Monday, September 28, 2009

On Color, Materials and Lighting

First I should say what everyone says - yeah it's been a while. One excuse is I always think it'll take me a long time to write anything here so I put it off. That's because I want to write well, so I spend a lot of time expanding explanations. Maybe I can put more stuff in this blog if I just write my fast way - which is usually point lists.

Reading 'OpenGL SuperBible' by Richard Wright has given me something to say. I'm at the chapter on Color, Materials and Lighting. I think specularity should be a property of the material, not a lighting property. Every surface should have a reflectance specification. Then the amount of normal light that bounces off surface would be calculated.

Thus one would specify 'dull', 'matte', 'bumpy', 'shiny', 'glass' for surface (numerically). This could be specified per-vertex, like colours, and get gradiented like colours are. Or reflectance surface could be like a texture, but each pixel is a reflectance value 0.0-1.0. This would just specify the proportion of light that is reflected - at incidental angle. Or each point of the reflectance surface could be a vector showing which way that point points, so the renderer could calculate where the light reflects to.

You wouldn't need a specular light, or even a diffuse light. The rendering engine could calculate the effects of light bouncing off a shiny surface onto other surfaces for diffuse light. It will take more CPU, but provide more realism.

Because really what you want is to say there's a huge sun millions of miles away, but only its rays provide the primary luminance, everything else is reflected.

Also you want to add diffusion property for volumes, to define what happens to light passing through gas or water or glass. This is internal reflectance.

By the way, I have updated the projects list on the Nimajin web site.

So, it took 10 minutes to get the lighting points up, then another 20 for the picture, introduction, advertising and editing (and another 10 to fix fonts and spacing!).

Monday, April 6, 2009

TimetablEd Now Does Orders And Consists

The Post T railroad simulator timetable editor is gaining new capabilities rapidly! The main panel has been reorganized to show movement orders. This was made possible by compacting the operating days into a new selector that shows the days by their initial letter, in the same way shown by the Stops chart.

The Stops chart can show you trains running on only the same days as the train you're working on, or trains running on any days you select. In the Stops chart you can change the track a train stops on by dragging its bar up and down, or you can change the stop times by dragging left or right. You can change these in the Stops list as well, and there you can also add new stops and delete them.

The train's movement orders are shown in text on the train panel, and can be changed in the Edit Movement Orders window. This windows shows all of the movement orders in the system on the left and the details of the selected order on the right. What's shown on the right depends on the type of order. Shown here is an uncouple order with the convenient graphical decouple point selector just like in the simulator.

I found it easy to get lost in the maze of movement orders, so I added the 'Find' buttons. When you click one of these the editor shows you the order that produced or consumes the item you're looking for, so you can easily follow the trails of the parts of your train.

The train consist editor has been added. You can edit templates that may be used to create many trains that are the same, or create custom consists for unique trains. At the top is shown the consist of the train. These are represented as a list of vehicles in the same way as the uncouple order, but here extra information is included. The bottom line of each vehicle shows the coupler type at each end so its easy to match couplers. In the centre are shown letters for Traction, Electric (or Steam) and Passenger. An L in the top right corners tells you that the vehicle is loaded. You build trains by selecting a vehicle from the vertical list and adding to the consist. For any vehicle selected in the consist or the vehicles list, the editor shows all of its characteristics.

So the editor is nearing completion! Still to do is the timetable printing. And yes, there will be an easy method of scheduling regular trains. My goal is to make the most convenient railway schedule editor. I will consider any suggestions.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

TimetablEd

Screenshot

In co-operation with SignalSimulation.com / Signalsoft Rail Consultancy Ltd. / Richard Plokhaar, railroad consultant and railway simulation developer, I am developing a new railway schedule editor. The editor makes it easy to set up the trains that will run through the new Signalsoft Post T series of railroad simulators.

While playing the simulator you are the dispatcher who must control the signalling and switching to allow the trains to stop and pass through your area of responsibility on schedule - the challenge is you are using 1950's era technology for communications and control! The simulation platform accurately reproduces train physics and events that effect their travel over your rails. It is useful as a simulation for railroad enthusiasts or as a complete simulation platform for modeling and analyzing real-world railroad traffic.

The timetable editor features:

  • Entry locations & times, exit location
  • Station stop locations & times
  • Arrival, departure & pass-through events
  • Textual & graphical representation & editing for easy conflict resolution
  • Special orders editing (train renumbering, direction switching, coupling & uncoupling of complete consists)
  • Train consist editing: locomotive & car selection
  • Special train & activity designation
  • Timetable printing

There will be a series of simulators, modeling various real-world railway centers. A simulator demo is available now at www.signalsimulation.com/content/category/3/7/7/

More information about the Post T series is available at www.signalsimulation.com

The editor and the first full simulation are in final beta testing stage and will be available spring 2009