World Of Rails Screenshot?

[TrainMan_112]

Just wondering if there will be any screenshot of a typical, undeveloped area in the WOR. I'm curious to see what it will look like.

[stonelance]

Something like in the article: http://tsinsider.com/Articles/AboutTS2/WorldOfRails.aspx

There are only a few things in those shots that are not WoR. Specifically, the track is from part of Steven's pass so it has been graded by hand, and some of the sgn posts are custom placed. Everything else is what you could expect in the WoR. We don't have any actual shots yet because we are still working on the algorithms to grade the track, and place tunnels, bridges, road crossings, signals, etc.

[MatthewS]

Something like in the article: http://tsinsider.com/Articles/AboutTS2/WorldOfRails.aspx

There are only a few things in those shots that are not WoR. Specifically, the track is from part of Steven's pass so it has been graded by hand, and some of the sgn posts are custom placed. Everything else is what you could expect in the WoR. We don't have any actual shots yet because we are still working on the algorithms to grade the track, and place tunnels, bridges, road crossings, signals, etc.

Good stuff! Will the algorithm "superelevate" the tracks too?

[TrainMan_112]

That's for the Stevens Pass route. I'm talking about some random area, like how about Frank Slide/Turtle Mountain in Alberta?

[MatthewS]

That's for the Stevens Pass route. I'm talking about some random area, like how about Frank Slide/Turtle Mountain in Alberta?

I think StoneLance is saying that is typical of a "random" area except that the track has been "hand" graded, and some sign objects have been hand placed.

If the FSX landclass system is anything to go by it should look pretty good. For TS2 I think they would be adding greater detail.

But yes... It would be nice to the some WOR shots of some city and country area's.

How about an update? It's been a while and your fans are getting restless!

[stonelance]

I think StoneLance is saying that is typical of a "random" area except that the track has been "hand" graded, and some sign objects have been hand placed.

How about an update? It's been a while and your fans are getting restless!

Yes, thats what I meant. High Accuracy Routes take a long time to build, so we try to leverage the autogen, landclass and other systems that are typical of the WoR for as much of the routes as we can. A lot of the Steven's Pass route is actually land class and autogen with hand graded track and hand placed signals, and a few landmark\scenery buildings.

I don't know when the next update will be, as I'm not working on Train Sim directly anymore. Most of my time is spent working on the new graphics engine, which is coming along nicely. We will have the new shader system up soon and then can finish converting the rest of the systems. After that we should have a good idea of what the performance will be like.

Oh, and I'm not sure if there will be superelevation in the WoR or only on HARs.

[muskokaandtahoe]

Most of my time is spent working on the new graphics engine, which is coming along nicely.

Ohhh, that is good news! I hope you'll push all a huge amount of rendering to the GPU.

Arcane technical question for you (hope I can explain myself here...): I understand how minimizing draw calls is important but I don't understand what happens when a single texture file appears in a variety of model definitions -- such as a chain link fence that's imaged in it's own file but made use of in all sorts of different model definitions. Within the games range of vision does that fence texture require 1 draw call per unique model definition or is it batched up somehow so only one draw call is needed to place into any model that uses it?

[janda]

I don't know when the next update will be, as I'm not working on Train Sim directly anymore. Most of my time is spent working on the new graphics engine, which is coming along nicely. We will have the new shader system up soon and then can finish converting the rest of the systems. After that we should have a good idea of what the performance will be like.

Oh, and I'm not sure if there will be superelevation in the WoR or only on HARs.

hey, if you didn`t work directly on train sim so the new graphics engine (you are working on ) is related to Train simulator 2 or new version of Flight Simulator ..???

brds

[stonelance]

FSX SP1 and SP2 technique for reducing draw calls was to batch draw calls that used the same texture and material into a single large draw call. Basically everything in the scene that uses the same texture and material is merged together. The problem with that technique is that if something moves, or something is removed or added, then the batch needs to be updated or recreated and that takes a lot of CPU processing.

The new graphics system focuses mainly on instancing. Instancing works by taking multiple copies of the same object and drawing them at the same time. This means that if you have the same tree in the scene 1000 times, then you can draw them all at the same time. Unfortunately this only works if the geometry is the same for each tree, so if you use the same texture on a different model then that will not get drawn in the same draw call.

One of the other benefits of the new renderer is there is a lot less overhead, and everything is sorted such that it can reduce the number of state changes during the frame. This means, although the number of draw calls is not quite as optimal as batching, the overhead of each draw call in the new renderer is much lower. D3D10 also helps to reduce the overhead of making a call to the D3D API as well.

janda: The new graphics engine is part of our core engine and will be used for TS2, FS11 as well as ESP2.

[muskokaandtahoe]

> so if you use the same texture on a different model then that will not get drawn in the same draw call.

That's a disappointment.

I do a lot of one-of Sketchup models for large buildings and I make extensive use of generic, reusable textures (e.g., various stucco, brick, roofing stone, etc). When a wall is 200m long and there is a track next to it, well, it makes a lot more sense to me to make a tilable brick texture sized at 2m square and step and repeat it across the wall rather than trying to paint a 5m x 200m of brick into 512 pixels. Then I cut in some polys for doors. And of course, once the brick texture is in hand, it gets reused in all sorts of other buildings in a similar fashion. Essentially, in order to have a much easier time creating the artwork, I pay a price in polys and the count of textures.

Seems to me batching would be bettter for static objects and the new way you described sounds better for anything that might be moving around. No way to have both huh?


Different question: is there any practical difference in performance that occurs on account of the size of the texture (in either bytes or dimensions) for these calls? Put another way, if there are a lot of draw calls for a model, can one compensate to any measurable degree by using smaller textures or are you better off using fewer but much larger textures? And WRT to texture size, is there a threshold of smallness beyond which it doesn't make any sense to go?

[stonelance]

The use of tiling detail texture arrays in D3D10 will allow you to combine more of your buildings into a single diffuse texture, but still get different variations of high frequency details, like bricks, roofing, tiles, stucco, wood grain, etc. This is how most of our autogen buildings are created, as we have the same content creation requirements that a third party would.

It is better to combine smaller textures into a single larger one as long as the final texture size doesn't get too big. Usually we shoot for 1k x 1k or in rare cases 2k x 2k.

Generally the best practice for texturing is to pick texture space that corresponds to the size of the polygons in the world that you are trying to apply it to. I think the most common term for this is pixel density. Basically the scene generally looks better if all objects in the scene have approximately the same pixel density. You wouldn't want something like a really high pixel density on a locomotive and have really low pixel density on the scenery objects for example. Doing so would put emphasis on the fact that the scenery objects are less detailed. This is harder to notce if everything is approximately the same quality.

A good way to test this is to replace all the textures with a texture that has the same size, but has hand made mip levels, each one being a different color. If you look at the resulting scene you can compare the color of objects to see what mip level is being used. Everythng at the same distance from the camera should be approximately the same color. Another way is to replace textures with checkerboard patterns and compare the sizes of the checkerboard for given distances from the camera.

[MatthewS]

This is how most of our autogen buildings are created, as we have the same content creation requirements that a third party would.


Talking about Autogen buildings.... In FSX the height of an autogen building seems to be determined by the floor area. IMO this results in houses that look like double storey mansions or warehouses. If you compare a real photo and then a FSX screenshot of the same area its very apparent just how distorted the scale is. Can you please fix this for TS2/FS11 ?

Talking about scale... Its nice the way in FSX you create autogen trees of different heights, but it seems like you just scale up/down the same tree texture. The problem in FSX is when you scale up the same texture the branches, trunks, leaves simply look too large. Can you possibly support multiple textures, so that large trees can use the "large" tree texture, and smaller trees use the "small" tree texture. This way a designer can design a tall tree that has height but with appropriately sized branches, trunks, leaves. I can see the same thing in the TS2 screenshots with trees. The tall ones look cartoonish because the branches and trunks look out of proportion.

The FSX autogen system is brilliant! But please, please, please can you look at these issues for TS2/FS11?

[adam3544]

Steve Heijster:
A smooth gameplay is always my main desire.
Fortunately, it is possible. In the new,stand alone Subway simulation named World of Subways Vol.1 the graphics are very dense, but the game running smoooth as can be.
Just take a look at it here:
http://simulshop.com/product_info.php?products_id=436

Cheers,

Adam

[stonelance]

Talking about Autogen buildings.... In FSX the height of an autogen building seems to be determined by the floor area. IMO this results in houses that look like double storey mansions or warehouses. If you compare a real photo and then a FSX screenshot of the same area its very apparent just how distorted the scale is. Can you please fix this for TS2/FS11 ?

Talking about scale... Its nice the way in FSX you create autogen trees of different heights, but it seems like you just scale up/down the same tree texture. The problem in FSX is when you scale up the same texture the branches, trunks, leaves simply look too large. Can you possibly support multiple textures, so that large trees can use the "large" tree texture, and smaller trees use the "small" tree texture. This way a designer can design a tall tree that has height but with appropriately sized branches, trunks, leaves. I can see the same thing in the TS2 screenshots with trees. The tall ones look cartoonish because the branches and trunks look out of proportion.

The FSX autogen system is brilliant! But please, please, please can you look at these issues for TS2/FS11?

I believe the number of stories of a building and the footprint of the building are independent already. It might just be a content issue.

The same is true for trees, we actually have different models for different heights of trees, so if they look stretched then it is probably just an illusion. If you can give me a specific example of a screenshot then I may be able to see it better.

[MatthewS]

I believe the number of stories of a building and the footprint of the building are independent already. It might just be a content issue.

The same is true for trees, we actually have different models for different heights of trees, so if they look stretched then it is probably just an illusion. If you can give me a specific example of a screenshot then I may be able to see it better.

Are these new features of the core in TS2 that aren't in FSX?

The following screenshots are from the popular FSX addon called FTX. If you have a look at the shots #4 and #5 in the linked post you will see that the houses are almost all double storey (with very steep roof pitch too). The author of FTX told me once that he has no control over the number of storey's because FSX determines the number of storeys based on the footprint.

http://orbxsystems.com/forums/index.php?topic=890.0

With so many enormous houses it really spoils the effect.

Re the trees, maybe im thinking of FSX trees more than TS2. Did FSX support different models for different height trees?