TSRE Changes / Wish List

[PerryPlatypus]

Hi Folks,

My TWO biggies - neither of which can be implemented in a vacuum:

Splines - Splines - Splines (Procedural Shapes - Lofts)

• Grass and vegetation mats that can be dragged to any size and that - - - - Conforms to Terrain.
• Telephone Poles with Wire pre-hung that can be stretched for miles.
• Fence Lines that follow the undulating terrain along a ROW.
• Roads, streets, sidewalks, parking lots - the list is endless - Trainz does this for markings on the roads such as the yellow line down the middle.

Both Trainz and RailWorks have these - it would VASTLY speed up route building.

Forest Regions

If not handled by the above - Forest Regions - that can be irregularly shaped - simply drop points to form a polygon - and - that can support multiple predefined mixes of vegetation set in specific proportions.

Regards,
Scott

Big agreement on these! Take it a step further, and the ability to apply forests (really any kind of vegetation) using a "paint brush" of variable size to a large area, and being able to select any preset - "DENSE MATURE PINE FOREST" over here, "SPARSE YOUNG FIR FOREST" over there, "DENSE SAGEBRUSH WITH SPARSE PINE TREES" way over there, etc. etc. This and procedural/spline shapes would be MASSIVE improvements to route production timeline.

(Some day hopefully tracks can be added to the list of procedural shapes with definable degree of curve, superelevation, spirals/transitions, track roughness/quality, etc. - but "baby steps" first )

[yellowdog]

I'd like to see the Consist Editor updated so that it could properly display new rolling stock, like what you see in navs_dttx_456700_c2001.zip

[TrainSimJack]

MSTS / Open Rails users usually don't have RTX GPUs with 16 GB of VRAM. Painted terrain takes a lot of memory. 512 pixel size limit is made on purpose.

The steam Data charts are a great source of information:

image.png
Looks like quite a few people have moved beyond 4GB.
I was surprised to see well over half now have 8GB of video ram!

GokuMK, given this data, how would you feel about leaving the Tile size choice up to the individual route developer?

[BrandonS261]

I have to say Eric and everyone else working on this project I am really looking forward to seeing how the end result of this will turn out! Now a lot of my ideas have already been covered by Josh and Scott but this really gives me hope for ORTS into making it a much better platform for route building, activity editor and consist editor. There is one thing I would like to see however but would need the help from other ORMT members and that is an all in one install of Open Rails, TSRE and Consist editor that way it would be a much smoother and easier install for new comers.

Now a few ideas I do have are as followed

1. Rebuild Track Database
2. Better way for placement of vegetation, trees, fences, and so on to match with the terrain.
3. I also second the idea of a favorites when it comes to putting stuff down.
4. Instead of the list of items that you want to use being every single thing you click on have it be what you have actually used instead and laid out.
5. I also like Scott's idea

Splines - Splines - Splines (Procedural Shapes - Lofts)

• Grass and vegetation mats that can be dragged to any size and that - - - - Conforms to Terrain.
• Telephone Poles with Wire pre-hung that can be stretched for miles.
• Fence Lines that follow the undulating terrain along a ROW.
• Roads, streets, sidewalks, parking lots - the list is endless - Trainz does this for markings on the roads such as the yellow line down the middle.

Both Trainz and RailWorks have these - it would VASTLY speed up route building.

6. An easier way to lay out milepost
7. Instead of having everything from the REF File in one spot split it up into Vegitation, buildings, Bridges, Stations, exc. where it says Objects: on the right with the drop down menus like we already have for Roads, Track, and Other. To me the REF File can get very cumbersome if you are trying to find something and you have a bunch of stuff already in that file.
8. Now idk if this is a Open Rails thing or TSRE thing but being able to have multiple signals, speed sings, and mile post from different railroads in one route. Then again it could just be myself not being able to figure out how to do that yet.
9. Having a picture of the object when you click on it and go to place it would sure be nice as well so we are not playing the guessing game some times when we go to place something and not sure if that is exactly what we want to place or not.
10. Being able to somehow integrate Track Diagrams into TSRE
11. An easier way to shape the terrain the way we desire.


Brandon

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

One more idea that came up from in another discussion - it seems like it might provide bang for the buck and wouldn’t be that hard to implement. Cameras are - obviously - how we interact with the sim. Let’s take a page from Trainz. Let’s add a new invisible object to TSRE that we can attach cameras to.

Camera Poles - both fixed and tracking.

That way - a route developer can stage the cameras to take advantage of scenic points along the route - and would certainly add a great deal of new variety for viewing our trains.

TSRE only needs to create a new invisible object with a position and elevation. Of course - ORTS will have to play a long with a new camera definition - but it’s nothing new - Carlos was attaching cameras to just about everything for a while there.

Just my two cents.

Thanks.

Regards,
Scott

[eric]

I've now got a version working that appears to work on other PC's.... feel free to give it a try and leave some feedback.

---> 64 bit version: tsre-v8.001.zip

You'll know if it runs based on the window title and lack of the black DOS window when running.

This version has a few of the tweaks I'd been working on last month:

• greater precision for dynamic track curves
• orange highlighting (not blue) for selected objects and terrain tiles
• menu shortcuts that don't duplicate letters for hotkeys
• logs with timestamps (no longer over-writing between sessions)

If you're using multiple monitors... it's forcing itself to the default monitor regardless of where you launch it -- that's to address a problem I haven't been able to figure out on screen positions greater or less than the reported monitor resolution. The Navi box was already doing this, so hopefully this is a decent compromise. Eventually, I'll parameterize the launch location into Settings.

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

TERRTEX PAINTING

I don't know if it's possible with how Goku implemented painted TERRTEX - but - SCALE and ROTATE - would be a godsend...

Also - since "Autopaint" is implemented - why bother having us track down each and every track or road line - how about an entire route worth of ROW painted in one fell swoop?

Finally - in Mosaic - we could detect water edges for painting - could we do similar in TSRE? Easily painted shorelines would be very helpful.

Regards,
Scott

[eric]

I wouldn't want every tdb line autopainted... you don't want ballast thru creekbeds, bridges or over roads and other crossings... but it's worth looking at.

Shorelines would be interesting. It calculates off the water level in the tile, assuming it's set correctly -- not all routes use the water features.

[scottb613]

Hi Eric,

Thanks for the response - yep - concur - not looking to take anything away - just an addition. I think it would be far faster to just handle the exceptions - than it takes to find every road and track segment on a route.

Regards,
Scott

[CSRX]

The paint brush from the forest regions would be excellent.
I also agree that 1024x1024 ground textures would be ideal versus the 512x512. It's 2024, if a basic computer can handle games like Halo Infinite or even Call of Duty, it should be able to handle this just fine.

Anyways, the first region is the biggest hold up for me with route building. It's extremely tedious work for the various trees..

[rdayt]

I run 4096 terrtexs without any problems.

Randy

[eric]

I'll look into textures once I can figure out the issues with DDS not rendering.

Irregular shaped forest regions would require a new object type in ORTS to allow for the extents of the polygon to be defined, as well as logic to read that object, and seed objects within its extents.

Not an impossible task, but not something the editor can do alone.

[joe_star]

The steam Data charts are a great source of information:

image.png
Looks like quite a few people have moved beyond 4GB.
I was surprised to see well over half now have 8GB of video ram!

GokuMK, given this data, how would you feel about leaving the Tile size choice up to the individual route developer?

Hi,

I think that holds true for the general gaming community, but not MSTS/OR users.

It's not uncommon to see some users here with machines 10 years or older and still running 32 bit windows!

[oper190]

It's not uncommon to see some users here with machines 10 years or older and still running 32 bit windows!

Quite true. I have a gamer with windows 11, that I run OR and have installed MSTS, but still used an old XP ( out of the box virgin ) never been on the internet to get screwed up, works great and still my go to machine, and my MSTS workhorse.

[Laci1959]

MTEyNzcwNA.png
Hello.

TSRE has such knowledge. Couldn't this line be taken further? The files are in the procedural folder in obj format. There is also a file with Dat extension. I placed them on the straight line drawn with the ruler.

Sincerely, Laci 1959