Removing All PBR NearrTacks

boleyd

Well-known member
I am tired fiddling with PBR and track shadows. I have replaced all of my textures with old simple flat textures. Actually, some look better to me.

However, I now have the thin black line alongside the track ballast where the track shadow "leaks" out from under the ballast. I remember discussions about this a while ago. Has any fix been found to avoid this leaking of the underlying shadow graphic?
 
Hello Dick,

I've found that setting the Shader Quality to Standard solve the problem. I feel that the lost of image quality is not to much to pay.

Best regards.
 
The problems experienced with PBR textures are mostly caused by the mixing of PBR ground textures and non-PBR textures both on the ground and built into tracks. Because PBR textures have a height component, i.e. they are 3D textures not flat like the original Trainz ground textures, this creates the problems you are seeing where the two meet as well as at locations of sudden terrain height changes. This is an issue that is built into the PBR textures themselves and occurs in all games and simulations that use PBR textures.

I have solved these problems, at least to my satisfaction, by:-

  • replacing all non-PBR ground textures with PBR textures which, in my opinion at least, look far better
  • using only track that has PBR textures builtin (i.e. in the ballast)
  • setting the Shader Quality setting to Standard

This solves most of the problems but does introduce a few new ones. Specifically:-
  • PBR textures cannot be rotated as you paint (for example by using the "]" and "[" keys) as rotating forces a new copy of the texture to be loaded for each rotation angle and this results in performance issues. Lack of rotation means that you can get repeating patterns in the ground textures.
  • Sudden height changes in the terrain (as mentioned above) still cause issues.

Both of these can be overcome or at least mitigated by using scenery assets to cover the problem areas.

PBR textures are not perfect but, in my opinion at least, are far superior to the traditional textures in the improvement in appearance that they give to a route that I am now exclusively using PBR textures.

My opinions.
 
Having the scale dial turned completely to the left when manually painting with pbr texture under the track works.
If there is a bit of "shadow" showing under the ballast, paint a bit further out from the track (still with dial to far left) will normally remove it.

My "shader quality" setting is always set at ultra.
 
Frustrating, but fun... Yes, the PBR's add a visual dimension that makes further "fiddling" worthwhile. The residual small shadow under the ballast was my shader set to ultra. However, I need to use the suggestions and have another go at it. It is frustrating dealing with interactive variables but the results are usually worth it. I do not use the 2.0 graphics management but this shadow stuff caused me to take another look. May be worth a few hours to become mildly proficient with those tools. THANKS

Oh, one other note - the Ultra Shadow setting really consumes CPU cycles. My "i7 cpu" temperature rises into the 90C. 100C is the max. And, which track has the PBR feature? Saves me from searching - lazy.
 
There are all kinds of PBR track. Bob (MSGSAPPER) made some nice-looking mainline track. Trainboi1 made a nice series of track with PBR textures and so did Samplaire. There's also the Pro-track series as well both built in and on the DLS.
 
Oh, one other note - the Ultra Shadow setting really consumes CPU cycles. My "i7 cpu" temperature rises into the 90C. 100C is the max. And, which track has the PBR feature? Saves me from searching - lazy.

I solved with a basic liquid cooling system (by Cooler Master): now the max temperature for my i7 7700 is 50°
 
I solved with a basic liquid cooling system (by Cooler Master): now the max temperature for my i7 7700 is 50°

My CPU runs cool and is also water cooled, it's my RTX 3080 which burns up when I use Trainz and I end up cranking the fans on it using MSI Afterburner otherwise the card starts to throttle up and down as the temps reach the 83 C maximum, then cools down then repeats when it warms up. The constant throttling up and down causes awful stuttering. By increasing the fan speed to about 65%, I keep the temps about 63 C and there's no throttling or stuttering.
 
I will not use water cooling. There are enough risks in this PC stuff. A leak can cost big money. But I do have AfterBurner and need to see what the RTX card is doing. Thanks for the reminder.
 
MSI Afterburner - I installed the APP. Ran ok and showed data. B U T this morning my email was a mess. (Comcast). I spent time trying various things to no avail. Checked GMail account and it looked ok -it is always messy. Panic time due to heavy reliance on email. After several "heart stopping hours" I remembered that I had installed Afterburner, which worked as expected. So I uninstalled it and magically all email issues disappeared. Draw your own conclusions.
Windows-11
 
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