Surveyor 2.0 feedback thread

TY Wreeder


Slowly discovering all these, cause I just signed up for plus
indeed found resize options, you expect the 3 standard buttons on a window - [] X


Docking panels left and right, even if non of the sub windows are there (undocked)
they stay as grey surfaces, would expect them to go away if empty.


The Asset Window seems a modified darkened Content Manager
the real CM can be used on another monitor, which would free up a lot of space in the S2 main window


The Asset Preview although nice looking, you cannot zoom, move or stop the rotation (which makes me a lil seasick)
the one we are used to in S1 has more functionality, has zoom move and stop animation works fine there.
also this window would be great to put on a 2nd monitor.


Indeed each window, would be helpful if it had a simple shortcut button (or Function key) to open or close


I realize it is a WIP, so far great work from the team at n3v

I think the asset-preview issue is a known one. I recommend bug-reporting that anyway and do the same with the scrollbars. The QA-Team will let you know if these have been addressed and if not will add the issues to a task list.

With your Plus subscription, I recommend downloading the allocated DLC. That will clear up a lot of your missing dependencies you see in your routes in TRS19-Plus / TRS22.

I agree with your other points. Being able to move the little palettes to another monitor is something that N3V should aim for. Not everyone has a system, budget, system capable, or space for huge monitors to be able to run a resolution high enough to move the menus out of the way, besides that many of us are older and our eyes can't see the ensuing ant footprints and gnat-sized icons. Sadly, this is a sore point with me even with all the potential that S20 has in store for us in the future because I spend much time moving palettes out of the way and adjusting views in order to do what I need to do.

I agree, strangely CTRL + Space clears the docked windows and menu bar but not undocked windows.

QA reply to my sumbitted report - Brush Tool error when using "United States Region"

As info for community -

Brush Tool, Get Height, Set height does not function properly when "United States Region" is used. (note "Region" - not merely United States)
(Works as expected with other regions)

Reply to submitted bug report:

It appears that the region asset has set the altitude to 1008 meters (so if you add 1008 to your height it works as expected).

I've raised a task regarding the current altitude not being recognized in the Info tool

Click to expand...

I feel that navigating the 3D world in Surveyor 2 has not improved whatsoever.

When working close in on a scene you very often need to pan the screen left or right to align objects the way you want.

Ok, so I click the RMB and the camera moves in the direction of the click. Sometimes I am lucky and I've clicked on the right spot on the screen, more often than not I have not and have to try again.

I change Compass Movement in Settings/Interface Settings to keyboard and I can now get the fine panning adjustment I need, moving the screen left or right in small increments. Perfect.

However, I now want to jump to another part of the scene in the near vicinity, not another part of the route many boards away, and have to use the keyboard where a RMB click would be ideal. Ok, so I can press spacebar to 'Move compass to cursor' which moves the camera to where I want it or I could go back to settings and change compass movement back to mouse but that is just plain ridiculous.

Why are we restricted to Keyboard or Mouse? Why can we not have both simultaneously?

As I have mentioned in posts before N3V are not making best use of mouse buttons. 3 buttons, 5 buttons. My son has 8 buttons on his mouse (don't know what he uses them all for mind you). I'm sure N3V could de better in this area.

So, with the development/release of a brand-new editor and something that N3V want to showcase isn't it about time they also looked at navigation to go with it.

Just my thoughts.

By the way while looking in Settings/Control Settings/S20 Controls there is a shortcut key of 'T' to open the Gizmo Menu.

What's the Gizmo Menu?


Regards,

John.

JCitron said:

Being able to move the little palettes to another monitor is something that N3V should aim for. Not everyone has a system, budget, system capable, or space for huge monitors to be able to run a resolution high enough to move the menus out of the way, besides that many of us are older and our eyes can't see the ensuing ant footprints and gnat-sized icons. Sadly, this is a sore point with me even with all the potential that S20 has in store for us in the future because I spend much time moving palettes out of the way and adjusting views in order to do what I need to do.

Click to expand...

Hello,

Agree with you. Like I mentioned earlier somewhere: multi-window support. Like GIMP has it; GIMP even offers the option of choosing between single-window and multi-window.

Regards,
Paul

I think it should be a way to edit invisible tracks easier, for atls is very had to edit without spline points.

Fineas10 said:

I think it should be a way to edit invisible tracks easier, for atls is very had to edit without spline points.

Click to expand...

I wish the spots were a little bigger myself, but I have no issue moving the track points.

Select the track segment
Click on the highlighted green square point.
Move the square spline point.

Why are there placeholder containers on the screen when palettes are closed?

These grey boxes along the side of the screen take away from the screen real estate gained by closing pallets. There are times when we don't need to have the pallets open while in Surveyor and these blocks remain along the edge which reduces the screen area.

agree John , posted that in beta test list
Tony calls it "polish" I call it interface design
they could be transparent or invisible

Oh, I thought it was just me, having those big grey bars with nothing in them when all the palettes are closed. Definitely an oversight to keep them on screen. Otherwise, what's the point in closing the palettes if we don't get to use all of the screen to see our Trainz?

G.M. said:

agree John , posted that in beta test list
Tony calls it "polish" I call it interface design
they could be transparent or invisible

Click to expand...

Polish... It's going to need more than that, maybe a bit of turning down and grinding first then the polish can be applied.

I also agree with Martin. What's the point of moving those out of the way if the block is still there?

What I was hoping for was to minimize the pallets completely and call them up as I needed after I placed them all across the top. When I saw the grey blocks on the side, it wasn't worth going forward.

We're well aware of the issue. If it was a case of turning them off or making them transparent, it would be done already. We're still working on things that don't work or don't work correctly, so things that don't look "nice" are obviously lower priority.

I would also like to make use of two monitors but I suspect that the programming for that might be more complex than it appears. Multiple Document Interface (MDI) has been around for a long time but since with the UDS it appears that Driver, Surveyor Classic and Surveyor 2 are all just interface changes to the same 3D view. Which would mean you might have to support it in Driver too. That would be fun but likely to impact performance.

Trainz already has a few separate windows outside the main screen
-Launcher
-Content manager
-Log screens etc


While testing S2, and enlarging the Asset window, I found it is actually a modified Content manager
with darkened screen and a few icons for selecting a group of assets
so I wondered if Content Manager could be used as the Asset window and be opened on a 2nd monitor
Content manager has the preview asset option and this window would also be on the 2nd monitor and not in the main window
The most handy would be if mapview/minimap would be external, so you always have a topview.
both in Surveyor and driver handy.

[h=4]Fine Adjustment Tool - Ctrl-click + Drag to clone.[/h]This is a very useful feature. I've used this for laying a row of terraced houses. However, it is very sensitive and you can easily end up with multiple clones/copies sitting on top of each other even with the sensitivity turned down to 1% in the Tool Options.

Anybody else experienced this or found a work-around?

G.M. said:

Trainz already has a few separate windows outside the main screen
-Launcher
-Content manager
-Log screens etc


While testing S2, and enlarging the Asset window, I found it is actually a modified Content manager
with darkened screen and a few icons for selecting a group of assets
so I wondered if Content Manager could be used as the Asset window and be opened on a 2nd monitor
Content manager has the preview asset option and this window would also be on the 2nd monitor and not in the main window
The most handy would be if mapview/minimap would be external, so you always have a topview.
both in Surveyor and driver handy.

Click to expand...

Yes, at the moment you can choose one or more assets in the Asset palette, right click and choose List asset in new window to open a CM window which you can move to another monitor where you can use Asset Preview to open a new window. You can arrange the the CM window and asset preview windows side by side on a second monitor. But what you are doing is a one way spawning of a new window with parameters being passed. There isn't any two way communication between the windows. For example, I can choose an item in CM that I would like to use on my route but there isn't a pathway to choose that item in Surveyor and make it ready to be added. Now if I choose either a route or a session in CM I have a command to Open it in Surveyor or Driver but you will find that what happen is a second instance of Surveyor or Driver is spawned which is totally unconnected to the other Surveyor window. Again it is just a one way process with parameters being passed.

To move the palettes to a second monitor and still maintain the two way communication to the Surveyor screen is quite a different task. I'm not saying it couldn't be done but I have only every seen it in 2D programs like Photoshop so I wonder what the effect on performance would be.

True wreeder, no programmer here, just a customer that knows what he likes to see
a pic of my old gmax (that many now have abandoned) from 2002, using it on 2 monitors (have 3 side by side)

I agree totally and I hope it gets done. I have been using two monitors for at least 25 years. My 3D program of choice was Lightwave 3D which had a separate program for modeling and another of laying out the 3D scene and animating it. They managed the two way communication through a tiny program called the Hub. It passed data back and forth between the two and kept the displays in sync. It was fantastic to pick and object in a complex scene and have it appear in Modeller ready to be adjusted and then just by saving it to disk have the newly adjusted object appear back in the scene with all its motion paths preserved.

I also posted this in response to Len's (lenscab) post on moving content, but I feel this needs more discussion.

Unless I'm missing something here, this becomes an issue as we do more and more with Surveyor 2.0

Selecting and moving is awkward in Surveyor 2.0 and it becomes more difficult when there's lots of content around because we end up repositioning the hand and end up clicking again. At that point, we end up selecting more than we want such as trees, tracks, roads, and grass splines and drag those along as well.

I ran into a similar situation yesterday. I wanted to straighten some track that was covered with catenary. The wires weren't on a different layer, and I didn't make the route otherwise I would have done that, and I ended up selecting the wires instead of the track over and over. I eventually got done what I wanted to do but with a lot of extra effort and eventually switched to the old Surveyor because it was quicker.

Having said that, it would be nice if we could specify which asset-types we want to select since the same tools are used for many things. The various tools could have a filter attached to them with the different categories such as splines, tracks, scenery objects, etc.

This could be done as checkboxes and even include an "All assets" checkbox in case we actually want to select everything. With something like this, we could select tracks only, for example, and now the tools only affect the tracks and nothing else. This is similar to the old Surveyor where we switch to the asset-type to perform the task.

This same selection process could work with the marquee tool to select only tracks and nothing else so tracks can be deleted or raised and not require us to select each and every spline individually.