Railworks America

What's a good rule of thumb for how many tiles out you should do the most detail work? Obviously I'm going to do the roads, trees, factories, etc. that exist immediately trackside, but how much more is typical?

As far as you can see from the cab.

As far as you can see from camera 2 about 100 ft above the engine

From loco cab view to 250m, use high detail and lots of clutter. From 250m and still within 1 tile (1000m), use fair to decent amount of detail. Beyond 1 tile length, use basic block shapes for buildings, few roads, and lots of trees to imply detail beyond your line of sight. I find it fairly simple to create and convert line markers from Google Earth to use as a guide within the world editor.

I'm probably just lazy but my philosophy has been if you can't see it from the cab why waste the time placing it and the memory storing it? That's how I'm building my route but it will also be free so I'm allowed to lower my standards

dfcfu342 wrote:I'm probably just lazy but my philosophy has been if you can't see it from the cab why waste the time placing it and the memory storing it? That's how I'm building my route but it will also be free so I'm allowed to lower my standards

Well, that's certainly your prerogative, but by following this practice it seems to me that you are blatantly ignoring the fact that most players do not always remain in the cab. I, for one, would not bother to install a route such as you are planning or, if I installed it without knowing your policy, would quickly remove it.

This.

The problem with staying in the cab is the in-cab cameras aren't movable.
A real engineer moves his head, can come closer to the window if needed, can look around the window frame.

The view from the cab in RW is so restricted that I immediately feel claustrophobic and often switch to head-out and aerial cameras.

Old Prof wrote:

dfcfu342 wrote:I'm probably just lazy but my philosophy has been if you can't see it from the cab why waste the time placing it and the memory storing it? That's how I'm building my route but it will also be free so I'm allowed to lower my standards

Well, that's certainly your prerogative, but by following this practice it seems to me that you are blatantly ignoring the fact that most players do not always remain in the cab. I, for one, would not bother to install a route such as you are planning or, if I installed it without knowing your policy, would quickly remove it.

I do not remain in the cab all the time either; trackside and flying are some of my frequent haunts and to insinuate that I'm blatently ignoring the majority of the TS population is a bit harsh considering how much you know about me, no?

I suppose if I further qualified that my route is essentially flat and lined both sides with mile after mile of tall pine trees may give you a better idea of the reasoning behind my thinking. You can only plant so many pine and oak trees before you begin to twitch and mutter odd sentences under your breath about nothing in particular.

How long is a piece of string?

Much will depend on the topography of the terrain your route runs through, the type of operations you plan on recreating on the route and whether you intend the route to be driven from inside the cab or from one of the external views, or a combination of viewpoints.

My own rule of thumb is that no unadorned terrain should be visible from the usual driving POV. So a high density urban commuter line running frequently through tunnels and cuttings and where you are likely to drive predominately from the cab would have a much lower depth of scenery than a long haul route through largely open countryside where you have much more time to switch to an external viewpoint and look around.