Guidance requested.......

[geophil]

Why would a 60 mile route be over 500mb?
I guessing the transdem file., but then wouldnt you delete it from the route when its done?

It largely depends on the number of baseboards, e.g. the number of lateral baseboards. Building a route manually, adding a baseboard requires explicit work. You tend to keep the numbers small. In TransDEM you define a lateral extent in a filter and TransDEM automatically adds as many baseboards across (HOG does it in a similar fashion).

Furthermore, the data size of each baseboard varies. Flat, untextured sea level baseboards as created by Surveyor have the smallest footprint. As soon as you add elevation and/or texture, affected ground vertices need more space in the .gnd data file. A baseboard created by TransDEM will always be slightly bigger than a bare-bones one created by Surveyor, because TransDEM, by its very nature, will bring in DEM elevation and map texture.

There is no specific "TransDEM file" of any relevance. The only one which is not a Trainz route file is the info file, a couple of hundred bytes.

 

[belgian46]

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[belgian46]

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[mtldrm38]

Wow file size can really get blown up thnx on that...
Basically Im doin a Chicago route and with all track layed and 40% scenery its only hovering around 2.25 mb...

I did try first the transdem map of chicago and like laying a few sections of track locked it up.........
My version has been stricktly measuring from maps and avoiding any overlay non track boards lotta headaches
and slow but gettin theyre......
good luck on this project....

 

[steamboateng]

Based on my limited experience, one mile of TransDEM baseboards, with only a (USGS) map overay applied (no assets) is about 1 Mb in memory. That's an off the cuff estimate. Seems reasonable to me.
That means a 60 mile route with no assets applied should weigh in at about 60 Mb.....give or take a few either way.
It seems to me one would have to mighty picky in applying assets to keep it at around 250 Mb total when finished. That's not including locos and rail cars...........
Thanks for the info on base boards Roland.
I still haven't made up my mind whether to split the route in sections or not!

 

[sniper297]

"one would have to mighty picky in applying assets to keep it at around 250 Mb total" trick there is don't package the assets with the route. As for doing a DEM for Chicago, downtown is about 600 feet MSL, O'hare is 670, grand total elevation change of 70 feet in 15 miles. Chicago is flat enough that DEM is a waste of time.

 

[geophil]

"one would have to mighty picky in applying assets to keep it at around 250 Mb total" trick there is don't package the assets with the route. As for doing a DEM for Chicago, downtown is about 600 feet MSL, O'hare is 670, grand total elevation change of 70 feet in 15 miles. Chicago is flat enough that DEM is a waste of time.

"Flat enough" doesn't mean completely flat. Chicago area in 1/3 arc sec NED. O'Hare at NW corner. Created in 5 mins. You get water courses, transportation arteries and some hillocks:



Any hand-made ground vertex not at sea level and carrying any sort of texture takes exactly the same space as a TransDEM created one. That applies even to flat terrain, as soon as not exactly elevation zero, like Like Michigan surface at 575 ft.

 

[Vern]

I posted a few months back that file sizes required by routes seem to have increased significantly, particularly if you are using 5m resolution terrain.

As an aside, having just myself the other week done a terrain extraction and started work on a route based on the Belgian Coast Tramway, I am now totally bowled out (English cricket term) to find someone already working on it. Guess I'll have to look elsewhere for a tram prototype as no point two people working on the same route!

 

[geophil]

I posted a few months back that file sizes required by routes seem to have increased significantly, particularly if you are using 5m resolution terrain.

The 5m grid, introduced with TS2009, brought changes to the .gnd file format. Different to what you would expect, size per baseboard for 5m does not quadruple. Auran/N3V cleaned up the format, eliminating some attributes per vertex which can be calculated at runtime, and also reduced the size of the minimap. However, they added the additional ground texture lookup table to each baseboard which increases the number of textures to 250 per baseboard instead of 250 for the entire route, but also slightly increases baseboard size in the .gnd file.

I think route builders in general are more generous these days with the number of lateral baseboards and may also apply the 5m grid to all baseboards, including those far away from the track.

 

[steamboateng]

Just for clarification, my estimate of 1 Mb per mile for a naked Trainz map generated with TransDEM is based on a 5m grid, and allows one base board on either side fo the track roadbed. It also includes the application of a raster topo map (at higher resolution) to the generated route.

 

[Vern]

Correct Roland, most people now expect distant mountains/terrain and I work to a minimum of 6 "boards" either side of the trackbed. It always irks me when you see an interesting route, otherwise very good, but the author has only used a single board width.

 

[steamboateng]

I agree with you, Vern. Adding distant boards to encompass scenery elements is cheap enough, memory wise; since those boards would normaly be filled with 'low poly' assets. Distant hills and mountains as well as coastal land masses add depth and realism to a route.
My reference to a single board either side of a roadbed is for estimating the memory usage of a route.

 

[belgian46]

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[Vern]

Hi Kurt,

Yes it would be kind of fun to compare the end result. I tend to "speed build" going for overall effect rather than micro detail particularly on a longer route. I'll see how I get on though the similar line in Spain from Darnia to Alicante has caught my eye too. Hopefully I can do both!

 

[belgian46]

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[steamboateng]

WHAT IS THE TOPIC OF THIS THREAD!
PLEASE CONTINUE YOUR CONVERSATION SOMEWHRE ELSE!

 

[Vern]

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[steamboateng]

ZZZZZZZZZZ..............!

 

[Vern]

@Steamboateng...
Not the best responses to people when they are trying to help you... even if things did wander a tiny bit off topic, it is a discussion forum and no different to chatting about something down the pub, going off at a slight tangent then veering back to the original subject. Certainly no need to shout or be rude to other members.

 

[steamboateng]

Vern your castigations fall on deaf ears. You and Belgian46 were just plain rude!
I don't mind generaly, that a thread of mine goes off topic. I enjoy the banter and am in no way adverse to discussion.
But to put it bluntly, neither one of you were much help at all.
Your negative implications and inuendoes are not welcome on any thread of mine.