answered Strange bridges all over the place

[Morten]

With OLC_EU and OLC_NA I'm getting these awful "wooden" bridges all over the place.
What is this all about and how do I get rid of those, please?

 

Cheers

 

[Doug Sawatzky]

Hi Morten

 

It would be very nice if you could show us these pictures in the day light with coordinates please, that way we might be able to see what the issue is.

 

Thanks 

 

Doug

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Morten,

 

do you have Black Marble installed? The night lighting on the roads and bridges looks like it might be that add-on. OpenLC EU and NA don't contain any vector roads and 3D bridges anyway, only Global Vector and the FTX Regions do.

 

Doug is correct, though, at least coordinates blended in (Shift-Z) would help us to cross-check against Orbx products.

 

Cheers, Holger

[Morten]

Hi Doug And Holger

 

Coordinates aren't really relevant in this case, because the phenomena is literally scattered all over North America and Europe!

And yes you are right Holger, Black Marble is installed into my P3Dv4 sim. For that reason I asked Chris Bell about it. He answered that he uses standard built in mesh, no addons here. And furthermore he says, it has to be something in the ORBX elevation data when I run the FTX Global Vector Config.Tool.

Looking at Black Marble's own demo videos the bridge phenomena is not present there at all.  

 

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

did you ask him if his software adds bridges?

Interesting comments about Vector from Mr Bell.

Is that a quote?

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi again,

 

I'm still not sure what your complaint actually is. What do you mean by "wooden" bridges or the "bridge phenomena"? I thought you might be referring to the bright textures on the 3D extrusion bridges but now the discussion seems to have shifted to mesh. Moreover, those comments about Vector's config tool and "Orbx elevation data" make no sense at all to me, perhaps you can post Chris' exact quote.

 

Please provide some daytime images and explain in more detail what you consider to be wrong.

 

Cheers, Holger

[Morten]

2 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

Hello,

did you ask him if his software adds bridges?

Interesting comments about Vector from Mr Bell.

Is that a quote?

 

Well close to a quote. Since this discussion with Chris is part of a private PM, I feel that I have to ask Chris if it would be OK if I quoted him directly in every detail - or if he rather prefer to take part in this thread directly.. 

 

1 hour ago, Holger Sandmann said:

Hi again,

 

I'm still not sure what your complaint actually is. What do you mean by "wooden" bridges or the "bridge phenomena"? I thought you might be referring to the bright textures on the 3D extrusion bridges but now the discussion seems to have shifted to mesh. Moreover, those comments about Vector's config tool and "Orbx elevation data" make no sense at all to me, perhaps you can post Chris' exact quote.

 

Please provide some daytime images and explain in more detail what you consider to be wrong.

 

Cheers, Holger

 

Indeed I'm referring to first of all the COLOR, secondly the STRUCTURE of those bridges as if they were build of timber.

I will be back with som daylight screenshots.

 

Cheers 

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Morten,

 

both the textures/color and structure of these extrusion bridges are determined by the developer. Extrusion bridges aren't fixed models but rather constructed by the sim "on-the-fly" based on xml code that contains the location and height of the support pillars and the type and textures of those pillars and of the bridge deck. 

 

Extrusion bridges placed by Orbx all use the default texture sheets -- BridgeRoads.dds and BridgeRoads_lm.dds -- in \Scenery\Global\Texture. The default night textures are a very dark grey, not the the orange seen in your screenshots.

 

The bright orange night textures on your bridges look the same as those I've seen in other Black Marble user shots. For example, see images 4 (lower right) and 6 (bottom) in this series: https://forums.chrisbelldesigns.com/topic/528-some-shots-of-bm-with-the-new-ftx-germany-south/ . That's why I figured that you have BM installed.

 

To evaluate the structure/profile of the bridges, daytime images would help. I don't have the BM bridge package but believe they should have concrete day textures and look similar to these http://blackmarble.chrisbelldesigns.com/img/bridge04.jpg (taken from the BM product page). I notice that Black Marble bridges appear to have much closer spacing of the pillars than what we tend to use, perhaps that's what you consider to be the "wooden" appearance, i.e., like a trestle?

 

Cheers, Holger

 

 

 

[Morten]

Hi Holger

 

Thanks for your examination of this annoying issue!

From what you are explaining and what is shown on my screen shots below, I guess the bottom line comes down to a simple COLOR mishmash issue! Which all has to do with the default texture sheets (BridgeRoads.dds and BridgeRoads_lm.dds) being too light gray in it's standard appearance compared to the surrounding roads - as clearly shown on my daylight screenshots.

The daylight appearance of the bridges looks In fact just as ridiculous as the Black Marble night appearance - being too light!

 

In other words, in the case of Black Marble, I guess it would be similar to a situation where you paint a wall with the same orange paint on two different underlying surfaces - that is, one dark gray surface and the other light gray. The orange paint appearance on the light gray surface would obviously always appear lighter than the same paint on a darker underlay!

 

So now, the big question! Would there be any way for us to edit these wrong default BridgeRoads.dds /BridgeRoads_lm.dds colors?! 

 

Cheers

 

PS. BTW Chris gave me the permission to quote from our private discussion about the issue. However I don't think it's actually relevant any longer according to your examination. Chris and I mostly discussed the possibility of a "mesh issue".  But I guess the standard bridge structure is actually okay - the only problem is if the structure becomes too light textured then all kind of unwanted details of the bridge will show up. 

Chris also said that if you need any specific technical information from him you may contact him directly.  

 

 

 

 

            

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Morten,

 

thanks for the additional images. I'd agree that there's a mismatch in textures for both the night and day textures. With those particular short bridges there's also an issue with their vertical profile but that's generally difficult to deal with using extrusion bridges (it's one reason why we tend to place "2D" bridge textures for short bridges in our FTX Regions rather than 3D extrusion models). 

 

However, since your bridges and roads are all placed by Black Marble and not any Orbx products you'd need to continue your discussions with Chris; perhaps he's open to making adjustments for either the bridge or road texture sets, or both.

 

I don't even know where the orange night textures come from. Perhaps BM alters the global default textures or it adds to the extrusion bridge code to place its own custom textures. As you can see from my screenshots below our extrusion bridges don't have those orange night sets but rather display the default dark grey. Also note that our road textures -- which are our own custom sets, for both Global Vector and the FTX Regions -- aren't as dark and thus the contrast between the concrete brides and the asphalts isn't as pronounced.

 

If you still believe that there's a display issue then perhaps have Chris post some comparison screenshots of his -- at given coordinates -- so the two of you can compare directly.

 

Cheers, Holger

 

 

[MyPC8MyBrain]

Happy Holidays Holger 

indeed our 3D Bridge Pack are Extrusion bridge (XML based),

handling vertical profile is done through a very complex algorithm we developed in house,

since we render on a worldwide scale; it is not feasible to render 3D library models for individual bridges,

 

im also not clear whats the reference with "wooden"

our discussion in regards to Mesh was about its potential influence on these type of bridges due to their "on the fly" nature,

as for colors tone; these will vary over the year pending the underlying seasonal texture below,

 

here are some images for comparison (BM+Vector+3DBridges),

(this is default P3D, my personal Sim where i have my ORBX stack installed is in shambles atm)

 

ATB

Chris

 

 

 

 

 

[Morten]

1 hour ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

 

im also not clear whats the reference with "wooden"

 

Means Black Marble's inappropriate reference to a a wooden bridge, as for the color and for the structure of the surface , for crying out.. 

Thought we already been through this, Chris. 

 

Cheers

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi guys,

 

and with that I'd suggest that further discussions about the design choices for Black Marble's bridges continue in the designated BM support forums as this really has nothing to do with any Orbx product.

 

Cheers, Holger