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NYCTA (T) Line Tottenville (SIR) to 125 St. Broadway via 2nd Ave using Sketchup

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GG_Train:
Hi,

I have known of OpenBVE for some time and did some minimal work to get familiar with the product.  About 2 years ago I detailed a comprehensive fictional subway plan for Staten Island.  The details are here http://www.nyctransitforums.com/forums/topic/47689-staten-island-fantasy-system-useful-for-future-bve/.  One of the lines takes the existing 2nd Avenue plan and extends it to Staten Island via Governers Island and the Red Hook Tunnel to St. George, Staten Island using Brooklyn as an anchor.  The existing SIR route would be modified to handle subways with signals, new structures and expanding the right of way.

I would like to build my objects as detailed as possible, so I wrote a program to create vertices and faces using primitive objects (rectangle, circles, polygons, etc.).  Although I had success it was equivalent to blindly building objects.  I needed something visual.  Enter Sketchup.  I have become quite experienced in using this product over the last year and wanted to find a way to export from .skp files to .csv files recognizable by OpenBVE.  My success was limited until I found a plugin that extracted meshes, faces, and vertices.  This plugin generated an XML file and had a trial version conversion program that converted the XML format to B3D format.  Sadly there is no longer any support for this so I wrote my own conversion program to generate .csv object files.  The results were fantastic, but there are downsides where the triangulation of the polygons generate quite a lot of faces as well as some problems with reverse faces that can be corrected building the Sketchup model.

I have somewhat coded up the Tottenville yard, rendering it size-wise as closely as possible aided by Google Maps satellite view.  I have built custom signals and am investigating how to integrate them with the Signal namespace if at all possible.  For signal identifiers I will use the chaining for the current 2nd Avenue line.  One problem is that the distance markers go negative based on the current use of the IND zero point where a current signal at 72nd Street is marked as 1168.  So when the identifier goes negative, I will precede the number with an "M" for minus.

Other issues concern FPS which is not to high, barely cracking 20 with a CPU running full throttle and my laptop fan running at full steam.  I am using a nearly 5 year old Sony VAIO 2.2 GHz Quad Core i7 running under 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium with 8GB of RAM.  My graphics card is the NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M with 4GB of memory.  Not sure if this is a problem.

Anyway here are some screen captures.

1. Regional Plan using Scribble Maps




2. Forward View showing signals, bumpers, and crossovers.

TrainKidKris:
Good job

GG_Train:
Ok, here is an update.  I had to update the configuration of the switches and yard leads given the curve extends some 125 meters past the point where the curve originally ended.  Also I have reduced the polygon count for the signals by 80 percent.  This was an FPS killer.

This is my first rendition of the station frame.  I will be modifying the beams slightly for better definition, add the station name, subway maps, and other signs.  There will be an exit to the fictitious Perth Amboy ferry.  The Jersey Coast line is less than a mile from the Tottenville station.




Aerial View Showing Tottenville Beach and approach to yard and station.  For scenery I am using Structure.Ground to define a scene every 25 meters.  Images for Ground need not be just ground.  It is possible to place objects above the y-axis, so trees, buildings, and other landscaping can be place there.  Can experienced users validate this technique for me?  I viewed the OpenBVE source code and there seems to be no limitations for the number of objects for Ground, Dike, etc.  Memory is your limiting factor.




Here is Tottenville Beach with the station visible behind the trees.  This may be overkill, but I enjoy that detail.




On the platform viewing southbound with the Arthur Kill visible behind the trees.  The Tottenville station is 6 feet above sea level.

coneyislandDFNQ:
I am very impressed keep up the great work, I will definitely be looking at how this project progresses

BVERailer:
Looking nice! Keep up the great work!

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