Northern Arizona Route

[GNdome55]

I’ve been working on a route of Northern Arizona. I’ve considered this just a practice route to establish what ground textures and desert vegetation I will use to get the look I want. As It’s starting to take on a life of it’s own I’ve decided to continue the route as more of an impression of the area rather than a mile for mile depiction of the Santa Fe/ BNSF prototype. I still plan on doing the ponderosa pine forest and the San Francisco Peaks (with snow) of the Flagstaff area. Right now I’ve just started working on my first small town on the route. I’m working in TS Mac. For now this is a fun route to create and run trains on. The relatively sparse vegetation has made for excellent computer performance. Hopefully soon Mac users will be able to share routes with the Trainz community.

 

[Dermmy]

Beautiful screenshots - great use of textures!

Andy

 

[matruck]

Yepper's i'm with Andy absolutely outstanding work GNdome55, Hope you find the stuff that your searching for but by the looks of what you have there mate i doubt you need anything else.
Cheers Mick.:wave:

 

[Pofig]

Awesome. Beautiful screenshots. Wishes of good luck and hope that I can ride on this miracle.

 

[rbar_164]

:udrool: :mop:
Very Nice! Some of the best I've seen

Cheers
Stevo

 

[colorado71]

Nice route. I like it very much.

 

[montanawestren]

Great job on scenery:udrool::mop:. Looks very good!
MTW:clap:

 

[BobCass]

GNdome55: What a nice looking Route..You have it looking so typical of the area..Nice work..:wave::wave:

 

[ametller]

Good job! It looks awesome!

 

[GNdome55]

Thank you all for the comments!
I switched out my highway today with one I found at USLW. It’s exactly what I was looking for. It’s much more realistic.
I’m working out east and west from this part of the route. To the west the elevation will gradually get higher. For the transition to more pines I’m looking for small scrub pines, (desert junipers, pinon pines). Does anyone know of any out there?
I’m also looking for any houses or buildings that would fit in with a southwest look (stucco, tile roofs). So far I’m not having any luck finding either.

 

[socalwb909]

-Pretty awesome man. You came out of no where with great skills. I'll be looking forward to more!

-Joe

 

[GNdome55]

Thanks Joe,
I’ve been following the progress of your outstanding California desert route. One thing I’d like to compliment you on is the density and realistic placement of your desert vegetation. It looks very believable! Great textures too! I have a lot to learn when I get to the point of signals and other BNSF details.

 

[Euphod]

Having been through that part of the country several times, I'd say you have captured the feel of the area through your excellent texturing. Please continue to post screens of your work!

 

[flyinsolo]

WOW! Simply stunning my friend.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Have you been studying under the scenery techniques of Mezzoprezzo, as I have also ?

WoW ... What great scenes !

 

[GNdome55]

Thanks Euphod, flyinsolo and cascaderailroad.

Cascaderailroad, yes mezzoprezzo’s work is very inspiring. His scenes have so much artistic detail and depth. I would also say Dermmy’s works is a big inspiration as well as many others. It’s also amazing how placing a Dinorious Redundicus derelict barn and old car can totally transform an otherwise boring shot. I have a lot to learn about route building but as someone said on a recent post, the forum is the Trainz manual. If anyone can point me in the right direction for desert like content let me know. I’m thinking at some point I should have some open crates that say ACME rocket skates, ACME bat wings, etc. just an idea. Anyway, back to looking for things for my small town.

 

[jakelw]

Awesome work!. It's great to see such a great/stunning/beautiful route been created in TSMac. I have a question to ask, what type of mac are you using?

:wave:

 

[GNdome55]

Thank you jakelw,
I have a Mac pro 1,1 quad 2.66 GHz with a new ATI Radeon HD 5770 video card/with 1 GB VRAM also 6 GB RAM
My main monitor is a 20” Apple Cinema display that I love for color accuracy.

As far as I know Trainz is a 32 bit app so 6GB RAM is plenty to run Trainz using max ram available (less than 4 GB) plus plenty left over to run OSX in the background. I wish I could run trainz on my multiple internal hard drives like I can in my music recording software and also Adobe CS software. As far as I know Trainz needs to be completely on the system drive. The new video card made all the difference in the world as far as performance.

 

[GNdome55]

 

[jakelw]

How are the frame rates on your system with TSMac?