Telephone/Telegraph Poles – PVPOLES.ZIP

LAST EDITED ON Feb-10-04 AT 09:51 PM (EST)

There have been several posts in this forum about placing Telephone Poles using the Auto-placement tool within the route editor. Along the way some have lamented the complication that the automatic placement poles have to be created with an offset so that they do not land in the middle of the tracks. I have created a "suite" of telephone poles which meet this challenge. The trouble with all this is that each variation of pole doubles and quadruples the number of different objects needed. What I wanted were poles which included from one to four horizontal bars to carry the 'invisible' wires. Then these poles offset to appear on one side of the tracks, or the other. Finally, each variety of pole needs to be spaced away from the centerline of the tracks according to how many parallel tracks there are (one to four in the MSTS standard track sections). All this auto-placement is controlled by the GANTRY.DAT file, with different gantry sets selecting the right pole to use on a given side of the tracks with a certain number of horizontals. PLEASE search and do refer to other comments here about the pretty good quirks of auto-placement within yards and out along the right-of-way. Despite how this is complex, the built-in tool works far better than any hand-placement one by one by one. Yes, now and then the poles do hop from one side to another and continue until something changes. Hand adjustment of height of poles is necessary in some areas with cuts, berms, or emabankments. When I finally got this all to work, I was really pleased with the added realism! I am tempted to say there is a minimal effect on frame rates. I have tried to help this out by having LOD settings of 750 meters for a pole to appear at all, and 150 meters for the final details of the little blue insulators and braces to show up. Of course the more horizontal bars there are, the more polygons there are to deal with. Still I can't say there's much of a dip in frame rates comparing areas with and without poles. Here's my option about the actual wires between poles. When I look at old photos, I am struck with how on most of those black-and-whites the wires are not visible. Last weekend, while out on a short drive on a side street I came across some still standing poles and a few wires still in place. Again I noticed what I didn't notice. Those wires are not really very visible at all. I *think* I would be more annoyed and distracted by pixel-popping skinny wires and wires which don't quite make it from one pole to another than by the absence of any wires at all. PVPOLES.ZIP has been uploaded to the library with an exhausting Readme.txt, a single texture, a number of not very large shapes, and a Gantry.dat file that copes with the variations on the variations.

--- Phil Voxland

Attachments

http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/402997cf3218aac4.jpg

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RE: Telephone/Telegraph Poles -- PVPOLES.ZIP, DRGWK36, Feb-11-04, 07:31 PM, (1) RE: Telephone/Telegraph Poles -- PVPOLES.ZIP, pvoxland, Feb-11-04, 08:11 PM, (2) RE: Telephone/Telegraph Poles -- PVPOLES.ZIP, erielackawanna, Feb-13-04, 01:11 PM, (3) RE: Telephone/Telegraph Poles -- PVPOLES.ZIP, pvoxland, Feb-13-04, 08:12 PM, (4) RE: Telephone/Telegraph Poles -- Updates, pvoxland, Feb-16-04, 09:02 PM, (5) RE: Telephone/Telegraph Poles -- Updates, robertreedy, Feb-16-04, 09:32 PM, (6) RE: Telephone/Telegraph Poles -- Updates, DRGWK36, Feb-17-04, 12:07 PM, (7)

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Phil - I'm assuming that the poles will appear along even short spurs using the autoplace feature - is that correct?Andy

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Yes, they poles are inserted along ALL the tracks within the big blue bordered tile where poles are being auto-placed. I haven't found this to be all that hard to deal with. It takes some hand-editing to delete unwanted poles but as I mentioned above that work pales by comparison with what it would take to put poles in place individually. Yards and switches are a challenge for the auto-placement too. Two recommendations: First search this forum for postings with the word "Gantry", you'll find advice and information from others who have used this technique. Second, after backing up your route, try out the auto-placement in a route. The track data base isn't touched at all by this, so there's nothing to worry about there. *AND* as long as you don't save a route editing session any experimenting you do will vanish as you quit the editor. When I finally got going with this I decided this was the only "fun" thing that the Route Editor does!! I even have come close to laughing when I see the tool misbehave. Errors that do happen can be corrected without trauma. (In the Gantry.dat file included with the download, the first set actually put poles with a single arm along a single-width track branch, and put poles with four bars along the double-tracked mainline)

--- Phil Voxland

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LAST EDITED ON Feb-13-04 AT 01:12 PM (EST)

Thank you for the set of telephone/telegraph poles. I am getting reasonable return on frame rates with them. Your tutorial on adding the poles was also very easy in following.
Sincerely,
Walter Conklin

Howells, NY
MP 71 "Jct of the NS Southern Tier and Old ER mainline"

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Thank you for the follow up note. Although I try to test out things I place in the library, it is reassuring to hear from someone that the files worked and the information provided was sufficient, informative and even correct! It brightens my day when I hear from someone that things that I've put into the library have been found and found useful. I think I'm feeling almost as evangelistic about these poles and the gantry auto-placement as Jeff Bush and the Kosmos utility! For me each of these in different ways had a dramatic effect on improving how my own work appeared more 'real'. At first I tried making poles with textures for the insulators and braces that were all one piece, in order to reduce the polygon count. But I was unhappy with how MSTS and the graphics engines rendered the poles. There was too much pixel shimmering and flashing. As I have already mentioned, the insulators and braces now do not appear until the viewer is within 150 meters of a pole. I *think* this helps keep the frame rates lower, as you have found out.

--- Phil Voxland

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LAST EDITED ON Feb-16-04 AT 09:20 PM (EST)

Attached is a zipped update file for the PVPOLES.ZIP already in the library. The updates include additional shapes, corrections or adjustments to a few original shapes, and an optional file which can be used to place poles 2.5 meters closer to tracks than the original Gantry.dat file ("Narrower_gantry.dat"). Revisions to the README.TXT file explain how this narrower version can be employed. If you have already placed poles, their location will not be changed when you use the narrower gantry sets. Thanks to Andy Miller for spotting shapes that needed to be redone. He also proposed optional pole placement closer to the tracks, especially for some narrow guage track laying . The spacing is still based on standard guage dimensions, however. The attachment contains only the replacement and additional files. Later, I will upload an all-inclusive revision of the first distribution of PVPOLES.

--- Phil Voxland

Attachments
http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/40317a4201f4738a.zip

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Phil, I've not had the chance yet to try these out, but am definitely looking forward to it. Still have probably 100 miles or more to fill for an update and this will be a god-send. Thanks for all the addons and work you've given us. They are all winners!RobertR .. ADF-M&RM at http://www.adfrr.com

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I've installed them on several tiles in my new route (Chama to Durango), and they're great. Phil's made it exceptionally easy to plop down a nice even line of poles, which can then be adjusted (or removed) according to the terrain. I had never worked with the auto-gantry feature before, but following the instructions makes it a "ready to run" application. A couple of cut-and-pastes and you're ready to go.The only thing I'd warn people about is that you should wait until you've got all your track down on a tile before placing the poles. Otherwise, when you go to add the poles for the rest of the tile, you end up with duplicates in the area where they were already placed.Andy

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