X Marks The Spot

JonMyrlennBailey

Well-known member
Have you ever tried installing invisible track on your map for high-altitude airplane flights? Have you also noticed that when you set the vertexes for the spline points of this sky track it is almost impossible to locate the spline points later on if you ever wanted to edit this track? Often track, if it is too long between spline points, will disappear even in Surveyor (except in map view). Often high-altitude vertex settings like 750-5,000 meters above ground level will be invisible also. Cascade, not long ago,mentioned using distinct houses to mark these spots to me but these will be visible in driver, of course.

Why not use invisible-in-Driver objects to permanently mark things in Surveyor that are hard to spot otherwise?

I finally got smart and marked my sky-high sky-track spline points on the ground with two pieces of red invisible track shaped like an X with the intersection of the two segments right at the spline point.

The problem is the Surveyor camera overhead looking down has a limited zoom height and will not "see" spline points, or their dotted circles and vertical dotted lines, if set too high off the ground.

The camera, can, however, in map view, or birds-eye view, even in Driver, easily spot motorway road and RR track courses in navy blue at virtually any height. The navy-blue X marks also show up clearly because they are formed from track objects.

Caution: when laying and positioning invisible spline objects as track to mark spots on the ground, be sure to hold the Shift key the whole time so the invisible track "marking tape" to draw the X on the map, if you will, does not join any other track that happens to be nearby. The X track will only serve human eyes to easily find things in Surveyor and have no other function when disconnected so drivable vehicles will ignore these X's in Driver so as not try to actually drive on them.

Use non-joined invisible-in-Driver-only (except map view) track to mark other hard-to-spot objects too like birds, animals and other objects visible only in a certain direction.


Don't forget that you can also use a red track mark placed on your X to name or describe the X as well. What is the X you made actually marking? Name the track mark "Coyote Pair" for the coyote animal object invisible at a certain angle, for example. Name the track mark "1,500 m" if you wish to annotate the vertex height of your sky track spline point for future reference.
 
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No disrespect because everyone does what you want: But why would you run your airplanes at 5000 feet high? I run mine at a height that I can see from the ground. If I am a "pilot" and fly at 5000 feet in Trainz, I may not see much.. Just a thought.
 
You want to fly at a height to watch your trains running below ... IDK what that height is ... several hundred feet is sufficient
 
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Taking vertex height readings the spline points of your X marks for your sky track, you can determine the ground altitude and adjust your sky track height based upon absolute altitude (ground level) rather than train board (sea level) altitude.
 
I have my Boeing 747's flying at about 2,700 feet (900 m) above ground level at the maximum flight path height. The Mojave Sub is mountainous in many parts and slow-climbing/slow-maneuvering jumbo jets need sufficient altitude (track height) to safely fly (drive) over mountains. The large aircraft can still be spotted easily and their jet turbines heard from the ground at this altitude and the the ground can easily be seen from the planes at these heights as well. The planes fly lower over the hills with the wind-farm power generators and then over my custom-built reservoir with a dam and Topography water squares as they approach my custom-built 9,500-foot-long airstrip near Tehachapi, California for landing.
 
Trainz can be built as low as -3000m below sea level (I can't fathom why, pun) unless you are modeling a deep sea trench

0.00m is the default sea level baseboard height

If you built a route at -3000m you could fly a total of 6000m in height.

At 0.00m baseboard height you can only fly up to 3000m

At your 2700' (900m) flying height, can you see the baseboards, and trains running below ?

If not, it defeats the purpose

Some areas like in Utah and the Sierra's, Trainz can not go up that high

13,528' (4,123m) Kings Peak

14,505' (4,421m) My Whitney
 
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Well, if my ground is at 1,230 meters/4,034 feet(at Summit on Mojave Sub) above train-board level and my flight path is at 1,750 meters/5,741 feet above board level, quite yes! The planes are only flying at about 1,700 feet above ground level, absolute altitude. This quite low for a jumbo jet.
 
Why does it have to be so exact, and precisely prototypical ? All this obsessive infatuation sweating over all the small details must be maddening ... It's just a game man
 
Well, if my ground is at 1,230 meters/4,034 feet(at Summit on Mojave Sub) above train-board level and my flight path is at 1,750 meters/5,741 feet above board level, quite yes! The planes are only flying at about 1,700 feet above ground level, absolute altitude. This quite low for a jumbo jet.

Don't worry if your aircraft are not precisely at the correct height above ground level. If you can't see your trains from an aircraft, or you cant see your aircraft from the train, then you've missed something along the line. You may need to compromise.
OR,. ..
You could fly 'light' aircraft instead.

Have some fun with it mate!
 
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