracks submenu). Up until then, I was trying to give a curve about 3-5 seperate splines so that the curve looked more natural and fluid than jerky. Now that I can go back and delete those individual spline points in a curve and make it the way I want, I was just wondering if this would help increase, decrease or have no overall affect on performance.

I also ask this because on some stretches of track that I've layed, they are quite long and sometimes I think they take a while to *load* when I'm zooming along them (so I was considering inserting spline points to help *spread the load* the computer spends in processing them).

Anyhow, I'm interested to know what everyone's thoughts are about this (as I'm getting somewhere near a point where I'll start to lay more splines such as citysplines or what not)

:wave:

Gisa ^^

 

[barn700]

Yes and No ...

Most of the time adding more poly's in the splines will decrease performance, but it also depends on the textures applied, the bigger the texture applied the more it affects performance. So the ideal is low poly splines with small textures.

Lay the track with non-bendy low poly type, then go back and delete the bits on curves and points (switches) and insert bendy higher poly. That way you get the best of both worlds, performance and quality.

 

[Euphod]

Check out the thread below:

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=19938

It may be of interest to you.

Ed

 

[gisa]

Thanks for the replies guys

I should have mentioned that I ran into this issue with some roads I had layed down (I prefer smooth curves over anything else). However, this makes laying track interesting...

I'm using joseph pavlovs low poly track, so I'm not so much worried about the framerate hit. I am guessing distance between splines has no affect on a chunky mesh track right?

:wave:

Gisa ^^

 

[barn700]

so Gisa

did you celebrate the new leader ??

The same applies to roads, choose the longest spline possible.

 

[gfisher]

To come back to his original question though, lets say you lay two long strips of road or track of equal length with one strip having spline points only at each end and the other having say 6 intermediate spline points. The poly count for both strips would be almost identical since the same number of repeats would be needed to make up the equal total lengths. But the second strip would require that the computer calculate the location and height of each intermediate spline point, so therefore there would have to be a small hit of performance. The moral of the story I think is don't put in spline points unless you need them for other reasons like the "shaking" of trains on long curves.

Personally I don't worry about them much and put them in as convenient.

 

[gisa]

Barn 700, I didn't know you kept up with the news. Actually, I am a Canadian currently teaching English out here in South Korea so alas, I could not vote (I am getting married next year so maybe I'll be able to do that in the next election). I personally think the new guy they elected is a liar, a cheat, and a fraud who basically "bought" the election (he is very rich and had the money to brainwash the masses) who doesn't care about the little guy and who is unqualified to guide the country regardless of his past experience in business, but Koreans expect a lot and he promised a lot so...we'll see. There's my two cents on that and this isn't a political forum so I will hush up now. :hehe:

Back on track...haha forgive me

I haven't seen any differing variation in terms of road lengths (i.e. a 2 m, 4 m, etc...). I consider them "scenic eye candy" anyhow, so I don't need perfect roads (and for what I want and need, none really exist anyway as I can't seem to find a matching intersection that's large enough to accomodate a 2/3 lane highway, although I might try tinkering with the AJS street kit). However, I run a slightly older computer so I'm quite concious of frame rates and have learned quite a bit in this thread. Thank you all for your input!

:wave:

Gisa ^^