I've been converting my routes to the late Norbert Rieger's USTracks system (a derivation of his much larger DBTracks library) since Norbert came out with the system. Recently I've been involved in a test of ORTS physics, and used the venerable old chestnut, SLI/Trainsimulations.net's BNSF Scenic Route v.2 as my test bed route.
This route originally came out in April of 2006, and was built using the default set of Kuju tracks only, hence when this route's tsection.dat file was made it was based off of the original 2001 Kuju global tsection.dat.
Later, in 2011, SLI improved the route's scenery and updated the route's locomotive physics and sounds, included a whole new rolling stock folder, made new activities, and updated the signals and trackside infrastructure. They also added five Xtracks sections to the route, which is why the route came bundled with an Xtracks installer. The default tsection.dat file that overwrites the original Kuju one is Build 00038. SLI didn't rewrite the whole route, eschewing re-inventing the wheel in favor of simply adding those Xtracks shapes to the world files but not updating the route's local tsection.dat's numeration to coincide with the Build38 version of the global tsection.dat file that the route purchaser must now use to get the route to run.
As we shall see, this will have implications for the very reason I'm writing this thread.
But before I get into the nitty-gritty of techniques employed to lay USTracks, let's take a look at just what a difference they'll make in your route. The pictures below were all taken on a copy of BNSF_Scenic purchased from trainsimulations.net. The first three images were taken in Everett Yard:
Hyy8yHE.jpg HyyaM6e.jpg Hyyb1an.jpg
I think you can see just how much this track - IMHO better track than what TS2018 serves up! - improves a route's appearance. The next shot was taken in Skykomish.
HyybeQl.jpg
In no small measure this is because not only does the rail look real, but the ballast actually has a 3D berm the way real track does. But it also improves things in more subtle ways that aren't immediately evident without further comparison.
We'll go into that in the next post.
Regards,
David