Overlaying Pictures to lay track

A few months ago, I remember somewhere in this forum, someone posted info about overlaying pictures of real world track sections from topozone, terraformer (or something like that) as a template for laying track for a new route.Can someone please provide me some detail information about this.Thanks.

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You mean this http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID6/5468.html ?David Beach.

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I know I personally have played with the idea for my section of The Pennsy Middle division, but got caught up in Harrisburg depot and pushed it aside. I wasn't the one who discovered it...I only tried it and reported back in the thread. Search under "We don't need no stinking markers"I was able to create textures directly from the DLG's for the Vandyke to Tuscarora section I was fooling with. Here's a Topozone map of the Vandyke area...
The trick was to create map sections that matched the tiles. I tried several sizes of tiles. You would think the bigger the better, but that's not what worked. The smaller tiles (128x128?) but NOT the smallest (64x64?) worked best. The map sections also had to be "skewed" about 16 degrees to the right to match the tiles "World projection"...I tested the idea by comparing the texture map with marker locations. I had markers for the track, the river, and the highway. The map lines were consistently at or near the marker locations. Of course the markers are only as accurate as the mouse clicks you use in the waypoint function of DEMEX....Still it looked very promising.I don't know if anyone else had success with it.Unfortunately I lost the test section. I moved to a new computer and didn't keep the tiles and textures. Track crews have already passed through Vandyke on their way to Harrisburg. Thanks for reminding me about it, because I really wanted see if it works.Frank Musick
Lehigh & Atlantic Railway, Canal Navigation Company

<www.KelticSylk.com>

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I created 512 x 512 bit maps from skewed map images, scaling as needed. Nothing magic about the 16 degrees though, in the area south of Spokane, WA the skew is 8 degrees. Using the tools available to me, I insert the DRGs as images into AutoCAD, scale it up to the point that it is full size (5280 feet to the mile), then using tile corner location determined in DEMEX, I overlay the tiles on the map image, then subdivide the tile boundaries into sixteen parts, making all 256 sub-tiles. Then shift the outlines from NAD27 to NAD83. Then zoom in on one subtile and do a screen capture, pan to the next and do another screen capture, etc., etc., boring etc., saving the screen captures as .BMP files. Once there are enough screen captures, each is opened in paint, skewed so that the sides form right angles with the base, cropped, scaled to as close to 512 x 512 (but not less than) as possible and cropped again as needed. Then run all the 512 x 512 .BMP files through MakeAceWin. I use the tile name plus two additional hex digits to name my .BMP and .ACE files. Upper left sub-tile has a 00 suffix, upper right has a f0 suffix, lower left, 0f, and lower right ff (the rest are left as an excercise for the student). Using only the sub-tile that have track on them, it appears that I will be able to do the whole route while staying under the limit of 64 textures in memory at any given time. At one point I was coming close, but just before I thought I was going to have to stop, I moved far enough away from where I started that it dropped a bunch from memory, allowing me to continue adding textures. At this point I have the track on three tiles mapped this way, track layed on much of the first tile. Pictures to be posted soon.David Beach.

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