Trainz Plus Alpha Release
- Thread starter n3v_laurence
- Start date
Tony_Hilliam
Trainz Plus - enjoy Trainz from just 20 cents a da
Driver Schedule is a bug so you’ll have to work around that for now.
Downloaded the alpha with my adsl (3hours) and everything went well. Setting at the moment to "high" level. Tried to create a new one board route only to test the HD terrain and i found something to report.
1) when using the smooth under spline tool with a road going from level 0 to level 7mt of a bridge a strange "wall" formed on terrain at junction between two sections of spline
2) the ground has a sort of jaggedness in the vertical part and where it has a degrading trend
3) under the bridge, where is the vertical "wall" retaining the terrain, ground has strange deformations and despite the use of the set height tool there is no way to smooth it at level 0mt.
here before the set height:
here after the set height:
4) I tried to set the height of the terrain back to 0 with the set height tool but remains some sort of spikes as follows
hope these could be helpfull
1) when using the smooth under spline tool with a road going from level 0 to level 7mt of a bridge a strange "wall" formed on terrain at junction between two sections of spline
2) the ground has a sort of jaggedness in the vertical part and where it has a degrading trend
3) under the bridge, where is the vertical "wall" retaining the terrain, ground has strange deformations and despite the use of the set height tool there is no way to smooth it at level 0mt.
here before the set height:
here after the set height:
4) I tried to set the height of the terrain back to 0 with the set height tool but remains some sort of spikes as follows
hope these could be helpfull
RoysTrainz
Rembrandt van Trainz
Can somebody enlighten me on how to make the texturing as we knew it work at least same as PBR or better. The result I see is not what I am looking for: visually not really any wow effect.
HD converts works nice and rather easy but textures is well sort off ,how to say.......
I was really exited about the whole idea of HD terrain but the texturing I am not sure what to make of this.
I not yet test HD in detail as the textures test was most important to get a first impression.
Sincerely I hope i not see things right away in this sandbox and treasure trove hunting contest.
HD converts works nice and rather easy but textures is well sort off ,how to say.......
I was really exited about the whole idea of HD terrain but the texturing I am not sure what to make of this.
I not yet test HD in detail as the textures test was most important to get a first impression.
Sincerely I hope i not see things right away in this sandbox and treasure trove hunting contest.
Tony_Hilliam
Trainz Plus - enjoy Trainz from just 20 cents a da
It can be a bit daunting at first to get the right mix of supply, demand and rolling stock (and allocating Drivers).
Can you explain in more detail about getting the commands "correct".
RoysTrainz said:
See my earlier post about textures (in response to Phil).
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RoysTrainz
Rembrandt van Trainz
thx Tony,I did not see those posts as it had similar result i show. I hope you consider improve textures at least SAME as the PBR detail or better if possible.Rotate I used a lot to avoid the lawn mower effect when looking at the landscape from further away. Wat Paul suggested not really is an option as you still see the LM effect. Thanks.
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RoysTrainz
Rembrandt van Trainz
update 1 on my findings HD terrain and classic textures importing one of my Canadian Rocky Mountain route:
I had to delete ALL classic textures to allow HD grid to work properly and not saying cannot due to existing textures hindering the conversion.
After that doing HD is a marvel and painting under track perfect with the grid allowing 0.12 m.
My first WOW.
Of course as a side note redoing all the textures is more than a hassle and loss of a lot of work. Itried to bulk replace textures but it hangs indefinite on just doing 2 Bboards replacing 3 types textures with grid twexture.
Trying to think of how we possibly can determine in classic what texture work well and which one not at all.
Time will tell for sure but I have fun trying little things texturewise on a bare only grid texture with 0.12 m grid HD set.
I had to delete ALL classic textures to allow HD grid to work properly and not saying cannot due to existing textures hindering the conversion.
After that doing HD is a marvel and painting under track perfect with the grid allowing 0.12 m.
My first WOW
. Of course as a side note redoing all the textures is more than a hassle and loss of a lot of work. Itried to bulk replace textures but it hangs indefinite on just doing 2 Bboards replacing 3 types textures with grid twexture.
Trying to think of how we possibly can determine in classic what texture work well and which one not at all.
Time will tell for sure but I have fun trying little things texturewise on a bare only grid texture with 0.12 m grid HD set.
Tony_Hilliam
Trainz Plus - enjoy Trainz from just 20 cents a da
I'm sure the final results will be much better than the Alpha.
I imported a TransDEM-generated route. With only topographic map textures, on the terrain, I get complaints when converting baseboards to HD and then an error message line stating can't convert the baseboard due to too many textures. Yet, the baseboard converts fine but one of the textures is now missing. With only 10 textures supported per baseboard when using HD terrain, that will defeat the purpose of using TransDEM to create prototypical routes. I hope this is only a temporary issue related to the Alpha test release and won't be a permanent limitation with the product.
n3v_laurence
Moderator
Hello John,
The error is reported when the baseboard has more than 16 textures. Missing textures when this error is reported is to be expected. It should still continue to convert to HD Terrain.
The texture limit for HD Terrain is currently 16 (not 10).
RoysTrainz
Rembrandt van Trainz
John, I did not want to raise this question for obvious reasons and I feel like for me and my exclusive prototypical routes get hammered once more.
After my long haul TRS12 CPR Canadian Rocky Mountain route working well under the given circumstances I was suddenly confronted with the fact that Trainz after TRS12 was dramatically in less size to package a route.
It changed that much that my route CPR Mnt Sub suddenly was to big. I had to spend more than 6 month to sort of make something workable and had to cut the route in 3pieces. The rest is history.
Now Finally I can again make the large haul even bigger than the one in TRS12 and test it right now in alpha and seem to hold and work in cS20 no HD until more feedback and experience gained.
Be aware I had to delete all textures once running HD.Converting HD worked well!
NO clue how to handle only 16 textures (non rotational) per individual baseboard.
HD looks a bridge to far for me and all my years of work.
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I'm going to weigh in on this one to agree that route-building with the HD grid involves substantially different tradeoffs to route-building with the 5m/10m grids. This isn't as simple as "keep doing what you're doing, just smaller". It will definitely require some amount of experimentation and relearning.
An automated conversion of an existing route is going to run onto this head-on; when you're building a new route, you'll (hopefully) build to the strengths of the implementation, however when initially converting a route you're only going to see the "weaknesses". For example, when developing the conversion process, we initially created a faithful representation of the original terrain heightmap, with the thinking that creators would not want their route to be messed with. It turned out that this is a terrible idea, because the original heightmap was always a compromise based on the limitations of the terrain grid. The current conversion process instead smooths the original terrain, with the end result that the terrain looks nicer than the original in most cases. In some cases you really cared about certain aspects of the original, and these might not be preserved exactly in the conversion. It turns out that this isn't a major concern because the whole point of upgrading is to access more detail, and that means you're going to be editing the route extensively anyway. The fact that there are a few things you'll want to edit after conversion is not a problem, it's entirely the point of doing the conversion.
Texturing is a bit harder for the automated process to deal with. Where you might previously have picked a texture and then splatted it over a relatively wide area, you're now going to find that you can finesse things a lot more by selecting between textures, adjusting tints, using a fine-detailed height brush, and so on. This can lead to some impressive results, but the flexibility obviously comes with a downside - nobody has time to finesse thousands of square kilometers of terrain. To mitigate that, we've added the scrapbook brushes which help you to develop a particular look once and then reuse it as necessary over a larger area. (Important note: scrapbook support for HD grid is very poor in the current alpha build, but this is already being worked on and will improve over time.)
Additionally, where a T:ANE-era route might have relied heavily on ground textures, as of TRS19 we've been pushing the use of Clutter and TurfFX for detailed ground cover rather than relying on texturing. Routes which use these technologies appropriately simply don't require the same number of unique textures, as the textures are merely there to form the base layer and not the entirety of the result.
For somebody building a new route, we don't currently expect that this will be a problematic change. Sure, it's a change. It will take some time to get used to. But we expect that people will adapt quickly and the results will be worthwhile. A big part of the reason we're taking the unusual step of releasing an alpha build is to get early feedback on how people are coping with that transition, and that's why we've talked up using built-in content rather than trying to import existing routes/content.
For somebody who has an entire route built to TRS19/TRS22 standards and wishes to upgrade it to benefit from HD grid, that's a much bigger ask. First, you'll need to learn the new approach. Then you'll need to undertake a trial conversion and see what happens to your route. You may find that you have a good starting point, but you'll probably need to touch every important area on your route with the height and texture brushes anyway, because what's the point of using HD grid if your source material is all at 10m resolution? At a minimum, you'll probably want to smooth off the rough edges near the track - but it's likely that this is only the beginning.
But you may also find that you are regularly going far beyond the new 16-texture limit. If that's the case, the automatic conversion will (at least currently) make quite a mess of your route. Textures will be replaced with something different, often something inappropriate. This is scary at first glance, and it does probably mean that you have more work ahead of you than those who didn't hit the limit very often. However, given that you need to touch every important area on your route with the height and texture brushes anyway, it turns out that this doesn't add as much work to the conversion as you might think at first. The biggest gotcha is perhaps not having the original textures visible as reference while you're busy replacing them. There are a few approaches which might work there, one of which is having two copies of Trainz running side-by-side.
The lack of paint-time texture scaling is annoying but ultimately not a serious problem. As has been demonstrated up-thread, this feature probably caused more problems than it solved. There are some good uses for it, don't get me wrong, but it's certainly not all roses and killing it off doesn't lose much in most cases. What it does mean is that some textures which were scaled inappropriately originally need to be fixed up or replaced. In routes where you're deliberately using an off-scale texture, that possibly means you'll now need custom rescaled textures. We have some options under investigation here, but it's not clear what the timeframe is for those and we don't have any plan to bring back paint-time texture scaling.
The lack of paint-time texture rotation is more interesting. There are three use-cases that I can think of offhand:
1. Holding down the rotate key while painting. This is basically a way of smudging out all the detail in the texture, which is only useful if the texture was bad or inappropriate to start with. It reduces performance and reduces visual quality. We've long recommended against this.
2. Rotating the texture direction from time to time while painting a large area with the texture, to avoid obvious repetition. This is a more meaningful use-case, which is partially negated by having larger textures and better detail maps on the textures. There are definitely overly-repetitive textures out there, and my advice is to just avoid those. Even the best texture can get repetitive if it's used over a large enough area - in that scenario you should start looking to bring in other textures, which you can control much better with HD grid. Paint your own texture or color tint details that don't match the repeats of the original texture. You should also use clutter and turf effect layers to avoid relying so much on the base texture.
3. Following the direction of some natural structures in the terrain. For example, wrapping rocks around a cliff face. This is an area that we haven't fully investigated at this time. We have some great ideas here but they're longer term. We'll be watching with interest on how this goes for you in the short term.
And of course, an important point to keep in mind: the old terrain types aren't going anywhere. Your route won't suddenly stop working if you don't upgrade it. Take your time learning the new capabilities and then determine how it's going to work for you.
Sorry for the long post, but hopefully that's some food for thought.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays,
chris
An automated conversion of an existing route is going to run onto this head-on; when you're building a new route, you'll (hopefully) build to the strengths of the implementation, however when initially converting a route you're only going to see the "weaknesses". For example, when developing the conversion process, we initially created a faithful representation of the original terrain heightmap, with the thinking that creators would not want their route to be messed with. It turned out that this is a terrible idea, because the original heightmap was always a compromise based on the limitations of the terrain grid. The current conversion process instead smooths the original terrain, with the end result that the terrain looks nicer than the original in most cases. In some cases you really cared about certain aspects of the original, and these might not be preserved exactly in the conversion. It turns out that this isn't a major concern because the whole point of upgrading is to access more detail, and that means you're going to be editing the route extensively anyway. The fact that there are a few things you'll want to edit after conversion is not a problem, it's entirely the point of doing the conversion.
Texturing is a bit harder for the automated process to deal with. Where you might previously have picked a texture and then splatted it over a relatively wide area, you're now going to find that you can finesse things a lot more by selecting between textures, adjusting tints, using a fine-detailed height brush, and so on. This can lead to some impressive results, but the flexibility obviously comes with a downside - nobody has time to finesse thousands of square kilometers of terrain. To mitigate that, we've added the scrapbook brushes which help you to develop a particular look once and then reuse it as necessary over a larger area. (Important note: scrapbook support for HD grid is very poor in the current alpha build, but this is already being worked on and will improve over time.)
Additionally, where a T:ANE-era route might have relied heavily on ground textures, as of TRS19 we've been pushing the use of Clutter and TurfFX for detailed ground cover rather than relying on texturing. Routes which use these technologies appropriately simply don't require the same number of unique textures, as the textures are merely there to form the base layer and not the entirety of the result.
For somebody building a new route, we don't currently expect that this will be a problematic change. Sure, it's a change. It will take some time to get used to. But we expect that people will adapt quickly and the results will be worthwhile. A big part of the reason we're taking the unusual step of releasing an alpha build is to get early feedback on how people are coping with that transition, and that's why we've talked up using built-in content rather than trying to import existing routes/content.
For somebody who has an entire route built to TRS19/TRS22 standards and wishes to upgrade it to benefit from HD grid, that's a much bigger ask. First, you'll need to learn the new approach. Then you'll need to undertake a trial conversion and see what happens to your route. You may find that you have a good starting point, but you'll probably need to touch every important area on your route with the height and texture brushes anyway, because what's the point of using HD grid if your source material is all at 10m resolution? At a minimum, you'll probably want to smooth off the rough edges near the track - but it's likely that this is only the beginning.
But you may also find that you are regularly going far beyond the new 16-texture limit. If that's the case, the automatic conversion will (at least currently) make quite a mess of your route. Textures will be replaced with something different, often something inappropriate. This is scary at first glance, and it does probably mean that you have more work ahead of you than those who didn't hit the limit very often. However, given that you need to touch every important area on your route with the height and texture brushes anyway, it turns out that this doesn't add as much work to the conversion as you might think at first. The biggest gotcha is perhaps not having the original textures visible as reference while you're busy replacing them. There are a few approaches which might work there, one of which is having two copies of Trainz running side-by-side.
The lack of paint-time texture scaling is annoying but ultimately not a serious problem. As has been demonstrated up-thread, this feature probably caused more problems than it solved. There are some good uses for it, don't get me wrong, but it's certainly not all roses and killing it off doesn't lose much in most cases. What it does mean is that some textures which were scaled inappropriately originally need to be fixed up or replaced. In routes where you're deliberately using an off-scale texture, that possibly means you'll now need custom rescaled textures. We have some options under investigation here, but it's not clear what the timeframe is for those and we don't have any plan to bring back paint-time texture scaling.
The lack of paint-time texture rotation is more interesting. There are three use-cases that I can think of offhand:
1. Holding down the rotate key while painting. This is basically a way of smudging out all the detail in the texture, which is only useful if the texture was bad or inappropriate to start with. It reduces performance and reduces visual quality. We've long recommended against this.
2. Rotating the texture direction from time to time while painting a large area with the texture, to avoid obvious repetition. This is a more meaningful use-case, which is partially negated by having larger textures and better detail maps on the textures. There are definitely overly-repetitive textures out there, and my advice is to just avoid those. Even the best texture can get repetitive if it's used over a large enough area - in that scenario you should start looking to bring in other textures, which you can control much better with HD grid. Paint your own texture or color tint details that don't match the repeats of the original texture. You should also use clutter and turf effect layers to avoid relying so much on the base texture.
3. Following the direction of some natural structures in the terrain. For example, wrapping rocks around a cliff face. This is an area that we haven't fully investigated at this time. We have some great ideas here but they're longer term. We'll be watching with interest on how this goes for you in the short term.
And of course, an important point to keep in mind: the old terrain types aren't going anywhere. Your route won't suddenly stop working if you don't upgrade it. Take your time learning the new capabilities and then determine how it's going to work for you.
Sorry for the long post, but hopefully that's some food for thought.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays,
chris
Hi Chris, thanks for posting that epos and merry christmas
I tried a conversion of just 1 baseboard with the following result:
-Can't convert less than 1 entire baseboard (I tried a marque)
-water gets killed/removed (as announced)
-the base grid goes to 5m (for the grid texture)
-the original texture gets painted on a much smaller scale (thus sharper)
immidiately reveiling textures that actually do not tile that well
-there are serious dangerous spikes on the edge between the 2 types of ground 10m/HD
Converting a full route to HD is never needed, just use the HD where you actually want/need it
use a more neutral, well tiling base groundtexture and add details ontop (texture spots, turfx, clutter)
Scaling removed I can live with, rotation will be problem for crops (texture with direction)
I tried a conversion of just 1 baseboard with the following result:
-Can't convert less than 1 entire baseboard (I tried a marque)
-water gets killed/removed (as announced)
-the base grid goes to 5m (for the grid texture)
-the original texture gets painted on a much smaller scale (thus sharper)
immidiately reveiling textures that actually do not tile that well
-there are serious dangerous spikes on the edge between the 2 types of ground 10m/HD
Converting a full route to HD is never needed, just use the HD where you actually want/need it
use a more neutral, well tiling base groundtexture and add details ontop (texture spots, turfx, clutter)
Scaling removed I can live with, rotation will be problem for crops (texture with direction)
I understand what you are saying, Chris but this has nothing to do with handmade routes using the sculpting tools where we faff around and smudge the terrain to create the slopes we want. What I was discussing is real world terrain utilizing Digital Elevation Maps (DEM)s with a topographic map texture placed on the terrain. These routes, created in TransDEM, form the basis for us to then place our own textures on top of the actual terrain along with the tracks, buildings and other scenery items. The textures that we place can then be enhanced with clutter-FX and turf-FX objects.
TransDEM does have a UTM-tile option, but that's not always possible for all routes. The route I was experimenting with for instance is based upon historical maps. The actual rail line disappeared in the 1920s and 1930s when the ROW was submerged under a reservoir and dam. The topographic map I'm using dates to about 1942-44 and still shows the topographic information prior to the dam being built including the rail line, which allows me to then use the sculpting tools to recreate the river valley, stations, place houses, roads, etc.
With that said, the 16-color texture limit is a no go because if the texture is already covered with the map, how are we supposed to then texture the surface? Do the underlying textures, the map textures in this instance, get replaced or does Trainz now leave empty spots as it does when the terrain is converted to high definition?
For us building prototypical routes or those based on prototypical terrain, this is totally unacceptable, and this is a step backwards rather than a step forward. We may as well as go back to fully to the EGA color palette as well.
TransDEM does have a UTM-tile option, but that's not always possible for all routes. The route I was experimenting with for instance is based upon historical maps. The actual rail line disappeared in the 1920s and 1930s when the ROW was submerged under a reservoir and dam. The topographic map I'm using dates to about 1942-44 and still shows the topographic information prior to the dam being built including the rail line, which allows me to then use the sculpting tools to recreate the river valley, stations, place houses, roads, etc.
With that said, the 16-color texture limit is a no go because if the texture is already covered with the map, how are we supposed to then texture the surface? Do the underlying textures, the map textures in this instance, get replaced or does Trainz now leave empty spots as it does when the terrain is converted to high definition?
For us building prototypical routes or those based on prototypical terrain, this is totally unacceptable, and this is a step backwards rather than a step forward. We may as well as go back to fully to the EGA color palette as well.
I will not be able to convert my Large Route to HD, even just a few small areas as the Route, the file size goes up from 800mb to over 2.2 gigabytes and the save to .cdp is no longer possible as the Route (Map) size is to large. Max Map save file is 999mb
Kind of of a bummer, as i was looking forward to the better Mountain draw distances that did work with them in the HD format.
There a are several Routes from the DLS that are more than 500mbs large and their Route will also be affected due to this file size limiting issue.
At the present time Max for Map file size is 999mb, over that then it can not be saved to a .cdp.
I almost forgot to include is that the Tree and weed textures are back to flickering again. Would be difficult to due a bug report for the flickering issues.
Cheers!
Kind of of a bummer, as i was looking forward to the better Mountain draw distances that did work with them in the HD format.
There a are several Routes from the DLS that are more than 500mbs large and their Route will also be affected due to this file size limiting issue.
At the present time Max for Map file size is 999mb, over that then it can not be saved to a .cdp.
I almost forgot to include is that the Tree and weed textures are back to flickering again. Would be difficult to due a bug report for the flickering issues.
Cheers!
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RoysTrainz
Rembrandt van Trainz
@jjef1955 I tnhink we now use tzar and as such can package different and better and more much more GB so to speak. I did last week test merging 3 route segments and was if remember correct over 2 GB.
check it out your backup should have the latest tzar it saved for your route etc.
good luck good hunting.
merry Xmas all and modest holidays to respect,honor and support all the people suffering from abuse and killings these days.
check it out your backup should have the latest tzar it saved for your route etc.
good luck good hunting.
merry Xmas all and modest holidays to respect,honor and support all the people suffering from abuse and killings these days.
Did a little test to check filesize
converted a small 100 baseboard route from 10m grid to HD
original 16.2mb, converted to HD 91.2mb, that is more than 6x the size
and this is without re-adding water or the needed repair textures
Showstoppers I see sofar:
-increased file size, more than 6x
--means slower loading and saving
--freeware routes get near impossible cause it overshoots .cdp size
--routes will then not be hosted on the DLS cause it only takes .cdp
-the spikes where 2 format boards meet
-the fixed direction of textures
-the deleting of water
-still stretched textures (textures look better when perpendicular to the surface)
-Dighole does not work (yet?)
-no support for Dem and the creator of Transdem
-non trainz+ users can't edit it
I do see advantages of HD but still needs a lot of work
merry Christmas all !
converted a small 100 baseboard route from 10m grid to HD
original 16.2mb, converted to HD 91.2mb, that is more than 6x the size
and this is without re-adding water or the needed repair textures
Showstoppers I see sofar:
-increased file size, more than 6x
--means slower loading and saving
--freeware routes get near impossible cause it overshoots .cdp size
--routes will then not be hosted on the DLS cause it only takes .cdp
-the spikes where 2 format boards meet
-the fixed direction of textures
-the deleting of water
-still stretched textures (textures look better when perpendicular to the surface)
-Dighole does not work (yet?)
-no support for Dem and the creator of Transdem
-non trainz+ users can't edit it
I do see advantages of HD but still needs a lot of work
merry Christmas all !
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