Pacific Electric… Again

Well, with all the distractions one has these days,( myself included, what with the Milwaukee Road electrics coming out and being developed), it's no wonder some things just get put aside ( like that tumbled-down fence on the northside ). The Pacific Electric Hollywoods came to a screeching halt while this was going on, and too, while the cabview was being made by someone else. The latter hasn't happened, unfortunately, and the 600's and 5050's are still sans cbaviews. Chuck Zeiler and I have made rudimentary "mock-ups" that don't have animations yet, but we may have to knock one out ourselves it seems. In the meantime, I'll offer these cars without their cabviews for anyone interested to run beta tests on the rest of the cars' features. Just leave me a PM here on the boards for further info.
Tim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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RE: Pacific Electric....Again, brooksy, May-14-04, 06:29 AM, (1) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, tryagin, May-14-04, 11:56 AM, (4) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, Matt Vince, May-14-04, 11:41 AM, (2) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, tryagin, May-14-04, 11:55 AM, (3) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, Thirdrail70, May-17-04, 09:01 AM, (5) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, tryagin, May-17-04, 10:02 AM, (6) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, gatewaycityca, Jun-19-04, 04:41 AM, (7) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, tryagin, Jun-19-04, 11:07 AM, (8) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, msavianney, Jul-09-04, 05:53 AM, (9) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, tryagin, Jul-09-04, 12:43 PM, (10) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, boundy, Aug-01-04, 05:33 AM, (11) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, TedB, Aug-01-04, 07:10 AM, (12) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, mrmike, Aug-01-04, 10:47 AM, (13) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, tryagin, Aug-01-04, 11:25 AM, (14) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, Swissie, Aug-01-04, 04:34 PM, (15) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, tryagin, Aug-01-04, 05:02 PM, (16) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, Swissie, Aug-02-04, 04:29 AM, (17) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, bradhig, Aug-02-04, 12:07 PM, (18) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, tryagin, Aug-02-04, 01:26 PM, (19) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, tryagin, Aug-02-04, 01:52 PM, (20) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, Swissie, Aug-02-04, 03:34 PM, (21) RE: Pacific Electric....Again, tryagin, Aug-02-04, 09:54 PM, (22)

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Nice work as usual Tim and I sure like the way you take screenshots, as with your earlier post as well.
Don't seem to be able to PM you but if not to big a file would love to give them a whirl.
Cheers

Nocturnal Flightless Bird

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Brooksy, you have a PM.Tim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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Tim, you have too much time on your hands!

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There's never enough time. Actually, I have more than the average Joe, I suppose. With my situation, its' about all I have. So, I choose to spend it constructively, and too, I find it's the perfect blend of respite, art, and modeling. Keeps me from going nuts...is that an oxymaroon? RegardTim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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Tim:
I'd like to take you up on your offer of an advance copy of your PE Hollywood car minus cabview. My email is: fdreany43@aol.comAnd don't feel bad about the cab, I'm afraid I've been stuck awhile on a cab which may have to be simplified in order to get it out and move on to other projects. Doing a cab seems to be as much work as the entire rest of the car sometimes. I'll be looking foreward to your Milwaukee postings and downloading them when I return to Florida at the end of this month.Frederick Dreany
Island Electric, East

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Fred, you have mail (hopefully).Yes, I find it 100% easier to produce a model, than to make a cabview. My partner, Chuck Zeiler does most of that work. When you get the 637, you'll see our preliminary cabview, with Mesaba conttrols, whereas the 653 has the Mesaba cabview. It's OK, but not near correct for these cars. But the passenger view is where you'll end up spending most of your time.
Tim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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Hi Tim,If you are still offering that early version of your PE Hollywood car, you know I'd definitely like to try it out! Sorry, I know this is kind of an old message now. But send me an email when you get a chance, at gatewaycityca@yahoo.comThanks!Chris T.

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Hi Chris, you have mail.Tim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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Wow, any chance of one for your old Aussie mate?! (Sheepish grin)Enough of my Victorian Railways steam, time to get the traction going again. Man, we were playing with that 1100 car over two years ago! Times have changed, standards have skyrocketed into the stratosphere and I'm hoping to get back into the game. What a laugh, the Milwaukee 1100 and your fine Oregon freelance repaints were the first US interurban available. Gee, I'm getting misty-eyed here!!!Cheers,
Matt

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Team-ALCO
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Why, of course, Matt! I'll send you mail with the links.Yep! Your 1100 was the ground-breaker! I still have them on my hard drive too. And your fine Speedrail car wasn't too shabby either. Yah, Matt, I'd like to see your next tram!!!Tim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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Tim: Any chance a poor old coonass down here in Louisiana can get one of these. I enjoy Mesaba and have started to eat lutefisk. My email is dboundy@access4less.netBon chance mon amiDavid

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TimCan I add my name to the folks here wanting your work, and the download site? Your stuff is unbelievable.Ted

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-01-04 AT 10:48 AM (EST)

Tim, I hate to sound redundant, but since I was off line for 3 months I guess I missed your original offer. Since I have a great love for all things PE, those Hwd. cars would make a great addition to my fleet.P.S. I have a 2 Gig. mailbox.mrmiker&pacbell.net
My Computer specs are in my profile
Mike
"

This Smile says it all"

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Mike, David and Ted,I have sent you all Private Messages with the links to download the various versions of the Hollywoods and a couple other of my projects. Feel free to try any out. Just remember that they are works in progress (although stalled at the moment due to a slight case of burn-out).I have also made a set of PE right-of-way signs. If anyone wants to build a PE line, they are welcome to the set. Just send me a PM, or ask here.This is a plea for someone to someday build at least one of the many PE routes (there were many!).Cheers!Tim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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> This is a plea for someone to someday build at least one of the many PE routes (there were many!).Hi Timwish we had one, too. But you know what you are asking for here, don't you? Because this would quickly boil down for another round of car-building - once we had the route, we'd desperately need the PE's 100s, the Blimps, the 1100/1200s, a couple of the many varieties of boxmotors, combines, and Express Mail motors, and and and And once we are day-dreaming: Maybe someday a dedicated group of talented modellers will bring the entire PE system (all 1000 miles of track, for the sake of it!) back to live in MSTS. I think I could be spending hours & hours running from Arrowhead to Venice, or from Long Beach to San Bernardino in an early 1950s setting...Lukas a.k.a Swissie

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Sounds good to me! And so on! Maybe someday. Maybe. I do have plans for all the above cars. Even the 5000's. Can you imagine the FPS in downtown LA? Tim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-02-04 AT 04:30 AM (EST)

Hi Tim,> Can you imagine the FPS in downtown LA?Well, I was rather kidding with the entire system (although it would really deserve such a recreation - must've been one of the world's finest ever!). Just imagine the size of the tdb and rdb this would translate to!While the fps could be dealt with - the sheer number of "downtown scenery" that needed to be built along would make it a tedious task.I've been experimenting a bit with fps in urban scenery lately, and my conclusion was that the main problem is to have buildings or other scenery using 512x512 textures. The more of them populate your tile, the more dramatically your fps drops. A good example is Enocell's NJ route. His excellent industrial buildings are all very low on poly's, yet the route is tucking along at 1-2 fps on my laptop (256MB Ram, 64MB graphics card). Altering all these buildings' textures to 256x256 (which does not destroy that many details, btw!) had a dramatic effect: Fps is at 8-11 all of a sudden. I noticed that as little as 6-8 512x512 textures on an already cramped tile can already drive your fps into the basement. And some add-on buildings (not Enocell's now, I think of a depot I recently inspected in this respect) use as much as 6 (!!!) 512x512 textures, four for the sides, one for the roof, and one for all the clutter surrounding it. Needless to say this object alone is hard on low-end systems, even when placed on an average tile, not to speak of a cramped one.So: My bottomline is that the fps can be brought to a useful level, even in downtown LA, when scenery objects are optimized. Ron Piccardi's recent farm houses and homes are a good example how many shape files you can decorate with an ever repeating couple of 256x256 sized .ace files: Three or four each for brick walls and wooden sides in different colors, a few textures with all kinds of doors, windows etc on it, three types of shingles for the roof, and a few apexes. Enough to build several dozen different homes! Some of these could even be shrunk to 128x128 (the bricks, e.g.) to even free up more ressources on the graphics card...Strayed from the topic a bit, but I found it interesting how much processing capacity is wasted on displaying overly large .ace files for remote buildings the train never gets close enough to see any difference...Lukas a.k.a Swissie

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I saw a picture of some modern LRV's in Calfornia with Pacific Electric livery on them. Is that a hertiage line?

Riding on Supertrain.

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They are the new "Red Cars" on LA Metro's Blue Line. For pics, go to Google Images and type in Pacific Electric, or Metro. All kinds of goodies there.
Tim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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Lukas,Wayne Campbell has also done much research into the textures vs. polys scenario dealing with OS resources, and has come to the same conclusion. Most modern machines and vid cards can render shapes faster than textures. It is with this belief, that I had begun to use many small textures, some 64x64, to paint parts rather than using patches on large texture sheets. It also has the added bonus of using "Off the Shelf" parts for many applications using a dediated ace for that part alone, like, for instance, all my wheels use a 128x128 ace, and the treads use a 64x64 ace. They can be used on all types of cars. Same with controllers, tops, bells, horns, handrails, roofs, etc. Then there's the trade-off of using 1024x1024 aces for the big parts. You just can't beat it for detail and clarity, and is what I've been doing with everything built after the Hollywoods. Tim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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Hi Tim,> Then there's the trade-off of using 1024x1024 aces for the big parts. You just can't beat it for detail and clarity, and is what I've been doing with everything built after the Hollywoods. I agree - and with an isolated trolley being your entire train, that 1024 texture on the player .eng does not even harm the system too much. Its another story if you do an entire train of passenger coaches in 1024x1024. You certainly know Gaétan Bélanger's VIA coaches. I've done some repaints of them, some of which (in FBL colors) were released, others I just kept for running my own little "non-contemporary" passenger ops on Marias & the Kootenai division. I did convert Gaétan's 512x512 textures to 1024s, to be able to add small lettering on the coaches. No problem on the fast desktop, but on the laptop, I can't run much more than 4-6 of the cars in a train (together with one of Mark's F7 ABA sets, also using 1024 textures). Otherwise I'll have 3-6 fps in the outside view when the entire train is visible, even in the bare terrain near West of Shelby...For that reason, and also in knowledge of the facts that some users with really old graphics cards can not even display 1024x1024 textures, I did offer alternate 512x512 replacement skins for the FBL cars, and I use these myself on the laptop, where I don't have problems running a 18-car train with small textures. Guess that is always an option (and it can be an isolated download, so that only those really needing have to d/l the additional files). It seems to me that MSTS is differing inbetween critical texture size on trainset items and scenery items. Most rolling stock uses at least 512x512, and still it takes quite a train until your fps really hit rock bottom, despite your engines on the point even using 1024s sometimes. While scenerywise, just a dozen 512 textures makes a heck of a difference, not to speak of 1024 scenery textures (yes, there are a few!). And then again it is yet another story with the terrtex, which mostly also are 512x512, and there is how many of them on a tile?Ah, the mysteries of MSTS! Cheers,Lukas a.k.a Swissie

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Hey, Lukas,
The PTC Hollywood is now available up on bti, the Yahoo account. Do you still have the passwords?Tim

Street and Interurban Electric Railway Models
Sumpter Valley B&B Gang
Willamette Valley Route
(No timetable for release)
Turn Off your TVs.

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