have elevated and ground tracks not share color, if they "intersect"

[joshinils]

11-02-2024, 21-10-36.png (3.19 MiB) Viewed 519 times

It's already difficult enough to distinguish elevated and ground level track, but sharing the same color does not help.
I get that if it is the same segment there is no way around it, but otherwise I think they should connect for coloring, and choose a different color to distinguish them.

Then any elevated and ground track that cross with the same color are also the same block.

[Nidan]

Generally this should be attempted, but it can't be guaranteed. With elevated rails you can construct pathological cases where a fixed number of colors will never suffice. (With only a single layer having 4 colors is enough.)

[robot256]

Maybe a different rail visualization sprite for elevated rails would work. For example adding periodic hatch marks on the lines (as railroads are often depicted on city maps). Then you could see when a hatched line cross a straight line.

[Lorenzo]

Or maybe a different colour set for elevated rails?

Or hide the lines of the rails on the ground behind the elevated rails?

Those are just some ideas, I don't think they are perfect.
But I think they would improve the current visualization, I find it very chaotic.

[joshinils]

Maybe a different rail visualization sprite for elevated rails would work. For example adding periodic hatch marks on the lines (as railroads are often depicted on city maps). Then you could see when a hatched line cross a straight line.

I like that Idea.
Here's a few mockups:

elevated_rail_coloring_dashed.png (1.15 MiB) Viewed 455 times

elevated_rail_coloring_hue_offset.png (1.15 MiB) Viewed 455 times

elevated_rail_coloring_thick.png (1.14 MiB) Viewed 455 times

[robot256]

Unfortunately rail visualization is set in a utility constant and cannot be changed per rail type by mods. The ability to make them different will have to be incorporated into the game engine.

[AileTheAlien]

I'd be happy with the dashed line. Thickness makes it seem like one is more important, and the hue is too subtle for me to see.

[Lorenzo]

I also like the dashed line, one thing I would add to it is that the sprite of the elevated rail could overlay the line of the ground rail.

[Hares]

TL;DR

Rail visualization mode should have more distinguishable track crossings for multi-level trains.

What?

I can see two options here:

1. Use different color set / palette for visualisaion (
   different spelling for better search attraction
   ) for the elevated level.
2. Draw dots on the intersections, like on the standard graph visualization.

Why?

That's how rail visualizer draws multi-level crossings right now (2.0.26):

12-18-2024, 00-35-21.png (3.17 MiB) Viewed 185 times

It's hard to distinguish which rails belong to the same segment and which don't.

See Also

• 57237: Add direction arrows to Train block visualisation

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into an older thread with a similar suggestion for the same issue.