Putting ballast down makes track dissappear in places??

A

autodctr

Active member
I had an Acer 1600 x 900 monitor. Everything was fine. As of today, I have a BenQ 1920 x 1080 monitor. Weird thing now happening. I have track laid. Was going to put ballast around the track, but the ballast covers the track in spots! Sometimes, clicking a few times (with the ballast) makes the track reappear. I have tried raising the track up to 0.25. It helps in most of the places, but now my track is "floating" and looks really dumb.

Any ideas? I am using an Nvidia RTX 2070 with the newest driver.
 
autodctr said:
I had an Acer 1600 x 900 monitor. Everything was fine. As of today, I have a BenQ 1920 x 1080 monitor. Weird thing now happening. I have track laid. Was going to put ballast around the track, but the ballast covers the track in spots! Sometimes, clicking a few times (with the ballast) makes the track reappear. I have tried raising the track up to 0.25. It helps in most of the places, but now my track is "floating" and looks really dumb.

Any ideas? I am using an Nvidia RTX 2070 with the newest driver.
Click to expand...

The problem is most likely not with your graphics card or computer. It is most likely the PBR ground texture and/or the track you are using. Since you haven't provided specifics I cannot say for sure. Just bear in mind that 3D PBR ground textures do not play well with thew older 2D ground textures or track that use 2D textures.

Bob
 
This is stuff that I have used before without problems. So far, I only have smiley #5 grass as a base and I tried many different ballasts: all did the same thing. The track is what I have always used before.

After posting the first message, I went back and tried some layouts that I had built before and ran with no problems. Now, there are problems: elevated track, snow covering tracks, etc. This is really weird.

I also find it hard to believe that it has anything to do with the monitor.
 
Hope you find a solution to this problem.

Keep us informed.
 
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Can you briefly switch back to the older monitor? I agree physical video hardware shouldn't make a difference, but I'm wondering if the screen resolution change has triggered something? Also, was the video card also new with the new monitor?
 
The video card (RTX 2070) is the same one that the old monitor used. Can I change back to the old monitor? I could, but it would be a lot of moving things that I really don't want to do if I don't have to.

I tried a few things this morning. Made a test track. I put down several different tracks. Then, I tried different ballasts. All of them showed the problem to some extent. Interesting thing that I noticed here was that the track, if it was going to be covered, was covered at the edge of the circle. What I mean is that the circled area where the ballast is being laid: the edge of the circle is where the track covering mostly appeared. Moving the circle while continuing to lay the ballast caused the overlaid area to be at the edge of the circle. In the middle of the circle, the track "reappeared".

Nexy, I went to the current layout that I was building. I had already lowered the ground for a lake. I filled it with water to 0.5 less than the ground level. All looked normal. Now, I wanted to put some dirt texture around the edge of the water. Again, I used the dirt/stone texture that I have use many time. However, I now had this: as I laid the dirt, it slightly change the level of the water! If I laid it in the water, the water's edge crept slightly up onto the shore. If I laid it on the shore first, the water slightly receded. Not much, but it was notable. Weird thing is that I actually like it better: it gives the water's edge a more realistic look: not as smooth.

Back to the ballast: choosing larger or smaller texture made no difference. Changing the size of the circle made no difference. Sometimes, repeatedly going back and forth several times made it behave and stay below the track.
 
If you use PBR ballast and it buries the tracks. Go back with a non PBR ballast and make your brush as small as possible and repaint right under the tracks it will put the PBR ballast to the correct height to the tracks. Can do this with roads also.
 
I will try that. But, I still have to wonder why things are different now with a new monitor? Was I not seeing things before because of the lower resolution? I tried setting this resolution to the what I had on the old monitor (1600 x 900) but I still had the same problem with track getting covered.
 
Important to recognise that PBR textures and older-style non-PBR textures do not play at all well together, so should not be mixed near track, or places where you'll be viewing scenery at LOD0/ 1.
Note that the latest procedural tracks for 2019 also sport mostly PBR ballast and the new Grid is a PBR texture too.
(If you place an older track-type onto the new grid, you'll see that it appears to sink into the landscape...)
These parallax anomalies you're seeing are not the fault of your RTX 2070 card - or either monitor - they relate to the rendition of the asset's textures using Physically-Based Rendering.
Best fix is to apply the best outcomes from your test-board track/ ballast combination experiments in your route creations and reject the failures.
 
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I'm just bumping this because I think I may have run into the same (or similar) issue.

Last night I swapped out the GTX1060 card in my Trainz PC (running TRS19) for a new GTX1660. It's kind of the same card but with more modern 'stuff' in it, originally bought for use in another machine but things got in the way and this was better.

I upped the shadow and water qualities to the maximum (they'd previously been one down) and the only other change I made was to toggle 'Texture Streaming' from On to Off, as my understanding is that you don't need it with reasonably good cards.

Then I loaded my layout and lo-and-behold there were areas where the track was sunk into the ground. The track is (from memory) the TRS19 1t Wood and it wasn't happening everywhere, but there were several areas where it was very noticeable.

Now, I can't be sure right now as to what textures were in use but I'm fairly sure they're NOT PBR ones (although the comment above about the TRS19 tracks using PBR ballast is interesting) - however, I'd need to check. Is it safe to assume that all PBR ones will have PBR in the name? I'm guessing not.

I'm not complaining, I'm just curious as to what made Trainz suddenly decide to start eating sections of track. Could the Texture Streaming change be it? It's no biggie - in fact it'll force me to separate my textures into known PBR ones and known non-PBR ones, something I've been intending to do. I've been noodling around with this layout for ages under TRS19 with no issues of this nature. the only thing that changed was the graphics card, the shadow quality, the water quality and the texture streaming. The nVidia driver did NOT get updated (although it looks like there's an update available, so that'll happen tonight).

From the top of my head the textures I use the most are 'JT Grass 50' (my default 'just fill in the grid with this for now' texture), the Pinehill 1-6 grass textures, 1000m Ground, and a couple of Protrack ballast ones (along with a couple other ballast ones I can't remember, but I'll find out if anyone cares).

Any thoughts?
 
GreyAreaUK said:
I'm just bumping this because I think I may have run into the same (or similar) issue.

Last night I swapped out the GTX1060 card in my Trainz PC (running TRS19) for a new GTX1660. It's kind of the same card but with more modern 'stuff' in it, originally bought for use in another machine but things got in the way and this was better.

I upped the shadow and water qualities to the maximum (they'd previously been one down) and the only other change I made was to toggle 'Texture Streaming' from On to Off, as my understanding is that you don't need it with reasonably good cards.

Then I loaded my layout and lo-and-behold there were areas where the track was sunk into the ground. The track is (from memory) the TRS19 1t Wood and it wasn't happening everywhere, but there were several areas where it was very noticeable.

Now, I can't be sure right now as to what textures were in use but I'm fairly sure they're NOT PBR ones (although the comment above about the TRS19 tracks using PBR ballast is interesting) - however, I'd need to check. Is it safe to assume that all PBR ones will have PBR in the name? I'm guessing not.

I'm not complaining, I'm just curious as to what made Trainz suddenly decide to start eating sections of track. Could the Texture Streaming change be it? It's no biggie - in fact it'll force me to separate my textures into known PBR ones and known non-PBR ones, something I've been intending to do. I've been noodling around with this layout for ages under TRS19 with no issues of this nature. the only thing that changed was the graphics card, the shadow quality, the water quality and the texture streaming. The nVidia driver did NOT get updated (although it looks like there's an update available, so that'll happen tonight).

From the top of my head the textures I use the most are 'JT Grass 50' (my default 'just fill in the grid with this for now' texture), the Pinehill 1-6 grass textures, 1000m Ground, and a couple of Protrack ballast ones (along with a couple other ballast ones I can't remember, but I'll find out if anyone cares).

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

The higher settings will enable the PBR and Parallax settings, and if you used the textures, you will find sunken track and roads.
 
JCitron said:
The higher settings will enable the PBR and Parallax settings, and if you used the textures, you will find sunken track and roads.
Click to expand...

I guess I could test this later, but which setting do you think it was? Can't see it being the water (because), but shadows _might_ I guess? And could the Texture Streaming On/Off have an effect?
 
GreyAreaUK said:
Thank you. Seems a rather drastic affect for so minimal a performance tweak, but I guess it just crosses a threshold.
Click to expand...

I agree. I'm not particularly fond of the PBR stuff and actually set back my graphics levels. It's not that my graphics card can't handle it, it's just I don't like the gel that surrounds them. Other benefit is better performance too overall because the card isn't working as hard.
 
I don't use any TS2019 track because I don't like trackwork that looks like it was extruded by a huge toffee machine. After transfering a favourite legacy route to TS2019 a while ago I changed its trackwork over to one of the TS2019 tracks and then promptly changed it back to the original track because it looked so awful.
 
I may persist with it for now, but I'm definitely going to have to separate my Textures piclist into PBR and non-PBR ones.

Would appreciate some suggestions for nicely detailed UK ballast (non-PBR).
 
I use UK Bullhead- Wooden <kuid2:79563:1042:2> by Rumour3 because it suits the secondary lines and minor railways type routes that I build. There's others in the Uk Bullhead series as well that are compatible with it. I use this track in TS2019 without any problems and it looks fine. It's definitely not procedural track so you have to place point frogs and check rails yourself, but that's not a problem for me since I dislike the look of procedural track anyway.
 
KotangaGirl said:
I use UK Bullhead- Wooden <kuid2:79563:1042:2> by Rumour3 because it suits the secondary lines and minor railways type routes that I build. There's others in the Uk Bullhead series as well that are compatible with it. I use this track in TS2019 without any problems and it looks fine. It's definitely not procedural track so you have to place point frogs and check rails yourself, but that's not a problem for me since I dislike the look of procedural track anyway.
Click to expand...

Thank you.
 
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