New steam (not electric) locomotives: Aslaug and Biarritz

[Hawk]

Or maybe transparent?

[Gumboots]

If it's transparent, you'll see the railway tracks. Not much point in trying to cover them then. You could try translucent, but that will glow in the dark as soon as the light starts going.

[Hawk]

I see what you mean.

Ship 3.jpg

Why does that texture cover the curves better in deep water than shallow water?

Ship 4.jpg

[Gumboots]

Would it be possible to bury the tracks a little under the water?

Oh, missed this. That idea had occurred to me and I did have a brief play around with it in the editor. There are two problems. First is that although the editor will allow you to create depressions below zero altitude, doing so is a real PITA. Doing it with any real degree of speed and accuracy is impossible if doing it manually.

If it was possible to code in a way of doing it, say by using a heightmap which had pre-marked sea lanes that would be automatically sunk below zero to a level base, then that might work. This should be possible, given how data tables for DEM's work. The question is how well will RT3 support it?

The other problem is that even if you sink the tracks below sea level how will RT3 read the water surface? My bet is it will just follow the heightmap down, so you'd end up with the same visual problem. It may look better, but it may not. Hard to tell without figuring out a way to run it live.

[Gumboots]

I see what you mean.

Ship 3.jpg

Why does that texture cover the curves better in deep water than shallow water?

Ship 4.jpg

That's just better tracklaying, so the shaggy effect isn't as noticeable. It depends on the angle between track sections. I'll probably be able to improve its tolerance with more experimentation.

[Hawk]

Would it be possible to bury the tracks a little under the water?

Oh, missed this. That idea had occurred to me and I did have a brief play around with it in the editor. There are two problems. First is that although the editor will allow you to create depressions below zero altitude, doing so is a real PITA. Doing it with any real degree of speed and accuracy is impossible if doing it manually.

If it was possible to code in a way of doing it, say by using a heightmap which had pre-marked sea lanes that would be automatically sunk below zero to a level base, then that might work. This should be possible, given how data tables for DEM's work. The question is how well will RT3 support it?

The other problem is that even if you sink the tracks below sea level how will RT3 read the water surface? My bet is it will just follow the heightmap down, so you'd end up with the same visual problem. It may look better, but it may not. Hard to tell without figuring out a way to run it live.

That makes sense.

[Hawk]

Why does that texture cover the curves better in deep water than shallow water?

That's just better tracklaying, so the shaggy effect isn't as noticeable. It depends on the angle between track sections. I'll probably be able to improve its tolerance with more experimentation.

Shorter sections of track in the curve, I take it.

[Gumboots]

I did have another cunning idea, at least for people who don't have water reflections anyway. That would be to pirate an existing model that is placeable in the editor, but which nobody uses. Turn it into one huge square of just two tris, large enough to cover a 1024 game map, set at an altitude of zero or close to it. Then just carve out your sea bed to suit, even including undulations if you want them to make the ships pitch, and the monster skin would just skin the entire ocean in one hit, with resolution as good as the game map. Around the edges, use a lake tool and smoothing tool to get the breaking waves on the beach, slightly above the monster skin level.

That's just better tracklaying, so the shaggy effect isn't as noticeable. It depends on the angle between track sections. I'll probably be able to improve its tolerance with more experimentation.

Shorter sections of track in the curve, I take it.

Yup.

[Gumboots]

Y'know this would be a total piece of cake if the @@&#%! devs had allowed an accessible .3dp for the actual track. If that was available, it'd be a simple matter of sinking the verts below zero height. No can do though. Can't find such a file. I think it's locked into the .exe, unfortunately.

[Hawk]

I did have another cunning idea, at least for people who don't have water reflections anyway. That would be to pirate an existing model that is placeable in the editor, but which nobody uses.

That might be plausible, but wouldn't it be better just to make a new model, just in case you pick one that someone decides to use later?
It would look less attractive for those of us that still have reflections.

Maybe the reflection issue is caused by your GFX card or drivers.