Standard vs Distant Mountains - A Comparison

[Bananarama]

The black barcode elude me. I suspect they may be due a glitch in the route's default ground texture, though that is what the tan parts are, intermixed with bare rock, dithered here in gray. The rock texture Kuju where the ground texture is mine.

I wonder is you were to link to your own texture file, and not those in the RSC or Kuju folders, whether that would eliminate the black sections. You could try copying all the RSC/Kuju textures to your own folder and reference them from the RouteProperties.xml. The files are relative, so need to change anything else. Then regenerate the DM to see if things change, and if so, then change the RouteProperties back to the way you had it before (the DM will remain unaltered once generated).

[Paragon]

Hack, thank you! You set me on a quest that leads me to conclude the barcodes mean "texture not found."

My texturing.bin file is a complete hack of the U.S. texturing.bin c. Summer 2011 when I was making ground textures. The fuss began with entry number two in the texture list, which referred to a substance called "Rock - Light". I was using this as my default rock texture, borrowing from the Kuju location:

Kuju\RailSimulatorUS\Environment\Terrain\Rock\Rock003

When I went looking for this texture, it no longer was there. In fact, the whole bloody Rock folder was gone. I had done a backup of things before TS2014, so a quick check of that archive revealed the Rock folder was intact just prior to the TS2014 upgrade. Is this a local problem or has everyone's textures been moved around?

What is even more interesting is that Rock003 no longer exists, period. Yet my route was drawing this rock texture on hillsides. Is there some internal mapping at work?

I then did as you suggested, and restored my Rock003 textures to my side of the world. I pushed the fog back a bit and here are the results:

DistantTerrain07.jpg

I am thunderstruck. I cannot believe the improvement, honestly. You can see the dry lake bed. You can see many many more mountains. I cannot describe how this completes my route.

I am also prepared to make these statements regarding the generation of distant terrain:

1. The generator will favor whatever painting you have done to your terrain first.
2. It will then use your default ground texture, default rock texture, and each of the three elevation textures, as described by PapaExpress, above.
3. Barcodes result because one or more of these textures is missing.
4. Taken together, these seem to indicate distant terrain generation has the biggest bang for the buck at the end of the route's painting process.
5. The generator will create season-specific files, so generation has to be done for each season that requires it. Generating in summer will generate defaults for the other three seasons.
6. I had the best luck generating from the route's origin point. If I strayed, I ended up with holes in the final results.

Related: I now have to audit my texturing.bin file to account for the file location changes.

Amazing stuff! Now, not to complain, but if we could just teach the mix map about satellite images, it would save me a LOT of painting...

[Bananarama]

What is even more interesting is that Rock003 no longer exists, period. Yet my route was drawing this rock texture on hillsides. Is there some internal mapping at work?

I believe that file may be included in the RailSimulator.ap archive.

[gwgardner]

Wow, solution found? Make sure all textures are present?

I reworked my texture files on my route to include the UKtrainsim textures pack.

But you guys are so far beyond me in your understanding of all these things that I now have a headache! Where do I start in trying to figure out if/what texture I'm missing?

Thanks for any suggestions..

[Paragon]

Wow, solution found? Make sure all textures are present?

I reworked my texture files on my route to include the UKtrainsim textures pack.

But you guys are so far beyond me in your understanding of all these things that I now have a headache! Where do I start in trying to figure out if/what texture I'm missing?

Thanks for any suggestions..

I found my missing textures by examining the texturing.bin file. To discover where this file is located requires opening your route's routproperties.xml file. This is located in your route's folder, off a folder called Content.

In that file looks something like this:

Code: Select all

<TerrainBlueprint>
      <iBlueprintLibrary-cAbsoluteBlueprintID>
         <BlueprintSetID>
            <iBlueprintLibrary-cBlueprintSetID>
               <Provider d:type="cDeltaString">TMOA</Provider>
               <Product d:type="cDeltaString">Panamint</Product>
            </iBlueprintLibrary-cBlueprintSetID>
         </BlueprintSetID>
         <BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">Environment\Terrain\Texturing.xml</BlueprintID>
      </iBlueprintLibrary-cAbsoluteBlueprintID>
</TerrainBlueprint>

Once you know the location of texturing.xml, that is where you go looking for missing textures. In my case, the offending lines were:

Code: Select all

<cMixTexDescriptor d:id="16365632">
               <BaseTextureName d:type="cDeltaString">Kuju\RailSimulatorUS\Environment\Terrain\Rock\Rock003</BaseTextureName>
               <BaseSpringTextureName d:type="cDeltaString"></BaseSpringTextureName>
               <BaseSummerTextureName d:type="cDeltaString"></BaseSummerTextureName>
               <BaseAutumnTextureName d:type="cDeltaString"></BaseAutumnTextureName>
               <BaseWinterTextureName d:type="cDeltaString"></BaseWinterTextureName>
               <DisplayName d:type="cDeltaString">Rock - Light</DisplayName>
               <LocalisedDisplayName>
                  <Localisation-cUserLocalisedString>
                     <English d:type="cDeltaString"></English>
                     <French d:type="cDeltaString"></French>
                     <Italian d:type="cDeltaString"></Italian>
                     <German d:type="cDeltaString"></German>
                     <Spanish d:type="cDeltaString"></Spanish>
                     <Dutch d:type="cDeltaString"></Dutch>
                     <Polish d:type="cDeltaString"></Polish>
                     <Russian d:type="cDeltaString"></Russian>
                     <Other/>
                     <Key d:type="cDeltaString"></Key>
                  </Localisation-cUserLocalisedString>
               </LocalisedDisplayName>
               <Wang d:type="cDeltaString">eTrue</Wang>
               <FloraIndex d:type="sUInt32">0</FloraIndex>
               <FloraDensity d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="0000000000000000" d:precision="string">0.0000</FloraDensity>
               <Category d:type="cDeltaString">eRock</Category>
</cMixTexDescriptor>

Each cMixTexDescriptor is a terrain texture. They are indexed in this file beginning with 1. In this case, this was my 2nd entry. Later down in the file you use these index numbers to tell the sim what your default textures are going to be.

To find missing textures, I used the second line from the above, baseTextureName, and went to see if the texture files are still there. I had to go through this process because my texturing.xml file is still hacked, meaning, I have not bothered to create my own blueprint file yet. Clearly, I really should get on that...

To get my test moving along, I simply restored the missing texture files from the backup I made pre-TS2014. These are Kuju textures so I will be replacing them, in time. For now, it's the five-finger discount. The reason they came up missing is a change the rail sim uses to package assets, i.e. ap files and such.

PapaExpress has written a most excellent tutorial on the subject of terrain editing: http://thegradecrossing.blogspot.com/20 ... to-cc.html

Best of luck! Let us know how it turns out.

[RvA944]

OK Marc,

I have tried changing my "TimeOfDay\Core_Summer" fog parameters all the way out to 25000, I have also tried changing the "Weather\Clear" fog parameters out to 25000 and I have seen no change in the fog........... What files are you guys playing with?

Roger

[gwgardner]

Paragon, thx for that explanation of the search for missing texture. Hopefully others beyond me will benefit from it too. Thorough explanation - even I will be able to follow that!

[Bananarama]

I have also tried changing the "Weather\Clear" fog parameters out to 25000 and I have seen no change in the fog...........

Make sure that you've renamed the internal name of the modified "Clear" file (RvA944 - Clear) and that you have selected it as your ToD file in the scenario weather field in the right menu while editing that scenario. It's easy to have the wrong one selected, and RW doesn't use what you place in your ToD folders automatically.

[RvA944]

Ok let me try that..... thanks

[gwgardner]

Having performed a search through the texturing.xml for my route, the only entry for which there is no associated texture or folder, in the new .ap file, is

<ProceduralFloraTextureID d:type="cDeltaString">Kuju\RailSimulatorUS\Environment\Terrain\[00]grass</ProceduralFloraTextureID>

By that I mean that the folder [00]grass does not exist in the .ap file. Could that be my problem, creating the blank areas in my distant scenery?

[Bananarama]

By that I mean that the folder [00]grass does not exist in the .ap file.

No - shouldn't make any difference, as it's a texture for the wavy grass object and likely not considered when generating DM. However, you'll need to look closely at the contents of the *.ap file, as grass.TgPcDx is indeed there (it's not a folder it's a texture - the folder "Grass" is there as well). It is in mine, and I doubt your stock version of RW differs from mine.

[gwgardner]

Thanks for the info.

You know what is disconcerting, some of the blank areas in my distant terrain are for tiles that I never painted at all, leaving only the default desert texture for Cajon Pass. For such tiles, only parts of the tile are blank.

example, this untouched tile, which has only the one desert texture from Cajon Pass:

[Paragon]

"Well," the Emperor declared, "There 'tis."

I have done enough experiments to come to the conclusion I have utterly run out of excuses not to finish this route. I was sort of waiting to make sure the time invested in the decoration and modeling would be worth it. The distant terrain rocks!

Here's an updated view from Panamint Springs (3pm Summer, fully lit):

DistantTerrain08.jpg

And here's the view from Panamint Butte. That line that looks like a seam in the alluvial fan is natural, a thin darker layer that is being eroded and exposed (3pm Summer, back lit):

DistantTerrain09.jpg

The challenge has been knitting together the 8km by 8km tiles, and what is not shown here are some seams where washes do not meet in adjacent bitmaps. Very fussy. What is needed is an RW Dem tool for distant terrain tiles to make it seamless. I also had to tweak the contrast and colors to make the tiles stand out more. I'll be playing with this view as it tends to be iconic to regular visitors of Death Valley National Park.

This will certainly reduce the amount of painting I will need to do!

[PapaXpress]

How far away are those mountains?

[Paragon]

How far away are those mountains?

The front range is about 11 miles from the camera. The small hill in the foreground is 7 miles from the camera. There is a bit of zoom on the camera itself. From on high, we are 6,585 feet above Panamint Vallley, which is 1500 feet above sea level, so the second view is from a mile up or so.