Fences in Hilly Terrain w/ TSRE

[PerryPlatypus]

I was considering adding barbed wire fences on either side of the ROW for many many miles on my Shasta route, but I've been quickly dismayed by the awkwardness of handling fences in anything other than table flat terrain... and about 80% of my route is in NOT flat terrain.

I experimented with TSRE's auto placement function, and even made a quick spreadsheet to determine exactly what to set the spacing for a 20-meter long segment of fence for various curve radii (because otherwise, there will be overlap or gaps in the fences on curves, which gets more severe the tighter the curve is).

What makes me want to abandon my attempts at this is that it seems basically impossible to have fences follow even mildly undulating terrain in a halfway-believable way without a MASSIVE amount of manual work, manually rotating every fence segment. Even pressing the N key tends to produce very unsatisfactory results most of the time, with one end of the fence up in the air, the other buried underground, and the entire fence tilted downhill.

What exactly controls the "N" key's processing to know how to rotate the object? Is it just the slope of the terrain under the pivot point of an object, or is it the ends of the bounding box?

Is there some obvious method that I am not realizing, or is there basically no good way to go about this? I am *this* close to giving up on right of way fences... Let alone trying to deal with code line wires, which I imagine would be even more of a headache in hilly terrain...

[scottb613]

I was considering adding barbed wire fences on either side of the ROW for many many miles on my Shasta route, but I've been quickly dismayed by the awkwardness of handling fences in anything other than table flat terrain... and about 80% of my route is in NOT flat terrain.

I experimented with TSRE's auto placement function, and even made a quick spreadsheet to determine exactly what to set the spacing for a 20-meter long segment of fence for various curve radii (because otherwise, there will be overlap or gaps in the fences on curves, which gets more severe the tighter the curve is).

What makes me want to abandon my attempts at this is that it seems basically impossible to have fences follow even mildly undulating terrain in a halfway-believable way without a MASSIVE amount of manual work, manually rotating every fence segment. Even pressing the N key tends to produce very unsatisfactory results most of the time, with one end of the fence up in the air, the other buried underground, and the entire fence tilted downhill.

What exactly controls the "N" key's processing to know how to rotate the object? Is it just the slope of the terrain under the pivot point of an object, or is it the ends of the bounding box?

Is there some obvious method that I am not realizing, or is there basically no good way to go about this? I am *this* close to giving up on right of way fences... Let alone trying to deal with code line wires, which I imagine would be even more of a headache in hilly terrain...

Hi Sean,

One of the biggest glaring deficiencies we have with ORTS for route builders - is that we don't have any (Procedural/Lofted/Spline) objects - like they do in Trainz or DTG products. It's utterly amazing to watch route builders on the other side of the fence - plop down a power tower - then simply stretch it as long as they want in any direction - with new towers popping up as needed with wires perfectly attached - following the contours of undulating terrain seamlessly. This works for roads - fences - telephone poles - sidewalks - ROW vegetation - etc etc etc - it appears you're only limited by your imagination. This would vastly increase the speed in which route builders could make routes.

Goku had experimented with this - but - the implementation required close team work between TSRE and ORTS - something we never really had.

Just wishful thinking - doesn't help with your predicament - sorry.

Regards,
Scott

[ebnertra000]

I think the infamous telepole objects in MSTS were basically a set of procedurally generated poles with extremely tjin wires between them. I have advocated for bringing that sort of functionality to OR/TSRE, since it would be a boon for route builders, especially in terrain that isn't table-flat.

As for your predicament...there's really no good answer

[PerryPlatypus]

Thank you both for the answers. Yeah, my brain was in the same place as far as wishing we had procedural/loft/spline objects at our disposal... But that will only ever happen if the OR developer team can break away from this need to make sure things have a MSTS-equivalent backwards-compatibility element to them... And with Goku possibly gone for good, someone who is willing to pick up where he left off on his editor. :/

I suppose it is not possible to place an object along a TSRE Ruler path? (Similar to how you can paint a ground texture along a hand-drawn Ruler?)

[geepster775]

Much like horn-activated flashing ditch lights, it needs to be handled by the core code and the current make-do process we have for msts compatibility is too hamstrung to even bother dealing with it.

[eric]

You might want to try using Auto placement with shorter lengths of 2-3m. That's pretty much the distance between two fence stakes...

What I've used in the past for placing power lines is laying down Road sections and then using World file hacker to place power poles the same trajectory is those Road pieces. My standard is 100 m and 150 m oh, and the results look fairly good to me. Once the power poles are in place, I remove the road sections.

WFH could also be used for placing code lines, provided you had objects that match the track sections and curve geometry that you use the most. Wouldn't work with Dynamic track, but there's not that much difference between using the tool to place trolley poles or catenary and using it to place code lines. The only caveat is that they would follow the track elevation, not the terrain. You might have to get creative with pole depth and height if the terrain is going through cuts or fills.

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[PerryPlatypus]

Eric,

I feel like going with shorter fence segments will only make the amount of manual labor worse, because then I would be having to select hundreds of pieces per mile and hitting the H key, followed by either pressing the N key or manually adjusting the pitch of the fence. If there was a way to automatically place all objects at ground level rather than the same elevation as the track, then that would help - otherwise it seems very counterproductive to use such short segments.

Following track elevation is exactly what I *don't* want, with both the pole lines and the fences. The majority of this route is cuts and fills of varying magnitude, and so not only does the pole line go up-and-down a lot, but it also swings in and out laterally in areas of larger cuts and fills, so that the pole line remains outside the "catch line"/earthwork footprint.

I think my takeaway from all of this is that getting wires between poles is pretty much a non-starter for my project with the current limitations of the sim. As for fences, I think I will start off using them in just the wide open and flat parts of the route between Klamath Falls and Mt Hebron and see how much manual effort is involved. I will probably avoid them entirely in the areas of rougher terrain, but we'll see...

[rdayt]

TSRE will put them anywhere you want 'em.

tsre.JPG

[PerryPlatypus]

TSRE will put them anywhere you want 'em.

tsre.JPG

Randy,

This is the function I am already using, however as far as I can tell, it does not have any function that will automatically adjust objects to follow a varying elevation of the ground under the objects, rather than being locked to the track elevation or a constant offset from the track elevation.

If the track is going through large cuts and fills, then by using only the Auto Placement function, you end up with poles floating in mid-air along fills, and buried underground along cuts. I could use a Translate Offset to raise all of them up or down by a fixed amount, but that will make the problem better in some areas, but even worse in others... Thus my statement that the Auto Placement is sufficient only in very flat terrain.