TRS19 gets Kinky...

[horacefithers]

I used the bulk asset replace tool to change some track from my old standby from JR to TRS19 SAP U.S. procedural track.
I used the change within selected area mode.

I don't know if this caused the problem but now I'm finding KINKs (not Ray Davies!) where some straightened track segments meet curved segments.

Central Oakhill

Kinks at the west end of summit yard.

Clicking on the joints while in 'move track' mode (F4, M) fixes the issue. However, I'm not thrilled with needing to inspect every stinking inch of track in a 105 mile route. Unfortunately I've done TONS of work since I changed the track with those Bulk Asset Replace commands. The scary part is that the kinks shown here are not within (and Oakhill isn't even close to) the selected change rectangles. The track in Oakhill hasn't been changed for MONTHS.

Has anyone else experienced this joy?

Is there a way to fix all such occurances without needing to spend a day or two walking all the track in my route?

Horace (N3V really did it this time) Fithers

 

[pware]

Horace, unfortunately your screenshots have not transferred into your post. In answer to your question, I have not experienced this "joy". But the last time I did a bulk track replacement was in the original (pre SP1) TRS19 and there were no problems.

PS: I was feeling a "little bit kinky" this morning so I ran a test using the bulk replacement tool on track in a selected area of a route that I am working on. No "kinks" were observed. Could be the track you were using (possible) or a random "glitch" (also possible).

How big was the selected area? I would try it on a small area first and then work up.

PPS: It is also possible that the kinks had nothing to do with the track replacement and may have occurred some time ago.

 

[horacefithers]

I can see the screen shots looking at my post...

Something new. In all the track that the bulk asset replace generated this morning the RR ties went missing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I rebooted the game. Still missing.

I rebooted the computer and went back two revs of my route. Still the ties are missing.

I wrote a complimentary article about virtual railroading that was published in the February issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine (www.mrhmag.com)

This parade of bugs and corruption is making me sorry that I wrote it.

N3V WTF?

Horace (spitting) Fithers

 

[horacefithers]

Track without ties...

To the tune of "Blowing in the wind"

Where have all the cross ties gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the cross ties gone?
So long ago
They have have vanished every one,
When will N3V ever learn?
When will they ever, learn?

The ballast seems really high. Are the ties buried beneath it?

HF

 

[SailorDan]

I don't know if this caused the problem but now I'm finding KINKs (not Ray Davies!) where some straightened track segments meet curved segments.

I don't if the cause was ever identified, but the problem was evident in a number of payware routes released for TRS2019, so you aren't the only one to experience it. The real problem isn't the kinks - it's the disconnected spline points that aren't kinked and therefore don't get noticed until a consist stops and refuses to proceed.

 

[dangavel]

Track without ties...

To the tune of "Blowing in the wind"

Where have all the cross ties gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the cross ties gone?
So long ago
They have have vanished every one,
When will N3V ever learn?
When will they ever, learn?

The ballast seems really high. Are the ties buried beneath it?

HF

I experienced this a while back when importing routes into 2019, one reason I’ve left it alone, I don’t need more hassles, life is difficult enough as it is without increasing the load

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

This parade of bugs and corruption is making me sorry that I wrote it.

N3V WTF?

A parade would indicate lots of people involved. This is more an isolated case where something unexpected is happening and we have no idea why until we narrow down the variables involved.

Please provide KUIDs for the tracks involved, build number, and the exact set of steps that led to seeing the issue.

Given that you mentioned straightened track, does the problem disappear if you unstraighten>? And does it return when you restraighten?

Does it disappear if you bulk replace with a different track?

Does deleting the two segments and re-adding them solve the problem? And if so, can you re-break them by doing anything?

What happens if you use the "remove gradient tools" (which turns them from yellow spline points into white ones, meaning they will stick to the terrain when adjusted)?

 

[jackyamstel]

I haven't done a bulk asset replacement of track in a long time but reading this made me try it again. My route is presently about 170 miles long using TRS 19 procedural track. I used the bulk replacement tool to change it to JR Dk Grey Dirty and checked the route, finding no kinks. I then changed the JR track to one of the TRS19 SAP tracks and found no kinks. However, the SAP track was not showing any ties. I tried it before the bulk asset replacement and it was like that then as well. I then wondered if the shader quality would affect it as I was using the standard setting at the time. After changing to ultra the SAP track showed the ties. I don't know if this helps but it is what I found on my route.

Jack

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

Ties showing/not showing could depend on the height of the track and the underlying textures being used. PBR textures can have up to a few hundred mm of apparent depth.

 

[horacefithers]

I haven't done a bulk asset replacement of track in a long time but reading this made me try it again. My route is presently about 170 miles long using TRS 19 procedural track. I used the bulk replacement tool to change it to JR Dk Grey Dirty and checked the route, finding no kinks. I then changed the JR track to one of the TRS19 SAP tracks and found no kinks. However, the SAP track was not showing any ties. I tried it before the bulk asset replacement and it was like that then as well. I then wondered if the shader quality would affect it as I was using the standard setting at the time. After changing to ultra the SAP track showed the ties. I don't know if this helps but it is what I found on my route.

Jack

Aha! I think i had lowered the shader quality from ultra. No ties. Then turned it back up all the way. Then ties again.

No time tonight, perhaps tomorrow I can try that experiment again.



Tony,

When I find a kink, I can unkink it by clicking on the circle of the kink while in track/move (F4 - M) mode. Actually, clicking on the circle at the other end of the curved segment that is party to the kink will also remove the kink.

I was unable to use the separate the two track segments by clicking on the kink circle and dragging. As soon as I click on the circle the kink vanishes.

Iirc un-straightening the straightened track segment removed the kink which remained removed when the previously straight segment gets re-straightened.

Clicking the circle with the height adjust track tool had no effect on the kink.

Someone mentioned that trains would stop at such a juncture. I have successfully driven trains across the kinks. But only trains I'm controlling, not an AI consist. Driving trains is how I noticed the problem. The train made violent motions as it rounded the kinked corner. Amazingly, the train stayed on the track. The train in question was 5 SP BW GP9s. I was driving from the middle unit with the camera down low against the unit behind so I could keep an eye on curvature to located places where curvature changes weren't smooth. The kinks definitely were not smooth.

There is a bug report ticket on this: #JHN-566-29358
The asset kuids of the existing and replacement track assets are in the bug report.

I haven't checked the whole route for kinks yet.

• In the Oakhill area, it looks as if there was a kink (some were hardly visible) EVERYWHERE a piece of straightened track met a curve.
• The track between Oakhill and Summit was almost all curvy track. There was a kink when the track curved around and became the yard's main track (which was straight).
• I'm not sure if *every* place between Sherman Butte and the Summit tunnel developed kinks. I know I found and fixed quite a few. This was the area where I'd applied the bulk asset replaces (I did the bulk asset replaces with a selected area over 3 or 4 squares at a time because I'm paranoid and doing 30+ squares at once seemed risky).
• Track from the Summit tunnel down and through the Oakhill area was NOT in the selected areas where I performed a bulk asset track replace.

Another thing I noticed when driving my "curvature inspection consist" - when I went through a tunnel, the camera would be squished down flat against the train. A little distance after the train emerged from the tunnel, the camera resumed its previous position. But seemed to have moved a small amount from the way I had it set up prior to the tunnel. I'm not sure about this. It's possible that what I saw was caused by a gradient change after emerging from the tunnel (the camera angle appears to be an absolute angle from the X/Y/Z coordinate axis rather than an angle relative to the train car from which one is driving). This might explain why the camera seemed to move - if there is a gradient transition the camera would be a bit higher or lower relative to the following locomotive from the driving position loco (in camera mode 2 or 3) and thus the view of the locos ahead of the camera also changes slightly.


HF

 

[pware]

I can see the screen shots looking at my post...

Off topic but intriguing. Your pictures are showing up on one computer (a laptop) but not on this desktop. The same OS, same browser.

 

[MSGSapper]

I haven't done a bulk asset replacement of track in a long time but reading this made me try it again. My route is presently about 170 miles long using TRS 19 procedural track. I used the bulk replacement tool to change it to JR Dk Grey Dirty and checked the route, finding no kinks. I then changed the JR track to one of the TRS19 SAP tracks and found no kinks. However, the SAP track was not showing any ties. I tried it before the bulk asset replacement and it was like that then as well. I then wondered if the shader quality would affect it as I was using the standard setting at the time. After changing to ultra the SAP track showed the ties. I don't know if this helps but it is what I found on my route.

Jack

The answer is yes, you must have the shader set to Ultra as the SAP track uses parallax to give the ballast bed and other items a 3D look.

Bob
Creator of the SAP Track

 

[blueodessey]

The answer is yes, you must have the shader set to Ultra as the SAP track uses parallax to give the ballast bed and other items a 3D look.

Bob
Creator of the SAP Track

Good Morning all,

Excellent information shared here.

I did not realize I needed Shader ever set to ULTRA for effect, this could explain some oddities I see on my Laptop every so often........

As well, I put Shadows and Shader lumped together in the same Camp due to Heat restrictions from running my NVIDIA 1050 Gti at full bolt, my laptop gets too hot when I run at Warp in Trains or anything else that works my Graphic card to hard....It comes with 4 Gigs of VRam and works quit well, but is starting to show some age with the faster Graphics in Software......

I'll go stand in the corner now for not paying attention to the details........

Best :wave:

 

[MSGSapper]

Good Morning all,

Excellent information shared here.

I did not realize I needed Shader ever set to ULTRA for effect, this could explain some oddities I see on my Laptop every so often........

As well, I put Shadows and Shader lumped together in the same Camp due to Heat restrictions from running my NVIDIA 1050 Gti at full bolt, my laptop gets too hot when I run at Warp in Trains or anything else that works my Graphic card to hard....It comes with 4 Gigs of VRam and works quit well, but is starting to show some age with the faster Graphics in Software......

I'll go stand in the corner now for not paying attention to the details........

Best :wave:

The requirement to set the shader to Ultra is the same for all PBR items, textures, etc that uses parallax to achieve the 3D effect, and not just my track.

PBR, and the 3D effects that come with it, is one of the major reasons that most people purchased TRS19, including me. If you have PBR items or textures that use parallax, and are not having your shader set to Ultra, then you are really missing out on what the creator of that item intended and the best look for that item.

It is extremely difficult to build a 3D track as the tolerances are very tight. It took me over two months to finally get a track that would look and function right. This is one of the reasons that many of the built-in TRS19 3D tracks don't have a ballast bed that looks right. Most are way to low or almost non-existent. I opted for a correct looking ballast bed, but the penalty for that is that it will not look right if you do not have the shader set to Ultra.

For those who have a machine that isn't capable of handling Ultra for the Shader, I would recommend the following track items instead which are not 3D:

<kuid2:439337:102787:1> SAP Protrack U.S. 132LB SG, FB, Rusty, Track Only
<kuid2:439337:102789:1> SAP Protrack U.S. 132LB SG, FB, Shiny, Track Only
<kuid2:439337:102745:1> SAP Protrack U.S. 132LB SG, FB, TP with Spikes, Rusty
<kuid2:439337:102784:1> SAP Protrack U.S. 132LB SG, FB, TP with Spikes, Rusty, No Ballast
<kuid2:439337:102580:1> SAP Protrack U.S. 132LB SG, FB, TP with Spikes, Shiny
<kuid2:439337:102786:1> SAP Protrack U.S. 132LB SG, FB, TP with Spikes, Shiny, No Ballast

Note: The above items are all build 4.2.

Bob

 

[horacefithers]

The PBR enabled tracks looks MUCH better than its non-3D cousin.

HF

 

[horacefithers]

In a fit of bravery I tried a bulk asset replace of track from JR to TRS19 SAP Track in the entire route instead of only within a region.

It worked. All though I've yet to scrutinize every piece of track in my somewhat large route, the 70% I have looked at doesn't seem to have any kinks in it.

Now the question is, were there kinks present before the global bulk asset replace and they are healed? I didn't check before doing the asset replace so I don't know for sure.

But it is encouraging that I've not found any kinks (so far) in the track-replaced route.

The bad news is that I need to go through everything again looking for places where the track is buried in subroadbed or floating above it and look for places where the procedural track's tie arrangement is wonky or the ballast contour is comprimised.

I'll make one more pass through doing this (and probably editing some textures and terrain contours) while I'm at it.

Hopefully TRS19 will cooperate. I've been having a lot of Surveyor-disappears-in-a-blink-of-the eye crashes lately.

I wonder if running it on a 2950x Threadripper is a contributing factor. Is anyone else running Trainz on an AMD threadripper?

Cheers if ya got 'em,

Horace Fithers

 

[clam1952]

I find that running a database repair after every patch followed by the trainutil prebuild command solves most issues.

On my own routes disappearing ties (sleepers), I find can usually be fixed by adding another spline point, also ensure that on both legs of a junction the splines are at the same height or very close to.

On the DLC with the problems, ensure the DLC is up to date as if I remember correctly some of it was updated to fix things like disconnected splines some time ago.

Threadripper? doubt that would be the cause, as the GPU does most of the work anyway, the CPU isn't that important in TRS19 or TANE.