NORO Trams and Textures

[Swordmaster]

Exceptional work Noah. I don't think I've ever seen more appealing transit textures than the RLR.  Sorry for not fixing that station -- I can't replicate the bug, though.

Now, with regard to the HD RRW texture. This observation by APSMS is well-thought, but not entirely correct:

One of the benefits of Willy's textures is that the noise imparted by reducing the texture size to SD (after he presumably worked them at 256px) introduces sampling irregularities that make the sleepers (and to a small extent the ballast) appear used, uneven, and worn the way that most wood sleepers appear when traveling down the line. They also blend with the ballast at certain points, so that despite being drawn square like yours they still appear to be uneven. Some sleepers are shorter than others, and overall there is uncertainty in Willy's textures, while yours are "regular" and thus appear unnatural (at least, to me).

I made the textures originally in SD. The noise you see is because my sleepers have a degree of transparency, so that the ballast shows through. Which, combined with the varied pixelization of the ballast is actually a visual trick that makes the sleepers seem to lie in the ballast, rather than on top of it.




As for why I picked SD, I don't think it ever was a very public discussion. I had several pages worth of private messaging with Ron (rivit) before launching the public RRW thread--given that he was the only active rail developer at the time--and he made interesting observations regarding the number of sleepers, the contrast, and the effects of subtle differences in the texture on the entire network's shape and visibility from zooms higher up. I expect HD textures to expound on these issues. I'd like to see your texture in game, and at different angles (FA as well), to see what happens when you zoom out rather than in. It might be the image compression, but I think I can already see some of the game's HD rendering problems on the bridge in that z3 shot. Imagine having a railyard full of these, and you're quickly looking at a headache. (And despite my MD zooming in quite often, I've always been more of an overview guy.)

There are other reasons was well. I was already inconfident enough about RRW's adoption rate, with the scale change and potential difficulties with lot integration, that a switch to HD seemed too much. Plus I had (still have) a fear of HD creep. Your tram network will find a handsome ally in HD sidewalks and a range of HD BATs that exist for urban settings. However, with railways being a far more extensive network in rural and suburban settings, in my opinion it will often look to draw too much attention to its HDness next to mostly SD lots and textures. I love HD--you know that--but I hate the contrast with SD when both appear together.

And you've already found this out--HD accentuates every tiny error in the texture, and with rail textures already being very detailed in and of themselves, I had too big a task ahead of me to add to my troubles.

That's not to say a HD version can't look just as good or better, of course. But try to remember how big a job it is.


Cheers
Willy

(PS: Come to think of it, if you ever want to make a HD RRW mod, you could stick to replacing only the z5 textures. That way our rendering problem is already fixed.)

[Simmer2]

Nooooo.... oh Lord no HD RRW please!
Willy, making RRW in SD was the best thing you could have done.
HD would definitively expose any texture variations (new word : oldiefication) which are an integral part of the RRW look.
The sleepers and ballast noise is a must in order to achieve that degree of decay which emulates real life old tracks.

My two cents.

Nick

[reddonquixote]

You've been very busy Noah! These look great, I love the cobbled tracks. The versions with the dark roads against the light-grey pavement look slightly odd to me though. It looks like there are gaping chasms either side of the tracks... maybe I just saw it that way and now I can't un-see it.

The ones you decide to drop look amazing btw 

[noahclem]

Thanks for the lively feedback guys! In what is unfortunately starting to seem like the norm I'll have to get back to replies a little later as I now need to head to dinner. Replies done, at least for the previous update

Finally took an afternoon to work on SimCity stuff and got a couple things done that I've been trying to for a long time: a TIA version with sets/stones instead of asphalt and a version of the tram pavement more at home in an environment with those other fancier networks that still matches the color of the other tram pavement. For that I took the original pavement and tried to turn it into little pavers by running them through GIMP until I got something close to what I was after. I built up an area quick to display the new stuff (same area as last time ) but since it was a quick, disposable build there's a lot of stuff that could be done better: no plaza texture mod for these sidewalks, lots with props extending onto the roads, slope troubles, etc, etc--hope you don't mind

click for 1861x1770


Thanks for looking

EDIT--Comments are in!!

You've been very busy Noah! These look great, I love the cobbled tracks. The versions with the dark roads against the light-grey pavement look slightly odd to me though. It looks like there are gaping chasms either side of the tracks... maybe I just saw it that way and now I can't un-see it.

The ones you decide to drop look amazing btw 

Thanks! I see what you mean about that though it took me a minute to understand--maybe I won't be able to un-see it either   This new type of TIA eliminates that problem though it leaves a rather abrupt transition from the tram pavers and the sets which may or may not benefit from some kind of smoother transition. This basically just pushes the problem to the next network though, tram-in-avenue. I think it should be possible to make a really cool-looking transition where the asphalt starts covering the sets over a couple meters in a way that is often seen in RL where asphalt is laid over earlier stone and brick streets.

Noah, that is fantastic!! 

Nooooo.... oh Lord no HD RRW please!
Willy, making RRW in SD was the best thing you could have done.
HD would definitively expose any texture variations (new word : oldiefication) which are an integral part of the RRW look.
The sleepers and ballast noise is a must in order to achieve that degree of decay which emulates real life old tracks.

My two cents.

Nick

First, thanks!! Second, there's no alternate dimension in which RRW will ever be forcibly HD-ified. However, showing a degree of decay and the like is possible in HD too, though much more difficult, as everything else is with HD rails. Really doing RRW justice in HD would be a Herculean effort as my experience indicates each individual texture is at least an order of magnitude more difficult than a comparable SD one. But yeah, really no need to worry here, or for that matter for anyone else to be excited about possible HD RRW as I'd call it very unlikely to ever be achieved.

Exceptional work Noah. I don't think I've ever seen more appealing transit textures than the RLR.  Sorry for not fixing that station -- I can't replicate the bug, though.

Now, with regard to the HD RRW texture. This observation by APSMS is well-thought, but not entirely correct:

One of the benefits of Willy's textures is that the noise imparted by reducing the texture size to SD (after he presumably worked them at 256px) introduces sampling irregularities that make the sleepers (and to a small extent the ballast) appear used, uneven, and worn the way that most wood sleepers appear when traveling down the line. They also blend with the ballast at certain points, so that despite being drawn square like yours they still appear to be uneven. Some sleepers are shorter than others, and overall there is uncertainty in Willy's textures, while yours are "regular" and thus appear unnatural (at least, to me).

I made the textures originally in SD. The noise you see is because my sleepers have a degree of transparency, so that the ballast shows through. Which, combined with the varied pixelization of the ballast is actually a visual trick that makes the sleepers seem to lie in the ballast, rather than on top of it.




As for why I picked SD, I don't think it ever was a very public discussion. I had several pages worth of private messaging with Ron (rivit) before launching the public RRW thread--given that he was the only active rail developer at the time--and he made interesting observations regarding the number of sleepers, the contrast, and the effects of subtle differences in the texture on the entire network's shape and visibility from zooms higher up. I expect HD textures to expound on these issues. I'd like to see your texture in game, and at different angles (FA as well), to see what happens when you zoom out rather than in. It might be the image compression, but I think I can already see some of the game's HD rendering problems on the bridge in that z3 shot. Imagine having a railyard full of these, and you're quickly looking at a headache. (And despite my MD zooming in quite often, I've always been more of an overview guy.)

There are other reasons was well. I was already inconfident enough about RRW's adoption rate, with the scale change and potential difficulties with lot integration, that a switch to HD seemed too much. Plus I had (still have) a fear of HD creep. Your tram network will find a handsome ally in HD sidewalks and a range of HD BATs that exist for urban settings. However, with railways being a far more extensive network in rural and suburban settings, in my opinion it will often look to draw too much attention to its HDness next to mostly SD lots and textures. I love HD--you know that--but I hate the contrast with SD when both appear together.

And you've already found this out--HD accentuates every tiny error in the texture, and with rail textures already being very detailed in and of themselves, I had too big a task ahead of me to add to my troubles.

That's not to say a HD version can't look just as good or better, of course. But try to remember how big a job it is.


Cheers
Willy

(PS: Come to think of it, if you ever want to make a HD RRW mod, you could stick to replacing only the z5 textures. That way our rendering problem is already fixed.)

Thanks a lot Willy, I really appreciate the compliment! And of course, thanks for all your help with whatever I try to mod and end up breaking   We've had a chance to talk about it a decent amount now and I think understand our positions on the SD/HD thing--SD was definitely the right way to go for making RRW (despite my initial comments way back in the day) and playing with HD stuff is pretty fun, but only really as a novelty. Unless someone at some point gets extremely ambitious that it

I love your new textures, it'll be a great improvement for the game !

Thanks a lot! Hope you enjoy them whenever I'm finally able to make them available

These are looking quite amazing  . I really like the transitions between the cobblestone textures

Thanks a lot Matt, glad to see you here!

It looks really great Noah, though frankly I always imagined TiR/ToR would tie into the cobble stone roads. Given you're much more prolific with this project maybe I should send you some files. 

Thanks Erik! I'd guess you'd do a better job at this then me and I certainly wouldn't have a bad thing to say about your cobble stone roads. The main reason I actually started this set is that I got to a point in my city development that I really couldn't keep working around the TOS stuff and with your beautiful 512 multi-fshs to work with I figured I had the tools I needed to make a decent set. There's no reason not to make your own version though, which might be particularly useful since mine are made in a pretty specialized way that's geared more toward detail and the closest zooms than the mainstream user probably prefers. Anyway, whenever you want to start on it I'm happy to provide whatever rails you would find of use

And yes, please to the file lending

Love your GLR, the cobblestone textures are just fantastic. 

but not sure I want to stand and wait for a tram between the road and the tram tracks......

The people in your pictures stand way over on the 'yellow line'

That's what the railings are for, so you can hold on tight .

The issue is really that there is so little space to work with between the tram lines. I still think personally the platform should generally be in the middle though. That's by far and away the most typical type of tram stop I'm used too.

Thanks a lot Robin, though Erik's textures provide the best looking part of these, and I'm also building on c.p.'s and Willy's textures for the crosswalks and rail respectively, though when I converted the rails to HD they became only loosely based on the actual RRW rail fshs.

I agree with your point that having the platform in the middle seems the most common and realistic way to do it. Back, I think, before this discussion was split from the main NORO thread we went through a fairly thorough investigation of how best to do these and these actual stops are extremely similar to how they seem to be in Melbourne, which is loosely the model I'm using for this mod. Of course you already are familiar with most of that having followed this project forever but I'll direct the other concerned people this way   And, in late-breaking news, I think it could be possible to modify the texture slightly to increase the space for the peeps waiting on the rails by a handful of pictures: after converting to a baked in curb with the stone versions of the TIR and getting feedback from Willy, I've moved the curb slightly outward so that it covers the whole tile. With some ever-so-slight squeezing in every possible place I could probably widen the waiting area by almost .5m.

Love your GLR, the cobblestone textures are just fantastic. 

but not sure I want to stand and wait for a tram between the road and the tram tracks......

The people in your pictures stand way over on the 'yellow line'

That's what the railings are for, so you can hold on tight .

Yeah, I wanted to mention the same I think, in such situation, a waiting place should be simply on the sidewalk. Crossing one lane to board the tram should not be that problem

Thanks for commenting! I mentioned in the comment above the reason it's done the way it is here. Would be nice to add a small amount of space but from what I can see in Melbourne there's no significant change to lane width, etc.

The cobble stone textures and all looks great !!!......


but not sure I want to stand and wait for a tram between the road and the tram tracks......

The people in your pictures stand way over on the 'yellow line'




(if the train speed was just a bit to high, I think I would clink on to the rail in that picture )

.... and yes I know we talked about.....
.... and shine on You Crazy Diamond......

Thanks buddy   I answered the main part of the space/yellow line question two spots up to Robin, and the geometry for these is pretty closely and accurately based on stops in Melbourne. They probably wouldn't design new stops in such a cramped manner but that doesn't mean these types aren't around

Looks nice!

Thanks!

I agree with Simcoug, the rails and cobblestones look great

Thanks a lot! I love those textures of yours I've been using for the crosswalks and hope you don't mind me using them--I think they make for a really good-looking intersection

This is great!

Thanks Guglielmo!

I'm feeling really really enthusiastic with that!!! 

Thanks a lot, glad you like it! Could fit really well with the type of cities you've been making such nice bats for!

The tracks on vortext's cobblestones looks amazing!   

Thank you very much! Can't go wrong with vortext's work, just hope I do it justice

[Gugu3]

Good work on the textures Noah!I am liking it

[compdude787]

Looking better and better! I would certainly plan on using this stuff if I ever get around to building mass transit in my cities (I currently only have a very limited subway system) but for now, I'm way more interested in building freeways. In fact, my sims even regard me as the Robert Moses of Lamont, since I'm so obsessed with building only freeways!

[Themistokles]

Looks nice and the textures are wonderful Is this a complete texture replacement (for all roads/only TiR, ToR and/or ToS?) or something that can be used in a certain area only?

[vortext]

That's splendid indeed. 

[romualdillo]

Those textures look wonderful!! They match perfectly with that "old town" armosphere. Great work!! 

[Simmer2]

Well done Noah 

[Swordmaster]

Just get on with it, will ya?

All kidding aside, though. I've been fortunate enough to get a glimpse of some of these textures in the game, and I must say one quickly gets used to them. Now I can't really go back to the GLR as it is . (Sounds familiar?)

In fact, I was equally fortunate back in the day to see the first steps taken towards them, and even though they were good in their first iteration, they've been taken up many levels since. I really hope you get to finishing these in the relative short term, so that everyone can enjoy them.


Cheers
Willy

[noahclem]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Looks nice and the textures are wonderful Is this a complete texture replacement (for all roads/only TiR, ToR and/or ToS?) or something that can be used in a certain area only?

This work with vortext's textures is just meant for the networks that already have something similar (TOS & SAM) and the other networks that are the best candidates (TIR, TOR, OWR1, some forms of GLR) for now. Additional options would nice but I think other parts of the mod should be higher priority. These textures also take substantially more work than standard asphalt ones and the alignment of all the stones/sets is done as well as I reasonably can, especially when it comes to where the sets border the rails. For each texture/set of textures I do quite a bit of thinking and experimenting about how best to do them and usually bother people like Willy or Arthur for feedback on the unfinished versions--I spent most of today doing the roundabouts and the family of TOS textures involving the 45 degree turn and didn't even finish all the latter. To add insult to injury, after finishing the 45 degree TOS turn I realized I'd already made it once before  If no one else does them first though, I would like to eventually expand the stone textures based off vortext's work. And incidentally, I think Erik has at least a basic road set already made that romualdillo has been showing in his bat thread.

I guess I made most of my points already in what was supposed to be a quick reply to Themistokles   Will get back to thank the rest of you later   For today I wanted to show the TOS roundabout I made today.

[Simmer2]

Magnificent 

[reddonquixote]

Wow, that looks fantastic - great work 

[mgb204]

This just keeps getting better 

I wouldn't have a use for such textures myself, but here mixed in with Romaualdillo's bats everything is just so . Glad you are still pushing on with this project, it's a whole new level of quality for GLR.

[Gugu3]

Great stuff

[Vizoria]

Very pretty, you even lightened the curb in places to highlight the lowered curb at pedestrian crossings.

[art128]

Wonderful textures.

As I mentioned on Skype (Seems you missed it) I think it's more logical of the pavement texture between the rails stops at the start of the inner roundabout for grass. I would also not cut the ring of grey stones.

This is what I meant:

[kbieniu7]

Wow Fabolous...

[Simcoug]