Wot ... no railways?

[Adamski]

I know there aren't *that* many trains left running in NZ ... but ... I'm not surprised - there aren't any rails for them to run on!!

I'm running FSX (+Acceleration, latest SP) with all (yes!!!) of the Godzone scenery installed - along with the Roads & Rivers Topo.

I saw a couple of textures that improve the quality of the default rail/river bitmaps. So ... I tried a "before and after" test, to spot the difference. To cut a long story short, I found plemty of rivers - but no railways! I followed the valley north of Wellington for a fair while and could see a fuzzy track of sorts - but no real texture. I re-oredered the scenery/topo a few times, but no difference.

Is there somewhere else in NZ that I could try? Tried In Auckland as well ... but both NZAA and NZWN are photoreal ... so maybe there's a problem with those <??>.

[Christian]

QUOTE (Adamski @ May 15 2009, 03:48 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I know there aren't *that* many trains left running in NZ ... but ... I'm not surprised - there aren't any rails for them to run on!!

I'm running FSX (+Acceleration, latest SP) with all (yes!!!) of the Godzone scenery installed - along with the Roads & Rivers Topo.

I saw a couple of textures that improve the quality of the default rail/river bitmaps. So ... I tried a "before and after" test, to spot the difference. To cut a long story short, I found plemty of rivers - but no railways! I followed the valley north of Wellington for a fair while and could see a fuzzy track of sorts - but no real texture. I re-oredered the scenery/topo a few times, but no difference.

Is there somewhere else in NZ that I could try? Tried In Auckland as well ... but both NZAA and NZWN are photoreal ... so maybe there's a problem with those <??>.

Hi Adam

R&R comes with the complete set of rails for the whole country. Good spot would be Wellington train main station next to the stadium, there's a lot of rails there. Of course, if you're using RealNZ, you have photoreal rails, but just follow north and eventually you should find the R&R ones.

Cheers,
Christian

[Adamski]

QUOTE (Christian @ May 11 2009, 11:24 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

R&R comes with the complete set of rails for the whole country. Good spot would be Wellington train main station next to the stadium, there's a lot of rails there. Of course, if you're using RealNZ, you have photoreal rails, but just follow north and eventually you should find the R&R ones.

Thanks for the quick answer, Christian. I could see a mass of (blurry) rails around the main station, but looks like I just didn't go far enough north. I seem to remember Wellington photoreal being quite a "tall" rectangle - extending quite a way northwards. Anywhere else in NZ (that isn't Photoreal) that I could beam myself to? I tried random areas, but couldn't spot any.

[toprob]

This is just one aspect which illustrates that photo scenery is not the answer to everything:) The most important reason for choosing photo scenery is that you will get more 'reality', but this is generally at the expense of resolution. In default FSX, ground resolution is variable, in that although the ground textures might be set at a resolution of 1.2 metres per pixel, other overlaying textures -- such as roads and rails -- may be higher resolution, provided you turn the resolution setting up to a suitable level.
Turning up the ground texture resolution all the way won't improve the look of the normal ground tiles, in that they are set at 1.2 m/px, but it will improve those textures where a higher resolution is available.

Real NZ photo scenery for FSX is generally at 2.5 m/px. This means that every single pixel, which is represented by a single-colour square, is 2.5 metres by 2.5 metres. Inside that square you CANNOT have ANY detail, as a pixel can only have a single colour.

The rail gauge in NZ is roughly 1 metre, which is the space between the rails, so even that can't be represented at a resolution of 2.5 metres, let alone the ties or actual rails. To represent ties, you'd need a resolution of at least 15 centimetres, and the rails would probably required 7 cm. Since the photo scenery is locked at 2.5 metres resolution, there is no way to represent railway lines properly.

Even a small country road might be reduced to 3 or 4 pixels wide, which would give a pretty blurry representation.

Ideally, it would be nice to overlay high resolution road and rail textures on top of photo scenery, but this isn't possible with FSX.

By the way, here's a shot showing the Christchurch/Lyttelton railway line. As you can see, rail is pretty well represented, but you will need to turn up your ground texture resolution to see them clearly.

[attachment=183:rail.jpg]

[Adamski]

Thanks for the detailed explanation, Rob. Hats off to you guys - this is all very clever stuff. I'm getting a vague idea [now] of the differences between default and photoreal scenery - and - at least now I know it's not something I had misconfigured (wrong layer order or whatever).

Whilst I've gor you Rob ... there's been something else that's been bugging me about Wellington. Just North of the airport (you pass it on the left on the 16 approach) is an area of bush on a peninsualr that looks very dark - as if there's been a bush fire. Is this the right colour, or am I missing a texture?

When I came back from Picton on the ferry this Easter, I took a long hard look at it to see what colour it was in reality

I'll attach a screenie if needs be.

EDIT: Aha! Just seen your screenshot. Thanks ... I'll zap there immediately

[toprob]

Again, this is a limitation of photo scenery, in that you are limited to the quality of the source image.
Here's the LINZ image directly from their site:

As you can see, the peninsula is not well represented.

[Adamski]

QUOTE (toprob @ May 11 2009, 01:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Again, this is a limitation of photo scenery, in that you are limited to the quality of the source image.
As you can see, the peninsula is not well represented.

Yes - and GoogleEarth shows it pretty dark too.



I wonder what makes that area quite so dark? Doesn't look like a trick of the light - must be different vegetation.

[Timmo]

Pine trees (i.e. Pinus Radiata) are usually very dark in aerial photography and I think shadow is just adding to it here.

In terms of Railways, Tauranga is another good area to follow with a railway coming up from Kawerau, into the mount/port area and then heading north through the tunnel under the kaimais.

The FSX version of Roads and Rails will of course have these features with updated data and perhaps some terrain.cfg changes to see them better (i.e. to raise the railway a metre or two above the surrounding terrain like in the real world)

I also had created a texture sheet for some NZ trains and carriages...I've yet to make some models for them though (hopefully I can find the texture sheet- I did it a while ago). FSX doesn't support moving train traffic unfortunately but im sure a few static engines and carriages in the yards would look good.

[Adamski]

QUOTE (Timmo @ May 11 2009, 03:19 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Pine trees (i.e. Pinus Radiata) are usually very dark in aerial photography and I think shadow is just adding to it here.

In terms of Railways, Tauranga is another good area to follow with a railway coming up from Kawerau, into the mount/port area and then heading north through the tunnel under the kaimais.

The FSX version of Roads and Rails will of course have these features with updated data and perhaps some terrain.cfg changes to see them better (i.e. to raise the railway a metre or two above the surrounding terrain like in the real world)

I also had created a texture sheet for some NZ trains and carriages...I've yet to make some models for them though (hopefully I can find the texture sheet- I did it a while ago). FSX doesn't support moving train traffic unfortunately but im sure a few static engines and carriages in the yards would look good.

Pine mystery solved, thanks

If you have any idea what that terrain.cfg line might be, I may give it a go.

Did FS9 have moving trains? I know they move in IL-2