Trees and LOD settings

boleyd

Well-known member
I usually work with Eastern USA routes and thus forests. Despite the improved graphics they are masked by a poor application of LOD values. In an effort to include as many customers in the experience of TS19, as possible, N3V has set the the lod to move to lower resolutions so close to the viewpoint that you loose all definition and only see shapes. As a result a forest is reduced to a mono-colored mass of a common shade of green. Even some distance from a tree you can see that none are as perfect as those in the TS19 world when viewed from a distance. There are subtle yellow and red overtones you never see on N3V trees. I look out of my window and I see nothing but large green trees but each looks different. Looking at TS19 (15,000M) I see either a solid common green or, at a distance, a very dark common green.
 
That unfortunately has to do with the Speed Tree implementation and the work of the content developer. If the content developer used additional leaf and branch colors rather than the common green for leaves and brown for branches, there would be more variety in the forests. Speed Trees also tend to be of a uniform height and shape so that they have that uniform size, color, and shape even in the distance.

We also have the drop off in LOD, which causes the Speed Trees to look spindly too soon so we don't quite have the cover that we should have in the Northeast. That jungle in the Southern Tier of New York in the Susquehanna Valley area to be exact, Western Pennsylvania, and all across the rest of New England can never, ever, be modeled as it should, otherwise, we will melt our computers.

But as I've said before, my complaint about the Speed Trees is they are too perfect and too uniform, and usually too big. They work well for those locations where we want perfect trees such as in towns along the fancy boulevards and avenues, in parks, and in the yards and gardens of big fancy estates. The Speed Trees as we have them just don't work well outside of those areas, and the billboard/flip board trees, just don't cut it either because they may have the right shape, but look like paper and mylar strips glued and stapled together a star-shape to represent trees. They looked bad before, but with the new lighting in TRS19, they glow in the dark.

What we need is a nice low-cost tree library that is compatible with the existing Speed Tree enging that is easy to use so we can all create trees that suit our needs. Maybe N3V could develop a random tree generator based on specific parameters, such as region, type, season, and let the system generate a procedural forest for our routes.
 
Part of the problem here relates to the baked-in closeup blur Post Processing settings delivered by the Ultra & High Post Processing settings in SP3 and TRS2019.
I overcome this by setting PP to Manual in TRS2019 and remove the closeup and distance blur settings, bloom, SSAO, and similar unwanted distortion effects there.

LODs have been severely implemented in TRS2019, resulting in consists and locos disappearing at intermediate distances where they would still be visible for another 3000+ m in T:ANE.
It's worse when locos are treated differently from their consists, and you see the loco blink out of view whilst the wagons roll on blissfully without it!
Really disappointing to me, since I revel in long distance, clear-air views like those we enjoy in New Zealand, where distant objects like hills and mountains are more often than not sharply defined and clearly visible for 50km and beyond.

I sent in a couple of bug reports related to this in recent times and was told by QA that they were able to replicate my observations (sent in a route with signboards, rulers, locos and consists at measured distances, so difficult not to) and a couple of locos were fixed, but so far there's no indication that the Devs will do anything more about this.
Seems a pity when those of us who have invested in higher-end graphics cards specifically for detailed rendering of this wonderful railroad simulator are penalised for our devotion.
 
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Part of the problem here relates to the baked-in closeup blur Post Processing settings delivered by the Ultra Post Processing settings in SP3 and TRS2019.
I overcome this by setting PP to Manual in TRS2019 and remove the closeup and distance blur settings and similar unwanted SSAO effects there.

LODs have been severely implemented in TRS2019, resulting in consists and locos disappearing at intermediate distances where they would still be visible for another 3000m in T:ANE.
It's worse when locos are treated differently from their consists, and you see the loco blink out of view whilst the wagons roll on blissfully without it!
Really disappointing to me, since I revel in long distance, clear-air views like those we enjoy in New Zealand, where distant objects like hills and mountains are more often than not sharply and clearly visible for 50km and beyond.

Lod is so easily controllable using LM.txt even in TRS19, only seems many are just using the example settings, I stretch them way out so you can't see the lod changes, the final lod usually a roughly shaped box is so far off you can't see it. Easy enough to fix the distances in lm.txt lowest lod of 0.01 as in a very low poly box shape works well as you can not see that far ;o)
 
Thanks, Malc; I'll check that avenue out next.
Couple of my reports outlined the poor and highly noticeable LOD transitions on several popular built-in locos and wagons.
Was reluctant to modify the built-ins that I was showcasing because I thought that I would not be able to without cloning and that these adjustments are best done by the author.
 
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I usually work with Eastern USA routes and thus forests. Despite the improved graphics they are masked by a poor application of LOD values. In an effort to include as many customers in the experience of TS19, as possible, N3V has set the the lod to move to lower resolutions so close to the viewpoint that you loose all definition and only see shapes. As a result a forest is reduced to a mono-colored mass of a common shade of green. Even some distance from a tree you can see that none are as perfect as those in the TS19 world when viewed from a distance. There are subtle yellow and red overtones you never see on N3V trees. I look out of my window and I see nothing but large green trees but each looks different. Looking at TS19 (15,000M) I see either a solid common green or, at a distance, a very dark common green.

Yea, someone else noticed exactly what good ole Tony Hilliam just had to discredit with my post months ago.....
Too "bleep"ing funny. Easy solutions to the above, yet people fail to do the extra work and don't seem to know what they have to do for realism :hehe:

$69 for this relase - Yea, No Thank You...…. Also love how people have placed knowledge above in the posts when they have little to no experience with SpeedTree, a very complex and very touchy program to do realism, just not throw up a model with a couple textures….. Too Funny
 
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I just spent some time closely viewing the Broadleaf trees. They are just to dense. I have a maple in front of my house that has been trimmed back to its maximum size of about 8ft in diameter. They grow quickly and would become a pain. Because of trimming it is very dense and looks a lot like the speed trees. On-the-other-hand the maple tree offered by N3V looks more appropriate in shape to a tree in the wild. BUT the leaves are perfect with only a few with a slight color tinge. BUT-BUT some idiot painted the tree's trunk and limbs white! I look at the small forest behind my house in Western PA. and I can't see any white trunks. A lot of the birches here were diseased. Many of N3Vs trees have been painted white. Millions of gallons of virtual paint, and the toxic gasses, were used. Right now I would take the N3V WHITE series if they could find someone, who perhaps vacationed out of town and saw trees, to fix the the white trunks/limbs and fix the perfect leaves. VARIETY !!!!! Or tie the _____ that painted the trees, to a tree.
 
I just spent some time closely viewing the Broadleaf trees. They are just to dense. I have a maple in front of my house that has been trimmed back to its maximum size of about 8ft in diameter. They grow quickly and would become a pain. Because of trimming it is very dense and looks a lot like the speed trees. On-the-other-hand the maple tree offered by N3V looks more appropriate in shape to a tree in the wild. BUT the leaves are perfect with only a few with a slight color tinge. BUT-BUT some idiot painted the tree's trunk and limbs white! I look at the small forest behind my house in Western PA. and I can't see any white trunks. A lot of the birches here were diseased. Many of N3Vs trees have been painted white. Millions of gallons of virtual paint, and the toxic gasses, were used. Right now I would take the N3V WHITE series if they could find someone, who perhaps vacationed out of town and saw trees, to fix the the white trunks/limbs and fix the perfect leaves. VARIETY !!!!! Or tie the _____ that painted the trees, to a tree.

We have the same issue back here in eastern New England. My maples are light-colored, but not white and the birches and American black cherry are all but disappearing due to borers, and birches don't glow like light sticks either. I agree let the tree-makers come sit in our woods and experience the real tree colors, but to give them a benefit of the doubt this may also have something to do with the libraries offered by IDV.

What would be nice is the ability to create our own trees to suit on the fly. Way, way back in the 1990s and early 2000s I used a program called World Builder by Digital Element. www.digi-element.com. This program, in its latter releases, came with a tree and plant generator. This worked by adding in the components, based on species, style, size, etc., and the program would create "offspring" based on genetic components of its parent trees or plants. There was no limitation on what could be created so it was interesting combining a bamboo plant with a pine tree, for example.

Anyway, once the trees and plants were generated they could be saved as in a library for future use. In addition to the mesh varieties generated, the program could also produce what they called a flip board, and even billboard varieties of the same plant and trees, which was great for low resolution distant objects while keeping the mesh-versions for up close. With many variants, sizes and shapes of the same species in both simple billboards or flip boards, as well as mesh, one could build up a fairly realistic scene.
 
Look what the cat dragged in.

Oh, you missed me..... Of course your post was wasted server space, but I digress..... People's opinions do not matter to me.

I just spent some time closely viewing the Broadleaf trees. They are just to dense. I have a maple in front of my house that has been trimmed back to its maximum size of about 8ft in diameter. They grow quickly and would become a pain. Because of trimming it is very dense and looks a lot like the speed trees. On-the-other-hand the maple tree offered by N3V looks more appropriate in shape to a tree in the wild. BUT the leaves are perfect with only a few with a slight color tinge. BUT-BUT some idiot painted the tree's trunk and limbs white! I look at the small forest behind my house in Western PA. and I can't see any white trunks. A lot of the birches here were diseased. Many of N3Vs trees have been painted white. Millions of gallons of virtual paint, and the toxic gasses, were used. Right now I would take the N3V WHITE series if they could find someone, who perhaps vacationed out of town and saw trees, to fix the the white trunks/limbs and fix the perfect leaves. VARIETY !!!!! Or tie the _____ that painted the trees, to a tree.

I highly doubt these broadleaves you speak of are very far off the prebuilt Speedtree that comes from the library. If they are not or modified, the texture that has been used thru I do not know how many Speedtree programs are designed for one particular leave mesh. Each leaf mesh requires a specific form of texture design, but what do I know, just continue to build them in a game that can handle superior quality and realism...
 
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You never fail to deliver. How many posts will it take you this time to melt down?

None.... When will people begin to realize that unwarranted communications above is wasted internet space and actually contribute to the overall discussion with relative facts instead :hehe:
 
You never fail to deliver. How many posts will it take you this time to melt down?

Look at this... yet another troll. Anyways, mcguirel's URST trees look fine in T:ANE,as in the screenshot here.
My-Trainz-Screenshot-Image.jpg


But I can't help with the TRS2019 issue,as 90 dollars Canadian is an insane price for it,but... it might ether be TRS2019,or the in game settings for tree detail is on something like low or medium. Have you tried putting the tree detail on high or ultra? It might work,it might not,but the game of trail and error with the settings might work. Or if your using the built-in speedtrees,they might be seasonal,but once you get far away from them then they don't look that good,where as with mcguirel's URST speedtrees,they look fine even at a distance. Just mess around with certain types of speedtrees from different authors,and try to see if it's the speedtrees your using,or if it's just TRS2019.
 
None.... When will people begin to realize that unwarranted communications above is wasted internet space and actually contribute to the overall discussion with relative facts instead :hehe:
And when will people realize that responding to such only encourages them? mcquirel, your posts are valuable and useful to us. Please don't let yourself get baited into wasting your valuable time responding to obvious flame bait.

--Lamont
 
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