This makes me think of something else that would go a long way. If we're going to be upgrading and enhancing the way that we build routes, then to my mind we really also need to address the elephant in the room, which is:
MSTS-style terrain textures are inefficient and have no place in 2026.
I wonder if, with the proper splines and textures created, we could define something like a dynamic track profile for different surfaces like track sub-roadbed, tools in TSRE to draw polygons with a texture applied, and all of the other things that allow other sims, MSFS being the prime example, to draw large and fairly representative swaths of land without terabytes of bespoke terrain textures just because we needed a single grey line to run under the track area. I wonder if the improvements being incorporated into TSRE could eventually incorporate some of these things (and, of course, OR would need to be able to read the data). Even basic things like roads and river beds shouldn't be individual shapes. They should be splines and the tools should be able to define them in a relatively intuitive way so that the sim can read them the same way it reads dynamic track.
To my mind, these things are some of the major things holding down route developers from being able to work quickly (along with a library of generic objects that looks contemporary instead of the old MSTS assets that look like they were made in 1994 - a project I want to tackle when I have time). Why spend who knows how much time finding the right road pieces and making compromises when you could just draw a spline, pick a road profile, and be done? Similarly, why spend time painting sub-roadbed into gargantuan and space-hogging terrain textures - even with TSRE's tools to assist - when a spline does the same job and doesn't need to generate a new space-wasting texture? You could even have spline profiles with different contours to create berms and the like.
The days of storage and memory getting cheaper are over because of this AI nonsense. Developers must focus on efficiency again.
MSTS-style terrain textures are inefficient and have no place in 2026.
I wonder if, with the proper splines and textures created, we could define something like a dynamic track profile for different surfaces like track sub-roadbed, tools in TSRE to draw polygons with a texture applied, and all of the other things that allow other sims, MSFS being the prime example, to draw large and fairly representative swaths of land without terabytes of bespoke terrain textures just because we needed a single grey line to run under the track area. I wonder if the improvements being incorporated into TSRE could eventually incorporate some of these things (and, of course, OR would need to be able to read the data). Even basic things like roads and river beds shouldn't be individual shapes. They should be splines and the tools should be able to define them in a relatively intuitive way so that the sim can read them the same way it reads dynamic track.
To my mind, these things are some of the major things holding down route developers from being able to work quickly (along with a library of generic objects that looks contemporary instead of the old MSTS assets that look like they were made in 1994 - a project I want to tackle when I have time). Why spend who knows how much time finding the right road pieces and making compromises when you could just draw a spline, pick a road profile, and be done? Similarly, why spend time painting sub-roadbed into gargantuan and space-hogging terrain textures - even with TSRE's tools to assist - when a spline does the same job and doesn't need to generate a new space-wasting texture? You could even have spline profiles with different contours to create berms and the like.
The days of storage and memory getting cheaper are over because of this AI nonsense. Developers must focus on efficiency again.
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