Speed trees. How many is too much?

[justinroth]

I am working on a route, Ohio based three years in the making. I am at a rolling hill/river area and want input and opions. This route is a combo of dems and fictional..I have figured out the wonder of backdrops and even edited some of the alpha layers to suit my needs. My question is, in heavy hilly areas I normally use mcguirrels ust (ultra speed trees). And they are small....looking at 15k speedtree count in any given area. I use pofigs tree's in any other application. I realize using pofigs to fill would be a huge hit on performace, what is everyone else using?

 

[oknotsen]

I am using "speed tree's".

What I picked up in some older post is that it is not really about the number of tree's, but the number of different speed tree's. Choose a small selection and keep re-using those few.

If you are still in doubt:
Put the tree's less close together further away from the tracks; people don't really see the difference and it still gives that forest feeling.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Even one "speed twee" is too much ... they are an abomination, a total bwain fart of Trainz ... a design thought up while on the crapper, like the Chevy Corvair was.

Do your speed twees look like this ?

Or this:

I suggest that you use the trees that Mezzoprezzo, Deadpoolmx55, Kamran, Ekankal, Conrail45, and others use ... Now they look real !

Photo by Deadpoolmx55:

 

[mikeaust]

The first thing I do when I dowqnload a route is get rid of all the speedtrees. I ahve a pretty little flower I replace them with.

cheers,
Mike

 

[Vern]

The trees by clam1952 and some of the built in Russian trees make a far better alternative than using Speedtrees without suffering from the alpha issue which affects the older JVC and Perfect etc. trees.

Also don't forget if you're planning to port your route over to T:ANE, the Speedtree technology has changed and the third party speedtrees in TS12 won't work in T:ANE unless the authors update them. I'm trying to avoid using any Speedtrees on my current WIP routes for that very reason.

 

[jjanmarine3]

Even one "speed twee" is too much ... they are an abomination, a total bwain fart of Trainz ... a design thought up while on the crapper, like the Chevy Corvair was.

Do your speed twees look like this ?



Or this:



I suggest that you use the trees that Mezzoprezzo, Deadpoolmx55, Kamran, Ekankal, Conrail45, and others use ... Now they look real !

Photo by Deadpoolmx55:

Please tell us what trees do they use cascade ?

 

[Falcus]

Yup, I have to second jjanmarine in this. I'm still trying to sort vegetation out (And this is Seattle I'm working on. Everegreen state? Emerald City? /sigh), and I'll happily take any pointers on decent Trees, speed or otherwise. I'm currently using a few speed trees in a few places (Ultra trees, big leaf maple, which I'm not unhappy with, but they won't work in very many places outside of where I have them currently).

Falcus

 

[mtldrm38]

I USE CLAM1952 trees also and quite a few without any fps problems....and theyre on the DLS

 

[Falcus]

@Cascade

Thought I'd post this since I just saw it. This is one of Deadpool's Screenshots.... Obviously he does use Speed trees sometimes.... And I recall him saying before too that he's bought a fair amount of JVC Payware.....

Falcus

 

[johnwhelan]

I seem to recall five different ones was the magic number, 5 or less and the performance hit isn't too bad.

Cheerio John

 

[cascaderailroad]

Please tell us what trees do they use cascade ?

How would I know .. If I knew the author of the realistic looking trees I would be using them ... instead I have blank gray baseboards with fabulous curvatures of track on them ... and look at screenshots by: Mezzoprezzo, Deadpoolmx55, Kamran, Ekankal, Conrail45, and wonder who the creators were ... and drool over screenshots like:

Photo by Mezzoprezzo

See: http://forums.auran.com/trainz/show...-Deadpool-(large-shots)&p=1210678#post1210678

 

[norfolksouthern37]

and drool over screenshots like:

because they look great in screenshots and background material. not so much when actually using the sim.

 

[Railwoodman]

I'm coming to really hate trees in general, not because I don't think they make a layout or route look better. But because when I do make the effort to use good quality, they kill my performance in running trains. Finding the balances between the two, realistic, or runable is hard for me to find knowing that it will degrade my overall performance .

Falcus

The shot you give as example is exactly what I find frustrating. The work and talent, and the quality of the foliage used makes this a route vary close to prototypical . But I would have vary low frame rates with them, making it only nice to see, not enjoyably as to running.

two PC's , and a third planed has left me frustrated, as to some of the high quality content and routes now available, and what the future of trainz is to bring .

 

[Hot_Box_Detector]

"How many speed trees is too many?"

one

The first thing I do to a route is to replace the speed trees.

 

[nicky9499]

... and drool over screenshots like:

http://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff461/fstrainz/Foresttreesnew_zpsc1389d33.jpg~original

The whole "Speedtrees kills performance" thing has been debated to death so many times it's not even funny watching you (trying to) pronounce the word any more. Speedtrees are just like any other 3D-trees so on a 1-to-1 comparison they shouldn't differ much at all, if you're getting low frames you've got something else in the scene like hi-poly tracks or some Sketchup objects.

Likewise and similar to the point Mr. Cornell is trying to make, billboards - the type you like to put on a pedestal - are things of a bygone era. Even in this shot you hand-picked (and no offence to Casper), the textures are obviously low-res and jagged around the edges. Not only that, because this is a billboard, you only have 2 or 4 planes to look at. There's a very thin line down the center - this is the other plane. Casper very carefully picked this angle because if it was offset by even 1 degree it would ruin the whole screenshot.

And the thing about Trainz; it's a train simulator not a screenshot simulator.

 

[dricketts]

Pofig's speedtreez look very prototypical. I have very large areas that are densely populated by them with no hit on performance. Billboard trees make for a nice screenshot but are horrible in game. It really sucks we can't use pofig content in TANE. I might have to pass on TANE until there something as nice as his content comes along suitable for TANE.

All speedtreez below by pofig...

 

[hminky]

Isn't anyone bothered by the twinkle on Pofig's trees, never looks realistic while driving with all that shimmer.

Then again most train-sims are used as screenshot simulators.

TrainzItalia's Donner looks great without Speedtrees while operating .

Harold

 

[dricketts]

Isn't anyone bothered by the twinkle on Pofig's trees, never looks realistic while driving with all that shimmer.

Then again most train-sims are used as screenshot simulators.

TrainzItalia's Donner looks great without Speedtrees while operating .

Harold

Ive never seen this twinkle. I've used his trees on two different machines with Windows Vista and 8.1. Follow by banner to my thread. I have several in game videos posted of my route using pofig's trees. I'm not seeing any twinkle.

 

[Falcus]

I think the twinkle comes from having one of the settings too low. Anti-Something or other maybe?

Something else nobody has brought up directly yet.... If you're running a High End computer (SOmething you probably dropped a few Grand into building), you can probably run Speed Trees by the thousands and not have any issue.... Look at some of the stuff Cloaked Ghost does (Though he tends to favor desert routes). If he can get that kind of performance on his machine at 60FPS.... I fail to see why it'd be impossible for anyone else, with speed trees, to get similar.... Of course, thats just one end of the spectrum.....

Having been on the other end of the spectrum for most of my life (currently sitting somewhere in the middle), I know the frustration of not being able to "Do what the other guys are" because of the lack of computing power.....

At the end of the day, all I can say is, if you're having issues running anything in Trainz, throwing more resources (Ram, CPU, GPU namely) probably will help it....

Falcus

Edited to Add:
@Dricketts
What route is that? If its yours or not distributed, can you tell me what sky that is at least? I'm looking for good sky Assets..... Thanks!

 

[JCitron]

Keep in mind too that billboard trees are not affected by the environment so that no matter what lighting changes there are, the trees will have the same lighting when the original trees their pictures taken.

The problem with Speed Trees is we need lots of them and they're usually too big. The huge ancient trees are, for the most part, a thing of the past unless you have them in towns and in parks. The rest of the countryside might have one or two big trees, but the rest is covered with smaller younger species, and even thickets of saplings and smaller tree species. Trying to match this effect in Trainz is nearly impossible. The other thing with Speed Trees is they're perfect, and always perfect with full branches up the trunks as though the trees had nothing to stop them from growing. In real life, trees in a forest are bare from the crown down. This means there are lots of bare trunks with fluffy, leaf-covered tops.

Now, I'm probably speaking out of my head here, if one of the Speed Tree creators could make a lot more smaller than "normal" Speed Trees that are mostly tops and a few trunks, they'd be great for creating a forest. We can then fill in the base with some undergrowth, which usually grows just along the edges of the forest near the meadows, and leave the rest alone with dark earth underneath. The larger and even small perfect trees can then be used near houses and on the edges of the forests where they're receive the light they need for proper growth.

John