Three Rivers Region

[Jmouse]

No, don't think I have it, but if you'll point me in the right direction I'll try and find out.

Later...
Jms

[threestooges]

I believe David fiddled with the thing back when he first started on the topographic maps back here. Open the cheat text box (crtl-x if I recall) and type terrainquery to turn your mouse into a query tool for the xyz axes of the game (y being height). Just measure the top of the hill and subtract from the value at the bottom and that should be the resulting height in meters. If anyone sees a gap in my instructions, please let me know or post it below, but that should be all you need to do, and typing terrainquery again will turn the feature off.

[Shadow Assassin]

Very nice work on the FAR, testers.

David, I like the Pine Cone map, but there's one thing I have to call in question, and that's the height of the benchmark. If I'm reading it right, that benchmark is 329m above the plane of reference. What is the plane of reference (datum) in this case? In real life, it'd be the mean sea level, meaning the BM would be more accurately written as 74m (329-255). I don't know what datum 3RR would use, but I naturally would assume mean sea level would be used (Australia uses mean sea level as its datum). Luckily, in SC4, it's a consistent 255m, so wouldn't it be more realistic to use that as the datum?

I'm sorry, but I couldn't help myself, after all, I'm doing engineering at university, and this is one of those things I learn.


EDIT:  Daniel- no worries!  The plane of reference, which I have set arbitrarily equal to the "game" water level of 250m (which was my understanding from long ago- I may be wrong, but I won't fribble over the five meters) is the mean surface elevation: 322 meters, of Lake of the Woods [linkie].



So every raw "y" elevation I take from a quad has 72 meters added to it to localize it to the 3RR datum.  Thanks for letting me address this interesting (to me, at least) point. -DE

[Doctor Soul]

Question/suggestion: on the abandoned nike site, it might be nice to have some ruins of warehouses and bunkers, and maybe also an abandoned railway track. Speaking of which, is anybody modelling abandoned railroad tracks?

Sam

EDIT: So I have another question: Doesn't 3RR have any cattle in it? Or is the climate unsuitable for cattle?

[bat]

Very great testing there again! And wonderful pictures of it!!!

[Swamper77]

-Swamper: Now that it a good piece of information to know and makes perfect sense. So does that mean all puzzle pieces must be rectangular, or is that just to accommodate the necessary textures (not to suggest anything for this project, but just for my own knowledge)?

The puzzle pieces are composed of square tiles, but the graphics/models do not necessarily have to cover all the space that is used by the puzzle pieces. The tiles can be arranged in various shapes for the puzzle pieces, but they will still be "blocky" in the amount of space they occupy. The images/models are just a visual representation of what that section of roadway should look like, but all the tiles will still be square.

-Swamper

[thundercrack83]

Here's the disappearing ghost that comes up when building on slopes...

As my fellow testers have pointed out, terraforming of the slope is essential for getting the pieces to line up.

And, I thought I'd share a few more "look what the FAR can do!"--shots, some featuring flora by Chrisadams3997 from his Rural Renewal Project...

Enjoy!

Dustin

[dedgren]

Just passin' through...



...oops... where'd that come from?


David

79137

[threestooges]

Heh heh... I knew it was just a matter of time before something new like this popped up. Again, when the time comes for these, you have at least one tester ready and willing. It'll be interesting to see how many intersection variations this can create (especially road-rail crossings). It looks like quite a project, but from testing, the results will be worth it.
-Matt

[thundercrack83]

Make that two testers, David!

This just keeps getting better and better!

[debutterfly]

make it three...it would be awesome of accuracy of my remake of Indianapolis (exactly to scale road-wise and rail-wise).  There should be a Fractional Angle... Thread on the NAM.  Think of the future FA(insert NAM acronym here). 

[bwatterud]

So now we have FARR as well!  Very nice work there. 

[dedgren]

Getting back to 3RR for a minute, here's Haystack Rock.



A pic of the rock from the past.



And one taken yesterday.



* * *

on the abandoned nike site, it might be nice to have some ruins of warehouses and bunkers, and maybe also an abandoned railway track

Sam (Doctor Soul), the quad's Planner/Administrator will be making those decisions- I send 'em out generic and the rest is up to him or her.

I will say that, as an ex-Nike-Herc guy, there wouldn't be a whole lot above-ground after almost 50 years (the last N-H bases in CONUS (continental U.S.)- they were deployed in Alaska into the 70s- were gone by the 60s) left to see.  Concrete pads, maybe a stand for a HIPAR (the big white golf ball kind) radar.  The rest wouldn't leave much of a visible trace.  I'm not aware of any sites that had rail lines associated with them.  Ed Thelen has an amazing website devoted to all things Nike-Herc here [linkie] and if anyone would know differently, he would.

As for doing an abandoned RR track with textures, though- that's an excellent idea in general.  I'll put that in the to-do stack...

...as soon as I can get out the ladder... just kidding.

I'll note that Owen (Yoman) has done some amazing Nike-Herc batting.  There's a pic he posted about 30 pages back- I'll track it down.

* * *

We'll hit 80,000 page views sometime Friday morning Alaska time (GMT-9).  We're also less than 1,000 away from 60,000 at 3RR-ST [linkie] (you might remember that each reached 50,000 page views with a few days of the other just this past January).  3RR Regulars^*, you are the best!

Later.


David

^*  A 3RR Regular, be assured, remains anyone who has ever posted here or at 3RR-ST at least once.  By gosh, there are a lot of you folks!

79233

[Pat]

David is that FAR_RR wow!!! Love Haystack Rock also and soo there is a talk of abandoned RR track texture as well nice!!!  I think you should talk with Toichus Maxius about having some track work, with some trains on it....⁷⁹²⁶¹

[BigSlark]

FARR is coming soon! Hooray! A whole new range of mountainous railways will soon be upon us!

And yes, I too must report the disappointing slope ghost with FAR. It makes for some interesting construction, to put it mildly.

Haystack Rock is looking great, I'd love to camp up there on an early summer's night.

Cheers,
Kevin

[thundercrack83]

Haystack Rock looks beautiful, David!

Boy, 3RR is such a scenic place!

Dustin

[etherian]

To see FAR coming to Railway is indeed exciting! But the main reason for this post is of course, FAR.


I wanted to get answers to my questions about FAR's mountaineering ability and where it fits in with the NAM road pieces - how best I can utilize them all together.

Although difficult to place down due to the already mentioned "disappearing ghost", the straight pieces actually help in smoothing out small gradient slopes. The only problem is that shadows formed by the terrain does not show up properly on FAR - see image below.



As you can see, FAR seems to be sitting "on top" of the shadow, this seems to occur at all zoom levels.


The following shows how seamless FAR really is, and by *erhmmm* far, a much more realistic way for creating winding roads and climbing mountains!






Check out 3RR over at ST for a mosaic


Kin

[superhands]

here is the testing ive done so far, RL is going to take up most of the rest of the week.

[girlfromverona]

Holy curved railway tracks, Batman! Now that's something I've been wanting for a while. 

P.S. Shots of my experiments with the FAR (road version) are coming - I've just spent the last couple of days rebuilding my PC...

[Cosmic]

Wow, yet another step towards making Sim City 4 more like what Sim City 5 might be! This is great!

(If Sim City 5 ever comes, that is.. )

Cool pictures, I'm looking forward to more!