jayjay0607
New member
Make an Across America Route Please.
Route Creation Tips?
- Thread starter cameronhoward
- Start date
Who is stopping you to do that yourself?
Happy to see that route in about 10-20 years when you are done with it
Who is stopping you to do that yourself?
Happy to see that route in about 10-20 years when you are done with it
I wonder how many baseboards this would take...
And oh, I don't even think any version of Trainz, whether it's still operational at that time anyway, could load it up.
John
I wonder how many baseboards this would take...
And oh, I don't even think any version of Trainz, whether it's still operational at that time anyway, could load it up.
John
Well, we could do the Math. Each Baseboard = X Amount of Feet.... But Id say ballpark somewhere upwards at least 500 Million.
And don't count future developments short.... I remember TRS2006, when HP's Marias Pass was one of the biggest Routes at a cool 250 Miles of Track, and everyone was shocked that such a big route could be done.... These days the only thing limiting Route size is Creator Interest (Or should I say Endurance? ) really. At least if we only look at making routes for high end systems.....
Add: @ The OP:
1:The route looks like its starting to come together. 2 things though I could suggest:
Depending on what you're trying to go for, few railroads ever put Switches right in front of a Station/Platform. Reason being that a Platform is where you unload something which means it doesn't move for awhile, and if it isn't going anywhere you can't use the Switch...... Just makes no sense logistically.
2:You're doing pretty well for scenery, but you're missing details. You have a good amount of grass, but how would people get between the house and the Platform? The House and a Store? The house and the neighbors? Right now it looks like they might just have to grab a Machete and Forge their own path.... Scenery and scenes in general are all about details. Its not enough to have an awesome House in the woods, unless the people living their are Wood Nymphs, they're gonna need transportation whether that takes the form of a Foot Path or a Road or a Helicopter, there should be some kind of obvious means of entry/egress.
Good Luck,
Falcus
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My guess is you are a few million off to just do an East-West connection.
San Francisco - New York = 4133km "as the crow flies".
Since trains don't fly that well, lets just double that distance to get a rough estimate; 8266km.
With 0.72km per baseboard that will be "only" 11480 to make just an East-West connection. Let's triple that to make it a 3-baseboard wide route to make some room for scenery, making this a 35k baseboard route.
Bit less than 500 million, but a bit more than any sane person is probably going to give a serious attempt any time soon.
cascaderailroad
New member
My route has in excess of 15,000 baseboards, and it is only a 4 County area of PA :hehe:
According to my favorite search engine, the area of the US is 3.794 million square miles, of which about 1/7th is Alaska. With about 6 and a half thousand miles, Hawaii is less than a landing area. A trainz baseboard is about .16 (sixteen-one hundredths) of a square mile. So if we were to do only the contiguous 48 states, we'd be looking at about 3.3 million square miles, or about 21 million baseboards to do the entire US.
Looking at the question another way, if we don't fill in the areas where there are not, or have not been, the figure given for peak railroad mileage was 266,381. Now I'm not clear on whether this was miles of rail, or miles of route, but if we assume miles of route, and if a baseboard is on average .4 of a mile, and we do strips about 7 boards wide (3 1/2 boards each side of the center line), then we're looking at about 4.7 million baseboards. But in a significant number of instances, one baseboard will contain more than one route, such as in major cities, and other places where the geography constrained the railroad builders. For example, along stretches of the Ohio river, NS and CSX are on opposite sides of the river, and you'll have both railroads on the same boards. In the Illinois Quad Cities (Rock Island, Moline, and Silvis), the CBQ, CRIP, and MILW would occupy pretty much the same boards. Taking such circumstances to account, I estimate that the total number of boards required to build the US by strips would be on the order of 3.75 to 4 million board during the peak era. The year of peak mileage was 1916; by 2012, the amount of mileage was about 1/2 what it was a century ago, so if one were planning to do contemporary railroading, one might be able to accomplish the parallel task with about half the number of boards.
Significantly less, but still a big project.
ns
Looking at the question another way, if we don't fill in the areas where there are not, or have not been, the figure given for peak railroad mileage was 266,381. Now I'm not clear on whether this was miles of rail, or miles of route, but if we assume miles of route, and if a baseboard is on average .4 of a mile, and we do strips about 7 boards wide (3 1/2 boards each side of the center line), then we're looking at about 4.7 million baseboards. But in a significant number of instances, one baseboard will contain more than one route, such as in major cities, and other places where the geography constrained the railroad builders. For example, along stretches of the Ohio river, NS and CSX are on opposite sides of the river, and you'll have both railroads on the same boards. In the Illinois Quad Cities (Rock Island, Moline, and Silvis), the CBQ, CRIP, and MILW would occupy pretty much the same boards. Taking such circumstances to account, I estimate that the total number of boards required to build the US by strips would be on the order of 3.75 to 4 million board during the peak era. The year of peak mileage was 1916; by 2012, the amount of mileage was about 1/2 what it was a century ago, so if one were planning to do contemporary railroading, one might be able to accomplish the parallel task with about half the number of boards.
Significantly less, but still a big project.
ns
Oh, clever. If you want to get into Trans-America, as the previous person suggested, I think you're a little off...... Doing it with only 3 Baseboards accross is awfully minimal.... If you're going to do anything you might as well do it right.... It might not be Triple Digit Millions, but it'll be more then 12K even in 3 board width...... You're gonna do the Rockies or the Appalachians in 3 board strips? Your route would look just as bad as some of the 12 year old's that come in here thinking their 3 boards with 31 assets on it will hit a thousand Downloads in the first 2 weeks, to which Id have to ask what's the point? I mean, if you like driving over your 8250 KM with nothing but backdrops and space to look at, please, upload some version of what you just described and we'll see how popular it is.....
Falcus
Basic math?
Search for "UMR-2013-SUMMER-REVISITED-MULTIPLAYER". 5468 downloads.
Web version of the DLS prevents me from checking a few other routes; I am guessing some technical difficulties.
But okay, let's have it your way:
Even if you make it 15 baseboards wide (8 baseboards / 5km on each side of the tracks being maximum view distance if I remember correct) and go for 16.000km tracks (4 times the distance the crow flies sounds like overkill but just to get a ballpark figure), you end up with 333k baseboards.
Let's assume you build 10 good looking baseboards each day and start at the age of 10 years old, you will be done at the age of 101.
Indeed. It will be 35k, as I posted.
Shall we just check out what someone else's route that is mainly 1 or 2 baseboard wide did and the longest route on the DLS?
Search for "UMR-2013-SUMMER-REVISITED-MULTIPLAYER". 5468 downloads.
Web version of the DLS prevents me from checking a few other routes; I am guessing some technical difficulties.
But okay, let's have it your way:
Even if you make it 15 baseboards wide (8 baseboards / 5km on each side of the tracks being maximum view distance if I remember correct) and go for 16.000km tracks (4 times the distance the crow flies sounds like overkill but just to get a ballpark figure), you end up with 333k baseboards.
Let's assume you build 10 good looking baseboards each day and start at the age of 10 years old, you will be done at the age of 101.
Thank you for finally agreeing with the crux of my original Point. Maybe next time instead of diving into someone's over-exaggeration with an attitude of "I know better then you, so here eat it", you'll maybe try to read the conversation better. 500 thousand or 500 Million, it doesn't really matter for the point I was making, as that point was that its far more work then the fella that original made the post that was being responded to would ever accomplish..... This is what comes from reading an entire thread, and not just the last 2-3 posts..... Or you read it and missed it.... Either way, replying with an attitude right out of the gate isn't what I'll call kosher or sociable....
Oh, and BTW. Try a Sociology class sometime. Or statistics. The reason UMR *MULTI-PLAYER* has 5K downloads is because its one of only 2 quasi-popular Multiplayer maps currently being passed around or talked about in many places..... IE it only exists the way it does because of the unique situation that spawned it..... Either Create 10 more on your own, or get 10 other people to create decent Multi-player Maps, and let them be out as long as UMR has been as of today's date, then we can discuss the public's consumption of them and popularity, but only if those 10 maps have a decent cross-section of available Route Creation methods, because theres no point in comparing 10 apples from the same tree in the public Market.....
Thanks for agreeing with me in the end, even if indirectly,
Falcus
Still in the ballpark?
Yeah, sorry, but I hope you (the forum readers, not just Falcus) understand that after such a post I have to reply.
Sorry, but I don't agree with your original statement. Let me re-quote that for you:
You just posted a ridiculously large number and called it a ballpark figure, so I was triggered to check the actual basic math.
My reply to you actually is an educated guess: I got some known figures and did the math.
I am sorry, but I do not consider being off by a factor 1000+ anything near a ballpark figure.
If I would do ballpark figures like that on my job, I would be out of a job and/or respect within a month.
Let's continue:
So you are trying to claim I only read the last 2-3 posts, yet apparently you failed to notice I had already replied twice to this topic before you even set a single step in it. Both posts were reactions to the content of the topic; the first being to the original poster, the 2nd to the person who bumped it 3 weeks later.
Now our argument / difference of opinion is about the bump post or "side topic" of this thread if you like. The funny part being that I make a relaxed comment that it will take 10-20 years to make a cross US route (which I guess you failed to read or see), which is then being quoted by JCitron who wonders how many baseboards it will take.
You say "we could do the math" but clearly don't;so I actually do the math; First to actually answering JCitron's question and later to proof that it actually is you who is a bit more than a little off (and apparently again missed some of my writing) and apparently you are having a problem with that.
I was not...
Both are not needed.
- I had statistics in university, but you can do this with just high-school math (see two of my previous posts)
- Everyone has access to google to get some figures (took me less than a minute)
- I used some of my experience; something being multiplayer does not have that much influence:
---- seeing online that hardly anyone of those 5000+ UMR downloads plays multiplayer (on the UMR); most people like the UMR simply because it is the longest route and of very decent quality.
---- I uploaded a route with just a bridge. I even made it clear in the description of the route it was just a bridge and people should expect nothing more then that. Even that route has 787 downloads.
Happy you agree with my original post even though I am not sure you have read it.
Yeah, sorry, but I hope you (the forum readers, not just Falcus) understand that after such a post I have to reply.
Okay, so apparently you have some sort of a problem with me actually doing the basic math that you could have done in the first place. And instead of making a simple post stating "okay, I was off a bit much" and agreeing with my original post, you then try to bash me or make a fool of me by coming up with some list of half arguments to then claim that I agree with you.
Sorry, but I don't agree with your original statement. Let me re-quote that for you:
The definition of "A ballpark figure" is an educated guess.Falcus said:
You just posted a ridiculously large number and called it a ballpark figure, so I was triggered to check the actual basic math.
My reply to you actually is an educated guess: I got some known figures and did the math.
I am sorry, but I do not consider being off by a factor 1000+ anything near a ballpark figure.
If I would do ballpark figures like that on my job, I would be out of a job and/or respect within a month.
Let's continue:
You got me confused here.
So you are trying to claim I only read the last 2-3 posts, yet apparently you failed to notice I had already replied twice to this topic before you even set a single step in it. Both posts were reactions to the content of the topic; the first being to the original poster, the 2nd to the person who bumped it 3 weeks later.
Now our argument / difference of opinion is about the bump post or "side topic" of this thread if you like. The funny part being that I make a relaxed comment that it will take 10-20 years to make a cross US route (which I guess you failed to read or see), which is then being quoted by JCitron who wonders how many baseboards it will take.
You say "we could do the math" but clearly don't;so I actually do the math; First to actually answering JCitron's question and later to proof that it actually is you who is a bit more than a little off (and apparently again missed some of my writing) and apparently you are having a problem with that.
I was not...
... but I was actually answering JCitron's question.
Now I think this has nothing to do with the original argument or question of the OP or the bumper anymore, but anyway:
Both are not needed.
- I had statistics in university, but you can do this with just high-school math (see two of my previous posts)
- Everyone has access to google to get some figures (took me less than a minute)
- I used some of my experience; something being multiplayer does not have that much influence:
---- seeing online that hardly anyone of those 5000+ UMR downloads plays multiplayer (on the UMR); most people like the UMR simply because it is the longest route and of very decent quality.
---- I uploaded a route with just a bridge. I even made it clear in the description of the route it was just a bridge and people should expect nothing more then that. Even that route has 787 downloads.
Happy you agree with my original post even though I am not sure you have read it
.Driver_Col
Active member
If you know that they are not right, it is a good idea to work out specifically why they are not right. It is tough to fix a problem if same is not clearly identified. This is not difficult for a creative mind however, it can be very challenging if you are not particularly artsy! Saying you should spend more time on it is not going to help if you haven't grasped the basics from an artistic perspective.
When children first learn to paint a landscape, they generally have a blue band at the top and a green band at the bottom and nothing in the middle. They are simply painting what they believe (the sky is up there and the grass is down here!) without actually seeing the reality. I have seen many routes with variations on that same unrealistic theme
Examples:
- Hills that are all the same shade of green (go and look objectively at any hill) - Finding a couple of similar shades to the base colour and blending them will bring hills to life
- Trees that are all the same shape and size - You can get away with a single tree (for a heavily wooded area) as long it is randomly oriented, and you use the raise/lower tool to vary their heights. I personally prefer to base treed areas on 3 trees and then add an odd accent tree now and then. The accent tree will be distinctly different from the others.
- Trees evenly spaced over the ground - Fine if you are creating an orchard or a re-foresting scene but not likely in general wooded areas.
Also remember that a heavy treed area will overshadow the ground around it so a very dark shade of the basic hill colour will look great around the trees.
As my art master told me many years ago - Look at the object you are trying to paint - then look at the components that make up that object - that look at each component in as much detail as you can. On one exercise I had to paint a farm gate and what he wanted to see was the rust on the gate hinges, the splits and knots in the wood, the wear marks from constant herds of cows passing through, etc. etc.
If you have difficulty making your scenery look "right", then perhaps you should go outside and have another look ...........really look! All the best. A good Route can be a most rewarding and satisfying creation. Colin.
Well said.
I think of route building as working in layers, not the layers we have in Surveyor, but layers of scenery details. We have the basic ground cover, track, and ballast in place. After that we add trees and houses, along with roads and telegraph poles. We then have the details which go on next and these are the things that can make or break a scene, and where we can get into a lot of trouble with frame rates because there is so much stuff that can be added at this point. This is also the part that takes the longest to get done the right way, and where I find myself giving up an area, doing something else, then coming back and adding more later.
John
@Oknotsen
My issue wasn't the math. It was the way you addressed it.
As for your replying earlier, I missed that it was you. You did recently change your avatar, so I'm used to seeing the little Red Excavator next to your name, not the Yellow GE. My apologies on that count. I honestly thought it was Another user who recently came to my attention as using that Avatar. Further, yes, you did beat me to posting about how long it would take, so yes, I was agreeing with you.
As far as a "Ballpark Figure", I would ask, How long is a piece of String? Its called a Ballpark figure because its not accurate at all....
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ballpark_figure
I took a Guess, based off an incomplete idea about just how large a Baseboard is vs the actual size of the U.S. I was wrong, but I wasn't really trying to be right... And your response was "Here Falcus, You were wrong by THIS MUCH!" (Paraphrasing how it came across to me).
Further, depending on your work, I hope you don't use Ballpark Figures ever..... Guessing is bad business practice period... But last time I checked, I'm not being paid to be here and do this, and neither are you.
You weren't? Later nothing... You quoted directly at me in your Next post after JCitron's and My response to him. Posts 23-25. That sure seems like "having a problem with something I said". You even went on to address my estimate specifically, and didn't even mention Jcitron once, or anything he said. Lying? Or did we forget? I quoted your post back at you, and I remember exactly what you said.... So of course I'm going to take it as Directed at me *when you quote me*, in brackets and not...... I don't care if you don't like how I use my words, but jumping on me for it is a bad way to conduct anything with me, and expect me to say so. Finally, you never did address the difference between your estimate of 30K and Mjolnir's of 4-5 Million, which is what I (And apparently at least one other) think to be closer to what it would take to make a decent Trans-America Route now that we HAVE gotten into the Math.
Falcus
Ditto, but replace "Falcus with Oknosten". Its nice to be thoughtful of others.
My issue wasn't the math. It was the way you addressed it.
As for your replying earlier, I missed that it was you. You did recently change your avatar, so I'm used to seeing the little Red Excavator next to your name, not the Yellow GE. My apologies on that count. I honestly thought it was Another user who recently came to my attention as using that Avatar. Further, yes, you did beat me to posting about how long it would take, so yes, I was agreeing with you.
Stop Lying, you're not sorry, or you would have been more polite in your initial response. Theres a difference between "Correcting someones Error" and "attempting to make another eat their inaccuracy". I'll even give you that you may not have set out to do the Latter, but you certainly weren't doing the previous either.....
As far as a "Ballpark Figure", I would ask, How long is a piece of String? Its called a Ballpark figure because its not accurate at all....
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ballpark_figure
I took a Guess, based off an incomplete idea about just how large a Baseboard is vs the actual size of the U.S. I was wrong, but I wasn't really trying to be right... And your response was "Here Falcus, You were wrong by THIS MUCH!" (Paraphrasing how it came across to me).
Further, depending on your work, I hope you don't use Ballpark Figures ever..... Guessing is bad business practice period... But last time I checked, I'm not being paid to be here and do this, and neither are you.
You weren't? Later nothing... You quoted directly at me in your Next post after JCitron's and My response to him. Posts 23-25. That sure seems like "having a problem with something I said". You even went on to address my estimate specifically, and didn't even mention Jcitron once, or anything he said. Lying? Or did we forget? I quoted your post back at you, and I remember exactly what you said.... So of course I'm going to take it as Directed at me *when you quote me*, in brackets and not...... I don't care if you don't like how I use my words, but jumping on me for it is a bad way to conduct anything with me, and expect me to say so. Finally, you never did address the difference between your estimate of 30K and Mjolnir's of 4-5 Million, which is what I (And apparently at least one other) think to be closer to what it would take to make a decent Trans-America Route now that we HAVE gotten into the Math.
If anything, that's more proof for my argument.... So a Route with *just a Bridge* got almost 1/5 of a Route with I don't even know how many miles of Single Baseboard Width Scenery? Either your Bridge is good enough to warrant that kind of attention, it has some quality to make people curious enough to download it, or UMR is just not that popular..... Statistics is the Math to figure out how many are doing what. Sociology is the Who and Why..... After a search of this board, it would seem that the search engine refuses to recognize "UMR" even when combined with other Search Parameters. So until you can prove your assertion that its a popular route in some relation to the fact that its a single baseboard Scenery Route, we would seem to be at an impass as to *why* its popular. Carry on believing what you will, I'll do the same, I'll agree to disagree until further information is provided.
Like nothing, we've hijacked this thread. Started with the gimmie-piggie asking for a Trans-America Route. That said, If this continues, I suggest PM's. After that, I think I'm done with this thread. 2/2 is a nice round number....
Falcus
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