Well actually with flat routes you can actually get away with fewer tiles either side of the line if (and with respect to the guy who posted earlier about viewing from a hill 500 feet above and 2km away from the track) you are focused on what is visible from the cab and/or train. The flexibility of Trainz and Surveyor is that you can use it how you want, but my approach is and has always been, it is a means of creating a nice railway which you can drive or ride along, not a vast tract of landscape.
Route builders , how far do you go?
- Thread starter dangavel
- Start date
Actually I started the thread and I know my approach is not for everyone, but I made no mention of looking at the route from 2km away , 500 feet above the track is not a lot, there are a lot of hills nearby where i could view the Adelaide main line from that height, its not exactly the stratosphere. If work can't hold up at that distance then the builder must have a very narrow route.
I have just as much interest in the surroundings as I do the railroad, but I am obsessed with the vastness of the terrain that US narrow gauge routes pass through. From my viewpoint many people concentrate on the railway, and not the context that it sits within, top end producers of routes like Jango obviously do consider the context that the route travels through to be as important as the track and near surrounding , which is one of the reasons that they produce masterpieces like Rollins Pass that hold up from a distance and the majority of us just produce "nice routes".
Yeah, there is nothing bad about model railway stuff, if one likes operating at high quality over a small area because you computer isn't up to a big route, or just happen to love the format, they are ideal. or design a freelance route, there you can do what you like, pull hills up to hide the edges, i do that with my freelance routes or others such as timber ridge which is very narrow at times. I should have said that really my comments apply more to prototypical routes with terrain that forces one to make decisions about what to do re cutting out endless vistas. on the Uintah, at Baxter pass there is a huge panoramic views once the route begins to descend, i had to make a wider dem and build up mountains where there was a big hole on one side, I cant vegetate all this lot , but i probably will have to add more hills on the right hand side, and pull some edges down on the other. these are views from trackside.
with something this scale one doesn't have much choice , it just looks terrible with big holes where hills should be.
Actually I started the thread and I know my approach is not for everyone, but I made no mention of looking at the route from 2km away , 500 feet above the track is not a lot, there are a lot of hills nearby where i could view the Adelaide main line from that height, its not exactly the stratosphere. If work can't hold up at that distance then the builder must have a very narrow route.
One thing I have learned about the Trainz community... There are many different interests, goals, concepts, likes, dislikes, etc, etc. as there are members. I've never seen such a single community have such a diversity of thoughts, goals, what's good, what's bad, etc. And each one valid!
I actually believe that speaks very well of both the Trainz products, and, the user base. I've never seen so many different avenues of use from "one product" (Nv3 Trainz sim, all versions).
In the entertainment world I can sit down and watch the Three Stooges or I can choose another channel and watch a Cecil B. DeMille epic. Once can argue that DeMille certainly is "better" than the Stooges. But when I'm in the mood for the Stooges a DeMille epic just doesn't fill the need. I'm finding that Trainz is the same way. We all have our preference, and that preference changes as often as we do.
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Looks very nice Dan, but as I said earlier you still need to be aware of the file size and performance implications of running the distant hills out to a long range, even if at 10m resolution and painted in a flat colour.
To me a route in any of the sims is a bit like creating a movie set - part of the art of illusion is giving the appearance of realism while keeping out anything no essential to how the scene will be viewed.
To me a route in any of the sims is a bit like creating a movie set - part of the art of illusion is giving the appearance of realism while keeping out anything no essential to how the scene will be viewed.
Obviously we have to agree to disagree,if i removed anything in this part of the route it would destroy the scene , as the route loops back and forth down the mountainside and drops at a 7.5 grade it would just look utterly idiotic if I applied a 7 board limit on myself and removed mountains that the route runs through further the down the canyon. anyway, this runs smoothly on an 8gb card and a 9 year old Xeon workstation, if it won't run for everyone , well that's just too bad. I could not make it below my standards as there wouldn't be any joy in it for me.
FootplatePhil
Trainz Tragic since 2002
I use a combination of backdrops based on my photos taken on location, and raised edges. I also try and force the perspective a bit by using smaller trees and scenery objects in the distance. This can look a bit weird from above using a "modellers" viewpoint, but when you are down "in the scene" it works OK. My route at the point of the below screenies is only 1.5 boards wide.
Modellers view...
View from "inside" the scene..
Modellers view...
View from "inside" the scene..
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I have noticed this with trees - many of those we have to work with are quite tall, 25 to 30m. The problem is, the smaller ones don't look "right" when viewed form the route builders "God" vantage but in actual fact when driving, they are exactly the right size to avoid driving through a canyon of green (which I guess does solve the distant hills dilemma...!). Even some bushes/scrub/grasses may look tiny in the editor so instead you grab the 1.5 or 2 metre variety then when driving you can't actually see much of anything over the tops!
Yes! There are some excuses though for tree tunnels where appropriate such as a forgotten and barely used industrial branch for example.
But... The smaller versions of the trees aren't quite right because they are only scaled down versions of the larger ones. Young trees have a totally different shape than the mature version, which is why they don't quite look right. This is the same with shrubs and bushes.
Interesting reading the different views in the posts.
Personally I prefer folk to use their own style and talent and build what interest them. If folk want to make distant rolling hills, mountains, or whatever else in their route, go for it! Variety is the spice of life they say.
Regarding tree tunnels, I love them. They can be made to feel and look "spooky" and/or have the sun shafts flicking through and gives variety to a scene. Having something slightly hidden near the track, can be bit of an "easter egg" for the player when it is seen. So much can be done if some thought, effort and imagination is put in. That is the beauty of trainz, you are only limited by your imagination. Well that is what I think anyway
Personally I prefer folk to use their own style and talent and build what interest them. If folk want to make distant rolling hills, mountains, or whatever else in their route, go for it! Variety is the spice of life they say.
Regarding tree tunnels, I love them. They can be made to feel and look "spooky" and/or have the sun shafts flicking through and gives variety to a scene. Having something slightly hidden near the track, can be bit of an "easter egg" for the player when it is seen. So much can be done if some thought, effort and imagination is put in. That is the beauty of trainz, you are only limited by your imagination. Well that is what I think anyway
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Interesting reading the different views in the posts.
Personally I prefer folk to use their own style and talent and build what interest them. If folk want to make distant rolling hills, mountains, or whatever else in their route, go for it! Variety is the spice of life they say.
Regarding tree tunnels, I love them. They can be made to feel and look "spooky" and/or have the sun shafts flicking through and gives variety to a scene. Having something slightly hidden near the track, can be bit of an "easter egg" for the player when it is seen. So much can be done if some thought, effort and imagination is put in. That is the beauty of trainz, you are only limited by your imagination. Well that is what I think anyway
I actually like tree tunnels myself and are quite common in my area.
I agree with Trainz we have the tools to do what we want with a gamut so grand that in some ways it can be overwhelming.
yep, as I said before, it all depends on what you want to achieve. I put the thread up because I have some sections where , to me at least, I could not remove distant objects because of the actual nature of the terrain, the direction of the track and the height of the route, which made using backdrops or hiding with objects impossible to achieve. I was really hoping to inspire more about how people manage to adapt and techniques Used in various routes, not that one rule applies to everyone . I have some routes I love to drive that re very narrow and in those cases I don't hover way above the route. But on my prototype , the nature of it forces me to make certain decisions because to do otherwise just looks bad to me.Interesting reading the different views in the posts.
Personally I prefer folk to use their own style and talent and build what interest them. If folk want to make distant rolling hills, mountains, or whatever else in their route, go for it! Variety is the spice of life they say.
jackyamstel
Well-known member
The route I'm building is CN's Watrous Sub which is a lot of fairly flat prairie where you can see for miles but also has sections of rolling hills where your view would be much more limited. I'm going 6 boards on either side of the mainline for the most part, a little more in some places and less in others. The countryside is scattered farms, clumps of trees and brush and sloughs with various towns along the track. I set draw distance to 10,000 meters or more so that I can see the long distances here when in cab mode but I also like to watch the train from an elevated view point and again, I like seeing the great distances. The route is getting quite large but so far my computer is handling everything OK. Maybe one day I'll find that I need to trim some boards but for now I'll keep plugging away as I have been doing.
Cheers,
Jack
Cheers,
Jack
That's what I am running into on a route project right now. I've started building the Laramie and Western a short line that didn't make it as far as it planned and ended up as a UP branch line to Coalmont, WY. It served a few towns up in the hills and then was sold off and abandoned. The terrain varies from fairly flat high prairie to some steep hills and valleys with lots of curves circling the hills. There are going to be places where I will need as much open land as I can, such as up near Laramie and over near Coalmont, Centennial, and other areas, but places such as Albany will be in the woods. With the hills and open prairies, I agree there is no way to use backdrops for this route because in those foothills of the Continental Divide, the route will be up about 7800 feet or more overlooking big valleys below.
With a route like this, I will do a rough cut first leaving a lot more baseboards than I'll ever use. Once I've got the basic framework in place, meaning the route graded and towns marked out, I'll "walk" the line and look for baseboards that can be removed even after setting the camera to the longest draw distance. If the baseboard still can't be seen from track view, it'll be cut off as long as it's not too close to the tracks.
Yeah you have to make a bigger dem than you need.This is what I've had to do with the Uintah , in one case it travels about 4 miles in one direction only to reverse direction to where it gets back within half a mile of the point it started off with , which is a fair difference in height. I was looking today to see what I can remove , in the space between the two points there's virtually nothing that can be removed without creating giant holes visible from many spots which would ruin the scene. Removing boards at the periphery results in edges that are visible from afar and cant be disguised in any way.Then there's another big hilly section that has to be retained even though the track is several miles away as the terrain slopes down about 500 feet before going up again rapidly , take the hills away and the river disappears into nothing.