Does the plotting of the route preview depend on the light source?

[ginga81]

My Tohoku Shinkansen has stations in Omiya and Sendai that both face almost due north.

Therefore, even when using Sendai as the starting point, I expected that using the same dynamic lighting and shadows as when using Omiya would result in the light coming from the same direction and shadows appearing.

However, when I tried it, the shadows appeared from the opposite direction.
Looking at topleft route preview , Omiya is plotted vertically, while Sendai is plotted horizontally.

I initially thought this was simply because the route outline was plotted considering the display direction and size.
However, after reconsidering the shadow results, I thought this might reflect the 3D space plotting.

The 3D space plotting starts from left to right, but the direction of the light is the same.

Then I realized that with the setting where Omiya starts from bottom to top, the relationship is reversed, just like in the screenshot.

I'd like to ask if the route outline reflects the 3D space?

If so, I think many users wouldn't know that if the 3D space orientation changes automatically, they would have to readjust the light direction.

I think it would be better to include this specification in the documentation.

I know that distance measurements can be moved using include, but I anticipate that correcting this now would be a very difficult task.

If possible, having a command to fix the plot direction from bottom to top would be very helpful, as the data creator would only need to add one command.

Could you consider this?

[leezer3]

I'll have to dig into this a bit to be certain- I'm not entirely sure what the route map generation is doing compared to what your route is up to. This isn't code I wrote either.

The short answer though is that the starting direction of the first element (that at Track Position 0, World Position 0,0,0) is fixed at due North, e.g. a World Direction of 0,0,1
The first element however isn't necessarily the first element that's used by the route. (as you can add trackwork before the first .Sta command)

What I think is likely happening is that the route map is being clipped to the 'used' worldspace, e.g. that between the first and last .Sta command, and then projected onto the 'best' axis for in-game viewing.

Essentially, up until now this hasn't mattered.

[ginga81]

I hadn't given it any thought either.
I think it was a blind spot.
I think that the appearance of the shadow has brought this unexpected problem to light.
This is beyond my capabilities, so I'll leave the decision to you.

[leezer3]

So, from some poking-
The map is clipped to the 'used' worldspace. Due North is always towards the top of the map.

I've just added a (trivial) new command:
Options.StartingDirection - This takes a Vector2 to define the direction of the intial first track piece.

[ginga81]

I downloaded the daily build and added
Options.StartingDirection 1
and then
0
Track.Rail 0;0;0
325xxx
...
I thought it would work, but it didn't seem to change.
Was I using it incorrectly?

[leezer3]

You need two arguments, e.g.

North:

Options.StartingDirection 0;1

South:

Options.StartingDirection 0;-1

East:

Options.StartingDirection 1;0

West:

Options.StartingDirection -1;0

It should add an error if there are not exactly two components, or if the direction is zero.

[ginga81]

Thank you!
Now the direction and shadows match exactly as I expected.
I first realized that the diagrams I previously thought simply omitted the map also represented the direction in 3D space.
I learned a lot.
I also felt fortunate that the directions of Omiya and Sendai happened to coincide.
I'll leave the decision to close this to you.