Distant Mountain Scenery And Such

[conrail1]

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

It’s no different than any other sim/game forum I frequent some of which even request you list your system specs in your signature when you register.

Why would my railroad experience have any impact in a forum where the majority of visitors wouldn’t know the difference between a boxcar and a banana?

[seagoon]

Why would my railroad experience have any impact in a forum where the majority of visitors wouldn’t know the difference between a boxcar and a banana?

Yes, of course. I completely overlooked the fact that the rest of us are cretins.

Bruce

[conrail1]

Yes, of course. I completely overlooked the fact that the rest of us are cretins.

Bruce

Lol, you said it I didn’t, although cretin might be a tad on the strong side.

[Bananarama]

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

My apologies - perhaps you and I aren't on the same page. I meant pre-rendered AO per a shadow map and not dynamic per the game engine - nice, but I would agree that in-game dynamic AO is very inefficient. As for the texture-applied AO, I thought you were referring to rendered shadows applied to the original texture, rather than a separate texture map, especially since MSTS and OR (the latter in its current form) doesn't support a second bumpmap channel (except IIRC for a very limited environment effect), and only support very basic specular values. In this case, an shadow map would need to be applied to the basic texture, rather than through the use of a second or third channel and thus would be limited to the main channel's UV. A second channel is possible in OR, since I've seen results of experiments using the OR code for dynamic AO, and was informed that other effects were entirely possible, albeit at the expense of system overhead. Instead of dynamic AO, a second and perhaps third channel would be preferred and not so resource hungry as dynamic.

[GoGoran]

Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition w/Corsair H100, ASUS Rampage III Extreme, Mushkin Enhanced Redline 12GB DDR3 1600, GeForce GTX 680, X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty, Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB SSD/Windows 7 Ultimate 64/SP1, Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB - Games/Programs, Corsair AX1200, Corsair 800D, Windows 8 Pro 64

intel Celeron E1200 @ 1.6GHz, 2GB DDR2-800 Hynix RAM in single-channel mode, intel Q43/45 graphics onboard, Realtek AC262 onboard sound, Seagate Barracuda 160GB HDD, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2, Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP2.

LOOOOOOOOOL.

[Bananarama]

LOOOOOOOOOL.

That hardly helps with the topic at hand. Guys, can we please dispense with flame baiting?

[neyland]

Yes, of course. I completely overlooked the fact that the rest of us are cretins.

Bruce

I wouldn't argue with that.

[geekman]

.... in a forum where the majority of visitors wouldn’t know the difference between a boxcar and a banana?

Bananas go on my breakfast cereal. Boxcars ruin the taste of Wheaties - plus they're hard to chew.

[eric]

Bananas go on my breakfast cereal. Boxcars ruin the taste of Wheaties - plus they're hard to chew.

I thought Wheaties traveled in boxcars, and bananas came on boats...

[mdeming]

I thought Wheaties traveled in boxcars

Not any more. General Mills in West Chicago, where Wheaties are made, no longer ships by rail.

[kox]

...

A material that supports pre rendered AO maps, does exactly the same as you would if you apply the ao map to the texture: multiply.
Why it's better to make two textures, and combine them while the game is running by AO supporing material, while you can make it to one texture?

[Bananarama]

Why it's better to make two textures, and combine them while the game is running by AO supporing material, while you can make it to one texture?

Because you can tile the diffuse texture and use a lower res shadow map. A good tiled brick texture can look better than one constrained by the outer bounds of the UV to that map, or perhaps one or two small concrete textures applied to something as large as a dam:



FWIW, the graffiti, streaking and horizontal lines are all part of one shadow map. Dynamic AO can't do this.

Depending on detail, I will often use a 512 x 512 or smaller texture for the diffuse, and 256 x 256 for the shadow map. A recent model of mine used a 32 x 32 diffuse texture, a 128 x 128 shadow map, and a 2048 x 2048 normal map (item required lots of detail). The only downside was the extra two texture calls, but the calls outweighed the results and was better than adding an additional 1k polys.

[kox]

Because you can tile the diffuse texture and use a lower res shadow map. The only downside was the extra two texture calls, but the calls outweighed the results and was better than adding an additional 1k polys.

It's very rare when tiling diffuse is enough for a model.
But what is the connection between the AO map and the poly count?

[Bananarama]

It's very rare when tiling diffuse is enough for a model.
But what is the connection between the AO map and the poly count?

None. The poly count was in reference to using a normal map mentioned in the post.

[rdamurphy]

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 )

Phil, I agree completely, DM should work as well - or better than - MSTS. It's just a matter of time until the team discovers how Kuju did it, replicates it, and improves it. And I'm confident that time will be soon.

Robert