New Vegitation pack from AP

[AmericanSteam]

https://www.armstrongpowerhouse.com/vegetation_enhancement_pack

Browse through the information on the AP site. Nice looking stuff. About $19.00 US.
On installation these assets will replace existing vegetation in several British routes. Read the manual and protect those routes if you do not want to change those assets.
These assets will show in the editor to apply to any other route.

[Boss1]

There is a thread over at the DTG forums and the screenshots look great. Will definitely pick this pack up soon along with their new sky and cloud pack.

[ENR3005]

I was really excited to grab these as I have been waiting for something exactly like this to be available. I have been playing around with the pack for the last two days, test replacing assets in my route which are heavy with DTG 3D trees but done in a way not to kill performance or reliability. These are beautifully detailed trees (almost looks like they were made from SpeedTree packs) that I really want to use but they are unusable when replaced on a 1 for 1 basis in my own route at this time even when using the least complex trees provided within the pack. Unfortunately using this pack is breaking the game with memory errors. I adjusted the tree density in track side forest regions from my default DTG settings to 1/5th the original amount with little change and the errors continuing after brief runs of a train which stuttered it's way through the new forest lines and I am still trying to get to the bottom of with further experimentation. I use a pretty high end system so it is not a hardware issue. Quite simply I do not believe the game engine is currently designed for complex trees like this on a large scale and I may have to wait to for further tweaks to the game engine by DTG or further performance tweaks by the provider before I can make use of them. Used more sparingly like in the default DTG routes these appear to run fairly well and folks shouldn't be discouraged from getting them to improve the looks of the default routes, they are just not yet a fit for those of us needing replace lots of default 3D trees on our own custom routes.

[buzz456]

I haven't used these yet but just a quick question. Are you putting them in as a irregular block? That way the game is only loading one object and is much easier on frame rates. Forgive me if you already know about that.

[ENR3005]

I haven't used these yet but just a quick question. Are you putting them in as a irregular block? That way the game is only loading one object and is much easier on frame rates. Forgive me if you already know about that.

Yes the line side stuff is in both regular and irregular blocks. Still experimenting to see if I can do anything else.

[ENR3005]

Here are some screenshots of my efforts after experimenting the past few days. My existing 3D tree asset blocks seem to be useless throughout the route when trying to reuse them with the new 3D objects swapped out by TSTools. Placing items as groups and individually along with a select few in new asset blocks has yielded much better results per the screen shots below. Still experimenting but the new trees do look good.

[ENR3005]

I think I figured out what has happened and why I can't easily swap these with the DTG trees and it keeps crashing the sim. I now suspect the problem is not necessarily with the new AP tree pack and I have a asset block somewhere along my route where it may have been accidentally over populated with 3D trees in someway despite my rigorous efforts to avoid such an error in the past. I have learned in the past that the mouse scroll button can be deadly while route editing, accidentally changing the object type in a asset block from a 2D to 3D object when moving. Let's say instead of 15,000 for a normal 3D tree block, it might be 150,000 or 500,000 depending on the accidental change of the original object, enough to bottleneck things and crash the sim with the higher memory usage of the new pack when replaced on a 1 for 1 basis for each object. To test this theory, I converted all the existing DTG to 2D trees and then I added in the 3D pack manually along the route, in some of the most dense tiles such as tiles with major yards and cities to test my theory. All now seems to be functioning fine, even populated with rolling stock and trains. The larger problem is I just don't know where the problem is on a 136 miles of right of way, so I am now editing each tile manually with the editor and TS Tools and testing the route as I go till I find the offending tile. Long story short, my issue appears to be fixable with some in depth work and this pack greatly enhances the look of my route, enough to warrant my efforts.

[Boss1]

Thanks for the update. I was holding off on purchasing the pack, but now I will.

[ENR3005]

So I recently spent several weeks editing in these new trees only to find another serious problem with massive tile loading lag on a few tiles which I do not have with the default DTG assets. In the route editor while editing the most offending tile I noted that number of Prims noted (short for primitives, rendered triangles basically) have shot up to over 34 million from 9 million when DTGs 3D trees are replaced on a 1 for 1 basis. From what I can tell thus far, the massive increase in number relates to LODs (Level of Detail at specific viewing distances) not being optimized enough with the tree shapes themselves and need further modification to optimize the LODs like their DTG counterparts. For now I can't use these trees in the numbers I want to like DTG's assets and have reverted back to DTG's trees. Until either the shapes are modified or the game engine is improved to prevent tile loading lag with such complex shapes, it has become necessary to shelve these for the time being. These are a glimpse into the future of what can be done with the Sim and I truly hope they are tweaked further by the creator to allow use of them again at some point in the future.

[Boss1]

Thanks for the info. It might not be a bad idea to send AP an email explaining this to them. Maybe they can better optimize the trees. Am glad that I did not purchase them yet.

[AmericanSteam]

I have been using these mostly for spot fillers instead of major substitutions. I am happy with the results.

[trev123]

I followed the instructions in the manual which shows you how to use this pack on your routes. I don't create routes etc but as I said I followed the instructions in the manual and tried it on the Saluda Grade. I don't think it worked as I cannot see any difference.

[ENR3005]

Thanks for the info. It might not be a bad idea to send AP an email explaining this to them. Maybe they can better optimize the trees. Am glad that I did not purchase them yet.

It would appear they are already aware of this this complaint from what I have seen on other forums. Hopefully something is in the works, they have already updated the package once. I can somewhat fix it myself using TS Tools from my experimentation but the fix would be useless to others as I cannot redistribute the shape files and explaining that folks would need to edit 30 or so shape files before loading a route would be a bit too much ask. My route has been built modular so I can substitute shape files (30 minutes of TS Tool editing allowed me to convert back to default shapes) whenever I feel I want to convert something.

[ENR3005]

I followed the instructions in the manual which shows you how to use this pack on your routes. I don't create routes etc but as I said I followed the instructions in the manual and tried it on the Saluda Grade. I don't think it worked as I cannot see any difference.

You need to substitute the shapes manually using TS Tools which is not hard to do, there is no conversion done by them for any US route. Just make a backup of the route in case you mess up with your editing and start replacing the default shape files with the AP ones in TS Tools. Be sure to do testing and further backups along the way to make sure you are happy with the results as it can be challenging to convert a route. In doing such a conversion I usually start the process by going into the route editor, picking a blank tile and placing all the default shapes I want to replace on that tile in a line. I then do a parallel line of the replacement shapes I want to use beside each object. This setup serves as a check of your TS Tool editing. If you succeeded, the original shape will now match the new shape (AP) you placed beside it exactly. If it has not changed or is a different shape all together you know you made a mistake and need to start again.