JR standard track; lighting issues and corrective action

[nicky9499]

3D track; wrong-way lighting and railhead reflections

Hi all,

Recently I started adding night mode to my route. Along the way I noticed how 3D track behaves in the dark - wrong, that is.

There are 4 main problems:

1. Rail reflection is absent on certain tracks.

2. Headlight reflection is absent on wooden-tie tracks.
3. Wrong side of ties are lit (the one facing away from the light source is lit).

4. Second LOD is not lit.

May I know how I can fix these please?

 

[norfolksouthern37]

I can not reproduce the strange reverse lighting on my computer. What version are you using? Maybe something was wrong with spline lighting in it.

 

[nicky9499]

TS12 49922

Set up a similar test on Mojave (ie. the one that shipped with TS12) - same thing.

Clean TS12 49922, new route - same thing.

Tried it in driver - same thing too. And that horrid LOD when viewed from the "correct" side.

 

[norfolksouthern37]

As I said I cannot reproduce those lighting effects. None of the tracks 'light' backward for me.

The track LoD issue was always a known problem and was recently fixed in new track assets. The tracks above have not been updated on the DLS yet but will be soon - however this should not have any effect on the lighting.

Here is what I see with various tracks.








Have you tried with other makes of 3d track? Can you, for instance, show that some other 3d track lights properly and the JR track does not?

 

[nicky9499]

Thanks for the come back. Yes, I still get wrong-way lighting with other 3D track. Will edit title to precisely reflect the nature of the problem.

 

[norfolksouthern37]

Then it is likely you are just noticing a bug that was present in that build and later fixed (check the changelogs). Yet another reason to upgrade to SP1 - that is, if it really bothers you.

 

[ZecMurphy]

Hi All
This was, from memory, fixed in Service Pack 1 (well, one of the SP1 updates). It also caused them to be lit the wrong way during daylight, which was noticeable on sleepers if they stuck 'out' of the ballast, and caused the normals maps to be lit from the wrong direction as well.

Regards

 

[nicky9499]

Hi Zec and Justin. Thanks for the replies and answers to this bug. It doesn't bother me as much as the inconsistency of the reflections on the railheads (between JR conc and ltgry) though - see 2nd picture right at the top. Is there a way to "copy" the concrete rail reflections onto the wooden rails?

 

[norfolksouthern37]

it may be possible to move the same railhead texture to the other, I think the materials should be the same, and the railhead texture is what controls the amount of shine you see.

 

[nicky9499]

Justin, can you advise what is the precise name of said "railhead texture" please? The only one I found was "track.tga" which is the same size (130kb) across all tracks, copying one from conc to wood versions didn't make any difference.

Edit: Same thing with "reflect.tga".

 

[llebrez]

Not only JR tracks show the problem. Some made by Ocemi among others do the same thing. Long ago I noted this in the forum and got no response.

 

[nicky9499]

Ahem, anyone?