PBR Roads and Track - compatible items?

boleyd

Well-known member
I had not seriously considered the PBR "stuff" until I had tried it on a route. I am impressed and intend to adopt/replace. However, I can't avoid the visual impact (dropout) of PBR textures adjacent to other elements such as track and roads. Yes, you can fiddle the stuff to and get god results in most cases, but it is a "pain". I thought that procedural track would solve the problem so I bulk replaced mine with TRS19 Trk Jarrah 3 -Procedural.

I had the same visual problems. Similarly roads are affected by PBR textures. However, I see no roads that show a compatibility with PBR textures.

These are not major issues but they are annoying due to wasted time trying to eliminate "interference" from PBR textures. Are their tracks and roads that work properly with adjacent PBR textures.
 
I make my brush real small and use a non pbr texture under my tracks and roads and it fixes it up.
 
Yep, that worked. I never paid close attention to the size of the brush and did not realize why it worked well sometimes. Thanks!
 
For PBR textures next to roads/track...

1) ALL PBR textures anywhere near the road, track, or TurfFX should have the same "magnification". Don't change the sizing of the textures next to road or track or the familiar terrain-doesn't-meet-road/track-seamlessly issue will appear. I use minimum magnification/sizing for all textures that are near road/track because it's much easier to keep the magnifications the same. I found this tip in the first of Approach Medium's YouTube video on the Rochester branch.
2) Do not mix PBR and non-PBR textures anywhere near road, track, or areas where TurfFX are in use.
3) Avoid using PBR textures that are extremely 3D. There are two problems a) they don't stitch well with other textures, b) to tops of rocks, etc. can poke up through the tracks/roads - unless of course that's the effect you're looking for.

Regards
Horace Fithers
 
Several weeks ago I wondered the same thing. So I loaded one of the built-in routes (Canadian Rocky Mountains) to see how the route creator dealt with this. Here is what a brief exploration yielded.

What works:
Textures - PBR Seasonal
Track Splines - Seasonal
Road Splines - Seasonal

So seasonality must be the solution although why is beyond me. Hopefully someone knows. Short term problem is probably the shortage of road splines that are seasonal, but I have not fully explored this.
 
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