Forests

[OTTODAD]

Having been referred to in my recent posts, it would appear that the ORTS team will have to have another look at how it will deal with them.

What I would like being able to do, partly possible in MSTS and not at all in Railworks, it not having user defined forests which can align all they contain with the terrain and neither can the few supplied default forests do that.

This add-on utility for RS and now RW comes close to what should be possible, but has severe drawbacks, such as not being able to see the terrain and existing scenery details to be covered with forests.

Perhaps this could be added to the team's TO-DO list ?

O t t o

[sniper297]

My solution would be different if I was a programmer - use procedural flora. For those who never tried RS/RW, instead of terrtex tiles they have a gadget that you use to paint textures on the ground, and the textures can be set for a kind of three dimensional texture - vegetation is generated from the ground paint. Two problems, the weeds are limited to a max height of a couple of feet, and a max visible distance (LOD) of about 30 meters.

https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=281643

Increase the draw distance and make the max height 50 meters or so, you could make forests of trees with a method that would be a lot less tedious than the MSTS forest regions.

For now forest regions are what we have to work with, so I made a little test route to analyze exactly what ORTS is doing now;

http://www.humyo.com/9455455/Oh%20rats.zip?a=mdI46c_4ASI

At the far end I used flat terrain with terrtex blocks, placed forest regions with the edges on the tile edges;



So next fire up MSTS:



Then look at the same area in ORTS;



And there's the problem, all the forest regions are present and accounted for, but shrunk to about half size.

[OTTODAD]

Did one more test to see what one of my weeds5 forest would look like after I have narrowed it and have moved it sideways.

Still flies on the slope and some original weeds5 forests do not show at all.

It seems that in ORTS forests get positioned at their highest points in slopes and all they contain is flying above the terrain ?

Also could not operate the brakes on that default DASH-9 I was driving, no train, loco nor dynamic brakes and putting it into reverse and applying throttle did not slow it down either.

Like I said before, no point doing any more testing until we get another beta.

O t t o

[mestevet]

While on the topic...

Gentlemen,

One other thing that I'd like to bring up, while the subject of MSTS Forest Regions is ripe, is this thread I started, seeking further clarification and potential solutions to the problem where Forest Region "objects" will disappear behind shapes with alpah'd polys, even with properly sorted alphas:

https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=273961

The conclusion reached by several experienced people who actually understand the problem (because there are MANY who didn't seem to 'get it') is that the hard coded object used in the MSTS code is at fault. There seemed to be no solution by modifying rolling stock or other shapes.

So here's my question, as I haven't yet installed the public beta of OR - can the OR forest region objects be seen through alpha channel objects, like cab windows from external views? If it's premature to be asking this question on account of the state of development, then I at least want to make folks aware of the issue.

Steve

[kraus]

Yes, forest region objects are visible through windows in shapes. It also appears that the size of forest regions has been fixed.

[sniper297]

Huh?

"appears that the size of forest regions has been fixed", did that happen since this morning? As for the alpha sorting issues, from what I see here;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGZ4EfEOxkM

Start about a minute into the video, the horizon is visible thru the first light cone (trees invisible), the second one the trees are not invisible. Why one and not the other I dunno.

[kraus]

"appears that the size of forest regions has been fixed", did that happen since this morning?

Take a closer look at the version number.

[rdamurphy]

The ORTS team reads these posts. They fix the problems. They're an open-source group with roots in the community, trying to produce a FREE replacement for the out of date graphics of MSTS.

So, if we give them POSITIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE feedback, they will fix it as soon as possible. Writing code is NOT easy. Debugging and troubleshooting is even harder.

So, it's GOOD news, that the ORL team fixed it and released a new version so quickly, and if that's what we have to look forward to, well, the future is indeed very BRIGHT!

Robert

[jovet]

So, if we give them POSITIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE feedback, they will fix it as soon as possible. Writing code is NOT easy. Debugging and troubleshooting is even harder.

Well said. Personally, I'm very impressed already with what it can do.

It's alright if some features do not work correctly right now. It isn't the end of the world or the end of Open Rails, which is still in early development. If something doesn't work as you expect, compare notes with others. If something is different for you, then it should be posted. The mentioned additions to the public documentation will help everyone learn what to expect when using Open Rails.

[sniper297]

Eh?

"Take a closer look at the version number", I went to http://www.openrails.org/release.html and it still says 128. Downloaded and installed again anyway, says;

SVN V = 128
BUILD = 0.0.3774.22544 Sun 05/02/2010 01:31 PM

in the DOS box?

[muskokaandtahoe]

I too have been a little suspicious that the forest area was a bit smaller than it should be... something to look into.

I can point out one thing about Open Rails forests that I know is different, and IMO better, and that is the tree texture is much, much sharper in clarity than the original MSTS. Move in closer at it'll be apparent.

A second point that isn't noticed right off is they're billboards. Billboards are camera-facing polys (the vertical axis remains fixed and the poly faces rotate around that line to face the camera).

For Otto: yes you can have a "forest" of cows if you want. Ice cream cones or balloons... whatever you want to have as a texture. The software never cares what is on the texture. I never tried that in MSTS but I expect it works that way as well. As for not having cows/trees/whatever inside your buildings, what happens in MSTS when forests overlap structures?

Last, the fellow who did the code for forests expressed a desire to try it w/ multiple textures -- as in multiple tree species. It hasn't been coded yet, but it does sound interesting.

[csantucci]

Nice that the forests issue has been solved by the OR dev people. However, as Sniper notes, the new release is not yet on line. Pls. don't take this as a request to handle fast!

[longiron]

"Take a closer look at the version number", I went to http://www.openrails.org/release.html and it still says 128. Downloaded and installed again anyway, says;

SVN V = 128
BUILD = 0.0.3774.22544 Sun 05/02/2010 01:31 PM

in the DOS box?

Jim,
work continues on ... in the background. In a later dev release (v134 vs v128 public download), the team has quietly made some adjustments to the random distribution of objects to better fill the forest definition. End result may be more big wooden hazards for engineers to avoid on the tracks.

[OTTODAD]

Yes you can have a "forest" of cows if you want. Ice cream cones or balloons... whatever you want to have as a texture. The software never cares what is on the texture. I never tried that in MSTS but I expect it works that way as well. As for not having cows/trees/whatever inside your buildings, what happens in MSTS when forests overlap structures?

You have to make sure that the rectangularly shaped forest areas do not cover buildings nor tracks or roads and a lot of fine-tuning or creating smaller ones may be necessary. Houses and other objects can be moved to not have forest trees growing in them.

Now if the forest code could be told not to plant anything on to other shapes, roads or tracks on the terrain then what would eliminate having to do that.

Another option would be to be able to freehand draw an irregularly shaped forest area, avoiding built-up areas, rivers, tracks and roads, etc, exactly covering mountains and hills areas.

But that could be too much work, requiring coding skills similar to those used for creating CADCAM software ?

Also shown below are some of Frank Carver's textures such as corn fields and there are others such as sunflower and other flower fields.

Mike Sinclair's trees show that by giving them 4 planes they look almost 3D and wonder how ORTS with display them, most add-on routes using them.

O t t o

[sniper297]

EGAD Holmes!

There you go, I'm a little slow on the uptakes. All youse guys on the dev team should add something to your siggy to keep old geezers like me from getting confused.

Otto, take a closer look at the forests from overhead, the standard individual trees are that same 8 sided shape but the new forest region is the flat type that rotates to face the view instead of the old four sided shape from MSTS;

http://msts.steam4me.net/tutorials/forests.html

From most angles that produces better framerates and better appearance.