[charland]

Hi Sid,

I tried the DAR route the other night and removed the checkmark from beside Morel Instancing and the water and trackside veggies stopped flashing, but doing the same for the TIR route had no effect on the flashing water. I'll have to check into this further because I'm sure I changed the BlendX settings and that stopped happening in MSTS.

Paul :-)

PS: Just opened the same activity in MSTS and the water does not flash on the TIR... only in OR.

Paul

[James Ross]

Sid P., on 10 April 2016 - 09:08 AM, said:

Hi All,
I have attached two captures showing the "flashing water" that I observe in the TIR route (and also the DAR). I moved my view position very slightly between the two captures.
I had unchecked the Instancing option.
Open Rails 2016-04-10 12-31-27.jpg
Open Rails 2016-04-10 12-31-37.jpg

It is likely that either the water layers are at the same height or they are too close together for OR's current alpha sorting to consistently order them. The second is more likely but the result is the same.

If you want to check yourself, look at the various .env files in the route's EnvFiles directory. The "world_water_layer_height" item specifies the height (as an offset) and the default routes all use -1, -0.5 and 0.

[charland]

Hi James,

I just checked and the top height is set to 0, the bottom -1, and there is not mid water.

Paul :-)

[James Ross]

charland, on 10 April 2016 - 11:43 AM, said:

Hi James,

I just checked and the top height is set to 0, the bottom -1, and there is not mid water.

I guess we're (OR) just struggling to come to terms with that. :) There's probably already a bug on file about water flickering, but you can file another if you can't find it.

[Sid P.]

Hi James and Paul,
I just modified my .env files in TIR, and the flashing is gone - many thanks!
Strangely, corrections had already been made to a couple of my .env files in 2014, and I had completely forgotten about it! As it happened, the .env file for the activity that I was recently running had not been modified.

[charland]

Hi Sid,

What was the modification?

Paul :-)

[Genma Saotome]

charland, on 09 April 2016 - 11:35 AM, said:

I thought I had the tide figured out in MSTS but it didn't work out, not sure how or if it would work in OR ....

Paul :-)

You have to vary the water layer heights in each seasonal .env file. On the Cal-P I put my "high tides" in the winter.env and Spring.env files, low tide in Autumn.env and the Summer.env for something inbetween.

[charland]

The water in the Bay of Fundy raises 48 feet twice a day. As I recall I was able to get it to vary but not on a 12 hour rotation, it was much too quick. In MSTS each water tile would pop up and it reminded you of broken ice popping up when a wave went beneath it then the more or less gentle rising and falling or a tide over six hours. Maybe OR has that corrected by now, but until they have their own route editor it's hardly worth trying again.

Paul :-)

[Genma Saotome]

charland, on 11 April 2016 - 10:26 AM, said:

The water in the Bay of Fundy raises 48 feet twice a day.
Paul :-)

Oh... world-class tides then. Ok.

The correct and full solution for route-wide tides is a tidal table made up of two-column rows... first column is time of day and second is tidal-offset (in meters) from whatever is presently recorded for the tile. The rows are at some standard increment of time... dunno if 1 hour is fine enough but I'd guess that one minute would be too many rows. OR would read the table and as the clock rolled along periodically do a lookup to get the next tidal offset, compute the proper level and use it when rendering the water.

To have tides on a tile-by-tile basis would be feasible too, tho in this case instead of one offset you'd need to record 4 -- a value for each corner. Obviously many more tables too.

Last case: Tides for selected water areas: This would be a big change from how MSTS does things because it means each body of water would have its own characteristics. In the idea this would be the best way to go because you could then have different art apply to different bodies of waters -- lakes and streams would finally look different from each other. For tides, same solutions as above only assigned to each body of water where tides are wanted.

Bottom line: Ya gotta find some programmer who wants tides too.

[charland]

It's been a few years since I last tried this but from what I remember someone did have me try the tide table approach but instead of all the water rising and lowering at the same time it only moved as the tiles were loading. What you ended up seeing was a large sheet of water pop up above the rest, then the next set of tiles loaded and that water popped up, and so on. If the tide was lowering you would see a line between the surface color and the mud color under it... it wasn't pretty. If I recall, this was all going up and down in one hour and the 48 feet really made each change very pronounced.

Paul :-)