Various Screenshots with no particular theme... Part 2020

[claudie]

I decided to go daytime,instead.Better view of the activity.

[lateagain]

I think it's mainly the Night "lighting" that lets the Sims down. Dawn and Dusk are believable and lets not forget the pretty good "variable" weather effects in Open Rails. Some miss the environmental "effects" that were made possible in MSTS by Kosmos and the like but they were rather static?

Of course depending where you live your experience of weather systems will vary. Those who live in regions where Blue skys and Sunshine that are only occasionally modified by some thin cloud will be mystified by the "obsession" with weather those of us who live in regions where you can experience several weather conditions in one day ....nearly EVERY day If your 1st site visit each morning is THE WEATHER you, like me live in the latter.

Either way OR allows those in regions of rapidly changing weather systems to experience a reasonable and adjustable simulation of that.

Of course the other issue is scenery depth? Many here obviously aren't that bothered by route scenery levels? If like me you regard high scenery detail and depth as a MUST in any route the other issue of Night Running, however well it's simulated, is that darkness limits what's clearly visible even on the brightest nights.

I've no experience of how improved this is in newer Sims but in any case that's hardly relevant to MSTS/OR.

[geepster775]

Working on a US3 tracks kit for the new Trainsimulations combined installation of Scenic Starter/Seligman ORTS/CN Ruel and MRL Mullan that has no ace texture files. All of these newer routes are now totally independent of ace files. So to add UStracks to that ace-less installation, I needed to convert US3 ace track textures to DDS and then edit all the shapes to call DDS textures. Also updated the US3 Trackprofile to now call DDS exclusively.

These shots show combined Mullan and Seligman stock on the new Scenic Starter route (since they share the same install now) with US3 applied and US3 showing on superelevated curves.

[uli2]

Now, that looks great!

[paulytechnic]

Seligman can be converted to US3? I don't have the new BNSF version, only the ATSF version, but didn't end up converting myself due to a handful of missing xtrack pieces. Hopefully the new OR version has more standard track to make a full conversion.

[claudie]

More screenshots with traffic.

[claudie]

Last screenshots.Should be in the library by Sunday.

[ak3221]

[mg123]

Heavy grain train

[ossie]

I needed to convert US3 ace track textures to DDS and then edit all the shapes to call DDS textures.

Unless ORTS calls track shapes differently to rolling stock (or you were using different names), you can save yourself a fair bit of work next time by not editing the .s files geepster. If it's a straight name swap, track.ace to track.dds or trackXYZ.ace to trackXYZ.dds (for instance) and you've got "load dds checked" the absence of .dds in the shape file isn't an issue. ORTS will load the dds texture regardless of the file extension name in the .s file.