[PerryPlatypus]

Today, our team at TrainSimulations discovered a pretty major visual issue with 1.5-rc1 related to snow. It appears that ORTS is no longer recognizing the use of an ORTSDefaultSnow.dds texture in the TERRTEX/SNOW folder, which is supposed to appear on any terrain subtile that does not have a dedicated winter terrtex. The terrain instead is showing up as solid black. Both our CN Ruel and MRL Mullan Pass routes are affected, as will be our upcoming Shasta route.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52370832551_da5441719b_b.jpgOpen Rails 2022-09-19 11-05-57 by Sean Kelly, on Flickr

Attached File(s)

•  OpenRailsLog.txt (11.45K)
  Number of downloads: 119

[charland]

This is ORTSv1.5rc-1 snow using an ace file (7:30 in the morning accounts for it being a little on the dark side):

https://images2.imgbox.com/fe/16/bQuPB5PS_o.jpg

Paul :-)

[A D REID]

PerryPlatypus, on 19 September 2022 - 10:09 PM, said:

Both our CN Ruel and MRL Mullan Pass routes are affected.

BNSF Scenic suffers the same visual effect.

[A D REID]

cjakeman, on 19 September 2022 - 05:51 AM, said:

we should change the log message from "information" to "warning" with maybe a bit more detail.

Hi Chris,

A warning message would be good, but I believe it would be a bad idea to attempt to resume from a file with known issues, as it is likely to result in problems later.

Wouldn't it be better to consider these situations as errors, and not load from a "bad" save file? The simulator could be stopped with a message that "the save file is corrupt".

Regards,

Dan

[cjakeman]

A D REID, on 20 September 2022 - 05:26 AM, said:

A warning message would be good, but I believe it would be a bad idea to attempt to resume from a file with known issues, as it is likely to result in problems later. Wouldn't it be better to consider these situations as errors, and not load from a "bad" save file? The simulator could be stopped with a message that "the save file is corrupt".

Good points. (Or perhaps Open Rails could abandon the saving of the file with a message to the user.)

Adding an indicator to a save file that it is considered unusable (and perhaps why) and an announcement to the user and then proving that this new arrangement doesn't add bugs of its own seems like a fair bit of work. Wouldn't it be better to invest that effort into finding out what is going wrong in this tight time window that you have identified?

[PerryPlatypus]

charland, on 20 September 2022 - 03:25 AM, said:

This is ORTSv1.5rc-1 snow using an ace file (7:30 in the morning accounts for it being a little on the dark side):

https://images2.imgbox.com/fe/16/bQuPB5PS_o.jpg

Paul :-)

Thanks Paul. So it seems the issue is specific to using a DDS-format ORTSDefaultSnow file for this. Odd that it used to work perfectly, and the functionality has changed recently.

[charland]

Yes, that's why I had a look and posted my shot. Ace is working fine but for some reason DDS has changed. I beta tested for a guy for years and just about every time he introduced a new feature it effected something that was once working, so it's just programming!

Paul :-)

[engmod]

More advanced adhesion issues

Mullan pass - double grain train

While sitting stationary on flat ground, apply engine brake fully, release engine brake, when air pressure gets close to zero a wheelslip warning comes up.

The warning comes up when the loco is in neutral as well.

[Csantucci]

PerryPlatypus, on 19 September 2022 - 10:09 PM, said:

Today, our team at TrainSimulations discovered a pretty major visual issue with 1.5-rc1 related to snow. It appears that ORTS is no longer recognizing the use of an ORTSDefaultSnow.dds texture in the TERRTEX/SNOW folder, which is supposed to appear on any terrain subtile that does not have a dedicated winter terrtex. The terrain instead is showing up as solid black. Both our CN Ruel and MRL Mullan Pass routes are affected, as will be our upcoming Shasta route.
...

I haven't OR 1.5, but in all other OR versions (Unstable, Testing, ORNYMG) the attached .dds files work well.
 Snow.zip (500.02K)
Number of downloads: 147

[lineman]

Using your snow files and NYMG 1.4-709 rev 130 I get black ground where the snow should be displayed.

No info in the Open Rails log. Appears as a clean install from the log file.