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Hi,Does anyone else have a problem with BVE turning transparent textures into absolute mush? I'm building some trees, but I'm having serious problems getting textures with finer details to map properly.Check this out. This is the original texture map. Obviously, setdecaltransparentcolor is 255,255,255 to make the white area transparent.When mapped onto a quad, this is what it turns out like.Horrible! It doesn't matter what size the original texture is. I've tried upsizing it to like 1024x1024 and still it looks the same.I also noticed that the overhead line equipment/catenary on most routes look vile on my system, with half of the details missing, and the diagonals hugely pixelated. It takes me back to the days of rubber-keyed spectrums!Could it be something to do with my setup in particlar?I'm using a P3 933Mhz, Geforce2 MX, 768Mb RAM, on WinXP.Does anyone have any suggestions?DavidBVE in Glasgow (temporary site): http://homepage.ntlworld.com/zerosignal/bve/temp
I remember I went through the same problem when I built the trees for my Pinda to Piracuama route. Try using textures with at least 256 colors or more, so these annoying square pixelized effects will be minimized, although this could reduce the frame rate while playing BVE.HTHRegards,
> Try using textures with at >least 256 >colors or more, so these annoying square pixelized effects >will be minimized, although this could reduce the frame rate >while playing Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately it doesn't make much of a difference on my system, but then it seems it's my system at fault.Cheers,DavidBVE in Glasgow: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/zerosignal/bve/
Hi DavidThis is a problem with GeForce graphics cards. Broadly, isolated pixels and pixels on right-hand or top edges fail to display. Shapes with lots of thin lines like trees or lattice girders are particularly badly affected (as you have seen!).Anthony B got round the problem in X-City by supplying separate textures for GeForce and other cards - you might want to look at them to see what he did to make the overhead equipment display correctly. It's basically a question of adding extra pixels on the affected edges.Unfortunately, this technique doesn't work well for complex transparencies like winter trees. In the ones I drew for X-City, I abandoned attempts to draw any but the larger limbs and used an impressionistic effect for the smaller branches. Filling some of the gaps with snow helped enormously - I've had much less success with 'dry' winter trees.I would have thought that making the texture larger would help, though, as the problem only affects a single layer of pixels.Cheers Simon
Hi Simon,>This is a problem with GeForce graphics cards. Broadly, >isolated pixels and pixels on right-hand or top edges fail >to display. Shapes with lots of thin lines like trees or >lattice girders are particularly badly affected (as you have >seen!). Thanks for that. I was suspicious it was the GeForce, since I remember glancing over a thread about a similar topic a long time ago.>Anthony B got round the problem in X-City by supplying >separate textures for GeForce and other cards... and this must've been where I noticed the topic mentioned before. It's a solution, but as you said it doesn't work well with bare trees. I've sinced moved on to a few other textures with less of the finer detail, and while they're not great (and they don't look as accurate in the route), they will have to do for now.I was getting so frustrated earlier that I actually started building a 3D tree out of triangles, just so that I could have some kind of object to place. However, plop a few of these down as .freeobjs and the framerate drops to about 3fps. How I long for proper hardware acceleration in BVE...>Unfortunately, this technique doesn't work well for complex >transparencies like winter trees. In the ones I drew for >X-City, I abandoned attempts to draw any but the larger >limbs and used an impressionistic effect for the smaller >branches. Filling some of the gaps with snow helped >enormously I remember noticing one bare tree object in a route somewhere but I couldn't remember which. Now that you mention it, it was those winter trees you supplied for X-City and WJ-MKC. At first glance, the trees look completely bare, but when looked at from another angle, you can see that a lot of the gaps are in fact filled in with snow. Against the white snowy background they work well. Very clever!Cheers,DavidBVE in Glasgow: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/zerosignal/bve/
Hey Guys,I don't have a geeforce card but for some reason my laptop has the same problem. When I make fence textures which have a mesh made up of single lines, I draw extra lines around them. This makes them look thicker unfortunately, but it does combat the problem. This is what Anthony once recomended to me (or something similar). So you need to draw round those bits of tree with a light grey or something....
When I was making the East Lincs Line (remember that?) I made the telegraph poles using the family computer which had on board graphics drivers from Geforce. When I got it onto my computer I wasn't able to see the arms properly. To some extent i get the same problem with my Mk3b catenery arms not registering at all well. I also made the catenery much thicker and with a 3d aspect to enable them to be seen properly. when I play it on the family computer I get no such problems, so I went for a 'down the middle' approach as regards texture thickness which I hope everyone will find acceptable.
How can you eat your pudding if you don't eat your meat?
When mapped onto a quad, this is what it turns out like.
Horrible! It doesn't matter what size the original texture is. I've tried upsizing it to like 1024x1024 and still it looks the same.I also noticed that the overhead line equipment/catenary on most routes look vile on my system, with half of the details missing, and the diagonals hugely pixelated. It takes me back to the days of rubber-keyed spectrums!Could it be something to do with my setup in particlar?I'm using a P3 933Mhz, Geforce2 MX, 768Mb RAM, on WinXP.Does anyone have any suggestions?DavidBVE in Glasgow (temporary site):
