[Genma Saotome]

I was painting a few patches and therw was this flash... and the result:
 Weird.jpg (557.53K)
Number of downloads: 4

Curious... I saved, exited, ran TSRE again and sure enough, there they were.

I was able to repair this easily enough but clearly something isn't what it should be.

[Genma Saotome]

It happened again. You can see where the paint texture function was started in the upper left corner of the weird area and then Bang! Weirdness. All of relevant settings are visible in this shot (click once to view full size).

 Weird2.jpg (479.1K)
Number of downloads: 16


FWIW the paint texture function is pretty cool.

[R H Steele]

Dave, What kind of experimental medical crop are you planting? http://www.elvastower.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/acute.gif http://www.elvastower.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif

[Genma Saotome]

R H Steele, on 20 October 2017 - 07:44 AM, said:

Dave, What kind of experimental medical crop are you planting? http://www.elvastower.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/acute.gif http://www.elvastower.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif

I dunno about whatever is on the right but the dark area on the left appears to be an array of RGB pixels.

If something funky is going on w/ the video cards I would expect to see such flashes elsewhere as well, but I don't. It only occurs when I use the Put paint texture function in TSRE.

<correction>

[Goku]

On last picture it is not a RGB array. It looks like some kind of binary data - OpenGL error and memory leak.

What do you do that you have that kind of errors? Today I painted whole tile several times and had not even one error.

[Genma Saotome]

Perhaps a clue:

The camera was further away from teh target than normal. I started to paint and boom! Three tiles changed instantly:
 Weird3.jpg (558.43K)
Number of downloads: 3

[Genma Saotome]

Goku, on 20 October 2017 - 11:28 AM, said:

On last picture it is not a RGB array. It looks like some kind of binary data - OpenGL error and memory leak.

What do you do that you have that kind of errors? Today I painted whole tile several times and had not even one error.

I really don't know what event triggers this. I load some textures, click the function paint, and start painting. Sometimes I can paint across many patches w/o a problem. Sometimes it blows up as the first few pixels change.

The post before this one is the first where I noticed anything that might be a clue: the area that I aimed the paint to go was instantly replicated in three adjacent tiles, two of which then changed to those wild colors (judged only by the fact the pattern of the paint is found under" those colors and it all happened at once.

A possible other clue: I did not create this route (I am editing it to my own tastes) so I cannot tell you anything about issues that may have cropped up in construction; But I have seen that elsewhere in the route all of the terrain mesh becomes invisible for several tiles... many tracks to not display. I've not investigated that yet, other that t o note the same areas won't properly display (at all times) in Mosaic. Close in they do, pull the camera back and they disappear. The effect is in the foreground of this shot::
 Lost ground.jpg (211.03K)
Number of downloads: 3

Perhaps the two events could be related by some common flaw in the terrain data (and here it would be nice to have some utility that would let route builders see all the relevant strings and elevation values in such data that are obscured to us by the binary storage used).

I'll post more as I learn more.

[Goku]

I'll try to add some debugging comments to the log, maybe it will help.

[Genma Saotome]

More issues... reasonable ones this time: I was trying to paint in a texture of a row crop and the orientation of the rows in newly painted pixels was just as they would be seen in the texture file itself -- up and down -- exactly what you would expect. However in this case I had done a 90d rotation of the texture in the adjacent tile and I wanted the newly painted pixels to align with that, running right to left. What follows are the sequence of steps I took to try to get what I wanted:

• I wanted to select the patch so I could rotate it. No selection or rotation function are present in the terrain tools window.
  
• I tried to get the properties window to display by toggling off then on using the view menu command. The window would not display.
  
• I switched to the object tool window which does have a select button. I activated that and clicked once on the patch I had been painting. The properties window appeared showing me data about the terrain I had selected. This window did have a rotate button.
  
• I clicked rotate in the properties window and the terrtex art on the selected patch rotated as expected.
  
• I needed to return to the terrain tool window (I had the Object tool window displayed) I so used the Tools menu to bring it back into use, no problems.
  
• I tried to paint more of the terrtex art and so I activated the Texture function again and I ran the brush left to right; The pixels applied themselves running left to right but (here's where it gets interesting) as they appeared the spray pattern was up and down. IOW the spray pattern was 90d off the motion I used with the brush.

This state of affairs left me in an impossible situation as if I returned the orientation of the art to its original state the row crop would be 90d off of what IU wanted; If I left it in the rotated orientation I could not control the brush well enough to achieve the correct positioning on the painted pixels.

So clearly something has to be changed.

Having opened this particular can of worms I'll add my opinion that the terrain and terrain properties windows are a mess. You've for some functionality that is specific to the display of water, some that is specific to the terrain mesh, and some for painting. I respectfully suggest you consider three tool windows for terrain work: Everything you need for managing the application and display of water (which could include that larger display of water elevation values I suggested to you a few weeks back). A second window to manipulate the terrain mesh... adjusting the height of the vertex points, cuts and embankments, bias, etc. This could include a copy of the toggle function to show/hide the mesh itself. Then a third window dedicated to the appearance of the terrain mesh -- both texture assignment and painting, including the suggestion I made earlier about controlling the orientation of placement and its scaling and to do so for both the surface texture and the microtex.

I think the result would be a better organization as well transforming the properties window for terrain to show only the data of a selected tile, such as the world file name, the \tiles name, the name of the terrtex and microtex files that are present, the current bias level, perhaps also the orientation of the terrtex file, its scaling, and so on.

IOW the properties window are entirely informational (or almost entirely so) and the tool window is almost entirely functiona.

[Goku]

Genma Saotome, on 23 October 2017 - 07:49 PM, said:

I wanted to select the patch so I could rotate it. No selection or rotation function are present in the terrain tools window.

You can just right click in the main window and choose "Select".

Genma Saotome, on 23 October 2017 - 07:49 PM, said:

I tried to get the properties window to display by toggling off then on using the view menu command. The window would not display.

That's how the "W" mode works. You need to select anything and the window will appear.

Genma Saotome, on 23 October 2017 - 07:49 PM, said:

I clicked rotate in the properties window and the terrtex art on the selected patch rotated as expected.
[...]
I tried to paint more of the terrtex art and so I activated the Texture function again and I ran the brush left to right; The pixels applied themselves running left to right but (here's where it gets interesting) as they appeared the spray pattern was up and down. IOW the spray pattern was 90d off the motion I used with the brush.

Rotating, mirroring etc. painted textures (white border) is not allowed. You use terrain textures MSTS way or TSRE way. No both at once. You can rotate texture before first painting. Not after it's converted to painted texture.

Genma Saotome, on 23 October 2017 - 07:49 PM, said:

I think the result would be a better organization as well transforming the properties window for terrain to show only the data of a selected tile, such as the world file name, the \tiles name, the name of the terrtex and microtex files that are present, the current bias level, perhaps also the orientation of the terrtex file, its scaling, and so on.

Yes. That's the purpose of terrain properties.