TRS19 Trivia questions

[Forester1]

Just because I am curious to know:
On the Trs19 launch window and precaching window, there is a scene of the Rocky Mountaineer
- Is that picture taken from an actual route, or is it just artwork?
- If it is an actual route similar to the TRS19 Main Menu route, is it available? Possibly one of the Canadian Rockies routes?
- If it is an actual route, I would like to know what tree assets were used. They look much better than anything I can actually find on the DLS.

Thanks!

 

[grazlash]

Since no one else has chimed in with an answer:
It looks like artwork. The bogies on the picture are scuffed and those on the DLC loco are not. I also cannot identify any of the flora assets in the picture and the ground is too high detail for 5 metre grid.
If it is a Trainz route, time travel was involved or the artwork produced using Trainz assets as a base and the scenery edited for realism later.
The TRS22 roundhouse splash screens look even more realistic.

 

[dangavel]

Just because I am curious to know:

- If it is an actual route, I would like to know what tree assets were used. They look much better than anything I can actually find on the DLS.

Thanks!

I've harped on about this before, but foliage is a low priority for NV3 and now we seem to have no one who is producing tree assets that are improved over the old ones , I think the app will potentially look pretty ridiculous in a year or two, with ancient tree, shrub and grass assets standing out like sore thumbs within routes that have advanced pbr houses , terrain and rolling stock .

So many of the old grass setts can look appalling if viewed in the wrong direction as they appear overly dark or dull. Ive been trying to update them so they look a bit better but with limited results.

Yeah I know you can use turf fx, but people with macs wont see that sort of grass and its also a heavy hit on the gpu if you are too liberal with that grass, as well as being limited to the number of grasses that can be included in any scene.

I could ask if any developments are being planned to rectify this sorry state of affairs, but really given Tony's previous pronouncements re this aspect of the game , is it worth it ?

 

[wreeder]

I think it is artwork as well. I remember during the kickstarter campaign there was a super detailed screen show what the E2 could do that was artwork and was labeled as such then.

 

[Forester1]

Thanks guys. I suspected as much, but hope springs eternal. I was hoping there were some better trees and other details that I was missing, but those mountains would definitely have to have been a background, and it all looked a little too good to be true. Wouldn't it be nice if the actual graphics were good enough to use actual screenshots!

 

[wreeder]

At least the website has come a long way.

https://www.auran.com/trainz/ultimate.htm

 

[Forester1]

LOL! I tried the "Buy now" to see how much they were asking and got a 404.

 

[wreeder]

Yeah, that was site until TRS2004 came out

 

[grazlash]

I've harped on about this before, but foliage is a low priority for NV3 and now we seem to have no one who is producing tree assets that are improved over the old ones , I think the app will potentially look pretty ridiculous in a year or two, with ancient tree, shrub and grass assets standing out like sore thumbs within routes that have advanced pbr houses , terrain and rolling stock .

So many of the old grass setts can look appalling if viewed in the wrong direction as they appear overly dark or dull. Ive been trying to update them so they look a bit better but with limited results.

Yeah I know you can use turf fx, but people with macs wont see that sort of grass and its also a heavy hit on the gpu if you are too liberal with that grass, as well as being limited to the number of grasses that can be included in any scene.

I could ask if any developments are being planned to rectify this sorry state of affairs, but really given Tony's previous pronouncements re this aspect of the game , is it worth it ?

Dan, Speedtree version 9.4 assets look magnificent and work much better with wind and seasons than our current version 6 trees. The downside is that v6 and v9 trees are not compatible with each other, add to that a dearth of tree creators and we would find ourselves back in the situation when we moved from TS12 to T:ANE with its upgrade from v5 to v6 trees. I suspect it would be even more dire. As there would probably be no bulk update available to replace the current trees, the multitude of routes created in the past would look very bare indeed in a new version of Trainz, else a clean break with the past would be required and that doesn't appear to fit in with N3Vs iterative improvement model.
https://store.speedtree.com/
cheers
Graeme

 

[Forester1]

Well, the Douglas Fir and Spruce look better, but I did not find any pine at all. No Ponderosa Pine, no White Pine, no Lodgepole Pine, nothing. No cedar (Hiba Arborvitae Cedar might substitute), No Hemlock, no Larch or Tamarack. So for the Northwest US it is not much help. And for prices over $100 per species it would take quite an investment!

 

[dangavel]

Well, the Douglas Fir and Spruce look better, but I did not find any pine at all. No Ponderosa Pine, no White Pine, no Lodgepole Pine, nothing. No cedar (Hiba Arborvitae Cedar might substitute), No Hemlock, no Larch or Tamarack. So for the Northwest US it is not much help. And for prices over $100 per species it would take quite an investment!

I dunno what the answer is, but I also am not expecting NV3 to prioritise a solution either , we lost jvc, who did look as if he was going to start creating again and the only additional trees that have been added recently are billboards which really don't look that great when placed among pbr textures and models. I probably spend more time searching for convincing vegetation than I do for all the other assets put together . Very depressing .

 

[JCitron]

Dan, Speedtree version 9.4 assets look magnificent and work much better with wind and seasons than our current version 6 trees. The downside is that v6 and v9 trees are not compatible with each other, add to that a dearth of tree creators and we would find ourselves back in the situation when we moved from TS12 to T:ANE with its upgrade from v5 to v6 trees. I suspect it would be even more dire. As there would probably be no bulk update available to replace the current trees, the multitude of routes created in the past would look very bare indeed in a new version of Trainz, else a clean break with the past would be required and that doesn't appear to fit in with N3Vs iterative improvement model.
https://store.speedtree.com/
cheers
Graeme

That's it in a nutshell. Speedtrees as a product is aimed at the large game and animation developers who upgrade and update every time a new version of Speedtrees comes out. What we have is now going on a decade old and far behind the curve without any upgrade path because Unity, who owns IDV now, has no upgrade or import/export for their older trees.

It's too bad that this is locked down like this and I too have been looking for various solutions including exporting trees from another program I have called World Builder from Digital Element. www.digi-element.com. World Builder has an L-system tree creation plug in that allows multiple generations of trees to be created within the program for use with world-creation. I'll discuss the virtues of that program at another time. The meshes for the trees, just like the rest of the world can be exported however I found that the meshes had too many polygons for what we need, and some of the trees had odd blobs on the branches where the leaves are supposed to be. The alternative was exporting the trees as billboard or in their case flipboard objects which turn around to always face the camera. Being billboards, we suffer from the billboard issues we're stuck with now.

Again, we're stuck with something that wasn't completely thought out with no plans to ever keep what was working before, or any plans for the future for a very important aspect of route creation. The flora plays an important role just as high-resolution terrain, lighting, water, and the rest of the railroad hardware. Some people will say that it's a rail simulator why do we care about these things, but we're supposed to be able to create a facsimile of the real world whether fictional or semi-realistic and we stuck with decades old technology that will never be upgraded or fixed, or newer technology that will never be updated in a reasonable time without destroying what we already have.

 

[Forester1]

N3V must (should?) realize that at some point all of their ventures into HD terrain and other whiz-bang features is going to hit a hard stop if that terrain has to be covered with old billboard trees. Why would I want super detailed terrain just to put a bunch of last-generation vegetation on it?