I appreciate you patience with me!! You guys seem so Nice.
Procedural textures are textures created using mathematics/noise, such as modified perlin noise. I'm sure 3D Max uses them. (I haven't had time to delve into gmax yet, but have 2 gmax books laying beside the sofa

- Guess I'm hoping to learen Ike Garfield - by osmosis) This allows textures to respond with greater detail during magnification. They CAN be "baked" on a poly surface - but that sort of defeats the purpose though some great effects can be produced.
I'll have to play with the cloud thing - I love to make software do what it isn't
s'posed to do

Sometimes clouds move in two different directions - It would be nice to get that effect.
As for the last question - I installed
immense numbers of assets! - Now the Content Manager takes
forever to load!! I'm afraid to start the sim if it has to read through this enormous amount of data. When I tried to add more content <blush>, the HD ran forever and the task manager indicated that the content manager was running over 50% of the CPU and was using about 300 MB of RAM. Aparently you can archive this stuff and move it to another external drive or DVD - but I'm not sure how this works, since I haven't a clue about dependencies or even how to ID what is what (though I see there are thumbnails in the cache) or how to get it back when I want it. I currently have 6.25 GB of CDP files in a cache folder. Then I seem to have files called chum (I think that's what they are called) and maybe they do the "work" and the CDP files aren't needed? I think they take up about the same amount of room as the CDP's

Can you tell I like technical explanations? Hehe - If Auran would just let me at the original code, I might sort it out - FAT CHANCE!!
I'm hoping to model some. I haven't used 3D Max - I use Cinema 4D, Rhinoceros, Silo, Lighjwave and Hexagon among others. But I guess I can move a .3ds or .obj file to gmax to complete it for the program.
Seems like I read somewhere that Maya could be used, but I don't use Maya. Actually I like texturing more than modelling. Is there a reason that many of the ground textures are so much worse than other textures (some of which are superior!) in the program?
SO much to learn - but then, I'm a learner. I'm just anxious to get on playing with my "choo-choo's"!! (And suffering from gross impatience!) It's obvious I need to learn a lot about trains in general. I even thought about taking the Canadian rail over the rockies to visit some friends in Seattle - but $6000 USD each is WAY over my head.
I ordered one of the CD's from RailDriver - The one on ancillary buildings. I certainly don't want to begin by modelling a loco! I thought that might be easier to start with - besides - as I said, I really prefer texturing. I think I can make some buildings look well-used
OK, I've rambled forever - Hope some of it made sense.
Thanks again.
Jim