Why build a "Dead" route?
- Thread starter davesnow
- Start date
I understand the preference to have "action" on one's route, but personally, i don't use carz. i have two routes that i split my working time between (both will be released...at some point
) and i have carz disabled on both. on one (a U.S. themed route) i have it disabled because it makes the setup of ATLS-triggered crossing simpler (the car stopper wants to sink the road...at least the YARN type...about 2.5 meters in the ground. It's a pain to fix once it does that) and stops the annoying sounds, suicidal drivers, and bad-looking vehicles from clogging my routes. i don't have a powerful computer anyway, so it's only a benefit to me.
on the other, which is british themed, i have them disabled for different reasons. there are only 2 crossing on the route, but it is based off the 1950's and the modern cars aren't really appropriate. also, the route is based off a famous movie from the '50s (guess which one
), and one of the key scenes is a race between a bus and a branch line train, so i have invisible track in the road for the bus to "drive" on. as such, the cars would have interferred, with the bus plowing through them.
just my two cents, take it for what it's worth. my reasons are mostly developmental based, plus personal preferrence to keep my rustoleum reject computer from throwing up the white flag.
) and i have carz disabled on both. on one (a U.S. themed route) i have it disabled because it makes the setup of ATLS-triggered crossing simpler (the car stopper wants to sink the road...at least the YARN type...about 2.5 meters in the ground. It's a pain to fix once it does that) and stops the annoying sounds, suicidal drivers, and bad-looking vehicles from clogging my routes. i don't have a powerful computer anyway, so it's only a benefit to me. on the other, which is british themed, i have them disabled for different reasons. there are only 2 crossing on the route, but it is based off the 1950's and the modern cars aren't really appropriate. also, the route is based off a famous movie from the '50s (guess which one
), and one of the key scenes is a race between a bus and a branch line train, so i have invisible track in the road for the bus to "drive" on. as such, the cars would have interferred, with the bus plowing through them. just my two cents, take it for what it's worth. my reasons are mostly developmental based, plus personal preferrence to keep my rustoleum reject computer from throwing up the white flag.
all my routes are 70's and older i hate the carz traffic they look like cartoons to me , so i prefer to place the vehicles as static objects. I wish it was easier to makde 3d models so i could fill up the roads with some better US pre 70's cars that are much needed such as Stangs Camaros Vettes falcons etc....
"auto traffic is actually sprite animations versus actual mesh objects running on a path like the trains"
Dunno, never looked into it, but since a train simulator is supposed to focus on trains with all the background scenery merely to enhance the trains, that would be the right way to do it. Having studied MSTS extensively I can tell you that all MSTS roads are programmed like track and all cars are programmed similar to AI trains - roads have a road database similar to the track database, and it does eat up processing power. I was naturally skeptical about Trainz roads so I did a lot of heavy testing before deciding to use them, I haven't been able to find any measurable performance hit with the roads I'm using.
Same thing with Ben Dorsey's canal bridges animated by a ship, I played with that in a test route for weeks before deciding I could go ahead and use it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCdqK-4R1Mk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7tfqD6aogc
200 ships and boats cruising up and down river opening and closing 30 drawbridges probably would have an effect, but this one boat with half a dozen drawbridges has no problem that I can find. Aside from rigging all the signals and triggers to work correctly, of course, and if there is a limit to the number of Trigger Multiple Signals instances the game can handle I expect I'll eventually stumble over that in this route. :hehe:
Dunno, never looked into it, but since a train simulator is supposed to focus on trains with all the background scenery merely to enhance the trains, that would be the right way to do it. Having studied MSTS extensively I can tell you that all MSTS roads are programmed like track and all cars are programmed similar to AI trains - roads have a road database similar to the track database, and it does eat up processing power. I was naturally skeptical about Trainz roads so I did a lot of heavy testing before deciding to use them, I haven't been able to find any measurable performance hit with the roads I'm using.
Same thing with Ben Dorsey's canal bridges animated by a ship, I played with that in a test route for weeks before deciding I could go ahead and use it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCdqK-4R1Mk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7tfqD6aogc
200 ships and boats cruising up and down river opening and closing 30 drawbridges probably would have an effect, but this one boat with half a dozen drawbridges has no problem that I can find. Aside from rigging all the signals and triggers to work correctly, of course, and if there is a limit to the number of Trigger Multiple Signals instances the game can handle I expect I'll eventually stumble over that in this route. :hehe:
Missed one - "most likely how the Speed Trees works" on my system they do NOT work. Speed trees were just the opposite of the road traffic, I have an RPG first person game called The Elder Scrolls IV: OBLIVION which uses the same speedtrees, framerates in that are fine. So I fully expected speedtrees to work fine in TS2010, and was surprised to find the exact opposite of what I expected. Carefully controlled testing, replacing tree for tree with the older "cruciform" style trees, conclusively proved to my satisfaction that speedtrees are an enormous resource hog on low end systems. I won't use speedtrees at all.
I would use cars if someone could put together a set of a accurate US road vehicles to use. I absolutely refuse to use those auran abominations, were they trying to make them look like something out of a cartoon? I did try to put together my own traffic set back in TRS06 but ran into problems with vehicles not appearing or driving backwards, also many of the US vehicles are high poly which can be a problem when you have the roads populated with them. I will have to take another stab at it with some of the nice new cars that we now have available.
That's good to know...
But... I was thinking about this after you mentioned it and the trees that do not have a lot of animation to them such as the Ultra series Speed Trees, have better results. It could be that your video card is trying to render all of the animation along with the other animated objects at the same time. With the Ultra Trees, they are animated but subtly so there's not a lot of thrashing, and therefore less horsing of the CPU and graphics card.
The other thing too, since you have an older system, your video card doesn't have quite the same number of GPU pipelines inside, nor the memory speed for that matter. This too can make a big difference, or more likely make matters worse because even my ATI5950 (laptop) and ATI 6970 on my desktop get a little bit of the stutters with lots of Auran SpeedTrees waving around. By replacing them with the Ultra series, which also look a heck of a lot better, the performance is like night and day.
John
Well, after all this discussion, I still prefer routes with cars on the highways, whether they look like toys or not ( I don't think "CARZ" look that bad actually). If all these creators are going to the trouble making RR Crossings and nice looking roads, and if this is supposed to be a COMPUTER Simulator with moving trains and stuff, I definitely want to see the cars moving on the roads and stopping at the crossings.
Regards,
Dave
Regards,
Dave