Track junction 'flicker'...

[Robertd81]

Using Trainz for some time now, the thing that has bugged me the most is the texture overlay flickering thing that occurs when building junctions. What are the best ways to avoid this?

Some tracks cause a terrible flickering with the ballast/ground texture, other tracks with the rail tops themselves, and others have both issues. It may seem like a silly gripe, but it just really annoys me to build a great looking section of scenery with flickering tracks at every junction.

I am happy to make do without animated junctions and so on, but really one should be able at least to build a regular junction without the textures just looking awful overlapping each other.

The only tracks I've found that look reasonable and don't do this so much are the lovely one's made by Ocemy. And unfortunately the selection from his website, while very well made, is fairly limited.

Any ideas?

Peace,
Robertd81

 

[JCitron]

Hi Robert,

Try lowering one of the tracks by .01m or until the flickering stops. This should be just enough so the ballast of one track doesn't show through the ties of the other, which is something I hate and will fiddle around with until that problem disappears.

I too can live with the default junctions as well. Being a simulator, I've resorted to the fact that this is all computer generated, and not quite the real thing.

John

 

[Robertd81]

Hey John,

I have to admit to just plain being frustrated with it at the moment. I usually stick with and maintain the mantra that this is only a game/simulation, I guess my fuse is just getting a little short.

I do try to jiggle things around by tiny increments until they look right, but the junction thing just bothers me; essentially in Trainz we can either have flickery textures at junctions, or one rail crossing the other not entirely flush - I just find that maddening.

Problems with texture layers on buildings and other third-party scenery assets are one thing, but in a railway/train simulator, the creation of a junction just simply shouldn't have to be a case of choosing the lesser or greater of evils.

Rant over, I'm going to go have a coffee with a decent shot of rum in it and go jiggle things around some more.

Thanks for the input though, taking the time to reply is much appreciated.

Peace,
Robertd81

 

[mezzoprezzo]

Hi Robert.

The flickering can sometimes be caused by slightly different track heights. It can be particularly noticeable when one of the diverging tracks is at a different gradient.

If that is what is happening the solution is to set a spline point just before the turnout and one on each of the two tracks leading out of the turnout. Then simply set all three points at identical heights. You can then apply any required gradients before and after the turnout. That’s the “cheat” version. However, with a steady hand, it is possible to set points on sloping terrain with a bit of trial and error.

If the flickering is the visual interference between the ballast and the baseboard I find this rarely occurs. When it does it usually doesn’t show in Driver; it is always worse in Surveyor. You can test how it will appear in Driver by doing an ‘Alt fly’ or ‘Alt walk’ (Alt-Y and Alt-U in TS2009 I believe).

Cheers
Casper