Another idea for realistic engine motion

[twpol]

My understanding of vehicle dynamics (my experience is mainly with aircraft, but many of the underlying principles are the same with rail and road vehicles) is that it can be quite complicated and will depend highly on an accurate model of the spring and dampening systems and the geometry of the suspension in a vehicle.

That's basically the same conclusion we reached - that it's probably too complex to simulate correctly, at least with out present team knowledge (which is pretty good I must say!), without adversly affecting overall performance. While we're also not that keen on a faked solution, though that's still more likely than a real one, there would certainly be an off switch.

[BNSFfan]

That's the way to do it to please all !

That is what I am pushing for in TS 2012, to let users decide in it's OPTIONS what they want to disable, like Cab Sway, Shadows on tracks and all derailments, no matter what the cause is, like derailments in MSTS which lets me drive my Santa-Fe Explorer at 1500+ MpH along tracks when testing them !

O t t o

No shadows on my track, TSX off, all settings on high except passenger density, and only MLAA on.

[OTTODAD]

Compare the left side of the gravel trackbeds with those on the right !

Can you not see that they are a different shade ?

O t t o

[kox]

That can't be disabled anywhere in games, that are the smoothing groups, and it's correct as it is. The shaded surface is not affected by the light source, since it's sloped in opposite direction, but the other surface is lit by the light, because it's sloped towards the source. Without it, the tracks would look unrealistic, and you will see the same in every game with same track mesh. If you don't like it, you need to make track with flat trackbed.

[OTTODAD]

That can't be disabled anywhere in games, that are the smoothing groups, and it's correct as it is. The shaded surface is not affected by the light source, since it's sloped in opposite direction, but the other surface is lit by the light, because it's sloped towards the source. Without it, the tracks would look unrealistic, and you will see the same in every game with same track mesh. If you don't like it, you need to make track with flat trackbed.

No track in all the train simulators I use has this shadow on tracks, MSTS, ORTS, BVE, TRAINZ, RS and RW-2 and neither does is show on real tracks unless the sun it really very low and then it is more likely to show the shadow of the rails and not on the trackbed !

Need more evidence ?

I do not use train simulators which display tracks like RW-3 now does, PERIOD !

O t t o

[kox]

These are not shadows, it's just the diffuse lightning. It's same in all game, this lightning is the principle of current realtime 3d lightning technicues.
On the MSTS screenshot i don't see any slope on the trackbed, so it's flat as i wrote before, or nearly flat, so the the light hits is equally. On real photos there isn't any slope between the tracks and the trackbeds are lightly sloped too, and in real there are things like indirect illumination, which is currently can't be used for realtime 3d graphics, but the professional renderers know it.

You can make wider or more lightly sloped, or flat track meshes for railworks, but these will cause other problems, or you can put all faces to a single smoothing group, so the games will shade it as planar surface. But these track meshes will look the same in every 3d game engines, until the computers will be fast enough to use realtime raytracing 3d engines with global illumination.

[longiron]

Can we stay on topic - realistic engine motion. If you want to discuss trackbed lighting in 3D games, please start another thread dedicated to that topic. Thanks.

[GoGoran]

Fantastic illustrations, Ottodad !

This is what happens when a simulation tries to become larger than life. Same thing as with the "cab-sway."

[OTTODAD]

Fantastic illustrations, Ottodad ! This is what happens when a simulation tries to become larger than life. Same thing as with the "cab-sway."

Back on topic I hope that ORTS will forget all about sickening for coders and viewers cab sway and do not attempt to create irritating to some lighting effects on trackbeds !

O t t o