Driving over the Chatham Mainline, which I have had for some time, the grass changes slightly as you get about 100 yards increasing - same with the trees - you can see a line going along the trees as they change slightly It there a way to stop this - very distracting when driving My Scenery Quality, Density and View Distance are on Max
I have not noticed it this bad before. I even re downloaded the route today to see if it made a difference but it has not. Seems almost as bad as a RSSLO Route. It is not on all routes - just ran Berlin - Leipzig with barley a flicker
The distance at which an object changes its LOD (Level of Detail) is defined in the model itself (GeoPcDx <LODController>). So it is depending on the asset. This is a bush line from Chatham. It has two LODs (models), the first ist the highest poly model, appearing at a distance of 0-50 metres, next lower poly model appears at 50-1000 metres away. (If it's beyond 1000 metres, it won't be rendered at all no matter what game settings.) As I see it, the AP VegEP renders the full models from a greater distance already, which needs slightly more performance but avoids the "popping" effect. Only one LOD for a tree here, distance 1000 metres. Theoretically, you could modify the LOD controllers and set the first (LOD0) to 500 e.g. I recall when Taurus Mountains was released, the tree LODs were horrible - like TSW. I pointed that out in the feedback thread, and the author changed that in an update. So authoring assets for TSC needs more thought than for modern engines, which use .ini parameters where you can globally multiply the LOD distance scale. In TSC, that's not possible - at least upscaling is not. You have to edit the assets.
Thanks - I might have a look at the trees I have the AP Sky & Weather pack but not the Veg pack. Peter
Spikee1975 can you tell me what I'm dong wrong? I opened the Bush_line01.GeoPcDx with Notepad ++ but it does not look like your version and there are a number of strange letters
The first characters are SERZ so I assume, just like BIN, it needs to be unserzed and then back. If you are lucky, serz.exe knows the convention by filename, if not, rename to-from BIN. You edit the XML.
When I attempt to "Open with Serz" nothing happens to the file Your suggestion of renaming the file to .bin the serz to get an XML has worked I hope it works in reverse too Peter EDIT - the reverse did work but the effect has not changed At a dead stand I can see the foliage changing as I zoom in and out from the cab.
Well then, halfway there a) Did you properly rename back? (the reverse would automatically create a .bin that you change to .GeoPcDx) b) Did you try clearing cache? Sometimes not necessary but everyone says it is, so maybe this time. It's a bit nasty because there is also a .bin. Soldier Summit has 3 bush lines so this specific object might be something else, too. You could try and mess it up big time (by placing something massively different, like a tree) to verify that it's what you're changing.
Hi Andrew, I started by copying the Bush_line01.GeoPcDx, Bush_line02.GeoPcDx & Bush_line03.GeoPcDx files from G:\Steam\steamapps\common\railworks\Assets\DTG\ChathamMainLine\Scenery\Vegetation to a desktop folder I then renamed the .GeoPcDx files to .bin then used Serz to create the xml. Each of the three files were altered to be <e d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="0000000000004940" d:precision="string">500</e> I then used Serz to finalize the .bin and renamed the back to GeoPcDx Finally copying them back to the game folder After clearing the Cache and starting the game I still have the lineside veg popping at the same distance as before. I don't know enough to know what I'm doing wrong. Peter
You may have to edit the vegetation in DTG\LondonGillingham too which is the assets of the first Chatham route, that's also used by Blackfriars-Dover/Ramsgate. RouteProperties.xml tells you which asset packs are used. If you see performance issues, lower the value to 250 or so.
Having looked thru the large list of different scenery items that I would need to change I will give it a miss for now. The route did not have this problem before so maybe something in my Graphics settings changed.
Might be related to how headlight components pop in and out based on a very specific distance. (While paused.) Since I'm photographing up close a lot, I noticed recently that one of the components is visible quite specifically between a very short range, not too close, not far. Maybe the devs added an override to some of these values. (It's not the actual headlights which disappear at medium range, but a second component, basically starsight simulation.)
So before this gets speculative, we don't know yet if this is an effect of anticipating a bug in a new version and therefore looking much closer at things than before, or actually a change. I am just copying the assets to my v72 folder and will make an easy check if the LOD changes at 50 metres, which it should, so I'm not sure if there is actually different behaviour handling LODs. The Geo blueprint says 50 metres, that means so far what has been described is not a bug but intentional way of rendering less polys in the distance. As far as the headlights are concernced, that was confirmed to be a bug (unrelated to this matter) and is fixed in the upcoming version. A personal wish: When posting issue-related screenshots, please provide as much info as possible. If the HUD was visible, it would speed up confirming the issue as I would know at which place the screenshot was taken. Best to hit F1 too as it tells which scenario is being played. The more info the better. So far it isn't even clear which version of Chatham is in question, there's three of 'em. Edit: Just playing a scenario under v72, the popping is the same. It renders the LODs as defined in the model, so cannot confirm any change in the current version. The AP VegEP addressed this by replacing some of the trees and bushes with a LOD0 of 1 km instead of 50 m. The offending asset is the LG Grass Field Weed Line. It has always been popping up like that. I haven't figured out what the four different distances inside one LOD are for - I will set them all to 500 and observe the effect. For testing, I'll make a quick new route placing these along a straight line. This looks good. Now the GPU must scale the grass down itself, and it does this without discrete steps, resulting in smooth rendering. Shouldn't affect FPS, as it is a low poly model anyway that just holds simple texture billboards. Before (bottom right is LOD0, middle left already shows LOD1) Please try the attached fix. This solves the issue. To get all the trees fixed and replaced by better models, I can only recommend the APVegEP. I will send Richard a note to include the fixed Weed Line 1 in the pack, it appears on many DTG routes and must be fixed individually, just copying that Geo to other routes will probably not work. Result: Smooth rendering now
Thanks Spike, - I will give that a try. The route is the Chatham Mainline London to Dover and Ramsgate.
Don't think so. Possibly related to four meshes that form this group, hence four LOD slots. Could also be a result of wrong naming when modelling (0_0050_mesh1..., 0_0100_mesh2). I'd say it wasn't intentional, more the result of grouping four objects with initially different LOD distances. Safe to set these to higher values as in my fix if you come across other instances of popping assets. (Just don't remove a slot - strange things may happen then.) View Distance is the radius of tiles rendered (terrain and scenery) - has nothing to do with LODs. Scenery Quality uses compressed (nmc) textures, then reduces model LOD (if available in the Geo) and texture mipmaps the further you lower it. Scenery Density renders objects based on their quality index (1-10), given by the author. Relic of older days. No one goes through the tedious work of assigning and weighing their assets, deciding importance for each single object. Never set it below max. Show them all
This problem is happening on another route - the Rodactalbahn - I realise its an old freeware route. Approaching this tree its all green As I get nearer it starts to add colour to it The next tree is also plain As I get nearer the tree also gets extra detail I had not reinstalled the route from a previous drive until today. and I don't remember it doing this before Kim Olesen - how do you find the route? The same graphics effect? This is departing Munchberg towards Selbitz. I wondered if my graphics setting might have changed but then a run over the RSC - ECML-S was without any problem Peter
It’s been a while since i drove it. Though it’s one of the very best TSC routes. I think i made a couple of videos though. They might reveal something.
