Optimizing 3DC files for MSTS

I don’t know for certain, but it is very likely that removing internal non-visible faces will improve peformance. The Union operation does remove internal faces, but it requires that each object be andquot;solidandquot; and doesn’t work particularly well on deformed objects. After you merge the Reduce operation can clean up any non-critical faces that result from the Union.

Richard

Sorry if I am asking an old question, but I am new round these parts!

Suppose I create a shape from a number of different shapes merged. Am I wasting my time ‘hollowing’ it out by removing all the internal faces and artefacts created by the merge, leaving a ‘shell’. In MSTS will this shell be less memory intensive to draw than the original complete merged shape. Or no different.

In other words, does MSTS just draw the outside faces that can be seen, or does it draw the whole lot, including internal faces. Does the .s file ignore internal faces when its created?

Thanks

Richard Scott

I agree with Richard. . .I don’t think MSTS does any clipping or removal of polygons that aren’t seen. andnbsp;Many people report performance hits in places where there are large amounts of scenery, for instance, on the other side of hill. . .well before you round the hill to where you can see the scenery. andnbsp;In other words, if it’s in the general area, it’s loaded. andnbsp;Also, Kuju recommends keeping the poly count as low as possible, and not to exceed, I think, 2000 polys, in most cases (for rolling stock and locos. . .scenery should be much much less). andnbsp;The way they say this kind of implies that a poly is a poly, whether you can see it or not.

Anyway, it’s probably always good modelling practice to remove such unnecessary faces anyway, as there most likely would also be some overhead in trying to figure out whether or not to draw the face in the first place.