[disc]

-Sometimes the Take other exit menuitem doesn't appear, but i can pull the path where i wanted to by take other exit.
-There was a passing path in a previously made path, which i wanted to change, but "take other exit" didn't apeared there, so i removed the passing path, and made it again with "start passing path" "reconnect passing path...". But again it created the same path, and take other exit did't worked. So i deleted the passing path again, and i tried to create it again, but the reconnect option didn't appeared where it appeared few 1 min ago.

Next time i will make some screenshots, however there were just simple passing loops.

[disc]

Here are some instances where the take other exit does not appears. I can move it to other track by mouse, but it's not reliable.
 trackviewer problem.jpg (480.54K)
Number of downloads: 199

It's a rarity where take other exit appears, i couldn't find any correlation when and why it appears and when isn'.

[JeroenP]

Dear disc.
Thanks for the pictures. Sorry for not reacting immediately, I am busy on something else.

'Take other exit' and 'add passing path' are features I implemented earlier on. These two only search for a path such that at each junction only the main track is searched. In your first picture above, there is no such path. So 'Take other exit' is not possible (no path is found that keeps the end-point; a destructive 'take other exit' is only possible if no exit is defined). Do note that this has not changed.

What has changed is that changing a path with a mouse is more advanced. It searches for much more possibilities (I was afraid originally that searching for all possibilities, so taking both possibilities at each junction, would lead to too many possibilities, since the amount of possibilities grows exponential. Later I found out that it wasn't that bad if you limit the depth of the search).

Do note that also passing paths have the option to do, within the path, a 'take other exit' but with the same limitations: only via main tracks at each junction. There is still the idea to extend 'dragging with the mouse' to passing paths and to path sections that have a passing path. But that is not available right now.

I also should consider rewriting 'take other exit'/'add passing path' to search in the same way as dragging with the mouse.

One last point, dragging with the mouse has two things that make it a bit difficult to use at the moment. You have to keep 'ctrl' pressed during the whole time. And you have to be pretty much zoomed-in enough to be accurate.

So, thanks for the feedback. For now I think the missing options are not a change from previous implementations (but they should perhaps be improved to be more like dragging with the mouse), and yes, dragging with the mouse is possibly a bit awkward.

Best regards,
Jeroen.

[conductorchris]

Hi Jeroen,

I've been having a big session with the trackviewer and have some comments I hope are helpful. I'm working in Windows 8.1

I have a laptop with dell's answer to apple retna which increases the pixels per inch (or cm). More current programs (such as Open Rails) scale up to appear normal, but some, including trackviewer, display the same number of pixels and thus shrink. I'm not sure this will translate, but here is the screenshot:
 trackviewer.jpg (2.82MB)
Number of downloads: 190
Note especially how the menu and the bottom information panel are half covered up. The small size of the program is not an issue; I can click full screen and it is fine.

I am working with a batch of paths that have multiple places that have to be fixed. I'm finding that some of them throw errors that crash trackviewer. It would be nice to be able to save the many changes I had made so far so that I could then try to solve the problem that caused the crash. One of these crashes happened while trying to fix a path crossing a track section in a yard that seemed not to actually be there. Eventually I managed to drag the path to the next yard track and the crash went away. Another problem involved a bad path on the last segment before a path end.

Is there some reason "Enable Editing" must be clicked? It's an extra step.

I am getting crashes from "system.NullReferenceException" Object reference not set to an instance of an object. This last time it happened after going to open a new path when a path was already open. It said it had been modified and I'd loose changes (it had't, I just opened it to have a look. Though it had been modified before) and I confirmed the message and then got the crash.

[conductorchris]

Another display issue I'm encountering: When I right click and choose wait point, the dialog box to set the time is not visible. I can see in the status bar that it is open, but then when I go to minimize the trackviewer window I find I cannot either minimize it or reduce it from less than full screen. When I close the dialog box from the status bar (without having been able to set a time), the ability to minimize or reduce from full screen comes back. A little more testing and I find that if I reduce from full screen *before* setting a wait point, I *can* see the dialog box to set the wait and it functions as expected and then I can return to full screen when I am one.

I'm also finding the "Draw path until here" option in the right click has no effect most of the time. I can't work out why. I tried putting an end point down and the dragging it with control-drag. That worked when "Draw path until here" was not functional. But then it didn't work either. I can't imagine doing this for 150 miles.

Christopher

[scottb613]

Hi Jeroen,

While Track Viewer is light years better than going into the old MSTS AE - - - just wondering - - - is your intent with this tool to eventually turn it into a full scale Activity Editor - - - or - - - just retain the functionality currently available ???

Thanks for all your hard work on this - fantastic tool...

Regards,
Scott

[JeroenP]

Dear ConductorChris,

Regarding the issue with the retina screen. I can see the issue. It seems like the menu and the bottom status bar do actually scale correctly (automatically somehow) but the rest of the application is not. This does make some sense since the menu and statusbar are programmed using WPF, which is a different graphics library than the rest, which is XNA. I know that the menu for openrails you show is also WPF, but the simulator itself is using XNA. I actually have no clue on how to change this (google does give some ideas) and I have no idea on how to verify it.

Regarding some of the crashes. Let me see if I understand this correctly. You have a path with quite some broken links. For some reason you actually get crashes. Sometimes. I am assuming you crashes during editing, not? Well, of course that is not good. But it is difficult to debug without an example route. But what you want is actually to save the path in between, not. And currently it is not possible to save a broken path. Is that what you meant?

Regarding the extra menu click to enable editing. It started out as a viewer only (hence the name). Editing came later. To make sure that during viewing there are no unintended editing steps happening, I decided to make editing a separate step.

On the nullReferenceException. Again, from that message alone I cannot judge what is going on. However, even though you did not change a path, it might have been modified during import. Not all paths are very well defined (partly because paths might belong to an older route of the version). During import some ambiguities are fixed. So it was modified. However, that fact should not lead to a crash.

Unfortunately I have also no idea why you would get the wait-window not showing. I can't recall running into that myself or having heard an issue with that. Sorry.

Regarding the draw path until here. Are you having a path that switches back on itself? (so running over the same track multiple times?) In that case the draw until here might work on the top-level pass at that point. Which means an underlying path might still be visible.

I do realize that I have not necessarily been able to give useful answers. The real bugs I would not be able to reproduce without an actual example.

As a general note, I have not tested on windows 8 (just 7 and Vista), I would hope that is not a factor.

Best regards,
Jeroen

[JeroenP]

scottb613, on 04 February 2015 - 05:40 AM, said:

Hi Jeroen,

While Track Viewer is light years better than going into the old MSTS AE - - - just wondering - - - is your intent with this tool to eventually turn it into a full scale Activity Editor - - - or - - - just retain the functionality currently available ???

Dear Scott. There is other work going on related to a full scale Activity Editor. I do not exactly know the status of that. However, that certainly is geared toward doing things beyond MSTS (like support for the already available timetables) that need their own editor. So trackviewer will be limited to MSTS path editing.

Next that that, due to all kinds of personal work-related things, I have not spend a lot of time on this in the past few months. Which also means I do not currently have a clear intent :shock6:

Best regards, Jeroen.

[hroch]

Hi
do you know about this bug? http://www.elvastowe...s-disappearing/
Please could you fix it?
Thank you a lot.

Regards

[scottb613]

hroch, on 06 February 2015 - 03:49 AM, said:

Hi
do you know about this bug? http://www.elvastowe...s-disappearing/
Please could you fix it?
Thank you a lot.

Regards

Hi Jeroen,

Thanks for the information - understand - and thanks for making this very useful tool... Greatly appreciate all you've done...

Regards,
Scott