Using TransDEM 2.5's new CDP for ground textures (TransDEM Ground Textures Orthoimagery 128 V1) I am able to get very acceptable "painting" of hi-rez orthoimagery on Trainz routes. I downloaded images from the Microsoft Virtual Earth Map Tile server set at Level 17.
Here is an image from the "satellite" view:
And here is the ground level resolution:
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Of course this assumes that hi-rez orthoimagery is available at that level for your project.
I have finished the route. It is 180 km long and the final route is 414 X 157 baseboards in size (at 5 m per baseboard). The route has a size of 380 Megs. The amount of detail on the route is amazing as you can see in the previous post. This would probably not have been possible without the 64 bit version of TransDEM. I also have a "serious" gaming computer that helps!
Thank you Roland for the latest version of TransDEM! It allows for much more detailed "painting" of Trainz routes.
geophil wrote:Derek, do you replace the otho-photo ground textures with your own or leave them as they are to save a lot of work?
Hi Roland:
I will probably use ground textures near the track but keep the ortho-photo textures in the near to far distance.
Unfortunately this route is rather flat land in Montana, US. Sometime I will try a test in a more mountainous region to see what the mid to far distance looks like. I believe that you have made it possible to revolutionize the way that Trainz routes may be done, certainly where high-resolution ortho-images are available. If you do not mind I might post a description of this to the Surveyors section in the Trainz Forums. Other route authors might find this interesting. Let me know if that is OK.
Derekc75 wrote:If you do not mind I might post a description of this to the Surveyors section in the Trainz Forums. Other route authors might find this interesting.
Go ahead!
One small point: The term "hi-res" maybe relative here. We still have only 1 pixel per 5m (with the 5m terrain grid in Trainz). But the new texture set will create a much more natural reproduction of aerial image colours. That was the intention. The original TransDEM ground texture set (with grid) is optimized for topo maps and will give rather poor results when used with ortho-photos. The idea was that with the new 3D UTM tiles the route builder could use the UTM tiles as the route building aid instead of the ground textures, making the latter available for ortho-image texturing.
One small point: The term "hi-res" maybe relative here. We still have only 1 pixel per 5m (with the 5m terrain grid in Trainz). But the new texture set will create a much more natural reproduction of aerial image colours. That was the intention. The original TransDEM ground texture set (with grid) is optimized for topo maps and will give rather poor results when used with ortho-photos. The idea was that with the new 3D UTM tiles the route builder could use the UTM tiles as the route building aid instead of the ground textures, making the latter available for ortho-image texturing.
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