:cull are there any work arounds?

It appears it doesn't work in TS19 which impacts performance if you have a coach full of passengers.

On one model I've used a blender source person then omitted it in the LOD. Unfortunately I don't have a large collection of blender source people that can be incorporated in models.

On UK assets it is used extensively for couplings and bogies. Will it return or do we need a blender source library to emulate it?

Thanks John

As far as I can tell it works where used. Perhaps you are configuring wrong?

The alternative to using :cull is just to leave out the attachment points on the lower LODs of your base mesh. I think this is valid for build 4.5 and up.

However, as NorfolkSouthern37 says, I have seen no statement from N3V or in game evidence that :cull doesn't work any more.

norfolksouthern37 said:

As far as I can tell it works where used. Perhaps you are configuring wrong?

Click to expand...

I have two identical signal boxes. One has a blender person inside and the other an attachment point with a person. in preview at 1,000 meters the difference is the same number of polys as the person on the attachment point.

Works fine in TANE.

The problem with leaving the attachment points off is that it only works for TS19 and not TANE which means a TS19 specific asset is required and since the older TANE version exists this means confusion when people select the asset in TS19.

More thoughts?

Thanks John

Cull doesn't always work when using the preview window. Have you checked what happens if you actually place the asset in a route and zoom out from it?

Build 4.5 is TANE compatible, but you need to use legacy materials not PBR.

:Cull behind an attachment pointname works since Trainz 2004
watch the spelling, the C is capital
Somehow since SP2 the passenger points get culled at or around 1000m,
no matter what setting you use in your .lm.txt file, for me that change is unacceptable.
So yes, it still works but no longer listens to the setting in your lm.
If this would only be in the preview window, it is still not acceptable,
cause the only viewer we have, where you can see culling, is the preview window.
content creators test their content there, it should be accurate.


greetings GM

Pretty sure you can leave out attachment points in TANE as well, I seem to recall, it was only a problem in TS12 61388.

I've been playing. I'm creating in TS19 and my assumption was when the poly count didn't go down correctly that TS19 wasn't culling. Looking at a wagon it is culling. So the problem is elsewhere.

The lm.txt file is basically a copy of a working lm.txt file the differences are the scenery object is fairly large and the attachment point is in a different area of the config.txt file. Anyone want to take a look? the :cull looks fine to me in Blender but I can make the blender files available on request. There are some half dozen assets with the same problem.

https://www.jatws.org/johnw/test_NER_Type_3_signal_box_enhanced_scenery.cdp

Thanks John

Changing the asset to a traincar and everything works. So it appears that scenery objects do not :cull in TANE or TS19.

Pity but there are work arounds.

Cheerio John

johnwhelan said:

Changing the asset to a traincar and everything works. So it appears that scenery objects do not :cull in TANE or TS19.

Pity but there are work arounds.

Cheerio John

Click to expand...

Agreed John, I was messing with this earlier on, only thing that works is traincar, not really a surprise as lm.txt is not really supposed to be used for buildings. Leaving the attachment points out of lod meshes does work and is now not a problem. Became an error in TS12 61388 if I remember correctly and then ignored TANE onwards. TRS19 only is easy for lod with the new method as you can specify the distances the lod changes, much as you can with lm.txt however it's now in metres, not the unintuitive screen size value.

There are great tutorials here on the site,
how to use texture atlasses and how many drawcounts is bad for performance
yet we have a build-in passenger product,
my guess still from TRS2004SP2, though its called Prod Passengers 2012
that has 146 seperate texture files and generates even more drawcalls than that


Here an example , pic above traincar empty pic below traincar full

The difference is 299-28= 271 drawcalls generated by 48 passengers
and 50.249 - 8.150 = 42.099 extra polies
Lets assume 1 drawcall causes 3k polies (read it somewhere performance wise)
then we reach 271x 3.000 = 813.000 + 42.099 = 855.099 because of 48 passengers
Not surprised people(Trainz) brings any pc to its knees lol


In SP2 i can only cull at about 1000m and have no influence through the .lm file (like i used to)
so yes it works, but this way is just wrong.


greetings GM