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First let me state that I am not a developer and realy have no idea what it takes to create a realistic simulator. If my questions are completely ridiculous, then I apologize in advance. Just tell me I don't know what I am talking about and I will shut up.With the plan to provide the ability to import MSTS routes, am I to assume that geograhpy will be the same as used by KUJU? Specifically, I am referring to the Goode projection which creates 2 KM square tiles that are skewed from reality. I ask because of my interest in the Alaska Railroad. I made a feeble attempt at creating a route in Alaska. I was put off by the map prjection because the skew angle in Anchorage is somewhere around 26 degrees. I just could not make anything work to my satisfaction knowing that North was actually 26 degrees East of North while East and West were correct. Also, since the Goode projection is area preserving it stretches everything out East and West when compared to North and South. Is it possible to use some other method of creating the geography and still import MSTS routes? To tell you the truth, I found it rather ironic that it was necessary to create a flat world in a 3D simulator. Is it not possible to create a curved world? If not then what about making flat tiles that are not quite square, but slightly trapezoidal in shape to as to create a curved world with flat pieces?
QUOTE:If not then what about making flat tiles that are not quite square, but slightly trapezoidal in shape to as to create a curved world with flat pieces?How would they be assembled to then make up the entire route?? (This isn't a smart-arse response; I am genuinely puzzled!)Bruce.EDIT! On reflection (and a little doodling!) I can see how the pieces would assemble but cannot see how they would necessarily create a "curved world".Could you elucidate, please?Bruce.
It wouldn't necessarily create a curved world, but a globe made of flat pieces. If you make them small enough, then the change in angle as you move from one to the next would be imperceptible. The distance around Earth at the equator is somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 KM. If you divide it into arcminutes then you have 21,600 sections that would be a little less than 2 KM each. Then, of course, as you go North the pieces would become narrower.
I hope the guys that make the decisions read that, I really think it is the answer, and existing routes could be remapped without much difficulty using a route conversion program. The individual msts "square" tiles are already made up of triangles, aren't they? The triangle is also the basis of the poly count in the models, isn't it? Seems natural enough to me, even if the page linked to is a bit heavy on jargon the diagrams make up for it. A tri-tree makes a lot more sense for an elipsoidal earth than the quad-tree system currently in use.Lloyd
Even for others areas of the world the skew angle created by using the Goode projection is a problem - in NSW Australia is about 5 degrees and makes the laying out adjoining city street blocks difficult. The answer is to use a transverse mercantor projection of some sort and map contours and placements to the world ignoring lattitude & longitute completely. Also due to current bug in MSTS that causes terrain not to load when travelling in certain directions across quad-tree boundaries ( big problem in the UK & Rocky Mountains USA ) you can relocate a route several hundred miles away from where it should be to keep a route within a single quad-tree.The only use for lattitude & longitude during gameplay is to calculate sunrise/sunset and provide information in the compass display which has no effect on the game. Of course it is used during 3rd party terrain creation processes but if these programs could do a transverse mercantor translation internally then map their terrain output to any group of tiles then all that is required is a reference point that would contain the following information:-Lattitude & longitude of start point. Tile row & column + tile x , tile z corresponding point. metres per degree of lattitude. metres per degree of longitude.If this was possible then effectively the skew is gone, you could use any group of tiles in the quad tree world (probably do away with quad trees altogether) and 3rd party programs could read this information and map terrain etc. to the tiles based on each route's local values. It might even be useful for making routes to scale eg. double scale for narrow gauge routes.And I was going to avoid a wishlist - but the team making TMTS may want to do something along these lines if they are going to make a better route editor.Cheers Cribbo.
