Is it possible to do the Whole USA? or even a state?

cashaber

New member
Hi,

In T:ANE or TRS19 is it possible to make the full lines of the US? or even a state w/out much laggy issues? Does the software keep everything in memory? or just load sections at a time etc like it would in MS Flight sim?
 
It depends upon how much detail you want. The more detail, the more stuff that needs to load and the slower things get. There's also file sizes to deal with. Routes over 750GB get a bit wobbly and can corrupt. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens. If you want something totally accurate, you need to use topographic maps and DEM files. A small 1 arcsecond slice of data is about 350 MB or larger, and you still need to place the topomaps on top of it, place objects and then continue with more content, maps, objects. For that I recommend looking into TransDEM, which is a third-party program and costs about $30.00 US

The logistics aside, do you realize how much work this entails? A fellow Trainzer is currently working on a tiny slice of Western Massachusetts in and around the Hoosac Tunnel and North Adams area. He's been working at this for well over 4 years and has barely scratched the surface placing trees, buildings, custom objects, and still has miles of route to go. The tunnel its self is about 5 miles long and that has to be custom built due to its unique assets. He's barely done with east side (East Portal), and still has the West Portal, parts of North Adams, and out to the New York state line.

Now multiply this by miles, and miles and you see what I mean. I'm not trying to discourage you and only giving you an idea of what needs to be done. Your best bet is to build smaller routes, at least initially, that you can more or less complete and use. Building a very, very large route gets very boring very quickly.
 
Theoretically you can, realistically it probably takes you 10+ years at the lowest detail level to do even a state.
 
Not sure how big a US state is. Here in Australia we measure how big things are in term of number of Sydney Harbours, or MCGs, or (failing that), kilometers. I think you have a similar concept - number of Grand Canyons.

Anyway, to get to the point. My route is currently 9 Sydney Harbours, or 170 kms (110 miles) long. Off and on it has taken me 15 years to build (as John says it can get a bit boring at times if you want to attain a reasonable level of detail, so "time out" periods are likely. I started small, and it just kept growing!.

As far as I can see the 'lagginess' is not determined by the size of the layout, but (roughly speaking) is a function of your graphics cards capabilities, the amount of detail in the route, the view distance you set, and the graphics options selected.


Notes:

Sydney Harbour: A place for parking boats, bridges, and opera houses. Also a useful New Year's Eve venue. "Sydney Harbours" is a unit used frequently by anyone from the state of New South Wales.
MCG: A large stadium used for an obscure game called cricket. This unit is used by Victorians, and those from the other Australian states that don't like people from New South Wales.
A new unit gaining currency (mainly with Queenslanders who also don't like Victorians) is "number of Great Barrier Reefs". However global warming could affect the precision of this measure.
 
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Using bare baseboards, with no terrain, no scenery, just track - you could do it in a couple of years but OMG it would be boring!

I am currently updating an old route of mine from about 10-12 years ago to TANE standard. My computer system has been greatly upgraded in power, memory and video capability since then so I thought it would be no problem, apart from the time involved.

One of the first things I noticed was that the vegetation along the route (180 miles of it) was very bare (almost no grass, shrubs, bushes, etc). So I fixed that by deleting the old stuff and adding lots of great looking TANE and TS12 grasses, shrubs and bushes and it did look good, very realistic in fact compared to the images available through Google Street-view. But I then noticed that in Driver the frame rate on a modern i7 CPU and a GTX1050ti video card dropped to "stutter vision" - a series of still images shown one after the other, not a smooth animation.

Lesson learnt.
 
I don't think any of us would live long enough to pull it off. Maybe in 50 years a computer generating could happen. Who knows the future anyway.:)
 
<kuid2:73500:100796:1> Baltimore to Connellsville & West Mega Route by jrfolco on the DLS. (all dependencies on the DLS)

"Total main line trackage: 1107 Miles. The route has 11,605 baseboards, and covers 2,322 square miles." Covering substantial sections of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.

The entire Class 1 Western Maryland Railroad with portions of the B&O, PRR, N&W, and other railroads.
 
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Not sure how big a US state is. Here in Australia we measure how big things are in term of number of Sydney Harbours, or MCGs, or (failing that), kilometers. I think you have a similar concept - number of Grand Canyons.

Anyway, to get to the point. My route is currently 9 Sydney Harbours, or 170 kms (110 miles) long. Off and on it has taken me 15 years to build (as John says it can get a bit boring at times if you want to attain a reasonable level of detail, so "time out" periods are likely. I started small, and it just kept growing!.

As far as I can see the 'lagginess' is not determined by the size of the layout, but (roughly speaking) is a function of your graphics cards capabilities, the amount of detail in the route, the view distance you set, and the graphics options selected.


Notes:

Sydney Harbour: A place for parking boats, bridges, and opera houses. Also a useful New Year's Eve venue. "Sydney Harbours" is a unit used frequently by anyone from the state of New South Wales.
MCG: A large stadium used for an obscure game called cricket. This unit is used by Victorians, and those from the other Australian states that don't like people from New South Wales.
A new unit gaining currency (mainly with Queenslanders who also don't like Victorians) is "number of Great Barrier Reefs". However global warming could affect the precision of this measure.


Clear across the US:

3,200 miles driving distance: Provincetown, MA → San Francisco, CA (5,149.9 km)

How many square miles is USA?


Land: 3,537,436 sq. miles (9,161,923 sq km) Water: 181,274 sq. miles (469,497 sq km) Total: 3,718,710 sq. miles (9,631,420 sq km) Land Area: (individual states)

That's a lot of area to cover.

1) A current PC would melt.
2) Stutter Vision(TM) would be normal
3) Would take decades to build
4) Impossible to run anything interesting;

There would have to be 100s if not 1000s of AI driven consists on the route to give any resemblance of traffic. With six AI drivers, it's like herding cats, with a dozen it's like trying herd ants, with this many AI it would be impossible.
 
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Hi,

In T:ANE or TRS19 is it possible to make the full lines of the US? or even a state w/out much laggy issues? Does the software keep everything in memory? or just load sections at a time etc like it would in MS Flight sim?

The fact that you even ask this question shows me you probably have never actually completed a route of your own in Trainz or you would know the answers already. In any case the answer to your question is: Theoretically yes, but practically no, and I would be willing to bet money that you would never complete it probably in your life time. Why? Here are good reasons:

(1) Even a small layout takes months to complete if done correctly. Are you prepared to dedicate many years of your life to this task?
(2) If by some chance you ever did complete it, the route would so large it probably would crash the program.
(3) If by some chance you ever did complete it, the route would so large it would not be downloadable from the DLS by most people.
(4) If by some chance you ever did complete it, the route would be so large that their would be tens of thousands of content items required to be downloaded from the DLS which would discourage almost everyone trying it.
(5) If by some chance you ever did complete it, the route would be so large users might need an entire hard disk or SSD just to contain it.

See this thread for my best advice to all newbies on making a route in Trainz:

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...considering-their-first-layout-design-project

Bob
 
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Wow so many great replies!

I was just asking, not that I wanted to do it, Well maybe a short line. :) Anyway I was just asking if it were possible to do and how the program handled the data.
 
Cashaber. It MIGHT be doable to create a state using the "condense" method used by simulators such as the Trucking simulator, where ten or more miles might get condensed into one. But even then I think they must have a way of only loading part at a time, or it would still get VERY large. Just modelling a large city takes a lot of assets and splines.
 
There was flusi's NEC. It was split into 2 parts, but it went from Boston to DC. It was never completed or publicly released, but it's still quite remarkable.
 
East to West US ~3000 miles. Consist running at 50mph. Total time 60 hours. If you want to watch a train running for 60 hours - Build it.
 
Even if you could and your computer could, why would you? Even prototype railroads don't let crews drive non-stop cross-country, why would you?
 
7 baseboard? in ho scale? or rl? that roiute seems a bit small to me to span 200 miles that is of course your using rl scale. I have noticed that 1 base board is about 1/2 mile in rl scale
 
Even if you could and your computer could, why would you? Even prototype railroads don't let crews drive non-stop cross-country, why would you?

To see if it can be done. :) just kidding I dont think I would want to take on such a project of that magnitude.

speaking of crews going nonstop it is a simulator have your train keep going and take a crew car with you so the other crew can rest or pretend that they change crews at a yard or station some where. keep the game running for 3 days straight and change crews out when you goto bed :)
 
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