Of Berms and Dynamics

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

As I approach the 30-mile mark of laying track - the most - by far - I've ever placed - a couple questions.

• Has anyone ever made a shareable Berm Set for XTracks? I'm assuming the only way to properly place them - if they exist - is with Eric's World File Hacker program?
• Dynamic Track is measured in Radius and Angle - Normal Track is measured in Radius and Degree. I need a track section with a 1500r @ 0.5d - is there a way I can equate "Degree" to an "Angle" needed in Dynamic Track?

Any info appreciated.

Thanks.

Regards,
Scott

[eric]

I've got some berms for X-Tracks, but they haven't been released yet. Let me run them thru Ged's compress utility and I can get them packaged up later this afternoon.

capture_5100372.jpg

As for the curve... I do have that geometry in my FRTracks upload, but they're not in the official TSection yet. I might be able to whip up a version for ATracks, but that's going to take a little prep work.

[scottb613]

I've got some berms for X-Tracks, but they haven't been released yet. Let me run them thru Ged's compress utility and I can get them packaged up later this afternoon.

capture_5100372.jpg

As for the curve... I do have that geometry in my FRTracks upload, but they're not in the official TSection yet. I might be able to whip up a version for ATracks, but that's going to take a little prep work.

Hi Eric,

LOL - you do too much - no rush at all - the berms would probably make the track look better in spots - I'm trying to be very careful to insure the trackwork is perfectly smooth. Nice looking models - does the repeating texture wrap the entire exposed parts of the shape - meaning I could paint the top face to match my TERRTEX work?

Don't sweat the curves - It was just one long straight away I was trying to fix - 1 degree right - 1 degree left - 1 degree right - and so on...


As mentioned - I have XTracks loaded with your improved track models (again - what a VAST improvement over default) Should I have A Tracks loaded as well? I'm still new at this.


Apparently, they used lots of berms:
48672502836_d3e0b74baa_k.jpg


48672159598_1e0591834d_k.jpg

Regards,
Scott

[eric]

The berm has its own texture you can easily replace with your own. It's independent of whatever you use for your track.

Don't sweat the curves - It was just one long straight away I was trying to fix - 1 degree right - 1 degree left - 1 degree right - and so on...

OK, don't do that.

1. Set the end piece of your long straight, and then right click "Tangent Target"...
2. Set the start piece of your long straight, and then right click "Tangent Origin"....
3. Remove the start piece of your long straight from the database, and then right click "Apply Tangent Rotation"

That will create a straight as an arrow piece of track. Because of skew/Earth curvature, if the long straight is more than about 2-3 miles, set some midpoints on that spacing and adjust as you go. It's barely perceptible when you run a train over it if you make minor adjustments along the way. I've done straights that are 20 miles long that way without a single curve tweak.

[eric]

The berms are being compressed right now. They have a "drainage trench" between tracks similar to the ATracks profile itself. With XTracks being flat, they might not look as good as with ATracks.

capture_5100373.jpg
The image above shows tracks overlaid on the berm, and you can see there's a slight gap between them which should avoid alpha sorting/fighting issues a bit.

Personal opinion, berms look best if you alpha out the ballast entirely on the track pieces. That's been my default for years -- the track textures are rails and ties only. Ballast is handled via the berms or terrain painting.

[eric]

scottb613 It's up and available. Give them a spin and let me know how they work...

[fchrist16]

Looks good eric! Now to adjust for ScaleRail!

Regards,

-Frank C.

[eric]

There's already a similar set for Scalerail: https://www.trainsim.com/forums/file...leid?fid=88226

But with the new shape profile and texture, why not ?

https://www.trainsim.com/forums/file...leid?fid=89861

[scottb613]

scottb613 It's up and available. Give them a spin and let me know how they work...

Hi Eric,

I can't thank you enough for your efforts and graciously sharing your work.


I'm working off my old machine and I had to reload the OS - clean wipe - last night - to fix several chronic issues that were getting worse (including a Shape Viewer issue that I reported here) - I didn't get a chance to test. I'll try it tonight when I get in. I have you WFH program - I'll see if I can figure it out.

Regards,
Scott

[eric]

I should have a bermplace for these later today. A seven hour outage investigation for my real job jumped the priority list last night.

[scottb613]

Hi Eric,

LOL - yeah - can fully relate.

Like this?

ATracks Berm Additions for World File Hacker

Separator for this file type is a tilde character
Lines without a tilde will not be parsed by the reading utility
// no berms, static level 1
// Standard berms, static level = 0

berm-a10t100mstrt.s~a10t100mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t100mstrt_idp.s~a10t100mstrt_idp.s~0
berm-a10t10mstrt.s~a10t10mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t15mstrt.s~a10t15mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t20mstrt.s~a10t20mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t24_01mstrt.s~a10t24_01mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t250mstrt.s~a10t250mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t25mstrt.s~a10t25mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t27_4mstrt.s~a10t27_4mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t28_3mstrt.s~a10t28_3mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t30mstrt.s~a10t30mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t35mstrt.s~a10t35mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t40mstrt.s~a10t40mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t44_46mstrt.s~a10t44_46mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t45mstrt.s~a10t45mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t500mstrt.s~a10t500mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t50mstrt.s~a10t50mstrt.s~0
berm-a10t5mstrt.s~a10t5mstrt.s~0

Gotta love regular expressions in Notepad++.

Untested - but I think this is the format.

Full ATrack WFH Config File

DISREGARD - I DID IT BACKWARDS...

I'LL FIX IT...

Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

I should have a bermplace for these later today. A seven hour outage investigation for my real job jumped the priority list last night.

Hi Folks,

Let's try this one more time.

ATracks Berm Additions for World File Hacker

Separator for this file type is a tilde character
Lines without a tilde will not be parsed by the reading utility
// no berms, static level 1
// Standard berms, static level = 0

a10t100mstrt.s~berm-a10t100mstrt.s~0
a10t100mstrt_idp.s~berm-a10t100mstrt_idp.s~0
a10t10mstrt.s~berm-a10t10mstrt.s~0
a10t15mstrt.s~berm-a10t15mstrt.s~0
a10t20mstrt.s~berm-a10t20mstrt.s~0
a10t24_01mstrt.s~berm-a10t24_01mstrt.s~0
a10t250mstrt.s~berm-a10t250mstrt.s~0
a10t25mstrt.s~berm-a10t25mstrt.s~0
a10t27_4mstrt.s~berm-a10t27_4mstrt.s~0
a10t28_3mstrt.s~berm-a10t28_3mstrt.s~0
a10t30mstrt.s~berm-a10t30mstrt.s~0
a10t35mstrt.s~berm-a10t35mstrt.s~0
a10t40mstrt.s~berm-a10t40mstrt.s~0

ATracks Full World File Hacker Config File - ATTACHED
BermPlace.txt

Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

Hi Eric,

First time through trying this. I have my BermPlace.txt detected - I have the shapes and textures loaded in the route directory - WFH scan directory - [Ctrl-A] to select all world files (they are uncompressed) - click on Rebuild WorldFiles. "Bad Data" shows for every single world tile. Route seems to work fine in both TSRE and ORTS. Am I missing something?

Log below.

Thanks.

Image1.jpg

LOG FILE:

Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (735.16 70.1861 -858.902)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (730.673 70.1861 -850.472)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (720.979 70.1861 -848.167)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (176.092 70.1861 -1016.05)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (182.102 70.1861 -1008.1)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (804.134 70.1861 -877.156)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (805.852 70.1861 -874.802)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (807.357 70.1861 -874.932)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (808.154 70.1861 -875)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (803.92 70.1861 -879.639)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (823.846 70.1861 -881.354)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (825.351 70.1861 -881.484)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (826.856 70.1861 -881.613)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011020+014363.w          (912.697 70.1861 -883.994)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011021+014361.w          (810.179 66.1336 68.0398)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011021+014361.w          (871.392 66.2442 697.646)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011021+014361.w          (953.443 66.4076 799.585)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011021+014363.w          (955.425 69.2824 -188.272)
Bad Data in e:\mstsmini\l&hr\train simulator\routes\sco_lhr\world\w-011021+014363.w          (919.046 69.5428 -150.708)

Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Disregard - it put the berms in - I must have been looking at the wrong log file.

Sorry.

If I ran it more than once - it won't put in duplicate berms - will it?

Regards.
Scott

[scottb613]

Hi Eric,

Just an FYI - noticed some artifacts - they are on every a2t joint. I don't know if it's an easy fix or not. If the grooves are causing difficulty - they seem hardly noticeable.

Open Rails NewYear MG 2025-03-12 02-35-24.jpg

Regards,
Scott