Engine Limits and HD Art

[OG_RuDeE]

Funny. Copilot had suggested using ESRGAN / Real-ESRGAN as "the nuclear option," but I left it out to try out various sharpening effects first. There was also the idea of super sampling, which I didn't try yet. I'm sure in the end it'll be something that varies track by track and by user's tastes.

When you say you do extra fancy stuff with 2-pixel overlap, that's *just* on the engine side, right, or is something worked into your script too?

I wouldn't mind having a look at your script for comparison if you want to share it.

Just seeing your post now about the normals, and cool. Looking forward to seeing if that's a good solution.

[Fila]

It does vary track by track. I was just trying it out with Sly's Flats and it gave horrendous results. So it depends on the original texture.

[Ford-chan]

I take it that Copilot is what's being used to bring this whole Comm Patch #3 altogether yeah? I may need to look this up later myself.

[OG_RuDeE]

Fila uses Claude which is much more powerful. I use co-pilot in my browser because I use edge. It is fine.

[Fila]

That's Rudee. Copilot is incapable of dealing with coding a full game.

[Ford-chan]

Looked it up, Claude has been used in places like NASA to plan a route for the Mars Rover, so that alone would suggest the sheer capabilities of it.

[Kmaster]

I wouldn't say one is better than the other. In the end, they're both product families and not really AI language models.

Copilot is tailored for every day use and its deeply integrated in many MS products and from what I've read it uses OpenAI models which are amazing for all kind of tasks. In fact, Codex (which is Claude code's main competitor) and GPT-5.6 Sol is what i've been trying lately in my Javascript tools.
Claude is overall more complex and expensive tool, but has access to advanced models like Fable or Opus that are tailored for deep reasoning and software development. It is my main AI development tool and basically all standards are built around it.
So each of em are good on their own depending on what's the task.

[Fila]

.md versions please!! basically i need to update everything, even KPodman with the new 499 pod limit

and this needs to be complemented with these:

Ok I've updated the following:

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/MONVERT_HANDOVER.pdf
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/GLTF_EXTRAS_SPEC.pdf

And for kmaster.

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/MONVERT_HANDOVER.md
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/GLTF_EXTRAS_SPEC.md

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/CPOD_LONG_NAMES.md

[Kmaster]

this might be unrelated but while working on CommPatch 3 pod extensions support for JPod, I found hidden palette metadata in the 32-byte directory field from old POD files from TRI games (TV, F3, HB, MTM1). TRI stopped adding this metadata starting with CPR (then MTM2).

Example:

Code: Select all

ART\BASHP.RAW  \0  BIONSHIP.ACT  \0  0 0 0 0 0 0
^ the name         ^ extra bytes we were throwing away

as many of you know, old TRI games used a single palette for all textures. VGA.ACT in flight games, METALCR2.ACT in MTM1. Few textures had their own palette.

this metadata ("BIONSHIP.ACT") was being lost in time since it seems no POD authoring tool supports it. Quite useful info for RAW preview tools, I will add support for this in JPod and JSPOD and eventually the rest of the javascript utilities.

I will also:
- create a windows version of JPod, and add a bunch of new features to put it on par with C-POD26 and other POD Evo tools.
- add MTM1 truck support for JSTruckViewer

[Fila]

Rudee, this better be what you wanted because I just spent 4 hours implementing it.

[OG_RuDeE]

How's it looking testing?

[Fila]

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/TERRAIN_DETAIL_MASK.pdf
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/TERRAIN_DETAIL_MASK.md <--- for Kmaster

All the .pdfs and .mds have been updated to the latest version.

So in short, you need the official Comm Patch 3
- create a folder MaskArt (same concept as MenuArt and WeatherArt)
- start the game, go to options>game and click export terrain mask referece. Start a level. Make sure you always have that disabled otherwise it keeps spawning out references.
- edit to your hearts content. It uses greyscale.
- trackname.lvl gives the file name. so trackname_MASK.png is the mask you are editing.
- trackname_DTL.png is the global (for that track only) normal map you can use. it uses blue for AO.
- while the game uses MaskArt folder, when inside the pod it has to be ART\trackname_DTL.png and ART\trackname_MASK.png

Without a mask, the game will not turn on map normal. With a mask, it will. The floor strength is 10, max strength is 50. It uses a random generated normal if you do not supply your own _DTL.png

The painting is all in grey scale. and the values are as follows:

Code: Select all

RGB	strength
0	10
32	15
64	20
96	25
128	30
160	35
191	40
223	45
255	50

Just copy that number in all the RGB channels to get the right grey.

Side note, the game is actually more lax. You can use a number in between and it gives, for example, 37 strength etc.
Using a soft brush for painting works! So a soft edge will actually create softer strength.

It's not ready yet but I will update Traxx so that you can load these files (like you load a backdrop for example) and have it author the .pod on its own so you don't have to do it manually.

The per-texture _N and _AO are still live too, so one can use either or both actually (if using both they stack so watch out for that). Figured to keep the per-texture in case someone has some special texture that needs a special normal/ao.

[Fila]

Kmaster, I made an update to CPOD_Long_names

[OG_RuDeE]

Hell yes, Fila! Love that you give no examples. ;)

Here is Sidewinder with my "HD" textures and Fila's random normal map on the terrain in the distance. Look at those hills, so much detail!

Screenshot 2026-08-31 165236.jpg

A little hard to see the new overall track normal up close, but it makes a big difference at a distance. I personally think it looks great.

I just generated the snake_MASK_ref.png in the MaskArt folder. Copied it and renamed it to snake_MASK.png. Threw it in the art folder of my SnakeHD.pod and fired it up. Above is the result. Mask below:

snake_MASK.png

Fila, for you, the actual _DTL.png is just a regular RGB (no A right?) normal map (blue you said was AO)? You said something about greyscale for the _MASK.png, but I am using this RGB mask that the game generated, and it works. Can you say a bit more about how to use / edit the mask?

[Fila]

Giving examples is part of my work today while working on the website. lol Also, going to do a hotpatch for the CP3 to make the reference maps even clearer.

[OG_RuDeE]

Sounds good and thank you! I don't know how you're accomplishing all this as just one person. Much appreciated by all!

[Fila]

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/CP3_hotfix1.zip
Here's a fix RuDee to have better looking maps. This shows you exactly where each textures are.

One thing... I highly doubt your mask actually worked. It's very likely that the game detected the mask and just enabled the baseline normal strength without applying any modifiers, so you're just getting a uniform 10 strength. I think, not sure what happens if you load a color mask.

Btw, for testing purposes, you can just copy the _MASK and _DTL in the MaskArt folder. The game looks for it there first before looking in a pod. Easier when testing.

Here is the new version of the generated reference, note that they are flipped. This is based on how the game actually reads them. If it confuses you, you can flip it, work on it and then re-flip it back. Otherwise it won't load correctly as the engine wants them the way it exports them (flipped)

FILASADV_MASK_ref.png

And now here is my _MASK

FILASADV_MASK.png

Where it's black, it stays at 10 strength. Pure white goes up to 50. The gray ones, those are the different levels of gray I tried to see if they work at different strengths. They do indeed and the level of NORMAL is different. I'm doing the MASK in greyscale to make sure I don't spill any color in it.

And for _DTL, yeah just regular RGB with BLUE being AO. Or to be more precise, right now the A is being read but discarded.

[Fila]

What I did was simply load up the reference, make a duplicate layer and then started painting over to keep the lines and to know where i am at in the world map. then when I exported I made sure to fill the areas where i wanted minimum with black. I might reconsider and have black mean 0 if people want. Photoshop filled up that space with white initially and my map was on full blast normals.

[Fila]

One thing I noticed here is that the reference map won't read the textures on groundboxes so they don't show up on the map but they are treated as terrain and thus will get normals too.

[Fila]

Side note: I REALLY like the way these generated references look, I might make my own tracks this way from now on (Traxx allows the MTM1 pop-up to work in MTM2 now).