Default Track Replacements

[paulytechnic]

I can look at tunnels. Per my homepage article, no promises on a date.

Understood, definitely not urgent, and I very much appreciate it! Thank you, Eric!

[eric]

I can look at tunnels. Per my homepage article, no promises on a date.

Sent from my SM-S911U using Tapatalk

[paulytechnic]

Maybe eventually, but the point of doing these has always been for a drop-in replacement for routes that used legacy textures, and something that a novice user would immediately benefit from without having to modify the routes.

On the few routes where I did try using the USTracks textures, it created some issues in that any terrain painting that had been done was never matching the track textures, which is a detraction and would require a lot more work on the part of the end user to try and match up the textures. That's why I stopped work on that variation.

That's understandable. Personally, I'm fine with (and actually prefer) recoloring the ballast textures myself to better match the terrain for my own copies of routes, but I acknowledge that's definitely not for everyone, and especially not the person who just wants it to work without any extra fiddling.

While it's true that some route creators have created custom track textures to match their terrain (which is where Atracks shines), many other routes use stock track textures for efficiency reasons that may not 100% match anyway, which I would typically tweak in Photoshop for my personal copy. The separate UStracks version of the default replacements would be still appreciated by power users who want a little more flexibility with the textures.

But the tunnel shapes that Norbert did had a flat roof, not prototypical in most cases. USTracks tunnel shapes with an arched roof would be very much appreciated.

Back in the MSTS days, I would intentionally color the roof portion of the tunnel textures REALLY dark with less detail to mimic soot, although the real reason was to minimize the odd "pointed" shape of the default tunnels (I did this with the Surfliner 2.2 tunnel textures). I do the same when using Norbert's tunnel shapes to help hide the flat roof, though it's probably not ideal.

[dcarleton]

But the tunnel shapes that Norbert did had a flat roof, not prototypical in most cases. USTracks tunnel shapes with an arched roof would be very much appreciated.

[eric]

Maybe eventually, but the point of doing these has always been for a drop-in replacement for routes that used legacy textures, and something that a novice user would immediately benefit from without having to modify the routes.

On the few routes where I did try using the USTracks textures, it created some issues in that any terrain painting that had been done was never matching the track textures, which is a detraction and would require a lot more work on the part of the end user to try and match up the textures. That's why I stopped work on that variation.

[paulytechnic]

Hey Eric, the new Atracks tunnel shapes are a huge improvement with the revised texture mapping on the walls, so many thanks for uploading them! 🙂

I understand that the development of the Atracks replacement is of a higher priority right now (for good reason), but are there any plans to eventually release a similar update for the UStracks replacement tunnels?

[eric]

Yep, there's a mapping problem. Used a brick texture to identify it, and will need to messing with the proportions a bit on the round tunnels before releasing.

[oper190]

I've seen similar results, did much the same with a texture of squares of different colors and could not find anything that made sense. Best I could figure it seemed that it uses only a small portion of the texture. Only a single color works best. Anything with detail, say like a brick or block wall gets freaky with a lot of vertigo if it's a longer tunnel.

[eric]

I'll have to check. That's not how they showed up before.

[paulytechnic]

I'm currently testing out the latest version of ATracks (default-track-atrack-01apr25.zip) and I just noticed something a bit strange with the tunnels. No matter which tunnel wall texture I use, I end up with what looks like vertical stripes on the walls when looking down the tunnel, which does not seem to accurately represent the actual texture.

I did an experiment with a test "ATrackTunWall.ace" texture to determine how the textures are mapped. Results are below...


What's odd is that the colors don't seem to match what's in the texture, so it almost seems like it's being stretched so much that the colors are somehow blending together. So I took a very short tunnel shape and stretched it to 1000% it's length, and the texture with the stretched shape looks like a spiral or "candy cane" texture (trippy!)

Is this a known limitation of Atracks tunnels? I suppose a quick workaround would be to use a solid color texture for the tunnel walls, although it'd be nice if it could display the tunnel wall textures as they really are.

Note: This also seems to be an issue with the USTracks replacements, as well.

[eric]

No, I haven't touched the USTracks version since then. My focus for the replacements has been on the drop-in versions not requiring new textures.

[paulytechnic]

Found 'em. There's an additional texture and layer that wasn't included in the original profile I got from Doug.

I'll have a fix out sometime in the next week or so.

Hey Eric,
Apologies for dredging up this semi-aged post, but are there any further updates planned for the USTracks Default replacements? Looks like the latest version currently available in the library is still "default-track-ustracks-11may24.zip", whose shapes are missing the spike head layer.

[Kist]

Thank you oper190, I will try what you said 🤝🏻

[oper190]

Those other tracks use the textures "concrete1," "...3," "...4" you need to replace them as well. Simply copy and rename the acleantrack1 you want use, to concrete1, or ...3, or ...4 as needed and overwrite, should work, done it in many routes myself.

[Kist]

Hello everyone. I need some help. I downloaded the PRB from the library, and didn't liked the textures from the acleantrack that came with the route. Then I copy and paste another one from a different route, but as you can see on the screenshots below, the 3rd line at right keeps on the original textures, while the others 2 are with the textures that I want, also the switches have the same problem. Thanks in advanced for any help.





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