Relaunch of Cityrail 2010 Project
Construction Note 577:
The project was almost lost in late
March......well perhaps not lost but severly damaged. After my last post I
discovered that after I had loaded the project into TRS2009 that I was
missing entire sections of the project plus at least 18 months of gmax models I
had created. The Blue Mountains and Central Coast were completely
missing.
To try and recover the project, I had to restore one backup set
after the next, each one missing the sections. It looked like my backups were of
data at least 18 months old....if not older.
Finally after many weeks I managed to find a backup I
could salvage and I have recovered about 98% to 99% of cityrail2010.
The Blue Mountains are back....... the Central Coast is back..... all my
models are back.
Hopefully this relaunch of Cityrail 2010 will be more
successful. Development continues today.
Watch for the next post
tomorrow.
Gmax.... Where to resume?
Construction Note 576:
After so much time away from the project, I
know without a doubt that it will be a little diffacult to remember exactly how
to do things in Gmax. Gmax is not that complicated once you get to know it, but
if you don't use it for a while you can forget some of the more complex
steps.
Being Sunday today I will spend the day becoming acquainted
again with Gmax so I don't have to waste time later on trying to remember how to
shape an object, attach meshes or a number of other possibilities.
During
my absence in the blog a number of people have asked about when Cityrail 2010
will be available and how it will be available.
Since I am still developing this project, and there
being still a lot to do on it, I still have no idea when it will be released.
But as the title shows, it is more likely to be 2010 at least and not 2009.
Models are being created using Google streetView to give a good representation
of each area of Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Central Coast. So when you
drive through an area in Cityrail 2010, you should recognize each of the suburbs
you go through.
When it is available the news will be released here first
and then on other sites around the Internet, such as on the Auran forums. At
that stage I will know how it will be made available.
I know that at
least one visitor to this blog is frustrated this is taking so long, but I can't
snap my fingers and make it suddenly finish itself. I am working on 600 km of
rail track and surrounding scenery...... and that does take time. I hope you
understand that.
Cityrail 2010 : Back on the Rail Tracks
Construction Note 575:
Due to the hardware issues which have hit the
project in the last 5 months, it was time for me to do something about it. So
during the week I decided it was time to purchase a more reliable computer to
develop the project on.
As a result
the project is now running on windows Vista instead of Windows XP and I have to
go through all the steps of transferring files and reinstalling software.
I have reinstalled TRS2009 on the
new machine and am currently copying the projects assets across. This will
probably take the best part of today as I check that I have the most
updated files and there has been no corruption.
Once that is done, I can then scratch my head and try and
recall exactly where I was in the project before hardware issues occoured.
The new machine is an ACER Aspire
5735Z and it is a spectacular notebook with lots of power and a really wide
screen. This will be a bonus when working on the models for the project.
Cityrail 2010 Moves to Trainz 2009
Construction Note 574:
I have no reasoable excuse for the lack of
updates in the last 5 or 6 weeks apart from that I hit a brick wall with the
project and became overwhelmed with the task at hand. With the release of Street
View I was able to finally take the project in the direction i wanted ...... but
it was at this stage that i hit the wall.
Where do I start with the new work? How do I do it? So much
to do.
And then it hit me. Trainz 2009 is
coming soon and from what I heard it had a tonne of features which would make my
job easier. So I have being gearing up slowly for a transition over to Trainz
2009 and last night placed a pre-order for TS2009 which is released some time in
November.
And in the mean time I
downloaded the beta version of Trainz 2009 and.... I was blown away. I have to
say well done auran for what I have seen.
Too many things have changed to list in this one post
but I like it a lot. And Auran were correct when they said the following:
"With
updated graphics capabilities for the 2009 Edition, many people are wondering
whether they will need to upgrade their computers. The short answer is that
TS2009 will run with the same minimum specs as previous versions. We have
introduced a "Compatibility Mode" which will generally run old routes better
than they ran in previous versions of Trainz."
I would have to say with the huge improvements here that by
the time I finish this project I recommend that people will need to have Trainz
2009 at minimum to try Cityrail 2010.
I have only spent a couple of hours overnight on Beta Trainz
2009 but I am impressed. and there are some changes so I can now start making
some changes to Cityrail 2010 to make it a little easier on me to complete
it.
By the way the picture above
is taken from some work I was doing in Trainz 2009 as I am now one of the Beta
Testers for Trainz 2009.
Artarmon Landscape - Part 3
Construction Note 573:
With the 3 texture maps done the next thing to
do is to create the 3d model within gmax. As you can see in this picture, I
added the satellite picture of the shopping area I am creating in to the left
hand side and added the Street View picture to the top right window.
Now I
create the model. This is done by making use of the satellite picture to get
the shape of the buildings looking down. By traceing around the area I want
to model, I get a 2D plane which is then converted into a 3d shape as seen in
the lower right.
The height of
the model is not correct as yet but it gives me the basis for the next step.....
which is to add the Street view image to the model.
Artarmon Landscape - Part 2
Construction Note 572:
To create the texture maps for this block
of shops, i needed to create 3 texture maps similar to that as shown in the
last post. So for each of the steps mentioned in the post, I have to process
each of the three files in the same way. And as mentioned in the last post, I
need to remove objects such as cars, people and the such from the picture.
The picture in this post gives a
before and after look at how I am doing this. Here I am removing every car from
the scene, taking away street signs and bus stops. as well. People are not
needed and since this is Street View, some pictures had blurs where people had
asked themselves to be removed. So a little work is required to remove the blurs
and put in the background scene where the blurs had once been.
The important things are the
buildings so any rough work in painting the pavement is not going to be a
concern..... the pavement will not be a part of the model.
You may have noticed that the names
of the shops are also hard to read at this stage. This is looked at and resolved
in a later step.
Artarmon Landscape - Part 1
Construction Note 571:
Now to get back to what I was doing before. I
was going through creating the landscape environment for Artarmon Station on the
North Shore Line of Sydney. I had identified 3 key areas I wanted to work on in
detail and picked up the Street View images for each of these areas and created
the required textures for the models.
Seen on the right is an example 
of one such texture map. On the
left hand side of thepicture I have the view as shown on Street View.... looks a
little dull and off color. So a little image processing is required here to
clean up the picture so it is suitable for Cityrail 2010. The results can be
seen on the right hand side of the picture.
The next step is to remove unnecessary elements from the
picture. In other words, I am not interested in the cars , people trees or
anything else which is in the picture. Just the building.
But I do make note of what else is
there..... such as the post boxes on the pavement outside the Post Office. Those
of course will be placed in the correct position outside the model when it is
completed.
Cityrail 2010: Now Arrived on Platform Facebook
Construction Note 570:
Despite my best intentions in my last post, I
had planned to resume the project last week..... but this never happened. I came
down with what I can only assume to be a flu virus which pretty much knocked me
off my feet this week. Still not 100% but I am pretty confident that I will be
able to work on the project from today.
Over the last few years I have been
watching as Facebook has become an Internet phenomena . Last night I came to
realize that some of the visitors to this blog may like to see Cityrail 2010
make an appearance on Facebook. By doing this I could open up a new avenue
of networking with people interested in Cityrail 2010 .
So if you are interested in the
project and are on Facebook all the time, please feel free to look up my
Facebook forum and become a member if you so chose. The Cityrail 2010
facebook Group is called Trainz : Cityrail
2010 and can be found at http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26640738458
You can leave suggestions and
comments in Facebook or continue using the Cityrail 2010 Message Boards as
linked to at the top of this page.
And yes... I know that above all visitors want frequent
updates to the project....... and that is my intention .
Cityrail 2010: Returns Tomorrow
Construction Note 569:
Due to a couple of issues beyond my control, I
have not been able to spend time on the project in the last 3 or 4 weeks....
hence the lack of updates.
With the upcoming development
work on Cityrail 2010 I needed to be 100% focused on the project and this
has not been possible in the last couple of weeks. Mistakes would have
been made...... work would not have been up to par.
But I am back.... the project is still alive......
and normal posts will resume as usual tomorrow.
Apologies to those of you who have been missing the updates
on Cityrail 2010. Hopefully there will be no more disruptions to this blog
and we can get this work back on track again.......
Terraforming Suburb #02 : "St Leonards" - Part 3
Construction Note 568:
After removing the distortion effect from the
p
icture, the building is looking a
whole lot better. For instance the windows are no longer tall and thin and the
height of each floor is roughly the same.
To get the accurate size dimensions of the model, I use a
terrain map in gmax as a sort of a floor blueprint for the shops in a given
area. Using this scaled blueprint, I measure the width and length of the
building accurately in metres.
Knowing the average height of each floor on a building, i
can pretty much get an accurate height in metres for the entire building too.
When I apply this texture map to the building with the correct proportions, the
model looks great. I then can work on the night textures for the model.
Terraforming Suburb #02 : "St Leonards" - Part 2
Construction Note 567:
It is a little diffacult to see in this
picture, but before I do anything with street View, I enhance the image I will
use with the station models. This picture shows the Street image from the 
last post .... but enhanced.
By enhancing the picture I get more
detail of the building and get a much sharper picture. I also remove some
reflections of light shining on the camera dome of the Google camera car....
though not seen in the prior picture. The distortion effect on the building
is easier to see and this is fixed in the next post.
I still find Street View amazing and
can already see how much time it will save me in the project. To terraform the
area around St Leonards railway station, I would need to have taken pictures of
the shops on both side of the Pacific Highway. That would have meant standing
around in the area looking like a tourist taking snapshots of the buildings. I
always feel awkward doing this and am personally thankful that Google Street
View now means I do not need to be a tourist to get these shots.
Plus I don't need to travel all over
Sydney trying to get digital snap shots. Travelling all the way out to Katoomba
for example stopping at each railway station along the way to
take snap shots would have taken a lot of time. I can instead spend the
time at home working on the models themselves and access the same shots via
Street View.
Terraforming Suburb #02 : "St Leonards" - Part 1
Construction Note 566:
It is taking a little longer than I had hoped
to work this stuff out..... but i am close to being happy with a process
of creating the scenery of Sydney using Street View. In the mean time, I
thought I would just show how I am creating the main entrance to St Leonards
railway station which is j
ust south of Artarmon.
The first step of course is to pick
up the Street View for the road outside St Leonards station. Now the entrance is
located on the ground floor of a 9 storey building. As you can see here in the
picture, when the camera view is tilted up the building image is distorted. The
width of the building is wider at the bottom and narrower at the top and the
height of each floor is smaller heading toiwards the roof.
This will be fixed in part 3 of the
St Leonards posts.
Terraforming Suburb #01 : "Artarmon" - Part 4
Construction Note 565:
The next 5 days of posts to the blog will be a
little delayed. This is because I am spending a fair bit of time working
out how exactly I am going to get this terraforming stuff down. Now that I have
the images I need, I have to find the best way to use them for the project.
Pretty much what I am doing is
testing a few ideas I have, see how they work in the project..... and redo it if
the outcome is not what I was hoping for. But if I spend a little
time working on getting it right now , it will save me a lot of time when
working on the rest of the suburbs in Sydney.
The picture on the left is pretty much a section of the
shopping district I need to add to the scenery around Artarmon station. This
afternoon I have been creating a night time version of this street which looks
pretty good.
I also have the
Tangara project in my mind too..... looking at overcoming a few obstacles there.
Be assured that this terraforming stuff I am working on at the moment will not
mean the Tangara development has been shuffled to the bottom of the pile.
I need the Tangara ASAP in the
Cityrail 2010 project as it will be vital for some of my modelling challenges.
So as soon as the train is available, I will announce it and send it over to the
Download Station for anyone who wants it......
Terraforming Suburb #01 : "Artarmon" - Part 3
Construction Note 564:
Over the next few days I am spending time
working out how to exactly use Google street View to it's full potential. The
Mission Statement is to add enough detail of each Sydney suburb into the
Cityrail 2010 project so that people living in those suburbs will recognise
where they are instantly.
Does
that mean I am going to add every single building , be they houses, flats or
shops? No.... that would actually take too long and require thousands of models
to create..... maybe even more. But I will be building just enough to
make areas in Cityrail 2010 recognizable.
Of course the main idea of Cityrail 2010 is giving you a
chance to drive a train through Sydney, Blue Mountains and the Central Coast
without even leaving your home. Trains such as the soon to be released
Tangara and a few others are in the pipeline.... but they need a realistic world
to travel through. This is why I am spending some time on the scenery.
The aim however is to achieve what I want to see in this
project..... and not take forever and a day to do it.
I thought I would show a picture here to illustrate a
process I am using while using Street View. If you look at the pictures, the 2
on the left are the original views from Street View. The corresponding images on
the right of the picture are my enhanced versions. At first they look the same
as the ones on the left, but if you look closely.... you will see more details
in the right hand pictures.
The
second part of the process involves me removing cars and other obstacles
blocking the buildings I am modelling.
Terraforming Suburb #01 : "Artarmon" - Part 2
Construction Note 563:
In order for me to create the Sydney suburb of
Artarmon in Cityrail 2010, I first need to get a bird's eye view of the area.
This will give me an idea what models I need to build. In
order to do this I exit out of
Street View and go into Google Earth itself. This is because i will need to use
some distance measuring tools found only in Google Earth to give me
the width and length of the buildings I am looking for in the vicinity of
Artarmon Station.
In the first
picture here I have 2 blue stars on the left of the railtracks which mark the
Artarmon Shopping area. A blue star on the right shows a residential area on the
other side of the tracks from the shops. The purple smudge is the Station of
course. At this stage I am only interested in scenery and buildings visible from
the trains as they stop at the station.
Now with each of these 3 blue star areas I use Google
Earth to measure the dimensions of the buildings.... and then create the
models based on that. This is relatively simple. The hard part is to texture the
model. What do I use?
In the second picture I have
returned to Street View and can now view the front edge of the shopping area....
or a part of the building. I will need to side step along a few times to
get the complete picture and tape them together side by side for the whole
picture.
Now I have the
texture for the front of the model. Using the side roads going around the
building, I can easily find what the sides of the buildings look like. And
of course Google Earth itself will show me the roof sections.
So by the time i am finished with
Google Earth here, I should have all I need to create and then add these models
to Cityrail 2010. So for now Google Earth is no longer required for these
particular models.
Terraforming Suburb #01 : "Artarmon" - Part 1
Construction Note 562:
Before starting this post I thought I might
mention that I have just archived the first 6 months of 2008. You will find
these archives on the left. I figured it was time I got the archives
back under control.
So what is
terraforming and what has it got to do with Cityrail 2010?
Terraforming is sometimes referred
to as planetary engineering, where the environment of a planet is altered
deliberately to make it habitable by humans. Now being a sci fi fan myself, and
figuring that this is what I am doing in the project by deliberately
changing the environment in Cityrail 2010 .... I have decided to call these
posts "Terraforming".
As this is
the first time I am going to be trying this terraforming using Google's Street
View, I thought I would start off with a simple station. So I have chosen
Artarmon which is on the North Shore line between North Sydney and Hornsby.
Hopefully these ongoing series of
"terraforming" posts will give you an inside look at what is being done in
the cityrail 2010 project. I am sure a lot of you are looking for some shots of
completed areas and what better way to show you than while these areas are being
created.
So with a little luck
you will see some more of those screenshots of Sydney in Cityrail 2010....
and hopefully it may give you some ideas for your own projects.
And before I finish this post, the
picture above is from Street View showing Artarmon Station.
Breaking News on Cityrail 2010 - Part 3 of 3
Construction Note 561:
From Day 1 of this project when I started it
so many years ago, I decided the only way to accurately recreate the look and
feel of Sydney's rail network with acurracy was to plot each step of the way
using latitude and longitude positions. Each and every one of these positions
was recorded in an Excel spreadsheet for future reference..... which has turned
out to be a good move.
I noticed
that when you are searching Street View, you can enter Redfern,Sydney in the
search box and it will take you straight away to Redfern. But there is also
another way to search.
As an
example, let us say I had finished created the Cityrail 2010 Rail Crossing
Lights seen where cars are stopped when trains cross over t
he road. By using my spreadsheet, I
can quickly search for each one of these crossings and find the latitude and
longitude figures for each of them.
Now instead of trying to work out which suburb a particular
set of lights is, and which street it was on, I can simply type in the lat. and
long. figures as seen in the picture.
In the example, I searched for -33.6813,150.8593 and this
gave me a quicker way to find the exact area I was looking for. Note that it is
not 100% accurate as I plotted each section of Cityrail 2010 using coordinates
from the DVD version of the UBD street directory and this has a slight margin of
error when compared to Google.
I
don't know which is correct and that no longer matters as I have finished all
the latitude and longitude plotting and am now adding landscape and details to
the project. But it is close enough for me to find what I am looking for in
Street View very quickly.
Breaking News on Cityrail 2010 - Part 2 of 3
Construction Note 561:
As the Google cars running around Sydney did
not take pictures of each area at the exact same time, this of course being
impossible, Street View will of course need a little bit of work on my part
before I can use the images for the Cityrail 2010 project.
For example you might be looking at
a couple of suburbs on the Richmond line and notice that some of the
pictures are bright and some of them are dark. This of course being due to
whether the picture was taken in the morning or the afternoon and also the
weather conditions.
So in order
to make good use of these images, I have decided on using "lunch time"
versions of each picture. This is because the sun will be directly overhead
providing the best shots.
To get the "lunch time" pictures
for each shot I need, I will get that effect using a technique I am
developing in Photoshop. This should give me what I am looking for.
If I don't do this then the textures
for some models sitting side by side may look darker than the other, or be
lit by more sunshine. This would not be a good look.
As you can see in this picture, the image to the top
left is the original Street View, with the picture on the lower right being the
enhanced version. Of course I only need to do this procedure if I
am gathering textures for the models, not when I am trying to work out how
a particular area should look.
Breaking News on Cityrail 2010 - Part 1 of 3
Construction Note 561:
A little late with posting Tuesday....but I am
so excited and over the moon about the announcement today that I have hardly had
a wink of sleep.
Tuesday, August
5, 2008. I was on the Internet at the ridiculous hour of 4am when I saw an
announcement from Google. Street View for Sydney and a large part of Australia
had finally arrived. Within 60 seconds I was trying Street View out for myself
and was watching 360 degree pictures from a Sydney street on the other side of
the city.
As I was practically
jumping around to different parts of Sydney and virtually walking down streets
within minutes, my mind was boggling at this new wealth of picture information.
And it dawned on me what this would mean to the Cityrail 2010 project.
An example. In the picture I have
accessed Street View for a street somewhere northwest of Bankstown.....
somewhere between Bankstown and Yagoona railway stations. I have never seen
this street before but here I am in the early hours of the morning practically
walking down that street as a train is seen passing by on the nearby train
tracks.
If not for Street View, I
would have had virtually no chance of recreating the look of this area and
adding it into Cityrail 2010.
The
arrival of Street View will have a major impact on Cityrail 2010 in that I now
have all the image information to steer the project up to a whole new level.
By using Google's Street View the
following will happen :
- I will
be able to create models a lot quicker as I can use the 360 degree zoomable
photos for textures.
- Each area of Sydney in Cityrail
2010 will more accurately reflect the actual look of that area.
- Ideas I had which were deemed impossible have now become
possible.
- My vision of what Cityrail 2010 will look
like is now much more achievable.
In essence this is a great day for the Cityrail 2010 project
. And as I work with Street View over the following days and months you will
start to see some hopefully impressive looking screenshots of completed sections
of Sydney in this blog.
Sydney Harbour Bridge - Part 2 of 2
Construction Note 560:
Here I have a similar picture to
the one shown yesterday of the Sydney Harbour Bridge model. This one is
shown from the view of the approach on to the bridge and shows a few flaws
with using this method to add night lighting to the bridge model.
T
he light from the pylons on each
side of the "hanger" has washed on to the "hanger" itself.... and this
lighting method would work only if I seperate the bridge model into seperate
sections with proper lighting for each section. That is something I am going to
have to think about.
I wasn't
going to mention it until tomorrow.... but I am too excited to keep it to
myself. I have heard some rumours on the Internet.... and if these rumours are
true... then I will be releasing some very important news tomorrow on
something which is going to have a huge effect on the project.
Tune in to this page tomorrow night
to see what the news is. Oh... and don't worry.... it's all good
news.
Sydney Harbour Bridge - Part 1 of 2
Construction Note 559:
There is still some work to be done in order
for the Sydney Harbour Bridge to be completed in Cityrail 2010. There are a few
places on the model I am not as yet happy with and are niggly little things
which I still have to get around to fixing.
Night lighting for the bridge still
needs to be done. At the moment when darkness falls over Cityrail 2010, the
Sydney Harbour Bridge is very dark and not easily seen. This of course is not at
all realistic.
So I have been
messing around with some ideas on how to give the Harbour Bridge the lighting it
needs.... as you can see by this picture. Note that this is just testing work in
progress and not how the Sydney Harbour Bridge will look like at night. I
am aiming for something much better.
Cityrail 2010 Goes Classic 3 - Part 2 of 2
Construction Note 558:
So far so good with Cityrail 2010 running
under Trainz Classic 03. It will probably take a few days to work out what has
changed and where any problems may be.... but I think that the deveopers of TC03
have done a great job here.
Why have I
upgraded to Classic 03 instead of waiting for TRS2009 to come out?
Well... there are a couple of
reasons:
- trackside objects can
now be added on gradients
- The fast sky animation has
been resolved.
- problems with alpha channel textures
have being fixed
- a new signalling system will allow me
to create the signals for Cityrail 2010
- more realistic
AI driving of other trains
-water is now see through
There are a number of other
enhancements and bugs which have being squished, but I have not yet noticed
these while developing the Sydney rail network.
Cityrail 2010 Goes Classic 3 - Part 1 of 2
Construction Note 557:
This last week has being spent gearing up the
Cityrail 2010 project for it's update to Trains Classic 03 which has being
released. This involved a couple of tests and a good number of backups to make
sure the project was safe if the upgrade did not go well.
I downloaded the digital download
version of Trainz Classic 03 which was a bit of a nightmare in itself. I was
having problems on my end and th
e download was very slow.....
something to do with my ISP. The file I was downloading was 2 gig in size and my
download mamager told me at this speed it would take 719 hours to download the
file.
It took longer than I
wanted to download , but eventually I was able to install Trainz Classic 03.
My testing showed the best procedure
for Cityrail 2010 to upgrade to this new version of Trainz was the following:
1... Backup the entire contents of
the local folder to a seperate area.... this being the heart of Cityrail 2010
2... Uninstall Trainz Classic 2 completely.
3... Install Trainz Classic 3.
4...
Copy the local folder containing Cityrail 2010 into Trainz Classic 3
5... Delete the assets file and rebuild it.
This didn't take too long to do and
I was happy to see an easy migration to Classic 03. A little early to test all
the new features but it was looking a lot better on the whole.
The most obvious fix I saw was that
the clouds were no longer crossing at breakneck speed. With classic 01 and 02
this was too fast and not very realistic at all.
Google Earth - Part 2 of 2
Construction Note 556:
The picture in this post shows an area of the
Blue Mountains in Google Earth just south of Katoomba. With the newly updated
imagery in Google Earth it will be possible for me now to recreate this
landscape and mirror it in Cityrail 2010 with more accuracy.
Those of
you familiar with Google Earth may have noticed that I am using an older version
of Google Earth. There is a reason for that.
I noticed with the latest version of Google Earth what
appears to be a bug. At the bottom of the screenshot in this post you can see
pointer information as well as elevation data in the old version of Google
Earth. In the latest version , this information is not displaying correctly and
numbers appear to be missing. This means elevation data of 424 metres might show
as 42 metres or 1000 metres may appear as 100 metres.
I am looking into this at the moment to see if it is a
problem on my end but hopefully this will be fixed when Street View is released
for Australia in a few months. Street View will give me a totally
new perspective for Sydney and will give me the images I need for more realistic
modelling throughout the Sydney region.
Google Earth - Part 1 of 2
Construction Note 555:
It has been a good 2 weeks since my last
update ..... but sometimes things happen in life that you need to take care of
ahead of everything else. A good friend of mine was in hospital and ,
remembering my time in hospital a few years ago, I decided to visit my friend as
much as possible . The staff at the hospital were the best of the best, and my
friend was well looked after..... but hospitals can be boring to stay in at
times. The good news is my friend is out and recovering at home..... and work on
the project is back under way.
Today I made a discovery . Recently Google had updated their
images on Google Earth and many parts of the world which were not previously
showing detailed satellite imagery were now fully detailed. This included
some updates for the New South Wales area.
When I started work on the Blue
Mountains section of the project, a large part of this area was just a fuzzy
blur in Google Earth. Now as seen by the picture which shows Katoomba's railway
station, this area has now been detailed and this gives me the ability to
add in scenery items to the project where scenery items should go. This will add
95% realism to the project as you will see houses, shops
and different buildings in Cityrail 2010 in the precise areas where
you will see them in real life.
However , I am not building a model for every single
building to be found in the Sydney region..... this will not be feasible. But
shopping areas, industrial areas and residential areas will all be in the
correct spaces.
Realism With a Little Help
Construction Note 554:
During work on the Cityrail 2010 project, my
main aim was to try and get the look and feel of the project as close to reality
as possible. Now of course 100% reality would be almost impossible, but there
are steps to be taken to make it as real as possible.
So over the course of developing the project, I have looked
for ways of finding this realism. And thanks to the wonderful world of the
Internet, I found what I needed. Movies.
The picture in this post shows a snapshot taken from 2 such
movies shown from the cab of a Sydney train, one taken during the day..... one
taken at night. The movies I have downloaded show high speed views of large
sections of lines and give a great reference for me in recreating those lines.
Now it is just as well that I saw these movies before I got too much further
with the Tangara train model... and for a very good reason.
This is something I had not considered with Sydney trains.
Unfortunately I have had to take a full week off from the project due to
suffering an injury last week and then experiencing some other issues along
the way. I was originally hoping that it would be just 3 days of downtime .....
but it ballooned out to 5... and then to 7 days.
At times like this one can only try
and focus on getting better quickly and get back to the project as soon as
possible.
Though I am not
physically working on the project, I am turning my mind to solving some of the
issues plaguing the project. During this week, I am spending time working out
where the problems are and trying to come up with a few solutions.
Work on the Tangara is still the
Number One priority at the moment and I am looking forward to the day when I can
announce it's availablity for download. I had intended this last weekend to be
known as the "Tangara Weekend" where I would sit down and do nothing but work on
the Tangara. But this was not to be.
So all I can do now is recover and get back to the
project as soon as possible.....which will hopefully be on July 7. There
may be a few days before the updates reach the blog..... but better late than
never.
