Light sources in Open Rails

[sankara]

In Open Rails there are only two sources of light, namely the Sun and the headlights of the locomotive. Thus in the night, the train appears pitch dark even when it is on a platform which “has night textures”. To improve the realism I feel there should be “light sources” which would illuminate the surrounding surfaces (so that the side of train facing the platform is adequately lit as how it should be in real life.

I would like to know what steps are being taken by the Open Rails team to ensure the same.

Regards,
Sankar

[GokuMK]

This idea requires dynamic lighting. Something like that wasn't possible in MSTS era of personal computers, today every game supports dynamic lighting. But it would require huge changes to OR graphics engine.

[longiron]

If you know anyone who would contribute to the development, please send the info to the OR admins. Stuff like you are asking for is only possible if we all assist the team.

[sankara]

Thanks for the suggestion. Since I don’t know anyone like that personally I’m asking here.

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

This was mentioned before and (IIRC) one of the reasons given was our requirement to maintain support with older products and operating systems that wouldn't support whatever was needed for multiple light sources. As a group - it's more than obvious that we're extremely reluctant to move forward.

Regards,
Scott

[anderson martins]

Hi Folks,

This was mentioned before and (IIRC) one of the reasons given was our requirement to maintain support with older products and operating systems that wouldn't support whatever was needed for multiple light sources. As a group - it's more than obvious that we're extremely reluctant to move forward.

Regards,
Scott

it is acceptable !
But the idea of the friend sankara, is very good.
I believe that the evolution, is almost reaching the requirements for general implantation in OPEN REILS.

let's wait .

[sankara]

So could we have dynamic lighting as an option that can be decided by the route maker and the end used, so that only users with high specs can get this feature on routes that have similar requirements?

[geepster775]

It has less to do with adequate PC specs and more to do with Open Rails officially leaving MSTS compatibility behind. Nobody's there - yet.

[R. Steele]

It has less to do with adequate PC specs and more to do with Open Rails officially leaving MSTS compatibility behind. Nobody's there - yet.

Do you think that will ever happen? I suppose OR could be coded for multiple light sources - dynamic lighting - and still keep MSTS legacy compatiblility. My personal opinion -- less interested in legacy compatibility ( at this point 90-95% legacy routes and equipment work in OR ) and more interested in OR moving forward.

Sankara you are missing one critical point...It will take a volunteer who is interested in dynamic lighting to devote time and effort to develop, test, and debug the code. Until that point computer specs are irrelevant.

[wwhall]

Most of this circles around to the same point--MSTS compatibility. Here's the reality--most of the payware and freeware content creators have abandoned MSTS. More and more offering are "OpenRails only." So, my suggestion is to move forward on things like dynamic lighting, etc.--just as has been done with OpenRails physics. Leave it such that "legacy" stuff will run in OR, but move forward with advances in OR for features that only OR can do. I just realized that I've been running OpenRails only for actual simming for 7 years now, and I abandoned the MSTS AE and RE when Goku's OR Editors appeared. If OR hadn't come along, I would have likely scrapped MSTS for TS20** or Run8 several years ago.

[anderson martins]

Most of this circles around to the same point--MSTS compatibility. Here's the reality--most of the payware and freeware content creators have abandoned MSTS. More and more offering are "OpenRails only." So, my suggestion is to move forward on things like dynamic lighting, etc.--just as has been done with OpenRails physics. Leave it such that "legacy" stuff will run in OR, but move forward with advances in OR for features that only OR can do. I just realized that I've been running OpenRails only for actual simming for 7 years now, and I abandoned the MSTS AE and RE when Goku's OR Editors appeared. If OR hadn't come along, I would have likely scrapped MSTS for TS20** or Run8 several years ago.

Even with the creation of those mentioned, I did not abandon the MSTS. The advent of OPEN RAILS left him as good as the others.
It still has the facility to recreate and enjoy trains in the same way.
The idea of dynamic light, will prove that the "old game remains young".

[NW 2156]

MSTS was already obsolete in its own time. We've only caught up to about 1999 in ORTS at the moment, as far as graphics and dynamic lighting are concerned. The sim's graphical capabilities are roughly equivalent to MSFS 7, which was released in 1999. At the time MSTS was released, dynamic water, a dynamic sky with sprite-based clouds, reflection mapping that you could control with a texture map, and things like spline-based roads, railroad tracks, rivers, etc were standard features in MSFS 8, which was testing at the time, and was released a few months later. Albeit, delayed by the attacks of Sept 11th, 2001.

Why did MS/Kuju decide to base MSTS on such an obsolete platform for it's time? Well, We will likely never know. For we don't know what the mindset was among the development committee. But it's a shame we got left in the dark and got a second rate graphics engine right out of the box.

Since ORTS started on XNA 3.1 and DX9. It's been possible to offer all of those features and then some. It just takes finding the right people with the knowledge and skill to make it happen.

I've been trying for a long time to get at least 2D lightning effects in the sky. With the possibility of 3d lightning from cloud to ground in the future. I love running in stormy weather and would really enjoy lots of lightning arcing across the sky. There was even a nice write up to use as a starting base. But none of the developers showed any interest in lightning effects.

https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-generate-shockingly-good-2d-lightning-effects--gamedev-2681

Hits to FPS should not be too bad. Even "Medal of Honor" and It's first addon "Spear Head" had lightning effects. And it was a fairly system intensive FPS WW2 battle game.

Robert

[wwhall]

I fully agree about the weather, lightning, and lightning effects. They have been needed for a LONG time. OR's challenge to find someone to volunteer his or her programming time to make it happen. I also fully understand that much of the OR development team's efforts have been centered on making the actual train operation part of the sim more realistic, which was sadly lacking in MSTS. That is still a work in progress, but it is far enough along that I would hope that the OR team would at least look at the idea of ramping up the visual aspects of the sim.

[NW 2156]

Dave Nelson brought up another good idea,

Quote,

"FWIW for years I have requested that OR add code to handle rain textures in the same manner as snow textures (it never snows in coastal California, nor many other places, but it does rain). I've found that I can create an effective rain texture by adding a 25% opacity black layer to the top of the art stack before exporting. "

I would tend to agree. It doesn't snow in parts of the world. But it rains nearly every place at some point during a year.

Robert

[NW 2156]

The above is in regards to having rain textures for locomotives and rolling stock.

See http://www.elvastower.com/forums/ind...t/page__st__30

Post #36.

Robert