Trees

[boyerm25]

I'm wondering if it is possible to get the trees from the default Auran "forestry" as simply a tree asset, because in my opinion they seem to be the best pine trees available for Trainz. To see what I mean:

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Those are the trees I want.

 

[JCitron]

Those are flipboard trees and are similar to those made by the German developers.

Look for Baum, which is tree in German on the DLS and built-in.

John

 

[montanawestren]

way back when in 2006 they had these as seperate assets, my friend uses them on his old computer with TS06 because they have perfect frame rates. To me they aint great and truthfully I only used em when I started out, but when I found the western hemlocks I stopped using the, to bad the western hemlocks dont work in TS12.

 

[JCitron]

way back when in 2006 they had these as seperate assets, my friend uses them on his old computer with TS06 because they have perfect frame rates. To me they aint great and truthfully I only used em when I started out, but when I found the western hemlocks I stopped using the, to bad the western hemlocks dont work in TS12.

Dave Drake made a lot of those trees for the older versions of Trainz. They are great assets, but as you said they don't work well in TS12. The reason is the way they are handled by the game. The older trees use alpa-channel blending to produce the different images on the trees. This isn't handled well by the game engine due to the video cards we have today. This causes them to have that awful window screen look. They never really had super performance, even in the older, game versions, because of how they're drawn. Instead of being handled 99% by the video card, they are first composed by the CPU then the information is uploaded for rendering. This extra time causes the chunky loading of trees in Driver.

John

 

[boyerm25]

The thing is, most billboard trees (including what I found when I searched "Baum" look like this, with the alpha/windowscreen problem:

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The ones in the forestry do not have that problem:

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All three of these screenshots were taken just seconds apart, in the same version of trainz.

 

[Retro00064]

Tree Pine High Fast (<kuid:44179:60021>; built in to TS2010, not sure whether it's built-in or on the DLS for users of TS12) should be an exact or almost exact match to the trees in the forestry.

If you has TS2010, then you could turn on Compatibility Mode and blended-alpha billboard trees would show up properly (although they are rendered with directional lighting, unlike in older Trainz versions, which doesn't look good when the Trainz time of day isn't around noon). If your computer is capable of handling them (and you don't need a super computer; my laptop (specs in signature) seems to handle them well if I don't stuff too many down its throat), then you could try decent SpeedTrees by mcguirel, Pofig, gawpo50, and jankvis (payware, but check out his screenshots :udrool, which would make that old pine tree in the Forestry industry look like rubbish. (Note: most of N3V's built-in SpeedTrees (with KUIDs starting with 523) aren't really eligible as being "decent".)

 

[Blackie11]

I used to use these types in TS09, when I got TS12 I switched them out for Pofigs' trees, they are really good and handle the movement much better than the normal Speedtrees.

Regards,

dave

 

[JCitron]

I used to use these types in TS09, when I got TS12 I switched them out for Pofigs' trees, they are really good and handle the movement much better than the normal Speedtrees.

Regards,

dave

Yes! McGuirel's and gawpo50s are great too for this. The N3Vs are just too big and clumsy.

John

 

[boyerm25]

The thing about the forestry trees, is they aren't speedtrees, or billboards. That's why I like them.

 

[Blackie11]

Yes but... they do look as though they came off a Xmas cake

 

[JCitron]

Yes but... they do look as though they came off a Xmas cake

I can picture that with frosting still stuck on the trunks.

Seriously though, boyerm, this will cause performance issues later on because of the way they are drawn in the computer.

John

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Seriously though, boyerm, this will cause performance issues later on because of the way they are drawn in the computer.

John

John

Those trees are alpha-masked, not alpha blended, judging by how 'stark' they look. They are using the so-called 'good' type of alpha (as do Speedtreez I think). Unlike Speedtreez, they probably use just one very small texture image, and each of their 4 billboard planes is just 2 triangles, making a total of 8 'polys' per tree. From that, I would predict they have a much lower hit on performance than Speedtreez. Whether they look any good or not is a different matter.

~ Deane

 

[JCitron]

John

Those trees are alpha-masked, not alpha blended, judging by how 'stark' they look. They are using the so-called 'good' type of alpha (as do Speedtreez I think). Unlike Speedtreez, they probably use just one very small texture image, and each of their 4 billboard planes is just 2 triangles, making a total of 8 'polys' per tree. From that, I would predict they have a much lower hit on performance than Speedtreez. Whether they look any good or not is a different matter.

~ Deane

Thank you Deane, for correcting my terminology. Yes the alpha-masked objects are much better.

I agree with you on the looks. They maybe good for distant objects.

John

 

[boyerm25]

I like the looks, hmmm. Maybe I'll use speedtrees up close and those in the distance. Where can I obtain Pofig's trees?

 

[Blackie11]

Search for Pofig here, then go to his website. It is not easy to distinguish the different types of trees but some kind trainzers have added a few ways to do this. The other thing is that it is better to use Chrome to look at the website and translate it from Russian.

Good luck, they are worth the effort.

Regards,

Dave