Distant Mountain Scenery And Such

[conrail1]

Well, if the OR development team can continue giving us excellent performance (high fps and no lag) and also cater to the 20 kilometre obelisks and insects in the weeds, that's fine by me.

But the moment that performance and operational realism is traded for glitz then that's the day that OR loses the plot.

Bruce

Game play is very important; nothing spoils a simulation like eye distracting scenery loading stutter and inconsistent/low frame rates.

As it stands now we’ve only seen OR running content originally created with MSTS’s very limited capability in mind. The excellent performance that you see in OR now could very well go by the way side as soon as we see content, shadows and lighting on par with what we’ve come to expect from other modern day sims/games. It all goes back to the platform/foundation that the game runs on.

[csantucci]

I would like that ORTS applies also to distant mountains the principle it has applied also to all other functions available in MSTS: in the first phase a compatibility with MSTS should be achieved, that is ORTS is able to display MSTS distant mountains; in a second phase ORTS may develop any new great feature (non MSTS-compatible) for distant mountains, but still should remain able to display MSTS distant mountains.

[neyland]

Very good points conrail1, a well rounded view of what is needed. In regards aesthetic qualities in a train game and the need for operational authenticity.

[phigui]

Hello
Just a few words to tell you that I quite agree with csantucci when he writes " but still should remain able to display MSTS distant mountains "
Here in Europe we enjoy many routes ( especially swiss routes like the Gotthard ) that display wonderful DM ! Without the DM they just look so strange and dull ! So, the DM are a very important component in all these outstanding alpine routes !
Thanks to the developers of OR for hard work

Phil ( from France )

[conrail1]

Very good points conrail1, a well rounded view of what is needed. In regards aesthetic qualities in a train game and the need for operational authenticity.

neyland,

Here’s another example, the two big player’s in North America as far as locomotive engineer training simulators are concerned are NY Air Brake and Corys.

Corys has just moved over to using Havok's new game engine (well known in the gaming industry) -

http://www.havoksimulation.com/?q=blocks/quotes/corys

http://www.havoksimulation.com/?q=use-cases

[seagoon]

.........The excellent performance that you see in OR now could very well go by the way side as soon as we see content, shadows and lighting on par with what we’ve come to expect from other modern day sims/games. It all goes back to the platform/foundation that the game runs on.

Well, there's a very simple solution for me if it ever gets to the point where Open Rails becomes a showcase for graphical excellence and performance drops into the weeds: I simply revert to the last good X-build that provided me with acceptable fps.

Bruce

[seagoon]

.....I don't care much for the Jet-1 engine.

You, me and a million others, Marc.
It's been around since 2000 yet there have been more iterations of Trainz than I've had hot breakfasts.
"Jet" became "Propellor" around 2004.

Bruce

[seagoon]

Corys has just moved over to using Havok's new game engine (well known in the gaming industry)

No doubt we can expect the OR team to purchase this product any day now.

Bruce

[Bananarama]

"Jet" became "Propellor" around 2004.

Wow - it runs that fast?! Who woulda' thunk.

[seagoon]

Wow - it runs that fast?! Who woulda' thunk.

Maybe I should have added "at idle".

Bruce

[neyland]

neyland,

Here’s another example, the two big player’s in North America as far as locomotive engineer training simulators are concerned are NY Air Brake and Corys.

Corys has just moved over to using Havok's new game engine (well known in the gaming industry) -

http://www.havoksimulation.com/?q=blocks/quotes/corys

http://www.havoksimulation.com/?q=use-cases

Very impressive conrail1. Havok is an excellent game engine, much better than anything in the current train games.

[kox]

lacks certain features that I feel are important from a graphics standpoint (ambient occlusion, normals, etc.),

You can use ambient occlusion in every games, it's just a texture merged with the color texture realtime AO is useless, just eating resources.

[seagoon]

I have T&E experience as well as train dispatcher experience and I wouldn’t go crazy over the operational aspects of Run8 either.
I’m well aware of what goes into training T&E; I’ve worked in the railroad industry as an instructor.

Well, might I suggest that, in a forum such as this, those qualifications in your signature line would have more impact than your computer specs?

Bruce

[Bananarama]

You can use ambient occlusion in every games, it's just a texture merged with the color texture realtime AO is useless, just eating resources.

I'm aware that the shadow map can be part of the original texture, thanks, but texture applied AO has some drawbacks of its own and isn't the only feature that's important from an artist POV. However, I wouldn't call realtime AO useless - there's much more to AO than rendering shadows.

[kox]

but texture applied AO has some drawbacks of its own

For example?

However, I wouldn't call realtime AO useless - there's much more to AO than rendering shadows.

For example?
BTW realtime AO is always have worse quality than a pre-rendered AO map.