N3v3rf1x3d

This is the old computer language called Leetspeak, N3v3rf1x3d=Neverfixed
the Trainz company name came from this language N3v, N3VRF41L=Neverfail


In this thread I like to discuss the various Trainz items that in years remain broken or incomplete


Kind MoCrossing, also know as a crossing
-Mysterious bump your train makes when reaching/leaving the crossing
it could be an option in properties
-No way to alter the 2 triggers(distances) to open or close gates
this was the reason complex systems like ATLS or TRC were made


Kind MoTurntable also know as a turntable or transfertable
-It used to have the option to add an interior,
a user could take the role as turntable controller
it was removed, probably because of performance issues
our computers are much faster now, so it could be restored


Kind Interior, also known as Cab or Cabin
-the camera positions cannot be accessed by script
-mesh-asset does not work in the mesh table
-no simple way to set the position of the cab in relation to the loco mesh
-any use of PBR texture makes it an ugly cab
-not all controls allow text to display what it is


Kind GroundTexture
-too much difference between standard and PBR
sometimes track will "drown" when placing textures
often strange shadows or gaps will show, it should work on any platform
and with any setting the user has (or is forced to have)


Kind Vehicle, known as car or wagon
-reaching View-Details involves 2 hands
one shortcut key or mouse key (combination) could be used


Kind Consist, a combination of train vehicles
-you can set the sequence and direction of the vehicles
not their properties, like how many of products loaded
the state of panto, lights, priority, etc. etc.
-Quite recently the entire GUI graphic user interface, to make and place these was remove
reason being "ugly" pictures, because some content creators do not take the time to make nice ones.
We know trainz can generate these pictures on the fly, see the driver list,
besides that it could be added to Content Manager, to generate these and add them to your vehicles/loce etc.


Kind Map, also known as Route
-it was possible to put some carz there as addition to the region asset used,
this has been removed for unknown reason.
It was handy, lets say you used Region UK, but for your London map
just add some double deck busses or the typical taxi to the route.


Kind Product, Passengers
-They are not animated or lit at night
The first thing a "fresh to trainz" visitor here sees and remarks about Trainz,
yeah the Trains look nice, but those people just don't move
We see all route builders now use neoklai animated people from 15? years back
all competitive Train Simulators have this sorted over a decade ago
Even our grass and trees move but not the built-in passengers/people


Kind Engine also known as engine file
-It was developed long ago with many parameters, that could be used in the future
yet development somehow halted and many of them do not work at all.
-A recent promessing addition was made called TNI, yet I see no one actually
programming or using it, which is a pity and waste of development time.


Kind Turfx/Clutter/Water
A great idea, but has too much Computer geek/nerdiness as currently used
float16, Int3, fun as a programmer, unclear for an average user
-needs more separate controls not combined with other functions
-needs better control to place/remove it where unwanted


Don't get me wrong, I love Trainz, I believe in the good people working at N3v
I tried the suggestion boxcar thread many times, can not bug report forever
I don't care how long it takes as long as I know it will be fixed/improved
feel free to add or comment (please no fanboi, it cannot be done replies)
enjoy Trainz, greetings GM

I thought APL was pretty arcane, but you may have bested it:

Here is an APL program to calculate the average (arithmetic mean) of a list of numbers, written as a dfn:
{(+⌿⍵)÷≢⍵}

G.M. said:

feel free to add or comment (please no fanboi, it cannot be done replies)

Click to expand...

What a contradiction! "Feel free to comment ... but I only want those opinions that agree with mine!"

I have been accused of being a "fanboi" simply because I have offered a different opinion to another poster on a given topic. I had thought that these forums were supposed to be for free (but polite) discussion of ideas and opinions, not an echo chamber. But apparently that is wrong. There, that is my whinge for the morning.

Of course there are many things in Trainz that need fixing. There are things that have needed "fixing" for a long time - complaints about Alister, the "AI", go back to the version it was introduced. There are many, many new features that could be introduced - the mythical "more realism" feature for example. One part of the problem is that all these "fixes" and new "features" mean different things to different people. The major complaint of one recent poster was the fact that side mirrors on those locos that had them did not actually show any reflections.

Perhaps if N3V had a staff of hundreds or more, just like Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, then Trainz would be perfect, just like Office, Photoshop, iOS.

My opinions, and please, feel free to disagree (really). I will not be offended.

pware said:

What a contradiction! "Feel free to comment ... but I only want those opinions that agree with mine!"

I have been accused of being a "fanboi" simply because I have offered a different opinion to another poster on a given topic. I had thought that these forums were supposed to be for free (but polite) discussion of ideas and opinions, not an echo chamber. But apparently that is wrong. There, that is my whinge for the morning.

Of course there are many things in Trainz that need fixing. There are things that have needed "fixing" for a long time - complaints about Alister, the "AI", go back to the version it was introduced. There are many, many new features that could be introduced - the mythical "more realism" feature for example. One part of the problem is that all these "fixes" and new "features" mean different things to different people. The major complaint of one recent poster was the fact that side mirrors on those locos that had them did not actually show any reflections.

Perhaps if N3V had a staff of hundreds or more, just like Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, then Trainz would be perfect, just like Office, Photoshop, iOS.

My opinions, and please, feel free to disagree (really). I will not be offended.

Click to expand...

Well said, I think for the size of N3V that they deliver quality products which I enjoy immensely.

Cheers,

PLP

I don't do route building, just session development. So those problems don't affect me directly. But I notice others have major problems with turfx and textures. I hope it doesn't dissuade them from contributing new routes.

Something to add to your list..

I'm generally the positive type. I have Gold and I'm proud of it (does that make me a fanboi?) because I think it's a good value for the entertainment provided. I also figure the more cash I give, the better N3V becomes (even if in a very tiny way) and I like to support niche products which I consider Trainz to be. I bought a copy of TRS19 Early Release as my first Trainz product but then went to Gold/Plus.

Suddenly, to get a "non Plus" "version" (Standard) I had to establish another separate account just to get a copy of Standard else it turns PE due to my account subscription. So I've purchased Early Release, purchased TRS19 Standard, and I have PE Plus. What I'd really like to have is a copy of 100240 but that is impossible, even with Gold.But these were MY choices and I'm glad I did them all.

HOWEVER....

I am amazed that so many Payware (DLS) routes and sessions are broken and there appears to be little to no desire for N3V to fix them. I've posted issues in beta forums, filled out tickets, bug reports, but they're still broken. This can't possibly leave a good taste in the mouth of customers. To this day they are still being sold. I just don't get that. And I just keep reading about broken routes and sessions in the forum. (Yes, I know, some are user error.) But still...No fixes...

On the flip side... Trainz is just fun and addicting... I'm glad I found it. I've learned a lot about Railroading from it. I'd recommend it anyone but I'd warn them about the problems.

pitkin said:

I notice others have major problems with turfx and textures.

Click to expand...

Agreed. But it is important to remember that TurfFX is not an N3V product - it comes from Nvidia. PBR textures (the main source of complaints about textures) is a "technique" for rendering surfaces that is now used by multiple games and simulations and the PBR problems we see in Trainz are also found in all those other applications. The options are to abandon both, or keep them and await future developments from their creators.

pware said:

Agreed. But it is important to remember that TurfFX is not an N3V product - it comes from Nvidia. PBR textures (the main source of complaints about textures) is a "technique" for rendering surfaces that is now used by multiple games and simulations and the PBR problems we see in Trainz are also found in all those other applications. The options are to abandon both, or keep them and await future developments from their creators.

Click to expand...

and a third option is to talk about them to hopefully keep the kettle boiling, or at least hot.

pitkin said:

I don't do route building, just session development. So those problems don't affect me directly. But I notice others have major problems with turfx and textures. I hope it doesn't dissuade them from contributing new routes.

Click to expand...

Remember that there's no rule that says you have to use either Turfx or PBR ground textures. I certainly don't and I'm having plenty of fun with route building in TRS22 and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

KotangaGirl said:

Remember that there's no rule that says you have to use either Turfx or PBR ground textures. I certainly don't and I'm having plenty of fun with route building in TRS22 and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

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I don't. I am just better at session creation and scripting.

Route development vs Session development. I am in both camps.

In my last project I spent almost all my time on Route development and almost nothing on the lone Session - that was a "bare bones" Free Roam Session with all the consists in place and industries set but no AI, tasks or objectives. I did however prepare sample scenarios as Wiki pages giving possible driving tasks. That was a lot easier than programming Session Rules and driver commands.

In my previous project I spent as much time (if not more) on developing the 13 different Sessions as I did on the Route.

Not complaining as I enjoyed both approaches but in future I think I will mostly use the single Free Roam Session supported by resources and tasks on the Wiki.

pware said:

Agreed. But it is important to remember that TurfFX is not an N3V product - it comes from Nvidia. PBR textures (the main source of complaints about textures) is a "technique" for rendering surfaces that is now used by multiple games and simulations and the PBR problems we see in Trainz are also found in all those other applications. The options are to abandon both, or keep them and await future developments from their creators.

Click to expand...

I dont mind PBR textures but when they starting updating all the default built-in textures used in earlier Trainz games to PBR. My routes started looking awful and now have to be fixed.

hert said:

I dont mind PBR textures but when they starting updating all the default built-in textures used in earlier Trainz games to PBR. My routes started looking awful and now have to be fixed.

Click to expand...

I complained about that too and Zec thanked me for mentioning it in the forums and said he'll raise a task to get the textures fixed.

pware said:

PBR textures (the main source of complaints about textures) is a "technique" for rendering surfaces that is now used by multiple games and simulations and the PBR problems we see in Trainz are also found in all those other applications.

Click to expand...

I've been playing PBR-textured games since at least 2015 when Far Cry 4 came out. Have not seen any PBR or TurFX problems in those games that Trainz has.

Dinorius_Redundicus said:

I've been playing PBR-textured games since at least 2015 when Far Cry 4 came out. Have not seen any PBR or TurFX problems in those games that Trainz has.

Click to expand...

I do not doubt your words but that is not the case according to posts by others in these forums in regard to PBR. TurfFX, like SpeedTrees, is a third party product and would have the same issues, good and bad, regardless of where it is used.

The caveat, of course, is how much freedom does a particular game/simulation allow its users when setting the application parameters (of which there are many in TurfFX and Clutter) when using these addons?

pware said:

I do not doubt your words but that is not the case according to posts by others in these forums in regard to PBR. TurfFX, like SpeedTrees, is a third party product and would have the same issues, good and bad, regardless of where it is used.

The caveat, of course, is how much freedom does a particular game/simulation allow its users when setting the application parameters (of which there are many in TurfFX and Clutter) when using these addons?

Click to expand...

Part of the issue is the implementation of these technologies by the developer and the understanding of how to implement them with the caveats that come with them.

Speed Trees for example have been a blessing and a curse. They're pretty trees, great for parks and properties in towns, but look terrible in the forests. What we need is tangled branches more than perfect ones that even the shrubs and bushes don't provide. Having that kind of tree is more often found along road and track sides and along the edges of woodlands and marshes. We go instead for the old splines and billboards. While these used to work well in the past, they no longer do well in new versions because they look like cardboard cutouts. In the olden days, they were okay, but now they're worse with some being worse than others. Speed Trees too can and will eat up the resources. I've culled my own routes back quite a bit because I had too many trees in some locations due to poor performance. Heck, I live in a heavily forested region and like to model my area, but I need to thin out the forest a bit otherwise my machine stutters along.

Grass, meaning Turf-FX works but as a user we have to understand it's limits. Due to the draw distance, meaning the culling and LOD built-in, it's not worth the effort of covering every inch of a hill and valley, and in many instances the grass turns into blobby clumps in the distance before it cuts out completely. The other issue too is too much of a good thing. We don't need to cover a lot to have a good grass coverage. What we see while placing the grass down isn't what we have afterwards. In some places on a recent route, I went back and pulled up some grass because it was too thick.

The other issue here is understanding that this is a vertex-based procedural object that appears on the cross points of our infamous grid. This is why it's so difficult to control and keep within the lines just like our texturing. Knowing these details, allows me to plan ahead for those places where a texture and spline is a better alternative than fighting the big cursor and placing grass that neither fits nor looks right in that location.

I noticed too that with lots of Turf-FX grass, things can develop a bit of a micro stutter as the GPU struggles to keep up. This may have to do with my video card and system being older, soon to be replaced, but there is that inherent hit on the performance that gives me a headache. To get around these issues, I keep my Turf-FX to about 5 or 10 meters on either side of the tracks, add in some bushes and call it a day in part because the grass disappears in the distance so what difference does it make to have it in the distance.

In many ways, this is no different than using too many grass splines. I've opened up a few routes that brought my system to a crawl. The issue wasn't Turf-FX and was related to splines. There were so many grass splines covering the area that it caused my video card to have a fit. After deleting a ton of splines, with some areas having splines over splines, over splines, the frame rates increased substantially, and those splines I left looked plenty thick without the extra overhead.

Then there's PBR. This is cool technology and I have seen both good and bad PBR in both Trainz and in other games. In Trainz we have both good and bad textures. The earlier textures were a bit too oversized causing weird things to happen. What I don't like about PBR in either case is the crawling textures. That jellyfish guts as I'm apt to call it is really offensive and detracts from the overall effects we're looking for. What I also don't like is how we have shadows through the textures to the ground underneath. This makes them look like one of those ca. 1970s Urethane paperweights we used to make with seashells and other objects in them. Trainz is not alone here. I ran into that issue on a map in Arma3. I recognized the anomaly immediately when I saw the grass splines sitting on jellyfish guts.

I have come to the conclusion that PBR is fine on PBR-built routes right from scratch but retrofitting this on to an older route doesn't go as well as we'd think, and this leads to an issue that really annoys me. PBR does not mix well with other technologies either which we're bumping into all the time. There's nothing more disconcerting than finding an old route with now updated textures. The updated textures being once regular textures that have turned into PBR'd ones now burying the tracks, roads, and causing clear spots under things with jelly and urethane paperweights. This is more of a logistics and content issue, and it really needs to be addressed by the community and N3V. If an old texture has been updated to PBR, then the old texture should remain and a new PBR version uploaded. This will prevent textures from being replaced unknowingly by a user because they've updated textures in Content Manager when a new version is available.

JCitron said:

Grass, meaning Turf-FX works but as a user we have to understand it's limits. Due to the draw distance, meaning the culling and LOD built-in, it's not worth the effort of covering every inch of a hill and valley, .... The other issue too is too much of a good thing. We don't need to cover a lot to have a good grass coverage.

Click to expand...

My experiences exactly. In my current project some of the branch lines would see 1 or 2 trains a week so I have TurfFX grasses covering the track, which was accurate from some of the images from that period. But you have to play around with its many settings and parameters to get it to "look right". It is still early days with this technology as I only started using TurfFX and Clutter Effect Layers in TRS19, and now it seems that I may have to master the Water Effects layer in Trainz Plus and TRS22 as well.

JCitron said:

I have come to the conclusion that PBR is fine on PBR-built routes right from scratch but retrofitting this on to an older route doesn't go as well as we'd think

Click to expand...

Again I am in agreement. I have decided to leave PBR alone until I start a brand new route. My current project is an update to an existing route filled with pre-PBR textures and, as you state, the two do not mix.

Trainz should use Tressfx instead of TurfFX , since it's compatible with both AMD and Nvidia .

lackoo11111 said:

Trainz should use Tressfx instead of TurfFX , since it's compatible with both AMD and Nvidia .

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Tressfx is mainly used for realistic hair. I could not find any reliable sources mentioning it used as grass.
I use PBR textures exclusively, mainly because they are sharper and better defined than standard textures. The only issue I have with them relates to using them on slopes (cuttings or trackbed) where the acid trip movement is most apparent. In an effort to combat the effect, I hide the slopes with either vegetation or a cliff spline where possible. Trackbed splines also have the advantage of being able to be placed high enough to negate the worst effects of PBR and allow TurfFX to be spread beneath the tracks which gives better coverage.
Take Elder Scrolls Online as an example, it uses PBR textures, TurfFX and Clutter as well, but the main difference is that in gameworld development Zenimax/Bethesda/Microsoft have almost unlimited resources and professional developers, whereas with Trainz route development we are virtually amateurs playing with professional tools. I'd love to be able to say "Art department, I need a rockface 40 metres high by 100 metres wide to hide some wonky textures", but with Trainz I just trawl the DLS hoping someone has made that rockface, because I have no idea how to make one.
cheers
Graeme

Honestly given how it looks and how it behaves at close range on sharp geometry, I think PBR should NOT be used for ground textures at all (or the strength turned WAAAAAAAY down, if that's even a thing). I don't see the real benefit if they are far enough away not to look like unicorn barf. The degree of the effect reminds me of the first Technicolor movies, the way they were VERY over-saturated and trended toward primary colors.

As if "IN TECHNICOLOR" wasn't enough, it HAD to be IN TECHNICOLOR!

Meanwhile, because creators don't notice (one actually told me they never use cab view, so of course they don't see what I see when I do use cab view), old textures get "PBR'ed", and there is not way around it - I keep shaders below Ultra, which as I understand it, denies me the benefits of PBR on models as well as shutting off the effect on ground textures. To say nothing of it being a much hyped reason to get the latest Trainz.

I also just want to share, I'm glad it's N3V now, even if it does remind me of how I felt the urge to vomit when Auran switched to the juvenile name of N3V3RF41L. I'm quite happy the various predictions that name conjured did not come to pass.