TurfFX - Entire grids of grass being wiped out

neilsmith749

Active member
Ok - so a few days ago, I thought I ended up losing months of work on my route, mostly all the TurfFX additions. I was able to recover a version from the previous day which was seemingly uncorrrupted, and everything is fine.
I'm still at a point where I've found a problem, and I'm not sure whether it's something I've inadvertently done wrong, or if it's a bug with TRS19.

Here's what happens:
-route loads fine - TurfFX looks as it should (presently have 6 types of grasses (or layers))
-when I try to create another layer, it seems to go well, and I can paint it on the present grids and everything looks fine
-BUT, when I go to an older section that may have been done a week or two ago, if I hit "add" or "delete" of ANY of the grass layers, ALL grass layers disappear on that grid.
-I figured that maybe there was a max number of layers, so I deleted one that I don't think I used, and without even creating a new layer, I went back to the same older grid, and tried again. Still, ALL grasses disappeared.
-I'm thinking it's the process itself of creating or deleting layers that may cause this problem.
-or maybe because of the sheer size of the route, and the amount of TurfFX I've used - is there a threshold that I've crossed which is causing this error?

I'm going to send in a bug report to the help desk, but was just wondering if anyone else had any experiences like this.
 
After searching the forums I don't see a response to this issue, and I am experiencing the same problem.

as stated above "when I try to create another layer, it seems to go well, and I can paint it on the present grids and everything looks fine
-BUT, when I go to an older section that may have been done a week or two ago, if I hit "add" or "delete" of ANY of the grass layers, ALL grass layers disappear on that grid."

This happened after I added a third layer mid way through applying the first two layers to my (largish) route. Turffx density is 10m on the first two layers, and 2.5 on the added layer (so I can't see that I would be pushing the TurfFX layer limit documented in other threads).
 
Thanks for your response, I did see that post. But I doubt very much that with only three layers (turf density 2 layers x10m and the additional 2.5m layer, all three layers pretty sparsely layed) that I have reached that limit. And if I have, well.......
 
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Ok - so a few days ago, I thought I ended up losing months of work on my route, mostly all the TurfFX additions. I was able to recover a version from the previous day which was seemingly uncorrrupted, and everything is fine.
I'm still at a point where I've found a problem, and I'm not sure whether it's something I've inadvertently done wrong, or if it's a bug with TRS19.

Here's what happens:
-route loads fine - TurfFX looks as it should (presently have 6 types of grasses (or layers))
-when I try to create another layer, it seems to go well, and I can paint it on the present grids and everything looks fine
-BUT, when I go to an older section that may have been done a week or two ago, if I hit "add" or "delete" of ANY of the grass layers, ALL grass layers disappear on that grid.
-I figured that maybe there was a max number of layers, so I deleted one that I don't think I used, and without even creating a new layer, I went back to the same older grid, and tried again. Still, ALL grasses disappeared.
-I'm thinking it's the process itself of creating or deleting layers that may cause this problem.
-or maybe because of the sheer size of the route, and the amount of TurfFX I've used - is there a threshold that I've crossed which is causing this error?

I'm going to send in a bug report to the help desk, but was just wondering if anyone else had any experiences like this.

Don't feel alone on this one. In my route upgrade efforts I have had a lot of trouble with TurfFX application. This first TurFX layer applies as it should. Adding another TurfFX layer tends to wipe out the first layer in the grid section being edited. I have also experienced that "wiping out" problem when later attempting to edit what I have already laid down, usually when trying to remove it from track. To reproduce this problem add a TurfFX layer to a test route and then save it and exit the game. Now relaunch the game and go back to edit the test route. Try editing what you have done or adding another TurfFX layer.

Bottom line: TurfFX makes very realistic looking scenery but is very buggy at this point. It is also very hard to be precise with it's application as the radius can't be turned down low enough.

Bob
 
FYI on Turf-FX... Merging a route with Turf-FX grass into a non-Turf-FX route results in the Turf-FX being wiped out on the route that was merged in. I found that out the hard way yesterday.

I have found that if I keep the layers simple, I have better results and less of an issue of the grass vaporizing into thin air, and I have also found that on rather large routes, the placement becomes more difficult as the computer processing begins to chug. It maybe my older hardware doing this, but it's something to be aware of.
 
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Lots of great responses and info here.

The new 2.5m layer was an attempt to create a more precise replica of one of the 10m layers. I planned to use it only sparingly, as in most locations the precision of the 10m layer is enough. I thought this may be less resource hungry than painting everything with a 2.5m layer, although I can find no documentation to support this.

Now I am now wondering if I am wasting my time painting TurfFX (it will take several days per layer to go over my entire route). Perhaps I should wait until the 1st Service Pack to see if things improve.
 
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The new 2.5m layer was an attempt to create a more precise replica of one of the 10m layers. I planned to use it only sparingly, as in most locations the precision of the 10m layer is enough. I thought this may be less resource hungry than painting everything with a 2.5m layer, although I can find no documentation to support this.
While this is a good idea, I believe it is only suggested in order to simplify the painting - creating large even areas with the high precision version is very tedious. So it doesn't save storage - in fact, it consumes more, but this isn't an issue until you get to the point of running out of storage. There is no penalty in using up the available storage space.

But note that all the Turfx documentation and commentary involves a lot of guesswork.
 
While this is a good idea, I believe it is only suggested in order to simplify the painting - creating large even areas with the high precision version is very tedious. So it doesn't save storage - in fact, it consumes more, but this isn't an issue until you get to the point of running out of storage. There is no penalty in using up the available storage space.

But note that all the Turfx documentation and commentary involves a lot of guesswork.



I have a theory, and my theory is this... (Monty Python).

More seriously, I have spent some time now trying to apply effects layers to my route. In doing so I have come against a number of issues. For now I am focusing on the disappearing sections, that being the most annoying problem, and for that issue I have just raised a Help Desk ticket. I am surprised at the low numbers of posts on similar issues on the forums (but I do not subscribe to other social media formats, or participate in Beta testing, so maybe I am out of the loop).
 
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I've encountered the disappearing turf now as well. I have been using only two kinds of grass and it's been working well but the other day when I added a third layer to be used for pasture land I discovered a problem. The new layer painted down just fine. I then went back to an older part of the route where I have been deleting splines and replacing them with turf. As soon as I started painting grass along the track, what I had previously done started disappearing. As I moved along the track to repaint what had just disappeared, grass farther ahead of me vanished. I now decided to just delete the new pasture grass layer. Pasture grass was now gone but so was most of the turf from the first two layers. I tried removing all of the turf from the new pasture layer by using the down topology tool before deleting the layer. Not as much of the other layers disappeared but it was still a substantial amount. My route is about 160 miles so far and I had grass splines removed and converted to turf fx for about 30 miles of that. I'll have to redo that and I'll see what happens when I get back to where I was. For now I'll be sticking to two turf layers.

Jack
 
I had the opposite problem: I put my turfx in a couple of squares and save the layout. When I opened it next day I found turfx everywhere within the area in between with no terrain where of course it's impossible to delete it.:(
 
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