Azimuth Angle and You

[PapaXpress]

Tori, a question for you. Am I reading this correctly and you are using numbers greater than 1.000 for your RGB? If so the values should be between 0.000 (0) and 1.000 (ie: 256 or 0xFF), as far as I know if you go above 1 then its hard to predict what the color will really be.

[SMMDigital]

Just a general tip: selecting the Foreground color box in Photoshop pops up the colors available with your paint brush. Moving the select circle around with your mouse gives you the RGB values for any given color you choose. I've plugged these into the game files with mixed results. I got a nice orange glow on assets at sunrise using a value in the red area. But, I got a totally gimpy green sky in the deepest night using a range near indigo. Experiment at will.

[PapaXpress]

There is a better way, there is no need to guess!

In part 3 of my series, about half way down you will see a screen shot of the blueprint editor (hideous utility!, but handy at times). You can either move the sliders to find your desired color, or pop open the color picker (as shown) to plug in some real RGB values.



Now having said all that remember what I discovered in part 4:

Something you should note is that you need to account for the fog altering your distant terrain color (usually by darkening it). I found that I need to use a slightly lighter color to achieve a satisfactory (meaning I will likely tweak it in a day or two) affect.

[Toripony]

I have seen photos of the almost purplish-blue Rocky Mountains in the far distance, but they are never quite that blue in the Appalachians (except during certain sunsets), particularly not in the summertime. Actually, at enough distance here in summer weather, the mountains eventually just blend with the sky in that bluish/whitish haze. I haven't been able to recreate that yet in TS; as you can see in my latest screenies below there is still a sharp distinction of mountain ridge against the sky. I'll keep thinking about how to do that, but in the meantime, I have "hazed" the sky and I've made some adjustments to fog and fog colour again and am pretty happy with the view I have now for Summer at Noon (just 50,000 other TOD's to change now! ). It appears that I am terrible at transposing the numbers to my posts (thanks for the headsup, papa) so I think I'll use the cut/paste method from now on :

<DistantTerrainColour>
<cHcColour>
<Red d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="000000003D9BCD3F" d:precision="string">0.2313</Red>
<Green d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="000000003D9BCD3F" d:precision="string">0.2313</Green>
<Blue d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="00000040AF94D53F" d:precision="string">0.3372</Blue>
<Alpha d:type="sFloat32" d:alt_encoding="0000000000000000" d:precision="string">0.0000</Alpha>
</cHcColour>
</DistantTerrainColour>

And those Azimuth settings should have been negative, of course: -0.24, -0.67, -1.08

Screenshot_Copy of C&O Alleghany_37.74859--80.46323_12-01-07.jpg

Screenshot_Copy of C&O Alleghany_37.74778--80.46491_12-03-02.jpg

[PapaXpress]

The shots look great. If you are still unhappy with it, the only thing I can suggest is to thin the fog out further and see if the distant color bleeds through some more.

[Kali]

Hmm. I need to bring this back up.

Are you guys generally using the default skybox? I cloned the default ToD files and edited the routeproperties xml file to point at them, and then put some proper azimuth angles in according to the thread data... but no matter what, the sun just goes in an arc straight overhead.

[PapaXpress]

I was using the All Aboard sky box at the time of my testing.

[Kali]

Can someone ( and I'm assuming they're in the northern hemisphere ) try this way of going about things?

• Get your solar altitude at midday for each season here
• Calculate 90-<that angle>
• Convert it to radians ( multiply by 0.0175 )
• Multiply by -1 ( we might be calculating the azimuth of the shadows... )
• Use that as the azimuth.

The whole solar azimuth thing never quite seemed to work for me, given it's the distance around the horizon and not up from the horizon; however the angle in polar coordinates ( and other coordinate systems ) is also called azimuth. I threw some figures in for a UK site ( 51 degrees north approx ) and the results came out like this:

az_winter.jpg

az_spring.jpg

az_summer.jpg

az_autumn.jpg

Even for up here the shadows might be a wee bit long for Jan 1st, but probably not really given the height of those catenary masts. Does look both promising and much easier to work out...

[RSvlado]

The very simple azimuth calculator. I hope it will help all of you https://www.box.com/s/tlctmxj8co3xfsmmddif
Note: In Blueprint Editor the comma must be replace with point

Regards
Vlado

[BNSF650]

any news on this route?

[PapaXpress]

Which? Do you mean the COA?

[GibbseyNZ]

Hi Guys,

Was the azimuth parameter ever finally figured out? I am making a southern hemisphere based route with a group of friends and I can't seem to get it to work properly. No matter what I put the value as it doesn't seem to effect the sun in game. Other problem is being southern hemisphere I need the sun in the North not the south and can't figure out how to change it. Having the azimuth angle ether positive or negative doesn't seem to make any difference.

Any help would be appreciated.

Ryan