TRS19 is having a problem with track that uses textures that are PBR parallax. This problem is the moire effect. I know this because many users using my <kuid:439337:103196> TRS19 SAP Track U.S. 132LB SG, FB, TP with Spikes, Shiny have reported experiencing it. Here is a screenshot of that track showing the problem:
The Moire Effect is often experienced in the video and image world as shown in this video:
YouTube video on why you get moiré and aliasing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3LJ43sgo84
I have experimented for many hours to try to find out what specifically is causing this problem. Here are the facts I have discovered so far:
1. With the exception of the Shader quality being set to Ultra, none of the other graphic settings in the Content Manager Performance section have any effect on it. If the Shader Quality is set to other then Ultra the problem goes away.
2. If a PBR texture does not make use of parallax the problem does not exist.
3. Shadows have no effect on the Moire effect.
4. It is not just happening with my track but can also be observed on some of the various built-in TRS19 Trk Jarrah versions that come with TRS19. I suspect that this will also apply to other non-ground content items that make use of PBR Parallax in their textures, especially splines.
5. In my case the moire effect, and how bad it is, seems to be tied directly to the ballast bed and how high it is, which leads me to believe that the issue revolves around the usage of PBR parallax in a texture. As a test I turned off parallax, by deleting the height map in the normal texture map for the ballast bed, and the result was that the moire effect completely disappears. Of course this is not an option with my track, which relies on parallax for the 3D ballast effect, and 3D ballast is the whole reason I created this track in the first place. BTW I also noticed that the moire effect does not appear on any of my track which does not have a ballast bed.
I searched the forums using the keyword moire and came up with a number of forum posts dating back to well before my release of my track where other track and content items using PBR parallax textures exhibited this same effect. As an example see this forum post:
https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?148593-Shimmering-scenery&p=1732468#post1732468
What was interesting about that post is that the moire effect apparently went away when a TANE procedural track was placed nearby the TRS19 track. Here is the image from that post:
Also according to another post the moire effect was much less apparent in driver then it was in surveyor.
Here is a screenshot of the graphics settings I Use on my TRS19 (1920x1080 144hz no vertical sync) with my EVGA 1080 graphics card:
For whatever its worth I did find the following explanation as for why moire appears in PBR, although I am not sure I understand it, nor am absolutely sure it applies here:
"Because mipmap levels are used to store the pre-integrated environment, they can't be used for texture minification, as they ought to. This can causes aliasing or moiré artifacts in high frequency regions or the environment at low roughness and/or distant or small objects. This can also impact performance due to the resulting poor cache access pattern."
The above explanation came from:
https://google.github.io/filament/Filament.html
I would really like to see this issue resolved once and for all for my new TRS19 procedural track users but at this point I think it will most likely need to be resolved by N3V, unless someone can furnish additional technical information on how to resolve it.
Bob

The Moire Effect is often experienced in the video and image world as shown in this video:
YouTube video on why you get moiré and aliasing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3LJ43sgo84
I have experimented for many hours to try to find out what specifically is causing this problem. Here are the facts I have discovered so far:
1. With the exception of the Shader quality being set to Ultra, none of the other graphic settings in the Content Manager Performance section have any effect on it. If the Shader Quality is set to other then Ultra the problem goes away.
2. If a PBR texture does not make use of parallax the problem does not exist.
3. Shadows have no effect on the Moire effect.
4. It is not just happening with my track but can also be observed on some of the various built-in TRS19 Trk Jarrah versions that come with TRS19. I suspect that this will also apply to other non-ground content items that make use of PBR Parallax in their textures, especially splines.
5. In my case the moire effect, and how bad it is, seems to be tied directly to the ballast bed and how high it is, which leads me to believe that the issue revolves around the usage of PBR parallax in a texture. As a test I turned off parallax, by deleting the height map in the normal texture map for the ballast bed, and the result was that the moire effect completely disappears. Of course this is not an option with my track, which relies on parallax for the 3D ballast effect, and 3D ballast is the whole reason I created this track in the first place. BTW I also noticed that the moire effect does not appear on any of my track which does not have a ballast bed.
I searched the forums using the keyword moire and came up with a number of forum posts dating back to well before my release of my track where other track and content items using PBR parallax textures exhibited this same effect. As an example see this forum post:
https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?148593-Shimmering-scenery&p=1732468#post1732468
What was interesting about that post is that the moire effect apparently went away when a TANE procedural track was placed nearby the TRS19 track. Here is the image from that post:

Also according to another post the moire effect was much less apparent in driver then it was in surveyor.
Here is a screenshot of the graphics settings I Use on my TRS19 (1920x1080 144hz no vertical sync) with my EVGA 1080 graphics card:

For whatever its worth I did find the following explanation as for why moire appears in PBR, although I am not sure I understand it, nor am absolutely sure it applies here:
"Because mipmap levels are used to store the pre-integrated environment, they can't be used for texture minification, as they ought to. This can causes aliasing or moiré artifacts in high frequency regions or the environment at low roughness and/or distant or small objects. This can also impact performance due to the resulting poor cache access pattern."
The above explanation came from:
https://google.github.io/filament/Filament.html
I would really like to see this issue resolved once and for all for my new TRS19 procedural track users but at this point I think it will most likely need to be resolved by N3V, unless someone can furnish additional technical information on how to resolve it.
Bob