Snow altitude seems not to work properly

Maymone

New member
Hi there,
When I set snow altitude to somewhere above my average base level, but lower than some hilltops, nothing happens. I don't get snow on those hills above the defined altitude. Sometimes some trees will be snowed over, but not the texture (and I made sure it has seasonal behavior, tried more than one). Only if I set the snow altitude to zero do I get a snow coverage. Does the same thing happen to you? Is it not possible to have ground cover of snow above the set altitude?

Looking forward to your feedback,

TM
 
A few months ago I came across a PBR texture that had its snowline tag set to 0m. So as soon as the season changed to winter (here in the southern hemisphere) that texture was covered in snow. A great look except that the layout was set in the Australian Outback where it never snows. I had to replace that texture with another.

I was always under the impression (right or wrong, I do not know) that only assets that had a snow effect layer built in (like the PBR texture above) would show snow at altitudes above the snowline.
 
Peter,

There is no snowline tag. The season-selector container in config.txt only supports the tag above-the-snowline which is a height test, not a snowline value. It only admits boolean values 0 or 1 (meaning false or true) and therefore has no units. The snowline height value is not set by that tag, it is set within the game’s Environment settings. Comparison of actual height against that setting (by means of the above-the-snowline test) gives either a true or false result, which in turn determines whether the asset’s snow texture will appear or not.

That system worked for objects and, originally, for ground textures too. But, a few years ago (TANE?), it stopped working correctly for ground textures. It started acting as if the Environment setting was always 0 metres for ground textures only, instead of whatever value the user nominated. N3V said they were not fixing it until the new terrain system is implemented (I guess that means the future high-resolution terrain system). Assuming that will eventuate in 2023, it amounts to 8 years or 3 generations of Trainz with that malfunction allowed to exist.


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Well it does seem like the new terrain system is coming soonish, so maybe this will be addressed in the new HD terrain settings. Although it begs the question what is the point of a snowline anyways if it doesnt work on textures properly?
 
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