Cutting extra baseboard 'fluff'

i currently am working on a route that follows a subdivision of UP that travels from Stockton Ca to San Jose Ca. As many have probably already seen, it is comming along quite well, but the time has come now to cut the extra baseboards that will never be scene when traveling the route itself. I understand the massive effort that is going to take place when I start deleting ALL these baseboards, but what I dont know is how much to leave. So the question is:

How many baseboards should I leave between where the track actually is, and the edge or soon to be edge (place that I delete)? I understand that 2010 has a much greater draw distance, likewise that there is and upgrade for 06 that increases the distance... So I am wondering how far will these upgrades allow one to see? I want the most expansive look for my route without having too many utterly useless boards (that are outside of veiwing distance). Keeping in mind that I may upgrade this route to 10, I would like to trim it to that drawdistance standards so that I may in the future...


any suggestions?

thank you,

Hi,

There are 2 ways to look at this.....

If you are in CAB mode, the engineer can only see about 3~5 miles from his position in the loco, based on the curvature of the earth. Read the following for further info:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_far_can_a_person_see_before_the_curvature_of_the_earth_blocks_the_view

If you are in outside mode, then you may need to consider the view distance based on how much content you place on both sides of the rails. The more content, the more that FPS could be impacted.

Not sure if this will answer your questions.

Have fun,

Well its a little helpful, but I am looking more in terms of the current capacity of Trainz to generate terrain features.... I would like to make the scenery as realistic as possible so that you can see terrain as far as the game can generate, not a big 'drop off' were there is nothing in exsistance....

I hope I am explaining myself clearly enough and not being too confusing,

thanks for the quick reply though

I generally keep 1 baseboards on either side of the track, for a total of 3 baseboards. If the area is fairly open, this sometimes becomes 6 baseboards if there are two parallel lines in a valley, for example.

If there are many hills or mountains, I will cut this back to 1 single baseboard with the track in the middle. There's no reason to texture baseboards, as you noted, if they are not seen by anyone. This only wastes cpu power that can be put towards other more important things.

John

aardvark1 said:

Hi,

There are 2 ways to look at this.....

If you are in CAB mode, the engineer can only see about 3~5 miles from his position in the loco, based on the curvature of the earth. Read the following for further info:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_far_can_a_person_see_before_the_curvature_of_the_earth_blocks_the_view

Click to expand...

From that link it would tie in with 2010's 5000 metre theoretical draw distance?

Well... I normally generate my Transdem out to 5 or 6 boards which in practice gives 7 or 8 around 4 or 5km. Generally speaking the smallest width across the track I would leave is about 3km, unless there is a massive hill or mountain blocking the view of the terrain behind which can be removed. Then of course you need to think about whether the plateau could just be visible from further down the line. If in doubt, leave it in, for anything beyond 2 or 3km viewing distance you can probably get away with a wash of basic terrain texture to achieve the distant mountain effect.

clam1952 said:

From that link it would tie in with 2010's 5000 metre theoretical draw distance?

Click to expand...

Yes it would....

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Answer: 5000 m = 3.10685 mi.
OR 3 mi. and 188.0 yd[/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Have fun, [/FONT]​

How 'wide' to make a route depends on several issues.

My East Kentucky routes are narrow - the entire route follows a deep river valley and there is nowhere on the route that requires more than minimum draw distance to see as far as it is possible to see anyway.

Conversely my Clovis routes are set on a high desert plateau. You can 'see' for miles. Originally I created this route about 8 or 9 boards wide. Even though Clovis is ultra-lo poly (there is nothing but ground texture more than 100 yards from the track) the wide base and long draw distance impacted performance. Eventually I settled for a much narrower base and a bit of 'Good Weather Fog' to simulate haze and the result was pretty good.

In short - keep the route as narrow as possible, but how wide is too wide is going to vary from route to route...

Andy

And just to chuck a spanner in the works, I'm currently doing a route that is 1 board wide. It is meant to be used in cab mode but there are a few cameras on it in places where the edges cant be seen.