TSRE distant mountains?

[tooltroll]

Ok, I'm having a helluva good time playing with TSRE. Less than a week, and I've whipped up a half-decent little two-tile test route, with no crashes the whole time. Far cry from the old TS editor! So far, TSRE has done everything I asked of it, and did it well. Bravo and thanks, Goku!

I notice that it has tools/options for painting distant mountain terrain. There's a bit of info on the TSRE page regarding the F3 tools, but it all seems more pertinent to setting markers and heights on 'near' terrain than setting up distant terrain, so here I am asking stupid questions:
I understand that the tools are geared towards 'real' routes with downloadable data available, but is there any way to generate 'blank' distant tiles that could then be painted to suit a fictional route? Or could I download the data for the distant tiles around the default starting location and just re-paint them to suit?
While I'm asking, is there any general technical info on how the lo_tiles work in the first place?

Thanx.

[tooltroll]

TSRE Distant mountains!!

Woohoo, I figured it out my very own little self, and it's stupidly easy! Basically, once you're in 'distant terrain' mode, lo tiles get created by hitting B, the same as regular tiles, and all the regular terrain editing tools work exactly the same on them. Even for fictional routes, making distant terrain is dead simple.

Is this significantly interesting enough for me to screenshot/tutorialise?

[tie]

Woohoo, I figured it out my very own little self, and it's stupidly easy! Basically, once you're in 'distant terrain' mode, lo tiles get created by hitting B, the same as regular tiles, and all the regular terrain editing tools work exactly the same on them. Even for fictional routes, making distant terrain is dead simple.

Is this significantly interesting enough for me to screenshot/tutorialise?

Some might find the information useful. I haven't completely moved to that editor yet..but looking at it with great interest.

[tooltroll]

Ok, this is what I discovered:

1:lo tiles1.jpg 2:lo tiles2.jpg 3:lo tiles3.jpg
4:lo tiles4.jpg 5:lo tiles5.jpg

I'm finding that to avoid seeing a gap between the near tiles and the distant tiles, it's best to have all or most of a near tile between the track/viewing point and the distant tiles*, and/or curl up the edges of the near tiles slightly. Avoid any situation where you can see below the horizon on the distant tiles; If you're modelling a valley, model the other side as well, at least up to 'eye level', unless it's at least a kilometre or two away.

*For some reason, Kuju decided to hide the distant terrain closer than a certain distance, about a kilometer or so, and OR follows suit. I'm guessing that it was to prevent the lo tiles from showing if they accidentally were transformed to stick up through the near tile. Seems to me the better solution would be to display the lo tiles under the near tiles at all times, and expect route designers to be attentive and careful enough when sculpting distant terrain. Provided that the lo tiles are UNDER the near tiles, as long as you're on a near tile, you can't see the lo tiles until you either exceed your viewing distance for near tiles, or hit the edge of one. Either way, proper careful route construction would prevent the distant terrain from improperly showing through.

PS: A couple of feature requests for TSRE:
1: A circular brush cursor so you can see how big an area raise/lower/texture effects will cover.
2: A 'noise' brush for height info to quickly create rolling hills, etc.
3: A way to automagically transfer height information from near tile edges to underlying and adjacent lo tile subtiles to assist in aligning near and distant terrain.

Bob

[Coonskin]

FWIW:

It's my understanding (and I would appreciate experiential input to confirm or disprove) that once you start generating DM's in TSRE, you can no longer use RE in any way upon the route. (In other words RE can no longer load the route.)

[baldwin]

I seem to recall that if you do not generate at least one tile in the MSTS RE it will not open a TSRE generated route. Not sure about the DMs though.

[tooltroll]

OR doesn't seem to care. If that applies to MSTS in general and not just the RE, I suppose I'll have to mark my output 'OR only', if/when I complete a route and upload it. I can't get MSTS or RE (or the other MSTS utilities) to run on modern hardware, and now with TSRE I don't have to. I have my MSTS content from my original disks, but that was just to get something for OR to chew on; I haven't actually played the default routes in ages.

I'm way more into building than running, anyway; I got into simming because I'm a frustrated model railroader: Frustrated with lack of space, and frustrated with the expense. Now that OR/TSRE are stable and running nicely, I can build a massive 'layout' (4x8 feet? Hell, I can have 40x80 km!) and I don't have to pay $15-$20 apiece for every switch, every building kit, etc., etc. The file library is chock full of decent looking assets, and if I need something 'custom', I can just fire up Blender and make it myself.

This is gonna be fun.

Bob

[Coonskin]

Mervyn/Bob:

I may very well be remembering incorrectly. I seem to recall reading Goku saying such on page 10,416 of one of those huge "New RE" type threads.

[tooltroll]

Mervyn/Bob:

I may very well be remembering incorrectly. I seem to recall reading Goku saying such on page 10,416 of one of those huge "New RE" type threads.

LOL. I probably missed that page. . . Probably something to do with TSRE/OR not creating certain tiles that MSTS needed.

Actually, the biggest issue I've faced in searching/reading the TSRE threads is that a lot of the info is for MUCH earlier versions, and is therefore out of date. Vince's 'TSRE Tips & Tricks' sticky thread has been more useful, simply because it's more recent, and not cluttered with other peoples' comments & questions.

Still: OMG, TSRE outperforms the old RE by leaps and bounds. I've run it for hours with no issues, and in a couple of weeks' use I've had one (1) CTD, and that was probably my fault.

Bob

[GokuMK]

TSRE distant terrain works in MSTS game and RE too.
Only important thing is that you can't mix MSTS or Demex DM with TSRE DM.
You need to choose one version.

[tooltroll]

Good to know, thanks Goku! And many thanks again for the wonderful editor, I can't praise it enough.

I suspect my route will be OR only, though. MSTS doesn't want to run on my machine, so I won't be able to test it in MSTS, and I'm having too much fun with OR's extended abilities. I've started playing with the F4 activity editor tools, and I'm loving some of the things I can do. Any idea when you might have the path editor working? I find the PE in the OR track viewer to be a bit twitchy: I can make the paths I want, but it takes quite a while; I imagine your PE will be just as good as the rest of the package! (The 3D vs. 2D thing doesn't concern me at all, either. Moving nodes along a track (or road) is already done in 3D for signals, to set up carspawners, etc., so I don't see the difficulty some people seem to have with pathing in 3D.)