[James Ross]

markus_GE, on 29 July 2014 - 03:17 PM, said:

Route is ATSF Glorietta Pass 2 available on TS.com. The siglight texture used is the one provided with the route, and telling of what it looks like in TGATool2A it´s might not be the default MSTS texture, but is very close to it.

It looks kinda like the signal lights are set too big, could you check the size in the sigcfg.dat and compare with a MSTS built-in route?

[markus_GE]

SigLight radius in the Glorietta Pass sigcfg varies between 0.22 and 0.27 (roughly), while in default Marias Pass it´s always 0.11.

another route I just today experienced the issue with is the LESurroundings route (also available from TS.com), with values of 0.001, 0.21 and 0.6. The 0.001 radius gives no glow at all, in fact, the lights are almost invisible, while the others give discs comparable in size to my screenshot, or thrice that size.

Cheers, Markus

[disc]

i'm trying to convert signal lights to normal texture and small radiuses to make signal glow effect look good.
It worked, but the glow have a really strange behavior.
As i closing to the signal, the glow fades and disappears for a while, then appears again, but when the camera is very close the signal, the original signal light texture disappears, and a small glow texture appears with black borders.

Click for video
(why can't i upload it as attachment? "Error You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file")

[markus_GE]

AFAIK the system is set to not allow uploading videos at all, not even in the railfan video section. You can upload it at almost any other video site (e.g. Youtube), and post a link here (or use the "insert media" button to outright embed the video, which will show the video player right in your post). Settings at the sites may also allow you to set the video to only visible for those who have a link to it.

BTW, how can you get so dark a night?

Cheers, Markus

[James Ross]

disc, on 13 August 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

i'm trying to convert signal lights to normal texture and small radiuses to make signal glow effect look good.
It worked, but the glow have a really strange behavior.
As i closing to the signal, the glow fades and disappears for a while, then appears again, but when the camera is very close the signal, the original signal light texture disappears, and a small glow texture appears with black borders.

Click for video
(why can't i upload it as attachment? "Error You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file")

Hmm, that's weird. (Thanks for recording a video, that was very helpful!) I think the signal light almost entirely disappearing at a medium distance (after the glow fades) is the glow drawing on top of the normal texture but blending behind it - the same as when it appears at very close range. Obviously, it should not appear at very close range so I'll have a look at that... I'm not sure why the blending isn't working right, though.

[copperpen]

I am finding that different siglight.ace files give different effects although I have not yet come across one that fades out and in. The best results thus far are to be had using the default ace file or a derivative of it.

My first two moves with a route with the signal glow enabled is to make sure it has a normal siglight.ace, then set all normal signal radius lines to 0.18. and those for ground signals and other smaller ones to a much smaller radius, say 0.05. This gives me visible normal signal lights at just over 2 miles line of sight, just a small blob of colour that gradually grows, but not much oversize, as it gets closer until about 500 yards at which point it shrinks to the normal lens size on the signal head. The shrinkage is more like it loses a hazy halo that developed as it came closer.

[disc]

I've used a custom 64x64 DXT3 compressed dds file for signal light, with 6 mipmaps. Radiuses are between 0.11 and 0.07.

[copperpen]

I wonder if it is your custom file that is causing the "blackouts" and the halo round the light in the closeup view.

[disc]

I don't think so, as what is appears when the camera is the closest isn't from that texture, but it seems that the glow effect itself activated again.

signal texture
Maybe some Z fighting? However the light fades gradually, but z fighting would cause flickering.

[copperpen]

Have you tried converting it back to a normal ace file to see if the behaviour is the same?. If it is not then the problem is caused by the dds, or the way in which OR is processing it.

[disc]

i don have tools for ace (and i don't want to use ace ;) ).

[copperpen]

No worries. I have taken your dds file and dropped it into the Patrick Wise version of Cajon Pass. Changed the sigcfg.dat to use the dds file and ticked the dds box in options. On this route it behaves exactly the same as an ace file, there is no fade in/out. The problem lies elsewhere.

[disc]

I've tried on a default route on hisatsu line, and the signal does exactly the same thing, except the signal light texture never disappears there completely, and the fading is not so dramatic, but still visible.

[copperpen]

On the Cajon route I tried, my radius is 0.18 which matches the size of the signal lens. The green signal was visible from over 3 miles distance, red came in at about 2 miles. The red had a bit of a flicker, but that was due to there being another red in line with it further along the route. When both reds were distinct items all three signal heads displayed no flicker or fade in/out on this system.

I am running a Haswell i5 with an Nvidia GTX650Ti 1 GB video card.

[disc]

So after some testing: the problem happens with all signals, but not visible at daylight(as the glow isn't grows bigger than the signal texture on the last few metres, only at night, except with that signal that is on the video. There for some reason the glow appears ahead of the signal light texture(while on other signals it's behind it), without transparency, so the corners are black.