Thierry_St_Malo
New member
It may sound as a silly question but it isn't. It isn't for me in any case, so much so that I just can't bring myself to buying TS2010.
I know, in these forums you can find quite a number of enthusiastic messages about the product, but behind the scenes the tendency seems far from encouraging.
It looks as if TS2009 and TS2010 have been set up by young and brilliant developers who are very much left to themselves, without any general guidelines. In particular, they don't seem to give a damn for what should be an ESSENTIAL concern: backward compatibility. They don't seem to have any idea of the investment in work and emotion that any route represents for its creator and they don't seem to care. With TS2009, it was already difficult, even in compatibility mode, to import say a TRS2006 route. From what I understand (I may be wrong) it is practically impossible with TS2010 as the new CMP's requirements are much more stringent than TS2009's.
There are ominous signs, the worst of all being that the new object creation rate seems to be very slow. Week after week I look at the DLS, and I find that there are very few if any new items designed for TS2009-TS2010. User interest for content creation seems to be disappearing rapidly.
The alpha layer in textures is now handled differently, we are told. Fine, but how is it handled? Very few people if any, including Auran's developers themselves (I have looked at Trainzdev) seem to have the slightest idea. I have not found any document that explains how to obtain results which are equivalent to those that were commonplace. Some attempts have been made, but they do have a tendency to produce grotesque artefacts when the object is viewed from a distance. As a result, essential objects that should appear almost anywhere on any route (catenaries, power lines, telephone lines, wire fences, vegetation etc.) have disappeared by the hundreds and do not seem to be replaced. I would very much like to be given the reference of, say, a single power line that gives satisfying results in TS2009's native mode, so that I can use it as an example.
Vegetation is the worst example. Hundreds, may be thousands, of very useful and satisfying objects have been sacrificed on SpeedTree's altar. Now SpeedTree is certainly a "nice-to-have", but by no means essential. For many people including me, it is a mere gadget. Simple (from the technical point of view) and satisfying objects have been replaced by rather crude polygonals that, in the end, are little more than memory-eaters and cycle-eaters.
Couldn't Auran re-introduce the old alpha layer management system along with the new one? It would require nothing more than a new token in config.txt and a single test for displaying the object, but a single test that would save tens, or hundreds of polys per object...
Highly unrealistic and frustrating design faults are still present. The viewing distance problem has been solved only partially. From inside the cab, the viewing distance is quite unrealistic: a few hundred meters (or yards) at most, I would say. Yet TrainzTuner has shown that the issue can easily be dealt with, even with a 32 bit (24x8, actually) Z-Buffer...
So my final question is: does Auran at last intend to address these issues? If not we users should better stick with TRS2006... Unless, of course, Auran coldly calculates that "old" users of Trainz will die (litterally) one by one and that newcomers only have any importance...
I know, in these forums you can find quite a number of enthusiastic messages about the product, but behind the scenes the tendency seems far from encouraging.
It looks as if TS2009 and TS2010 have been set up by young and brilliant developers who are very much left to themselves, without any general guidelines. In particular, they don't seem to give a damn for what should be an ESSENTIAL concern: backward compatibility. They don't seem to have any idea of the investment in work and emotion that any route represents for its creator and they don't seem to care. With TS2009, it was already difficult, even in compatibility mode, to import say a TRS2006 route. From what I understand (I may be wrong) it is practically impossible with TS2010 as the new CMP's requirements are much more stringent than TS2009's.
There are ominous signs, the worst of all being that the new object creation rate seems to be very slow. Week after week I look at the DLS, and I find that there are very few if any new items designed for TS2009-TS2010. User interest for content creation seems to be disappearing rapidly.
The alpha layer in textures is now handled differently, we are told. Fine, but how is it handled? Very few people if any, including Auran's developers themselves (I have looked at Trainzdev) seem to have the slightest idea. I have not found any document that explains how to obtain results which are equivalent to those that were commonplace. Some attempts have been made, but they do have a tendency to produce grotesque artefacts when the object is viewed from a distance. As a result, essential objects that should appear almost anywhere on any route (catenaries, power lines, telephone lines, wire fences, vegetation etc.) have disappeared by the hundreds and do not seem to be replaced. I would very much like to be given the reference of, say, a single power line that gives satisfying results in TS2009's native mode, so that I can use it as an example.
Vegetation is the worst example. Hundreds, may be thousands, of very useful and satisfying objects have been sacrificed on SpeedTree's altar. Now SpeedTree is certainly a "nice-to-have", but by no means essential. For many people including me, it is a mere gadget. Simple (from the technical point of view) and satisfying objects have been replaced by rather crude polygonals that, in the end, are little more than memory-eaters and cycle-eaters.
Couldn't Auran re-introduce the old alpha layer management system along with the new one? It would require nothing more than a new token in config.txt and a single test for displaying the object, but a single test that would save tens, or hundreds of polys per object...
Highly unrealistic and frustrating design faults are still present. The viewing distance problem has been solved only partially. From inside the cab, the viewing distance is quite unrealistic: a few hundred meters (or yards) at most, I would say. Yet TrainzTuner has shown that the issue can easily be dealt with, even with a 32 bit (24x8, actually) Z-Buffer...
So my final question is: does Auran at last intend to address these issues? If not we users should better stick with TRS2006... Unless, of course, Auran coldly calculates that "old" users of Trainz will die (litterally) one by one and that newcomers only have any importance...
) reduced to the strenuous work of two Japanese gentlemen is an ominous sign.