Railworks America

Is there an advantage, in terms of impact on frame rates, of using ground textures rather than road lofts for a route with LOTS of roads?

I'd prefer to use road lofts quite often, but not if it's going to make the route too burdensome for a typical computer. I just don't have a feel for how much a loft adds to that burden.

What do you mean "Lots of roads."? Is it a cityscape? Or something else?

A great number of road lofts in a scene shouldn't cause any issues. The orange and apple groves on my Tehachapi Pass route are set up as roads, and some scenes have hundreds of rows without hassle, with the only hit to FPS being from the alpha on the trees themselves.

Besides which, using the brushes in TS are akin to painting with a wet noodle and will never look as good as a object loft.

Now I'm tempted to paint with a wet noodle.

Thanks for the info. I guess I'll try lofts then closeup,perhaps within a block of the track, then see what it looks like with ground textures farther away.

Yes, cityscape for the most part. Centered on downtown Fort Worth.

Since when I'm making scenery and doing a town I always lay out the roads before doing anything else I have found almost no loss of frame rates from the road lofts. I have always used Scale Rail roads on my stuff.

Good, thanks, it does look much better with lofts. It's too homogeneous with ground textures.