Adding road traffic to DLC route?

[OldProf]

Let me start by mentioning that the only time I open the route editor is to unlock a route's scenarios for editing. So, I am completely inexperienced with route building and editing.

That admitted, I'd like to try adding road traffic to my copy of the Woodhead Route, which features very nice looking and apparently fully functional crossing guards, but no road traffic that I've noticed. I'm hoping that someone will either give me a few pointers or refer me to a manual or tutorial. I have already looked for this information in the Creator Manual, but there's nothing there about road traffic and it hasn't been updated since RW2 anyway.

Regards,

[Rich_S]

Hi Tom,
This is the only thing I miss from the old MSTS days, the traffic spawners. In MSTS you'd simply drag one of the blue triangles of a traffic spawner along the roadway and it would snap to the road. In Rail Works it's a little more complicated. The first method is using the offset tool. If you have Scale Roads from 3D Trains, Marc explains the use of offsets for adding traffic in the RS_ScaleRoad.html manual found in the following folder:

Steam\SteamApps\common\railworks\Manuals\3DTrains

The problem with the offset method is, if the roads were laid with the snap to terrain option enabled you will not be able to use the offset method. How do you know if the roads were laid with the snap to terrain option enabled? You'll see red triangles every so often in the center of the road. You can still use the offset method, but at every red triangle the traffic loft will reset, meaning your traffic will disappear then a new vehicle will appear and travel to the next red triangle only to disappear again.

This leaves the manual method, where you need to manually select the correct traffic type for the road. Then place the yellow placement arrow in the center of the road and start dragging the traffic loft toward the red triangles found in the road surface. As you begin dragging the yellow arrow will turn into a white rectangular outline that will snap to the red triangles in the road surface.

Roads and road traffic are found by selecting Linear Object Tools in the top left fly-out, then selecting Roads in the Middle left fly-out and finally selecting the correct traffic type from the list. One word of caution, the traffic Lofts become part of the road surface and once laid are very hard if not almost impossible to separate from the road surface. You also want to make sure that the snap to terrain radio button is not selected but do select follow network and snap to track radio buttons.

Hope this is somewhat helpful.

Regards,
Rich S.

[NDORFN]

Yeah, I miss traffic spawners. You could load those babies up with say 100 different vehicles and set speed and frequency etc...

I'm not even bothering with traffic until something like traffic spawners are made.

[artimrj]

I use scale roads traffic and I use scale roads for most of my roads. Whether you sanp to terrain or not you can only make segmants so long before you get the red triangle. I beleive the length is 200 meters. The main problem I have is when you use the scaleroads traffic and have it laid down, you cant adjust it very well as you can not see it. The ribbons and gizmos always select the road and not the traffic. I found myself having to raise sections of road to get at the AI traffic. If the road is not flat and has small hills it is even harder.

Tom I think your best bet would be try to replace the roads with roads that already have traffic on them, I beleive that would be much easier for you than trying to add scale roads traffic.

Also another thing about scale roads traffic is that the vehicles bunch up on top of each other at crossing gates.

[Bananarama]

I wonder if raising the height of the traffic ribbon source model might help with laying? I'll investigate.

[artimrj]

I wonder if raising the height of the traffic ribbon source model might help with laying? I'll investigate.

That would be great if it can be seen. But then again also the road ribbon is there. Any chance the color of the ribbon could be something other than yellow like everything else is? Maybe white. Dontknow if it is core or part of the scenery. Just thinking out loud.

Maybe the ribbon can wider or narrower?

Oh and I wasnt putting scaleroads down either, I love em. Tom said he had zero experience and I was trying to give him the easiest route to take.

[Rich_S]

I use scale roads traffic and I use scale roads for most of my roads. Whether you sanp to terrain or not you can only make segmants so long before you get the red triangle. I beleive the length is 200 meters. The main problem I have is when you use the scaleroads traffic and have it laid down, you cant adjust it very well as you can not see it. The ribbons and gizmos always select the road and not the traffic. I found myself having to raise sections of road to get at the AI traffic. If the road is not flat and has small hills it is even harder.

Tom I think your best bet would be try to replace the roads with roads that already have traffic on them, I beleive that would be much easier for you than trying to add scale roads traffic.

Also another thing about scale roads traffic is that the vehicles bunch up on top of each other at crossing gates.

Hi Bob,
The point I was trying to explain was, if you use the offset method to add traffic lofts, the traffic loft will reset at every red triangle. If you add traffic lofts manually, they will not reset at each red triangle. I know for the route I'm working on it's 100 times easier to lay the roads using the snap to terrain tool, the only problem is each little segment causes a red triangle. Some segments are only 40 feet in length, no a problem when manually adding traffic, but if trying to add traffic using the offset method, at the end of that 40 foot segment, the cars would disappear and a new car would be generated for the next segment. I guess a true win / win would be, if RSC was able to remove the red triangles so we could use the offset tool to add traffic lofts. Using the offset tool does make the process a lot easier.

Hi Marc,
That would be the best thing since sliced bread, if you were able to raise the traffic ribbon for the traffic loft above the road surface. I've already had several instances where I had to delete complete sections of roads, because I was unable to adjust the traffic loft.

Regards,
Rich S.

[XDriver]

Just to add to everything going on here. It does help to use your gradient tool to find the difference between the road and the traffic ribbon. Click raise lower that sort of thing. Don't want to highjack the tread. Just saying It helps that's all.

[Rich_S]

Just to add to everything going on here. It does help to use your gradient tool to find the difference between the road and the traffic ribbon. Click raise lower that sort of thing. Don't want to highjack the tread. Just saying It helps that's all.

Hi XDriver,
Yes, at times the traffic ribbon will rise above the road surface and you can use the gradient tool to adjust that section. Just remember to pin the two outer points where the traffic ribbon begins to meet the road surface before making any adjustments. I forgot to do this once and had the entire traffic ribbon floating above the road surface. For me at that point it was easer to delete the traffic ribbon and start over The problem is when the traffic sinks into the road surface and every time you try to select the traffic ribbon, you actually select the road ribbon. Times like those can become frustrating

Regards,
Rich S.

[OldProf]

Wow! These great responses and an examination of the instructions that come with Scale Roads are encouraging me to experiment. I imagine that I had best start by cloning the Woodhead route and trying to add traffic in the clone, so as not to make a mess of the actual route. If success comes my way, I'll post some before and after screenshots.

Thanks, everyone!

[Truvelo]

.....Also another thing about scale roads traffic is that the vehicles bunch up on top of each other at crossing gates.

This is something that's been bugging me for ages and I've been looking at ways to solve it. Finally I've found the answer. In Assets\3DTrains\ScaleRail\RoadNetwork\Vehicles there are .bin files for each vehicle that Scale Road uses. In each file there's a line near the bottom containing the following:

<fVehicleLength d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="0000000000000840" d:precision="string">3</fVehicleLength>

This is the distance between each vehicle. The default 3 is too close and this causes the cars to overlap when stationary. Increasing this figure to 4 for cars, 8 for buses and 10 for trucks will solve the problem. All 29 files will need altering for the changes to take effect.

[NDORFN]

I've got a a modified bin for the vehicle lengths. I painstakingly adjusted all the length by trial & error. I'll upload it when I get a chance.

[SCLALINE]

did you ever upload this?