Speed Trees Are A Beautiful Nightmare

[mp202]

Rhianna (or some other American Pop Singer) said it best, Speed trees are a beautiful nightmare (Or something like that. So forgive me for sounding like Christina Aguilera :hehe. But for my payware route, I am planning on using Profig trees (With permission of course). But I was wondering if this is what I should go with. My route is going to be 121+ miles long and has somewhat dense forests surrounding the tracks at places, and I want people to not have too big of problems with frame rates on middle-of-the-road CPU's. I also am going to use (again, with permission) JVC grass splines but to a bare minimum, should I go with this as well without straining Medium CPU's? I'm asking because I want to retain the maximum level of detail with acceptable frame rates.

 

[Dermmy]

Performance wise you don't have a problem, Pofig's trees can be used by the thousand. What might be an issue though is that the whole reason Pofig's trees are not on the DLS is that the license he uses to create them does not allow their inclusion in payware routes. There's pretty much a whole thread devoted to the issue in (I think) the freeware release section.....

 

[mp202]

Man that really sucks. They are excellent trees, just haven't had the time or space to "use them by the thousands".

 

[johnwhelan]

If you are going with USA then I would suggest mcguirel's speedtrees and talk very nicely to her about how to use them. I think she suggests no more than five different whatevers and I can never remember what the whatever is. These days I think they are on the DLS so can be used in a payware route. They offer winter as well as summer foliage. I assume you are going with TS12, if so from memory splines can be a problem. I seem to recall grass being available in Speedtree format.

From memory Speedtrees are rendered on their own render engine and I think most work is done on the GPU so the cpu isn't that relevant, again mcguirel knows the technical details if you can work with her. Pofig has raised some technical issues on at least some of his trees recently and said that he is unlikely to fix them.

Cheerio John

 

[mp202]

My route is set in Central Illinois but there seems to be a certain kind of tree that grows in a great abundance around here, yet I can't find it anywhere. I thought Profig MIGHT have one. As for the grass splines, they are just to line the ballast and treeline. The "Speedtree" JVC grasses I feel takes too long. I'm wanting to include the ATLS system as well. It was used an a recent payware route by PacificTrainz so I assume that I can use it as well, with permission?

 

[clam1952]

Could be an idea if you can find a photo of what tree it is, then I expect some one will know if there is SpeedTree version on the DLS, gawpo50 has some speedtrees as well. There may be a problem over mcguirel's trees regarding payware as well the licences are are a bit confusing.

mcguirel's advice about speed Trees was no more than five types of her trees in I think it was one area however I have dozens of different pofig types and some mcguirel ones and it makes virtually no difference here. Case of see what you can get away with. For grass splines try out some of jankvis's old style splines, there are quite a few that work well and don't look strange or have performance hits, need to search them out though.

 

[mp202]

Aha! Found them! This is the billboard version though. I need a speedtree version of it.

 

[Dermmy]

Have a look at the grass splines by tram__ (tricky to search there are TWO underscores). He has a series using Trunda textures on a JVC spline which are just brilliant both in appearance and performance....

 

[shaneturner12]

Is that the right username? I haven't come across that user before.

Shane

 

[itareus]

Is that the right username? I haven't come across that user before.

It's "tram__" - one "m" and two underscores.

 

[shaneturner12]

That's what I thought. I couldn't remember seeing a user with two ms like that.

Shane

 

[Dermmy]

oops - typo fixed!

 

[mp202]

Alright, I got the grass splines but what about the trees (picture above)? Is there a speed tree version of that?

 

[JCitron]

Alright, I got the grass splines but what about the trees (picture above)? Is there a speed tree version of that?

I don't think there are you are showing here are. These look like the Perfect Treez from Dave Drake, and these are winter trees without any leaves if these are the ones you are looking for.

Do you have a picture of the real thing? I'm sure we could identify them. I'm pretty good with flora, and I have traveled through the region myself. I'll check my storm chasing photos. From what I remember, there are a lot of birch, poplar, and oaks in that area.

John

 

[mp202]

John, I dont think there is any way I can get a good picture of them since they are so far from a roadway and Google maps doesn't make it any better. But I am certain that those are the trees that are in the above picture.

 

[JCitron]

Taking a guess... I looked at Bing in the Carlinville area and then south eastward along the river. They look like poplars and oaks to me.

Here's some pictures from my storm-chasing trip in 2011. We covered MO, KY, IL, OK, TX, TN, and AR.

http://sdrv.ms/Wy6Ibj

http://sdrv.ms/10mwaJ1

http://sdrv.ms/WK4MMF

Try these... All from southeastern Il, and one from western KY.

They maybe what you're looking for.

John

 

[mp202]

Not exactly. The kind of trees i'm looking for grow in abundance specifically around the Sangamon River/Petersburg area. I will have to take a picture tomorrow.