Brno BVE Website

What will your wife say.?

I imagine something approximating to, "Hand over the money"

Then she's a lady who has definitely got her priorities right.....!

Some more progress has been done. Firstly, let me say I finally learned how to make Photoshop do what I want and (surprise surprise), the results seem visually OK. The first outcome will be a fotball training pitch - it is almost complete.
Pic 1: Changing rooms and benches
Pic 2: Net with fencing to keep the ball close to the pitch (specially talented guys need this, trust me. )
Pic 3: Some HQ fencing.
Pic 4: Water collector on the side of the pitch.

As always, any opinion is welcome.

Last update on the route. I managed to modify the bench on the training pitch, as the previous one looked a bit odd.

Hi Dexter,

I look at the work produce by others including yourself and I cannot even hope to get near the quality of the objects you guys create.

My forte is trackwork and hopefully making the lines flow. I see lots of objects out there that I would gladly include in routes I hope to produce in the future.

So don't give up, as you are one of the few that are producing anything for BVE / OpenBVE today. Lots of talk going on, though it has been a bit quiet of late but little on the way of quality products.

Bye for now,

Stephen.

Don't despair, there's not much activity on any of the boards right now. None of us are inundated with comments, it's normal.

Nice detailing, by the way! My efforts in the football department amounted to a pair of goalposts Then again, I'm no sports fan!

No, you shouldn't definitely quit! Feedback is rare, that's true, but, just like Graymac says, I can't really see much feedback anywhere to any project. You can still be sure your route is appreciated by everyone! I'll also be happy to download and run it as soon as I have my new PC up and running (only missing a desk, a monitor and a keyboard...).

Don't despair =)

OK, here's the "Philosophy Corner" . . . .

It's usually necessary to have a reason to spend what amounts to a lot of time and effort on any sort of project or pastime. Frequently we find that the prime reason is the pleasure and/or enjoyment which results from the completion of the task. This requires no feedback or involvement of other parties (at least at a basic level) as the participant is working for his or her self satisfaction.

Once the need is felt to require comments, justification, appreciation or condemnation (the whole range) in order to make the task fulfilling then it is time to ask whether you have, in reality, better things to do with your time. It's a bridge to be crossed and once over that bridge the whole thing looks very different. If your expectations are not met then you will not be content as you might have been in the past.

You're asking the right questions, however only you can find the answers in your own mind. Plus, your life priorities are certainly different than they were a year ago, which matters greatly. That's your call too!

Never gets easier, does it?

i took BVE off my computer a while back to clear space but i still come back to have a look regularly and your route is something i'd love to have but my computer won't let me. (budget option, 5 years old, full of crap, only 1/2 gig ram).

it's only this, graymac, NWM, plus a couple of others that keep me interested.

I have managed to improve the riverflow animation... the colors are a it weird after uploading to YouTube...

The water looks wet enough LOL - YouTube video compression will probably f*** the colors up. The game screen may be as good as 16 bits per color but the movie won't be, unless you go for enormous HD files, which which are too big to mess with.
Have you tried using heavily optimised pngs with reduced colors* in the object files? As well as reducing file size it sometimes adds texture and may even give a stronger impression of movement.

*similar to using "index color" in bmps

they in fact are *.png textures, Gray. No alpha channel, though. That would mess the animation up...

Yes, but pngs can have reduced color depth, even more so if there's no alpha channel, it can significantly reduce the file sizes thereby improving efficiency. A good pic editor will allow you to optimise to balance pic quality with smallest file size.

it could help save some space, but is it worth the quality costs?

This is where a deal of judgement and wisdom comes into the job. You need to try reducing the image resolution/bit depth and see the result. Will a 256 x 256 texture look OK instead of a 512 x 512? Or even smaller?? Must i use 24bit? Or will lesser quality look OK??
If its a "close up" object it probably needs the extra res/bit depth. But a lot of stuff you can get away with amazingly poor textures and it still looks good playing on screen. Objects further away from the track can be surprisingly crap and STILL work!

Please, don't ask me how I know

As for "quality costs" - I don't hear too many folks kvetching about the stuff I've done, but IF some of my files were bigger, better and SLOWER - then I am sure I would hear about it quickly enough!!

*g* Yepp, people often forget, how small objects can be on a computer screen. Many of the objects don't get bigger than e.g. 16px in height.

So, finally, after years, I'm able to drive your route at last, having a desktop-PC now. In FullHD on a 19" display I can, at last, really appreciate your work. Really great route!!!

1.5GB RAM (will become more), GeForce 210 graphics, 2.4GHz Pentium 4 CPU. At 1000m sight I was getting something around an average of something about 40 FPS. I'll have a better look tonight, I didn't watch FPS closely, I was just happy it was going fluently =)

Hello everyone,

I have managed to take two new snapshots from my route. You can see the pictures below, but I would also like you to pay a visit to my webpage, as there is some more information provided.

Thank you.

Two more screens available now - comments and suggestions will be appreciated!

The inner walls of the swimming pool could need some toning. I'd suggest something along those lines:
- part above the water line at 100% of current light
- sharp-edged change to 90% of current light at water line
- gradient from 90% at water line to 60% or 50% at the bottom.
Would add depth to the water.

And your tree- and bushwork shows how much OpenBVE is missing a position randomisation for periodic objects (wall etc.). If the trees and bushes didn't stand that regularily it would add to realism very much. In older routes it doesn't matter that much, but in modern high-end products like Brno, St. Julien or CTS routes it often is the only remaining thing to instantly destroy the illusion of a photograph. But there's nothing you could do about that, I fear, as positioning the trees one by one by hand isn't an option for sure...

graymac wrote:

it could help save some space, but is it worth the quality costs?

If its a "close up" object it probably needs the extra res/bit depth. But a lot of stuff you can get away with amazingly poor textures and it still looks good playing on screen. Objects further away from the track can be surprisingly crap and STILL work!

Some rendering engines, have an LOD option, meaning you can set a tolerance for how detailed things are at certain distances..

To add LOD detailing in OpenBVE would need an engine tweak...