Vanishing Rulers in TRS19 SP3

Its not a show stopper by any means but it is a minor annoyance. I have noticed my rulers (drawn on bare baseboards) are partly or completing becoming invisible. You can usually still see the distance and bearing data at each end and at the middle (but on the shorter rulers, only at one end not both) but the multicoloured ruler lines and arrow heads have either vanished completely or are only visible at the active (moving) end.

The move and delete ruler tools are still working as normally as is the add ruler but only the data description can be seen, not the arrowhead or line. Only when the ruler length exceeds 7kms (yes 7,000m) does approximately half, the half at the cursor drawing end, become visible.

I have a maximum of 3 rulers on the layout at any one time, and mostly it is only 2. All of my rulers are LONG and all but one are 9kms to 12kms in length. The one exception stretches from the start point to the end point, a distance of 103km.

All the rulers start and end on a baseboard but will sometimes "cut the corners" and cross the empty spaces where the line of baseboard has changed direction. This may be a factor in the problem but the problem did not appear for some time and after many such empty space crossings had been made.

Some preliminary observations seem to suggest that it may be a display refresh/redraw issue but I could be totally mistaken there.

Interesting.

ADDENDUM: I add that all the rulers were fully visible until the first one vanished from view. From then on every new ruler was invisible until it reached 7km in length. Saving the layout, exiting Trainz and reloading made no difference, the rulers stayed invisible. Even did a DBR just to make sure - it had no effect. When starting a new layout or loading other existing layouts, the rulers were all fully visible.

Do the Surveyor settings have anything to do with it? Thinking in particular of draw distance and "process objects behind camera".

That's a thought, thanks. I will do some more "playing" with rulers.

EDIT: Preliminary tests indicate no difference but it may help to narrow it down.

Tony_Hilliam said:

They are fully visible here, so the step you need to work out is what is required to make the first one go invisible.

Click to expand...

Yep. Testing that now.

I have made some progress. When I deleted the invisible shorter rulers and then the partly invisible 103km ruler the next ruler I drew was completely visible. Hypothesis: It may have something to do with the length of the 103km ruler.

Test: Draw a new ruler starting at 5km in length and increasing it in 5km increments. Then save, exiting and reload after each length change until invisibility problem returns. Repeat to test reproducibility.

Preliminary results.

When the length of the ruler exceeds 90km then any new ruler that is drawn will only show the data (distance, bearing).

Delete the 90km long ruler and new rulers that are drawn will show the line, arrowheads as well as the data. It is almost as if the long ruler has used up all the multicoloured ink.

I will do some more checks to confirm it is reproducible and then submit a bug report.

Further results.

I have been able to reproduce the effect.

In summary:

I created a 120km long linear set of bare baseboards (by merging).
Started at one end and drew out a ruler 10kms in length.
Drew a short ruler near the end of the 10km ruler. The short ruler was fully visible.

Extended the longer ruler by 10kms and drew another short ruler near its end.
Repeated the above every 10 kms

At 80km to 85km the short ruler appeared without its coloured line and arrowheads but distance/bearing data was present.
I checked the other short rulers and their coloured lines and arrowheads had also become invisible.

I reduced the length of the long ruler below 80kms and all the missing lines and arrowheads reappeared.

Weird. Bug report submitted. It is not a "killer" bug and probably 99.9% of route creators will never encounter it - alas I am in the 0.1% who likes really long routes with stations correctly placed.

if no-one else does, TY for the testing pware.
this is the proper way to get this game better for all.

Thanks for that G.M.

I understand how difficult it can be for N3V's QA to reproduce "strange behaviours" and claimed "bugs" because there are often just too many different variables involved. While it is time consuming and thus does not appeal to everyone, a methodical approach is often the only way to (hopefully) resolve these problems.

N3V's QA team have confirmed my test results and a task has been raised.