Railworks America

I just wanted to examine this fictional route of mine route close to sunset, and I noticed that the distant terrain is all dark blue. Doesn't look very realistic to me. Has anyone else experienced this?

Here's some visual evidence of such.

That's just how the game renders distant scenery. With most routes being based in more forested areas, having a bluish atmospheric effect makes more sense but even then it becomes a little extreme.

Try playing with some of the different weather effects in the editor from different routes. Usually those which have "3D" in them tend to not be as bad. Also check out some of the graphics mods as those tend to do a good job correcting that effect.

This is normal for me atleast.

That's kinda what they look like with the sun behind them in real life.

With RWEnhancer they look more like this.

Now with RW Enhancer they look more good in cloudy weather.

Thanks for the replies. There's just something not right about the colour. But I tried the 3D weather, and it seems to improve the visuals by a tiny degree at least. The sun going down at 7PM in Summer isn't very realistic for an Australian setting though.

But speaking of such, is there any way to change the azimuth angle with such? It looks very peculiar with the sun shining in the south at midday in rural Australia. Is it just a matter of editing the TOD files? Will have a look at them at another time as it's quite late here.

SAR704 wrote:I just wanted to examine this fictional route of mine route close to sunset, and I noticed that the distant terrain is all dark blue. Doesn't look very realistic to me. Has anyone else experienced this?

You can change the distant terrain color in your texturing file (which is linked in your RouteProperties.xml and has to be serzed first)

There you'll find this section at the end of the file

Code: Select all

<DistantTerrainColour>
   <cHcColour>
      <Red d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="000000005856D63F" d:precision="string">0.94902</Red>
      <Green d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="000000E0D7D6D63F" d:precision="string">0.00</Green>
      <Blue d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="000000409292D23F" d:precision="string">0.0</Blue>
      <Alpha d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="0000000000000000" d:precision="string">1</Alpha>
   </cHcColour>
</DistantTerrainColour>
<WinterDistantTerrainColour>
   <cHcColour>
      <Red d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="000000807A7AEA3F" d:precision="string">0.827451</Red>
      <Green d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="000000807A7AEA3F" d:precision="string">0.827451</Green>
      <Blue d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="000000807A7AEA3F" d:precision="string">0.827451</Blue>
      <Alpha d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="0000000000000000" d:precision="string">0</Alpha>
   </cHcColour>
</WinterDistantTerrainColour>

In this example I've made the distant terrain red but this is only visible if you don't have real distant terrain with another color

SAR704 wrote:The sun going down at 7PM in Summer isn't very realistic for an Australian setting though.

You should create your own timeofday blueprints.

SAR704 wrote:But speaking of such, is there any way to change the azimuth angle with such? It looks very peculiar with the sun shining in the south at midday in rural Australia. Is it just a matter of editing the TOD files? Will have a look at them at another time as it's quite late here.

Yes, you can change the azimut in the TOD blueprints. You can get the right data for your location here https://www.suncalc.org
You have to use the altitude and than calculate the right value for the TOD file

Example for Cheyenne at noon in summer --> Altitude: 72.30°
AzimuthAngle = (-90+72.30)π/180 = -.31
For USA the value is negative, for Australia the value has to be positive because the sun is in the north at midday.

There where good explanations on railworkswiki.com that I have used for my TOD blueprints but unfortunatly this site is down now

Here is the new RailWorks Wiki
https://sites.google.com/a/railsimdev.com/dtgts1sdk/