Yes. Rosenheim station in the DTG version versus RSLLO version. First i thought that it was because they hadn’t built as mucr terrain in the dtg version, but i built a helluvalot of extra terrain so i could compare. The DTG terrain does not render near as far as the Rsslo, which seems way more than 30 km.
Are you sure you compared them using the same weather pattern? Usually 3D 1.Clear gives the best view distance. I've got the Steam version. Rosenheim (Max ViewDistance). How does RSSLO version look here? EDIT: I thought you were comparing the Steam version of Salzburg-Rosenheim vs RSSLO version. Now I know you meant Salzburg-Rosenheim vs Munich-Rosenheim.
Give you some screens late this evening. But if you look south towards Inntal, the RSSLO doesn’t have a “hole” in the mountain range. Having traveled in the area many times, i’d venture to say that the distant terrain only renders about 15 km in the DTG route. Just checked this on satelige images as well.
Wish: Would be nice to have a basic rendering of distant hills and mountains as to create actual scenic views. Experience with TSC: I observed three elements: Distant terrain overlay: at about a threshold of one mile, terrain texture is completely replaced with a more generic texture. Most of the time I simply observe one color (snow white in winter, or the famous deep green of Canadian Mountain Passes), but I see above it could possibly be more complicated. Once I got a missing texture overlay instead of it, possibly a pause / alt-tab quirk. Distant weather overlay: most weathers involve a tint for distant scenery, which is mostly valid - haze also improves the overall feel of the image, even if sometimes it is realistic to have none at all (wind neither carrying fog nor dust). In reality it's just a tint, in the game it entirely overrides distant textures, to the point that they are unnecessary. I would assume it's design intent. Scenery rendering distance: Distant mountains have a tendency to miss a couple polygons, on top of endless terrain errors. I notice the same in classic WoW as we use graphics settings the game wasn't designed for. Just tried to analyse this as I have time and it might have a couple pointers towards Steve's team, what can they do. Overall I'm worried that such engine upgrades could go wrong without suitably updating content to match it. The simplest example is Pacific Surfliner where even with my elderly settings I can see that the ocean ends quite soon and the entire planet beyond is just a big green nothing. Thus updating weathers could break most content. The only way I see right now is to allow route specific 2D-3D overrides to allow beautiful distant rendering. Two screens to illustrate my points: The outer section of München-Garmisch seems to render distant terrain but it's like this. Donner Pass has a fairly working iteration, colors depend on stuff. Spring has this palette while summer is starker blue. Fine, a third that illustrates how the haze is supposed to hide the transition:
This is all just depending on the TimeOfDay files. The fog start/end in there can be overriden in the weather pattern. All colour values for ambience, sunlight, backlight, fog, lower and upper sky, clouds can already be freely defined for eight phases of a day, and four seasons. Additionally you can use the Ambient, Contrast and Sunlight sliders to modify these ingame. Or switch to SilverLining, or use AP TimeOfDay files. Or set up your own ToD blueprint. What I don't like about the Donner Pass spring timeofday file is the lower and upper sky colours are swapped, giving it a heavy gloomy look, like it starts raining any time soon. Normally on a clear sky you go from almost white at the horizon to blue upward. Karlsruhe-Mannheim has a greenish sky colour tint. Replaced that with AP. Not sure what Steve should do here, as the content creator already has full control. Take your time and study the dev docs . You seem to assume that many things are "hardcoded" whilst they are freely customizable. The TSC weather system is very flexible. Sun size and glare, etc... Also in your shots, you have first used a "Clear" weather pattern, in the next ones a "Cloudy", which has a much closer distant fog start defined. Let's compare the most used weather blueprints, Kuju\RailSimulatorCore\RW_clear.bin and RW_Cloudy.bin (1. Clear / 2. Cloudy) Clear has fog override false, so the fog start/end defined in the TimeOfDay file will be used. Cloudy overrides the fog, using its own. And Cloudy defines two WeatherPatterns (you can have four per blueprint, for nice weather changes. If these aren't enough, you can use weather extensions), notice the second one has darker fog coulors. (The name of the pattern is actually not relevant.) Now, at the bottom of the weather blueprint, the weather chain of events is defined. For the first ten minutes, the pattern "Clear" will be used, using bright fog values. Then, we have a slightly darker phase for the next 15 minutes. This simulates the cloudiness, when the sun is blocked by clouds. The patterns take turns again... This is a good system. See what AP made out of it, using no different blueprints. It's all about using good cloud bitmaps for the three rotating dome layers, defining well balanced TimeOfDay environment colours, and good weather blueprints. (And a batch file to swap cloud bitmaps for more variety in the Cloud Pack) You can customize almost every aspect of TSC's appearance. Only two "hardcoded" values come to my mind: 1. Sun always rises exactly east and sets exactly west, no matter what season or date. (And here's where SilverLining fills the gap.) 2. Distant terrain max rendering distance is 32 km. Back on topic: I thought RSSLO only cuts down the Steam versions on rolling stock and tracks - according to Kim they also use different terrain. Let's wait for the screenshots.
Don’t know if they use different terrain source. But they use the max terrain draw distance, and München Rosenheim certainly doesn’t. And, as i said, i know how to import terrain, and have, so it’s not that. Screens tonight. (Imported the southwall of the Inntall to the west of Innsbruck because the Mittenwald bahn didn’t have it. Looks much more like the real Inntal now. Also a place i’ve been so many times, so i just had to fix it)
Maybe it's different. I don't know everything, but a maxterraindrawdistance I haven't encountered yet, other than the "View Distance" slider which cuts off distant terrain. It may be they "cut out" the terrain tiles of their network differently for Steam. Maybe RSSLO actually supply more terrain tiles in their own DLC. Just compare the Terrain folders, as you are the one owning both as I understood? I don't have all RSSLO routes, as I find many of them just being too similar. Though I like their distinct style, using a variety of nice colourful 2D vegetation. 3D trees have a flaw, shadow rendering will begin when already in close range (even in TSW, though you can play with engine.ini values there), so distant 3D trees look bland and uni colour often. 2D veg has their shadows baked in the texture, so they always appear with good contrast.
Kim, there is no max terrain draw value. I do suspect they've cut out a bigger area for their own release - awaiting screenshots. (I'm sure they have the full austrian terrain already imported on their PC's, and cut out sections to release as separate DLC, similar to JustTrains.) There just is no terrain supplied to be rendered. Should answer your initial question It's pretty irrelevant, as you don't notice that from driver's perspective (and thus is saving resources. Rule no1 in creating 3D worlds - only render what the player will actually see. The rest is wasted on your electricity bill.)
I imported the terrain, so on my München Rosenheim there is terrain to be drawn. Regarding what you can see from the train: As you approach Rosenheim you definately can see the mountains towering up 15 km away in real life AND in RSSLOs two routes that cover the area. If you’ve ever approached the alps you will know what i talk about. But as i said. I imported 20 km of extra terrain into Mü-Ro and it does not draw, Somewhere there is a value for the terrain draw distance if the route builder set it to less than 32km. I also KNOW that i am doing it correct, as i’ve imported terrain into other routes, for more realistic views. Also my imported terrain is there if i fly closer.
Still I haven't seen screenshots from you. I'm a visual guy. We're talking about Salzburg - Rosenheim I thought? It's simple to test. Go to the mountains and move 32 kms away in one straight direction, parallel to the tiles. Go exactly as far as 32 tiles (a 1024 metres) and that's the point where the terrain should disappear. Test: this mountain is now at the 32km edge so all is ok.
Now München-Rosenheim (DTG). No distaint terrain texturing, but the mountains are there too, but there's a difference. Mountains do appear later. -The RouteProperties.xml contains no draw distance value. -A terrain tile only contains x,y and the height data blob. -TemplateRoute also nothing of interest here. So, where else to look? So there's no place such a value you are looking for would be defined, as far as I've found. If you don't see your added mountains, you have probably not correctly done the distant terrain importing. This is needed, as in that 32 km distance a lower resolution "distant" terrain is rendered. If you just add a tile with a mountain or paint one yourself, it will not be seen from a distance. So, we've had this before - you must regenerate distant terrain .bin http://tscdevdocs.co.uk/reference-m...lator-2014.html#TOC-Distant-Terrain-Texturing So, make a clone of your route. Then, in World editor, go exactly to origin 0,0 (best by creating a new scenario at the origin and go to world editor without moving) and press "generate distant terrain". This should repair distant scenery, and it seems it is needed. You cannot just add mountain tiles without regenerating the distant scenery. (München Rosenheim has no distant terrain generated!)
Problem solved. I've repaired Munich - Rosenheim Default: After generating distant terrain (a folder "textures" and "distantpatches.bin" were added to the Terrain folder) So that's all the magic. No MaxTerrainDistance parameter - just hit that button after importing new terrain tiles (mountains) to update the distant terrain. Do it again with season set to winter - it will then generate the winter textures based on the definitions in the route template -> environment texturing blueprint. You can delete the .dds files from the Terrain\textures folder. The remaining issue I'm having with this route, is that not all distant tiles are white in winter. Maybe the texturing.bin is not correctly set up for this route. atomicdanny could you give me a hint on what's the reason not all tiles are painted white after generating distant winter terrain? OldVern any ideas?
GOOD FIND! Looks better, but see how the non steam RSSLO version of the same place looks. But this might just be a case of importing even more terrain. Will report back.
About 2 minutes. Depends on the number of terrain tiles of course. For safety, I do it on a clone and then just put the distantpatches.bin and textures folder into the original route. Easy to remove incase I'm not happy. (Just create a "Terrain" folder next to MainContent.ap and put the files in there.) Wish I knew how to get white distant scenery in winter though - it seems either the winter terrain generation is buggy, or the data it's using (route assets Environment\Terrain\Texturing.bin (or what the TemplateRoute points to) is not set up correctly and misses winter defs for some entries - haven't fully explored that blueprint. I only saw that "Alps Rock" has only a summer texture defined in M-R.) As seen in the dev docs, this feature was bugged in TS2012, removed from TS2013 and reintroduced in TS2014. M-R released in 2015, but was eventually started using the editor without Distant Terrain generation, so that's why routes from that time may lack it. And many mostly flat routes don't have a Distantpatches.bin at all, as it's not necessary if there's nothing to see anyway, and saves FPS. I see I have some DEM data from Sweden Bohuslän area here, will experiment with that using Kuju texturing.bin. (I've spent much time in that place north of Göteborg, the beautiful Tjörn and Orust islands... wanted to make a route but that's just not what I'm good at )
Something strange at work here. No texture folder is created in the terrain folder. Only the DistantPatches.bin is created. I tried in a clone of the route, the main route itself (no worries i have a backup) With .ap file unpacked and i made sure the folder is not writeprotected. Since you managed, to create it, clearly i am doing something wrong, though i am at a loss to work out what….
This is from the dev docs? It’s stated in a bit of vague terms. Later i’ll load a screenshot of the screen in the editor. Btw, your digging into this is much appreciated.
Spikee1975 Ok i found out now. The devil is in the detail. Steps to do. 1- go into the route editor. 2- import the terrain you want to import. 3- hit save. 4- create a new quick drive in the scenario editor. Creat it at route origin(!). DO NOT MOVE THE CURSOR AT ALL. 5- hit the big yellow play button, then save the scenario. 6- press escape THEN world editor when the exit menu appears. 7- press generate distant terrain. observe the green square in the top right. It’s actually an activity monitor. There wont be something happening all the time, but should be something happening some of the time. 8- when it’s finished after a couple of minutes hit f2 to save once more. Now the alps are towering in the distance, just as it looks in real life from Rosenheim. It hasn’t created winter textures. Don’t know if i have to create a scenario set in winter to do that. Will check tomorrow.
Huh? This is exactly what I have written above. Do you read my posts? Already done all that if you check again, and to get winter textures you have to set the editor to winter and the _wi.TgPcDx files get created, as I have already explained. The issue is most of these textures are not white - that's where I'm stuck. You found out nothing new mate.
Errr yes i read them, how else could i have gotten this far? Gotta ask: are we good? You seem to be somewhat condenscing towards me. I guess that’s what i have to take to accept help from one that’s ahead in the learning curve…… I was spelling it out because OTHERS might search this topic and find the dev docs wording fluffy. So the difference i was searching wasn’t a parameter, It was missing texture. Easy to think there was a parameter for this, because why on earth would you build a route so unrealistic (forgetting that this is DTG after all). But at the same time i just knew something had to account for this difference between DTG and RSSLO. Hopefully this thread will help some new budding routebuilder in the future.
No worries, I just found it a little funny. And I'm thankful for your initial post because I had never messed with Distant Terrain, learnt a lot yesterday. I know I might come over as a bit rude sometimes, that's just when my brain is in pure "technical/logical" mode I hope maybe next year AtomicDanny will share some insight why not all tiles are textured white for winter - workaround would be to load all these textures into paint.net and add a white layer with 80% opacity or so over them... Still have to check on whether it's the used "texturing.bin"'s fault though - because the distant winter texturing uses this. Haven't got time, but to check why not generate a new test route based on a modern route template (Pegnitz for example), use the terrain manipulation tool to add some spiky mountains in the distance and hit that button in winter. Cheers!
I noticed that winter terrain is only generated for 4km. I wonder if the reason no distant winter terrain is generated, is that DTG simply didn’t bother include one, just like they didn’t bother including the highest mountainrange in Europe. Perhaps it’s simply possible to import a didtant wintertexture from another route, and then modify the distantpatches.bin to point to it. Or even easier, perhaps there is an entry in the distantpatches.bin that can just be pointed to one from another route.
Trial and error - but I'm sure we'll find out. As I said the "Alp Rock" def in the MR texturing.bin is missing an entry for winter.
I think so. Most winter scenarios I documented are night, foggy (snowy) or both. The rest is rounding error or mine. I first noticed on Edinburgh-Glasgow that distant scenery is pitch black using clear weather. Including mountains and hills. Donner Pass is green with overcast weather. White nearby, then transitions. Haze overrides and fog hides it. Otherwise it's quite annoying. Newer routes with 3D weather are usually fine, such as CMP, NY-New Haven, NS Coal District, NJCL. Not all - Weardale is suspicious. Also the 2018 PDL. With 2D weather they still get the blue override, Soldier Summit. It also means that distant scenery can be a little disruptive, so overall might be a choice to better to not have it. Plus, when it's foggy, the black scenery actually has a mild chance to show. (I can post screenies if you want. Guess it's enough of a side discussion already.)
DynamicClouds / SL 3D weather is not route dependant. It's available for all routes. The rest is, as explained, up to the fog defined in the ToD/weather bp. Nothing to do with distant terrain.
Slightly off topic but could be related. I've noticed that the rendering distance of tracks since the installation of the AP track pack is significantly shorter. Is there a way to increase the distance?
