Open Rails Sky Texture

[02468]

Hello everybody.

Ever since I have gotten open rails the sky texture didn't look like other people's skys. I have tried to replace the sky pictures with sky re placers but it still is the same old thing.

[R. Steele]

Sounds like you have the MSTS environments box checked under Options/Experimental. Uncheck that box and see if the sky looks better. The MSTS environments add-ons like Kosmos do not work as well in OR as they do in MSTS.

Better environment rendering has been something people have asked for, but more important items are at the top of the list.
There are some replacement Clouds.png for OR and other sky domes...you can make your own. I do not know if any are in the TS library.

People have posted that they have gotten Kosmos to work correctly with OR, but I've yet to see the visual evidence.

Screenshot of sky in my setup

ATSF-Sunset.jpg and this one PRB_2.jpg

[02468]

Thanks. I went ahead and checked it of and it worked great.

[bprice]

Those sky textures look good. Are they available anywhere?

Thanks

[ossie]

There were some uploaded to the file library by Shawn a while back. https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/tslib....ight&fid=32229
Gerry, if I've got the wrong set, please correct me.

[qballbandit]

If anyone has the Redding Route, a good deal of the great sky textures included can be used in OR (just name them clouds01). Wide variations. A few will not work, and I don't know the reasons why, but they get squared off "framed" sections in the sky.

[R. Steele]

There were some uploaded to the file library by Shawn a while back. https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/tslib....ight&fid=32229
Gerry, if I've got the wrong set, please correct me.

Yes, these are the ones [ orskytextures.zip ] Claus Overgaard first posted in a thread at Elvas and then uploaded to the library at ET. I've used these and some of my own to mash up my own set of clouds01.png. I change them out for specific effects when I'm doing some screenshots.
I'm sure one of these days an OR developer will tackle the environment issue.
I wish someone with experience with Kosmos would see what it would take to make it work with the OR code.

If anyone has the Redding Route, a good deal of the great sky textures included can be used in OR (just name them clouds01). Wide variations. A few will not work, and I don't know the reasons why, but they get squared off "framed" sections in the sky.

Cool, Neil. Thanks for the heads up, I have the Redding routes ( an overlooked route, but nicely done - I love the county fairgrounds with the blimp circling overhead ) and had not considered it a source for sky effects. Will take a look.

[baldwin]

To get Kosmos environments working in OR needs OR to recognise and use MSTS environments. A start was made a while back, but development stopped, real world sort of gets in the way sometimes.

[peterman]

To get Kosmos environments working in OR needs OR to recognise and use MSTS environments. A start was made a while back, but development stopped, real world sort of gets in the way sometimes.

Sorry for bumping up this thread but.... I was getting kind of tired of seeing the same cloud pattern in every weather scenario, so I got to thinking on how to get a different cloud pattern for each scenario.... then it hit me. Convert the Clouds01.png to an Clouds01.ace file, then put it in the textures folder inside the MSTS ENVFILES folder. Next open the .ENV file and find the line pertaining to clouds and replace the name of the .ace file with the one you just created ( Clouds01.ace ). Next open OR, click on options, click on experimental, check use MSTS environments and away you go.

Now, having said that... there is no advantage to doing that unless... you convert the other three or four Clouds01 that were uploaded recently (NOTE - not the ones that came with the SkyDome upload but the ones uploaded earlier). Call them Clouds02, Clouds03 etc. and use them in other ENV files. There should be a nice mixture for the different weather scenarios.

You can still use OR's dynamic weather to fine tune.

Peter

[ossie]

Peter, I assume from your idea that you get MSTS environments to work well with ORTS? It wouldn't matter what ace file I used for sky on mine, it'd come up with strange blues/purples etc. I assumed this was the same for all ORTS users with MSTS environments enabled, so I'd be really interested in learning more about why some are displaying MSTS environments correctly... especially if there was a work around/fix I could use.

[peterman]

Peter, I assume from your idea that you get MSTS environments to work well with ORTS? It wouldn't matter what ace file I used for sky on mine, it'd come up with strange blues/purples etc. I assumed this was the same for all ORTS users with MSTS environments enabled, so I'd be really interested in learning more about why some are displaying MSTS environments correctly... especially if there was a work around/fix I could use.

Howdy... I delved further into this today and I believe I have a simple solution. When you look into an .ENV file, most of them have three layers in the world_sky section ( some have more ). The first one handles the atmosphere, the second one is usually used for the stars and the third one is the clouds. The one that causes the strange looking effects is the first .ace file. What I've done to get around it is to make a blank (transparent) .ace file and insert it in place of the original .ace file. That will work for all the clear scenarios ( Summer Clear, Autumn Clear, Spring Clear and Winter Clear ). It also applies to all the other scenarios, but because of rain and snow you might want to tweak them a bit. I had some problems with the Summer Rain because that layer uses the Summer Snow cloud .ace. Perhaps an error in the coding? Anyways' , I substituted a converted Clouds01 that I mentioned earlier into the Summer Snow .ENV. If I can do this right there should be a screenshot below of OR running with MSTS Environment.

Open Rails 2017-01-25 MSTS ENV.jpg

Remember that the dynamic weather is still usable in this mode.

Peter

[R. Steele]

Very Interesting, deserves some study. Although, the sky looks a little alien, railroading in our twin universe??
Most definitely not as strange as is usually the case with MSTS environments option checked.

[ossie]

Thanks for the further info Peter. I have had a bit of a play around with it today and there's a huge improvement over the "default" sky, but still well short of the way I remember MSTS looking. When I have more time though, I'll have another go at it as one of the clouds I tried gave a really good overcast type effect. Experimenting with fog, different times of day etc may provide some good options for running on various routes.

Not knowing how all these pieces come together, I'd hoped MSTS environments might have included MSTS satellites but no. Still have that day time ORTS moon. Certainly worth continuing to experiment with. Good stuff!

[peterman]

Thanks for the further info Peter. I have had a bit of a play around with it today and there's a huge improvement over the "default" sky, but still well short of the way I remember MSTS looking. When I have more time though, I'll have another go at it as one of the clouds I tried gave a really good overcast type effect. Experimenting with fog, different times of day etc may provide some good options for running on various routes.

Not knowing how all these pieces come together, I'd hoped MSTS environments might have included MSTS satellites but no. Still have that day time ORTS moon. Certainly worth continuing to experiment with. Good stuff!

Peter...
I believe the days of blinding snowstorms and monsoon rains won't be seen anytime soon. I resized a couple of .ace files today from 512 x 512 to 1024 x 1024 and they did look better, so I guess bigger is better . If you use the headout cam and then look straight up above your locomotive, you can see how the SkyDome is laid out and why it's hard to make good .ace files.

Peter

[jeff9595]

To get Kosmos environments working in OR needs OR to recognise and use MSTS environments. A start was made a while back, but development stopped, real world sort of gets in the way sometimes.

Sadly, this is true. To be very fair to the extraordinary crew at OR, it's also not really high on their priority list to get "MSTS" environments, sky, water, fog, etc... functional in OR. Their priority is a much broader "superset" world program which would greatly expand the weather possibilities, and I think see water as a component of the route rather than a separate environment. At least that's my reading of their mission approach.

To comment on a couple of the MSTS issues noted in this thread. The problem, I think, with the sky lines comes from the need to "tile" or "make seamless" the sky textures being used. This is a standard graphics app procedure and enables images which are 'tiled" across a surface to not show any sharp boundary lines. The tile procedure modifies the image itself so that each edge matches its adjacent tiled edge, and the lines disappear. BUT, you'll still see the repetitive pattern when the tiled image is applied, for example, to the large area of the sky. You just won't see the sharp lines.

The basic problem with the MSTS environments implementation in OR is that OR reads SOME of the parameters in the ENV file, but not all of them. For example, it clearly reads the layer 1 sky texture, so you can observe that texture in the sky when you run the route. But it does NOT read the multipliers (how many copies of the texture are tiled in each direction across the sky sphere), nor the motion parameters (which cause the clouds in the sky to rotate across the sphere). Of course, that's frustrating. The MSTS implementation is very primitive... and I'm not sure whether we can hope for more work in that area. I offered to help (sadly, I'm NOT a programmer in the real-world languages that they use), and I'll offer again. But I can respect the team's focus that environments may not be one of their primary items.


Jeff..........................