Why are "splines" so called in Trainz?

WindWalkr said:
Not claiming that we are the first to use the term in a railroad context, but we derived our use of it from the mathematical basis that is used to generate the track curves, as norfolksouthern37 suggests, and not because of 3D Railroad Master.

chris
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Wasn't implying anything sinister, Chris, just that it does indeed perfectly fit the description of what the parts do - even for a numpty like me with little understanding of the maths behind the principle.

And of course, 3D RRM long went the way of the dodo, Trainz even in its early years offering far superior functionality in its original model orientated guise.
 
itareus said:
Good explanation, trouble is I've forgotten the answer , or was it the question !

Anyway who the hell are you :)
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He's really Alex Trebek, (the continual "question guy") from the TV game show Jeopardy

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...m-XWtg&usg=AFQjCNEASvyZjEkkWIkDrGSK6qPP4zdDAA

A girl walks into a gas station and asks: "Do you have one of those, car tire, air pressure, pumper upper, checker thingies" ... "You mean a tire gauge' ?

"Can you change the air in my tires" ? "Doesn't the air in the tires get stale after awhile, and needs to be drained out, and needs changing" ? "Changing out the air in yer' car tires, draining out the old stale air, and refilling them with newer, high quality fresh air, fortified with nitrogen and helium, makes them bouncy-er, - $2.00 (per tire)".

"Do you have one of those 110v to 200v, small gray, electrical wall socket, step up converters ... I have a 220v 30,000 BTU air conditioner, and the fat plug won't fit in my 100 volt wall socket" ? "Yeah ... it's called: an Electrician" !

Shop rates:

Answers to hard questions (which actually require deep thought) - $1.00
Answers to dumb questions - 50 cents
Dumb answers - 25 cents
Stupid looks, snappy comebacks, and snippy remarks, are always free !
 
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Vern said:
Wasn't implying anything sinister, Chris
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No, sorry, wasn't implying that you were. Just putting in my 2c. It's likely that one or two people on our team had even used that game extensively in the past, but not of the tech guys had and the naming came from that end.


And of course, 3D RRM long went the way of the dodo, Trainz even in its early years offering far superior functionality in its original model orientated guise.
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Trainz had the rather unique advantage of being developed just as 3D hardware was becoming mainstream, by a company with the resources to tackle the subject matter seriously. Of course little did we know that Microsoft was also preparing a shot at the same space :)

chris
 
Meanwhile, in an alternate universe:
8f787418b3d38ba941ec04b769707e0d.png
 
This thread really isn't going anywhere unlike many splines in my routes.

Off topic - ex-politician in Australia used to say to Journos "please exspline" when asked a question - still makes me cringe when I see clips on TV.
And I cringe again now...............busting my spleen!

So 'BISCO' ....a "Bloody Idiot Spline Causing Obstinancy" happens every time I am in a tight corner with multiple splines trying to join a to a and b to b and c to c etc etc!!!!
 
butler57 said:
This thread really isn't going anywhere unlike many splines in my routes...
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Quite the contrary, butler57! I have thoroughly enjoyed the laugh or two (yes, mates, I must have a very low laughter threshold :D).

Most of all, I am certainly getting to know all of yinz better. Spline on!
 
cressjl said:
Quite the contrary, butler57! I have thoroughly enjoyed the laugh or two (yes, mates, I must have a very low laughter threshold :D).

Most of all, I am certainly getting to know all of yinz better. Spline on!
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OK, I am all splined out so why is Trainz spelled with a Z?
 
ray_whiley said:
...Rendering fat is a very common British cookery term...
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Not so common now Ray that we 'old stagers' are in the minority.

I wish I still had my mothers old wartime cookbooks. There were some great recipes in them which cost virtually nothing AND you did not need a cupboard full of exotic seasonings & Herbs to make them !

Cheers

Chris

PS - Now back to Trainz....
 
My grandmother used to render down pieces of chicken fat and use it to make latkes. These potato pancakes have a distinct flavor when fried in chicken fat that is quite tasty and unlike a similar item done in the usual corn oil.

Unfortunately today chickens are less fat than their predecessors and it has also been determined that frying food in chicken fat isn't necessarily healthy. And as you said, Chris, this practice is going away with the times.

John
 
A lot of cooking shows here in Aus (and believe me when I say we have a lot of them) still refer to rendering.
It (the term) is used most often when talking about cooking duck breast and lamb racks.
 
Re post #34 - Hi Chris. We have both my mother's recipe book and my wife's mother's book. I have thought of starting a web site with some of the recipes, plus others which I adapted for use in a motorhome with limited cooking facilities, many of these recipes being vegetarian - but it would take time away from Trainz ...

Ray
 
ray_whiley said:
Not so, edh6. Rendering fat is a very common British cookery term. Anyone who lived during WW2 would have known all about rendering to obtain and make usable every scrap of fat, from bacon rind, suet etc. to eke out the meagre rations. British housewives knew how to make the most use of everything in those days.

Ray (a WW2 schoolboy)

PS there are many odd terms used in railways/railroads and railway modelling - frog, sleeper (tie in the States), etc.
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Is that how the knackery and butchers - and housewives on food stamps - made Lard?
 
Getting back to Jon's question, he also asks if splines are used to design real world roads and railways.

30 years ago the answer would have been "no" because, us designers (myself included) had a gadget called a flexible ruler and this was bent by hand to fit through a set of points laid out on a piece of paper. Easy to understand.

Then some smart sod thought up a way to do all this on a computer. The heart of this was the computer's ability to quickly draw a straight between two points in 2D and later in 3D. Thus CAD systems came to exist.

So how, then, do you draw a curved line though a set of points or through two end points with others influencing the curves. Mathematicians had long know of spline calculations and they became the tool to do such tricks. Hence every CAD system has at least two ways to draw curved lines (a) through or (b) near to a series of points.. done with different spline calculations.

I know of at least 3 ways to calculate splines all with slightly different outcomes AND NONE of which are perfect.

If you have ever created a route in Trainz using tunnel splines you will understand what I mean by "not perfect". The finish end of a tunnel spline has a mind of its own and, in a curved tunnel, alignment with subsequent track can be awkward to say the least. This is not the fault of the Trainz coders.. it's a fact of mathematics when using splines. And if N3V chose another formula for calculating tunnel splines the result would be WORSE.

So think of the Trainz game without splines.. there would be no curved track, no curved roads or fences and so on... just a series of straight lines joining a string of points.... no fun or realism in that!

Thus we have splines to display curved lines and objects.. But keep in mind that every spline is displayed as a series of short straight lines.. the easy thing for computers to draw.

As some one in the Goon Show in the late 1950's (way before PCs etc) used to say "It all very confusing really".....

PS.... I have written a program to design guitar shapes using the cubic spline calculation.. A guitar can be an hour-glass shape or something else. The cubic spline calculation, in this case, is ideal as you can force it to pass through the start and end points of a curve and just be influenced by the intermediate points. Lots of fun for a nerdy guy like me. Plus it has helped me make some great looking guitars.

and I have just completed another update to Images2TGA.. see FAQ thread..

Ah..... not enough hours in the day to do all the things I want to do. What fool said retirement was boring.
 
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