Official v128 Thread

[conrail1]

Hello,

The members of the Open Rails team have discussed the issue of rendering shadows in the software, but have not come to any definitive conclusions as of this writing. Wayne Campbell has done some experimentation with shadows.

Thanks again for the info.

It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of performance hit we’ll experience when they are finally implemented.

[6sparrow]

I'd just like to say that this is a fantastic idea, and is a wonderful product so far. Even on my low-end laptop it gets over 30fps, 10 more than MSTS and far smoother than Railworks. Excellent work, keep it up!

A bit of feedback for you; it seems to me that the camera will clip planes at a much further distance than it does in MSTS. for example, siting in the replacement acela passenger view in MSTS i can look behind me and see the back of the chair i'm in, where in OR i can see through it. It looks like the camera is in the correct place, but the back of the seat still clips. It's a small thing really, not worth much attention.

This game has a lot of potential because of it's open source nature, I look forward to seeing what it becomes.

[longiron]

Thanks for the vote of support. Cabviews and Passenger views are something that we haven't spent much time on to date. It's certainly on our short list of features the team wants to tackle.

Stay tuned

chrisvw
Project Lead
openrails.org

[lindsayts]

On one of the other threads a number were discussing running OR on large screens so I thought I would throw in this.
I recently did a major recontruction of one of my PC's here in order to try OR at 2560x1600 on a Samsung 305T monitor. The result after a hint by twpol a member of the OR team was a REALLY excellent expierence, you have to type in the resolution into the window and OR does the rest. It worked very well I must say, in fact for the first half hour or so I was suffering a little bit of vertigo on curves in the hills. The details of the machine concerned is
MB ASUS P7P55D-E-Delux
CPU i5-750
Graphics Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 260 SuperOverclocked
4 gig of Ram
Window XP professional.
Monitor Samsung 305T 2560x1600

I also have OR running on a slightly older machine
MB gigabyte P35 DSO3
CPU E6850
Graphics Sapphire Radeon 4870
I think it has 2 gig of ram
Windows XP home edition
Monitor Sony G520 at 1600x1200

I have not as yet done extensive testing between the two systems. One reason for this is that a good portion of the routes do not have activities with them and I have not got around to building some to test OR. The second is on one route, (Adelaide hills and SE) on loading at least half the activities OR starts up and the sim does not respond to keyboard input although windows still does.
Now I have driven a number of routes a good bit though (around 2 hours on system 1 and 5 on system 2) apart from the resolution difference the behavior appears to be similiar. The rendering on both being excellent. The frame rate improvement over MSTS is around 1.7 to at least 4 times. This appears to depend on the object count in the scene displayed, the higher the object count the less the improvement. On one mountanous route (Wogan Valley) in the mountains MSTS frame rate drops way down, OR at the same place has no problems at all.
Note: On both graphics cards the frame rate is set to the vertical sync rate. so the frame rate drops way down when running MSTS.

The clarity of the rendering on both systems is really good, as far as I can see at this stage there is little difference between the two graphics cards in rendering quality or performance. Antialiasing was X4 Ansiotropic filtering X8, these settings worked quite well. On the Samsung at 2560x1600 the results REALLY were stunning.

Next week I am giving myself an early christmas present and the first system is getting a Radeon 5870.

OpenRails is looking really good, excellent news on one of the threads a developer said they would have to get into the train simulation instead of the scenery display. I am really impressed with OR. At 2560x1600 I consider the display clearer and better rendered than Railsimulator.

I am looking forward to the next release..........

Lindsay (from UKTrainsim)

[conrail1]

I consider the display clearer and better rendered than Railsimulator.

Lindsay (from UKTrainsim)

I don’t know if I’d go that far just yet.

You’re looking at very low poly models in OpenRails so RailWorks is still going to obviously look a lot better, once some high poly models/textures get into OR that should change.

Here’s an example, now compare those screen shots with any of the ones I’ve taken of OpenRails in the link below.

https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=293605

[lindsayts]

This is of course subjective. I personally dislike high poly count models and multiple layer texturing just for the sake of it. Railsimulator tends to a have softer "more realistic" texturing which nice at a glance but I find quickly gets old.
With a train simulator I wwwwaaaaayyyyyy prefer routes and operations that behave realistically rather than look realistic. Note 1

One of my favorite routes and the only one that has made me feel what it was like to drive a loco in days gone by (1950's in Australia) does not have a particularly high object count and most of the objects are necesarily simplistic as the total line length in the route is 600 miles (not total track pieces). But the routes author has a happy knack of getting the "character"of the line and the area correct. I have driven a number of routes with a significantly high detail level that have not grabbed me at all. Although I must say I know the first mentioned area much better then the others. (not really well, just better).

Note 1: I judge a route if it is operationally accurate, that is you can do the things in a yard that were done, exact track layout need not be correct. As long as the signaling is there and aproximates what is required does not matter what the mounting pole is made of. Or in fact if its is semaphore or coloured light. Bridges and earthworks in the correct place, minor bridges can be what ever the author had on hand etc. Enough social detail in the scenery to show why the line was put there and so on.

[conrail1]

With a train simulator I wwwwaaaaayyyyyy prefer routes and operations that behave realistically rather than look realistic.

I'm with you on that one Lindsay and I do hope that the development team doesn’t get side tracked from the focus on “loco physics, train handling, signals, AI behavior, dispatching, and most of all running trains in a realistic, prototypical manner”.

It’s one of the reasons why I have been confused about some of the comments already in this forum about targeting OpenRails at the “casual gamer” when in the OR documentation it clearly states on at least two pages (pg. 6&11) who this is targeted towards.

[MIKEinNE]

lindsayts, "With a train simulator I wwwwaaaaayyyyyy prefer routes and operations that behave realistically rather than look realistic."

Conrail said, "I'm with you on that one Lindsay and I do hope that the development team doesn’t get side tracked from the focus on “loco physics, train handling, signals, AI behavior, dispatching, and most of all running trains in a realistic, prototypical manner”."


Lindsay, then drive on flat earth w/o any scenery or any interactives. All interactives are scenery. The trick is getting the proper balance between scenery and operational capacity. That is why RS fails as a simulator. Although it has good scenery, the AIs and signals do not work as well as they do in MSTS. Thhw issue you are describing is highly subjective.

[OTTODAD]

That is why RS fails as a simulator. Although it has good scenery, the AIs and signals do not work as well as they do in MSTS.

Such as scenery which is lacking fully visible textured Distant Mountains, no customizable forests which align all they contain with uneven terrain and objects which pop into view as one get closer, including procedural flora and others being re-drawn in stages ?

I hope that ORTS will do a lot better than that !

O t t o

[Train-a-Mania]

Let's not turn this into another MSTS vs. RW topic.

[muskokaandtahoe]

Let's not turn this into another MSTS vs. RW topic.

IMO it is reasonable to look at features well done in another sim (e.g., MSTS, Tranz, RW) and say I'd like to see that in Open Rails too... or conversely another sims weak/missing features and say I hope Open Rails can do better than that.

Those are all valuable inputs to the OR project.

What should not happen in this forum is a debate about some other sim.

That may be too a fine line to walk for some so here's my suggestion about how to find that line: If you want to reply to someones post with the thought that boils down to "Your opinion about that other sim (e.g., MSTS, Tranz, RW) is wrong" -- you've crossed the line -- and so don't post that here.