Angled Ground Textures

Well, since the mods haven't approved my post for the Suggestion Boxcar (thanks again, guys), i suppose i'll post it here instead where it doesn't need to be approved.

I was laying down some asphalt textures as roads when i remembered yet another one of my many criticism of T:ANE:

XCjjzWl.png


Why is the texture on the right at a perfect 45-degree angle, despite the one on the left being staggered? Although the picture was taken in T:ANE, since TRS19 uses a very similar engine to T:ANE, the "issue" can be replicated there as well.

Do you guys think you could fix this in TRS19 before it launches? I doubt it's a very hard thing to fix, and though it doesn't seem like a substantial thing to do, i'd still like to see it fixed, if only to help my "perfectionism".
 
I don't think this can be "fixed" because it has something to do with the way the engine uses pixels. Many other game engines also have the same "problem" because I've seen it in Far Cry, Amercan Truck Simulator, and other games.
 
From what I can see, the only way around that problem, baring the appearance of new graphic technologies such as pixel level resolution controls for users, would be to provide a series of 10x10 (or 5x5) grid texture template patterns showing transitions between two different textures. There would have to be several transitions at different angles or % coverage and you would have to provide them for every possible pair of textures. That sounds like a lot of fun.

PS: I have never seen texture borders like those shown in your initial posts.
 
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I don't think this can be "fixed" because it has something to do with the way the engine uses pixels. Many other game engines also have the same "problem" because I've seen it in Far Cry, Amercan Truck Simulator, and other games.
From what I can see, the only way around that problem, baring the appearance of new graphic technologies such as pixel level resolution controls for users, would be to provide a series of 10x10 (or 5x5) grid texture template patterns showing transitions between two different textures.

Well that blows. It's not really that big of an issue, i know, but it's annoying in specific cases. Such is Trainz, i guess.

PS: I have never seen texture borders like those shown in your initial posts.

Try it for yourself, then. Open Trainz (T:ANE or 2019, preferrably), make a new route using the 5m baseboards, set the texture radius dial to minimum, and carefully place down a random texture over the default Grid. The borders should be fairly obvious.
 
I'm guessing the grid is actually made up of triangles (2 for every square) which means there must be an (invisible) diagonal line across every square in the grid. It looks like the diagonals must all be going from top-left to bottom-right here. So the grid is asymmetrical in that sense, which results in the effect shown when textured.
 
I'm guessing the grid is actually made up of triangles (2 for every square) which means there must be an (invisible) diagonal line across every square in the grid. It looks like the diagonals must all be going from top-left to bottom-right here. So the grid is asymmetrical in that sense, which results in the effect shown when textured.
Bingo! Though I loved reading the other explanations in this thread.

Similar visual artifacts can be seen with very extreme terrain differences along the same angles, too.

here's a crude illustration to show the 5m triangulation on a 10m square as-is vs having the triangles pointing towards the center, giving a symmetrical model:

trainz_grid_geometry.jpg
 
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From what I can see, the only way around that problem, baring the appearance of new graphic technologies such as pixel level resolution controls for users, would be to provide a series of 10x10 (or 5x5) grid texture template patterns showing transitions between two different textures. There would have to be several transitions at different angles or % coverage and you would have to provide them for every possible pair of textures. That sounds like a lot of fun.

PS: I have never seen texture borders like those shown in your initial posts.



In the (probably far) future, PC's will have switched to something else instead of pixels. I read an article several years ago that "points" will replace Pixels. There'll be no more jagged edges, lag, or stutter. Everything will look sharp and clear. I don't really know what "points" are but I remember reading the article. And it wasn't talking about Font point sizes I don't think.
 
One of our major tasks ahead is to change from polygon mesh terrain to a new single-pass terrain system. Thie will provide much better performance and flexibility in terms of editing, with the trade-off being a loss of some flexibility in terms of the number of unique textures that can be crammed into a small area.
 
Bingo! Though I loved reading the other explanations in this thread.

Similar visual artifacts can be seen with very extreme terrain differences along the same angles, too.

I figured this was the case, considering all Trainz's ground is is just polygons.

One of our major tasks ahead is to change from polygon mesh terrain to a new single-pass terrain system. Thie will provide much better performance and flexibility in terms of editing, with the trade-off being a loss of some flexibility in terms of the number of unique textures that can be crammed into a small area.

That's good to know. I'll be looking forward to it.
 
While possibly a bit off the topic, I wonder how the new NVidia RTX graphics cards which incorporate ray tracing technology will affect the production of graphics, particulary the "on the fly" rendering used in games. Ray tracing has been around for quite a while but was always too slow to be practical. I once used a ray tracing program back in the 1980s to create a simple 6 second animation of a rotating bowl of fruit. I started the rendering process at 3pm and it finished just after 9am the next day.
 
While possibly a bit off the topic, I wonder how the new NVidia RTX graphics cards which incorporate ray tracing technology will affect the production of graphics, particulary the "on the fly" rendering used in games. Ray tracing has been around for quite a while but was always too slow to be practical. I once used a ray tracing program back in the 1980s to create a simple 6 second animation of a rotating bowl of fruit. I started the rendering process at 3pm and it finished just after 9am the next day.

Good question....

I did the same thing with World Builder. The open world animation of some clouds, trees, and grass blowing in the wind with reflection in some water took 32 minutes per frame. I let it run over night and into the next day for a few seconds of video. The images size wasn't very big either from what I remember, maybe 1024 x 768.
 
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