Class 754 - Brejlovec

Hello everyone,

I have made a decision that despite I have been offered a cooperation on a Brejlovec 3D cab, I am going to finish mine 2D, that was already in progress before, off. there are two reasons for this - firstly I don't know when the eventual 3D cab would be available and secondly, there is currently no suitable cab for 754 to run in open BVE. The old cab gives an error...
Also, the external will be updated with a few animations and there is a poll on this Brejlovec subject on brnobve.net. You might want to visit the place.

See the screens of current progress below:

Nice work Dexter.

Re poll - voted for a change. For me, it just needs to be a little bit more 'side-on'. From the pics I've seen, it looks like you can see the windscreen wipers on the side cab windows. Apart from that - great!

Hi Dexter,

Apart from sitting on the wrong side (lol), it looks great to me. I spend a lot of time up front in trains as part of my job and most of the time you look straight out front, therefore the ability to look around the cab in 3D is nice but not essential. If a cab is laid out right the Driver does not need to look around to find things, as all they need to operate is easily within their view or reach.

I say it looks great but if someone would like to make a 3D for you then give them the opportunity, it doesn't mean you have to incorporate it if your not happy with it. I am all for us getting together and make use of our talents and hence producing a better end product in a shorter time frame.

Bye for now,

Stephen.

Hello everyone,

a new journal entry has been posted n my website today - there is an inquiry on further development of this loco. Please take a few seconds to vote.

D.

Interesting question there Dexter - I haven't answered, as I can see both points clearly:

Releasing it as a beta will satisfy some people. I see SteveGR has released his Class 56 external whilst still a WIP.

I can also see people not reading it properly and pointing out things left off. That would be my main worry.

Re the smoke effect - that would be interesting to see. Would help to push the game forward a bit! Must carry on with my autoballasters - got plenty of shots!

I have seen the smoke coming out of Chris Lees' steam engine, so I might give that a try as well. The questions is how to make the smoke semi-transparent...

If a beta was released, I would point out what will be worked on.

While I of course don't know the CD class 754, I'd like to point out, that normally you don't see nearly no smoke in diesel vehicles, only thermic turbulencies ("flickering air"). The only situation, when smoke is visible, is when the engine is started cold (depending on modernity between few seconds and several minutes, check videos on older british diesel locos, those are real dirt bombs...) and in some classes if running under maximum load.

Quork - quite often here you can see smoke coming out of exhausts - even on modern Class 22000's - I often go to my local station and see class 201's and 22000's regularly producing smoke - not a lot, but quite clear

Quork: I know, but this loco, when starting movement from zero, pulls off a cloud of smoke and the produces only those thermal turbulencies. That is something I am thinking about right now.

Might be related to different ecological standards on the continent and in the UK... We have many of your class 66's 'round here, they're very popular among private railway companies. They too are... let's say... though, on the other hand, let's better not say anything. German diesel locos on the other hand, modern as well as modernized old ones, are equipped with very good filtering, resulting in the exhaust gas being virtually pure CO₂, meaning you don't see no smoke.

@ Dex - ah okay, well if it does, it would be great if it could be modelled as well.

There is now a video of Brejlovec on BrnoBVE Website!

Dexter wrote:I have seen the smoke coming out of Chris Lees' steam engine, so I might give that a try as well. The questions is how to make the smoke semi-transparent...

If a beta was released, I would point out what will be worked on.

Easy
Either use a PNG with alpha channel transparency, or add the optional fourth paramater to your transparency declaration like so:

Code:

Transparent 0,0,255, ALPHA

Alpha should be a number between 0 (Opaque other than anything keyed on the color) and 255 (Completely transparent)

Someone will correct me in a moment, but I'm sure that the fourth transparency paramater has been there since at least BVE4!

The real issue isn't semi-transparency, it's making good looking smoke that behaves in a realistic manner, as nothing at present is really setup to handle smoke generation as a functional relation to engine activity.
We can access power notch state, RPM/ power depending on the plugin and relative direction & speed, but you've got to shoehorn this into a combination of both state and transform functions to make it actually work
This is the code that makes the funnel smoke work on the 81xx:

Code:

[Object]
States =  funnel1.b3d, funnel2.b3d, funnel6.b3d, funnel5.b3d, funnel4.b3d, funnel3.b3d
Position = 0,0,-6.34
StateFunction = If [powerNotch >0, if [speed >-1 & speed <1,1, if [speed <-1,3,4]],if [speed >-1 & speed <1,0, if [speed <-1,2,5]]]
TextureShiftYDirection = 0, -1
TextureShiftYFunction = if[speed <=-15,0.8,if[speed <=-5,0.4,if[speed <=-1,0.2,if[speed <=1,0.1,if[speed <=5,0.2,if[speed <=15,0.4,0.8]]]]]] * time

That took a while to figure out properly

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Argh! I got logged out while writing a lengthy response... Damned, now the text's gone... Well let's cut it short, don't have the nerve to research it all over: It's not relevant for the "nationality" of an engine, where the producer's headquarter is; what's important is for which market it was developed. And while TSI ("Technical Specifications for Interoperability in railway traffic) norms are leading to a unification of norms in the EU, there still is a looong way to go. Railway vehicles, which are really sold in different european countries, are a very new phenomenon, not even 10 years old, with very few exceptions of national classes being adopted by another country (the most notable example being SBB class Re460, adopted by Norway as NSB class El18 and by Finland as VR class Sr2). Even platform solutions, the biggest ones being Bombardier's TRAXX and Siemens' EuroSprinter, have only been present for few years on the market. So still, most railway vehicles are very nationally impacted by both specifications from the buyer and specifications by the buyer's country's railway agency. That's why while Bombardier is a canadian company, their elegant double deck coaches are definitely european (originally german, in the meantime also danish, polish and even israeli) (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/DBpza_rdgost.jpg) while they produce clumsy looking, *ahem* aerodynamic "Bombardier MultiLevel" coaches for the northern american market (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/NJ_Transit_Multilevel_7014_on_Train_6651.jpg).

leezer3 wrote:

Dexter wrote:I have seen the smoke coming out of Chris Lees' steam engine, so I might give that a try as well. The questions is how to make the smoke semi-transparent...

If a beta was released, I would point out what will be worked on.

Easy
Either use a PNG with alpha channel transparency, or add the optional fourth paramater to your transparency declaration like so:

Code:

Transparent 0,0,255, ALPHA

Alpha should be a number between 0 (Opaque other than anything keyed on the color) and 255 (Completely transparent)

Someone will correct me in a moment, but I'm sure that the fourth transparency paramater has been there since at least BVE4!

The real issue isn't semi-transparency, it's making good looking smoke that behaves in a realistic manner, as nothing at present is really setup to handle smoke generation as a functional relation to engine activity.
We can access power notch state, RPM/ power depending on the plugin and relative direction & speed, but you've got to shoehorn this into a combination of both state and transform functions to make it actually work
This is the code that makes the funnel smoke work on the 81xx:

Code:

[Object]
States = funnel1.b3d, funnel2.b3d, funnel6.b3d, funnel5.b3d, funnel4.b3d, funnel3.b3d
Position = 0,0,-6.34
StateFunction = If [powerNotch >0, if [speed >-1 & speed <1,1, if [speed <-1,3,4]],if [speed >-1 & speed <1,0, if [speed <-1,2,5]]]
TextureShiftYDirection = 0, -1
TextureShiftYFunction = if[speed <=-15,0.8,if[speed <=-5,0.4,if[speed <=-1,0.2,if[speed <=1,0.1,if[speed <=5,0.2,if[speed <=15,0.4,0.8]]]]]] * time

That took a while to figure out properly

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk[/quote]

Thank you for that, Sir, I will take a closer look at the formulas.

I do of course know about the alpha parameter (I am using it in my objects) and I have also tried the transparency within a *.png texture. The *.png texturte, however, is not behaving correctly on all ocassinos; it flickers and if you put two of these objects next to each other, they actually interfere in a strange way (e.g. you cannot see the closer one, only the further one). I am using the latest nVidia driver.

So, (forgive me if I am being dumb here) is there any way on how to make a texture semi-transparent? Which means you can actually see through the physical smoke itself?

And for everyone - they really DO know how to make the air fresh and nice to breathe. This is not neccessarily a cold start.

No, there's nothing you can do about the PNG flickering without a fix in the OpenBVE graphics engine
There was a technical discussion about this in the closed forums, but in essence, there's a Z-sorting issue when alpha channels are involved, and an extra layer of calculations is needed, which never got implemented.

I must admit to an error- I meant adding the alpha parameter to a color (Not transparent color) statement.
So:

Code:

Color 255,255,255

This in effect gives you an object identical to one without the color statement.
Now, add the fourth paramater ALPHA:

Code:

Color 255,255,255,110

This should give you a semi-transparent object. To quote the original documentation:

Color Red, Green, Blue, Alpha

Red: The red component of the color. Measured from 0 (black) to 255 (red). The default value is 255. Green: The green component of the color. Measured from 0 (black) to 255 (green). The default value is 255. Blue: The blue component of the color. Measured from 0 (black) to 255 (blue). The default value is 255. Alpha: The alpha component of the color. Measured from 0 (transparent) to 255 (opaque). The default value is 255.

This command sets the color for all faces that were already created in
the current [MeshBuilder] section. If no texture is used, the faces will
be colored using the color data as specified by Red, Green and Blue.
If a texture is used, the pixels in the texture will be multiplied by
the color, where multiplying with black results in black and multiplying
with white does not change the color of the texture pixels. Values
in-between make the texture pixels darker. When lighting is used in the
route, the actual color can change depending on the lighting conditions,
but will usually become darker.

That help at all?

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Yes Chris, that helped a lot. Looks like I need to review my reading capabilities.
Thanks!