Elvas Tower: Weather Activity Event Won't Go Over 20,000m Fog - Elvas Tower

Jump to content

Page 1 of 1
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

Weather Activity Event Won't Go Over 20,000m Fog Upper Cap Needs to be Raised to 100,000 Meters Rate Topic: -----

#1 User is offline   PerryPlatypus 

  • Fireman
  • PipPipPip
  • Group: Access 1 Open Rails Forums
  • Posts: 192
  • Joined: 13-January 10
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Post Falls, ID
  • Simulator:Open Rails
  • Country:

Posted 01 May 2021 - 11:23 AM

This has been a bug for a long time, as far as I know (I'm not sure if it ever wasn't a bug, actually). When using weather event blocks in activity files, it seems impossible for the "Fog" value to be raised above 20,000 meters (which is the default fog value at start of a Clear activity). The Fog value should be able to be set as high as 100,000 meters, which allows for greatly improved distant mountain viewing. It seems the only way to achieve this is manually by holding SHIFT + MINUS key. Page 196 of the ORTS Manual itself indicates that the range of possible ORTSFog values is up to 100000.

Example of the weather block I am using in an activity event. It appears any value over 20000 for ORTSFog has no effect, but values under 20000 do have an effect.

ORTSWeatherChange (
ORTSOvercast ( 0 0 )
ORTSFog ( 100000 0 )
ORTSPrecipitationIntensity ( 0 0 )
ORTSPrecipitationLiquidity ( 0 0 )
)

P.S. Personally I have routes where it would be nice if this max fog distance could actually be pushed to as high as 200,000 meters, for example. I have routes where in real life, mountains are visible very clear even from nearly 100 miles away on a clear day (that's about 160,000 meters). Mount Rainier in Washington is one example, and I'm sure the Alps or the Himalayas are visible from 100 or more miles away on clear days.

Take this picture for example: https://railpictures.net/photo/339409/
Mount Shasta in the back of this image is a bit over 70 miles away. From this distance in OR, distant mountains appear as very faint hazy mush, even with the ORTSFog manually "maxed out" at 100,000 meters by pressing SHIFT+MINUS.

#2 User is offline   Csantucci 

  • Member, Board of Directors
  • Group: Status: Elite Member
  • Posts: 6,986
  • Joined: 31-December 11
  • Gender:Male
  • Country:

Posted 02 May 2021 - 12:50 AM

ORTSFogTransitionTimeS must be > 0. If you correct your above line to
ORTSFog ( 100000 1 )

your fog distance will jump to 100000 in 1 second.
If you need to have that value at 0 (e.g. for very initial conditions for activity), I'll see if this can be easily supported.
I'll see what it means pushing the max fog distance to 200000. It might not simply be replacing a value in a comparison.

#3 User is offline   PerryPlatypus 

  • Fireman
  • PipPipPip
  • Group: Access 1 Open Rails Forums
  • Posts: 192
  • Joined: 13-January 10
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Post Falls, ID
  • Simulator:Open Rails
  • Country:

Posted 02 May 2021 - 12:00 PM

View PostCsantucci, on 02 May 2021 - 12:50 AM, said:

ORTSFogTransitionTimeS must be > 0. If you correct your above line to
ORTSFog ( 100000 1 )

your fog distance will jump to 100000 in 1 second.
If you need to have that value at 0 (e.g. for very initial conditions for activity), I'll see if this can be easily supported.
I'll see what it means pushing the max fog distance to 200000. It might not simply be replacing a value in a comparison.


Thank you Carlos! Interesting, I had thought I experienced this issue on both instantaneous and gradual weather changes, but it seems not. Just tried with a 1 second timing and that worked! I should note that the OR Manual does not agree with this and may cause confusion. It says the following:

The xx_transitionTime is expressed in seconds, and indicates the time needed to pass from the initial
weather feature value (overcastFactor, fogDistance and so on) to the final weather feature value. If such
xx_transitionTime is set to 0, the weather feature takes immediately the final value. This is useful to start
activities with weather features in intermediate states.


As for 200,000 distance, thanks, I appreciate looking into whether it is an easy fix or not :)

#4 User is offline   Csantucci 

  • Member, Board of Directors
  • Group: Status: Elite Member
  • Posts: 6,986
  • Joined: 31-December 11
  • Gender:Male
  • Country:

Posted 02 May 2021 - 12:46 PM

View PostPerryPlatypus, on 02 May 2021 - 12:00 PM, said:

Thank you Carlos! Interesting, I had thought I experienced this issue on both instantaneous and gradual weather changes, but it seems not. Just tried with a 1 second timing and that worked! I should note that the OR Manual does not agree with this and may cause confusion. It says the following:

The xx_transitionTime is expressed in seconds, and indicates the time needed to pass from the initial
weather feature value (overcastFactor, fogDistance and so on) to the final weather feature value. If such
xx_transitionTime is set to 0, the weather feature takes immediately the final value. This is useful to start
activities with weather features in intermediate states.


As for 200,000 distance, thanks, I appreciate looking into whether it is an easy fix or not :)


That's good. OK, so here the manual describes an intention and not a fact ;) What should be changed is the code, so I'll work on it.

#5 User is offline   Csantucci 

  • Member, Board of Directors
  • Group: Status: Elite Member
  • Posts: 6,986
  • Joined: 31-December 11
  • Gender:Male
  • Country:

Posted 04 May 2021 - 01:17 AM

In rev. 98 of OR NewYear MG I have
- corrected the fog issue that didn't work with ORTSFogTransitionTimeS = 0
- increased max fog distance to 200 km.

Sean, if you will find out that the changes work, I'll port them also to the official OR releases.

#6 User is offline   PerryPlatypus 

  • Fireman
  • PipPipPip
  • Group: Access 1 Open Rails Forums
  • Posts: 192
  • Joined: 13-January 10
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Post Falls, ID
  • Simulator:Open Rails
  • Country:

Posted 05 May 2021 - 12:28 AM

Carlos,

Tested and confirmed that the weather change event with transition time of 0 seconds now works to set the Fog distance to 100,000 (and higher). I also tested out the new 200,000 meter fog, definitely a noticeable improvement in the haze, very much appreciated :)

Page 1 of 1
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

1 User(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users