OK, I drove it in the other direction with the same Loco, and it worked fine.

I had Bin Ver1.6, so uninstalled that and installed the latest stable version, 1.7XXX.

Will drive it again tonight and see what happens.

Wayne

Go for a track database rebuild.
If there is a problem that usually finds it.
It will freeze at the problem area and you write down the lon lat and go back in RE and explore what is wrong.
On recolection I had a similar problem with a route I was building and a TDB rebuild fixed it..
DONT FORGET back up your route before doing this as I have also had a good route go corrupt during this process..
Cheers Russ

OK, did a Track Database rebuild. Showed no problems.
Did a couple more runs, now instead of just freezing, I get the "Train.exe encountered a problem" screen, and MSTS shuts down.

Also checked the entire length of track in RE and no orphan blue poles.

Wayne

Time you call for that coffee - oh and bring the route with you, heh, heh.
Cheers

Problem solved. Really quite Elementary, My dear Watson.
I built the Route up until the next Siding, joined the tracks again and stopped there.
It needed one more length of track after the points at the end of the Passing Siding.
Works fine now.

Cheers,
Wayne

Here is an updated shot of the new texture.



If anyone wants to see how it looks in-game, let me know and I'll send it off.

Cheers,
David.

Hmmmm, that does look quite nice - QUITE nice! Is that applied to the VM track?
May I please have some?
Cheers

Sure is Allan. I'll zip it up now and send it off.

Cheers,
David.

Might want to blend the 'ballast' in better with an alpha channel to the edge of the texture, Dave.

Hi, Trying to set up a long (approx 40Kms long) straight.
Direction of track is slightly off to the right, but if I use a 0.5D curve, then it is slightly off to the left.
Should I use Dynamic Track to get a lesser curve angle? Probably needs about 0.2Deg.
Any other way I can line this up?

As always, any help appreciated.

Wayne

I always thought that long straights would be easier than winding track until I actually had to build some. My longest was only 26 km so I feel your pain.

I suspect the dynamic track solution is the best one if you can’t find a set track curve that exits at the desired angle.

I searched through the global\defaults folder for *d.s files and found the following shape file.

a1tEndPnt4_7d.s

Assuming 4_7 stands for 4.7 degrees you could find that’s the .2 degrees difference you are looking for.

Hi SHS,
The track that is being used is the VM via metrico - Spanish metre gauge. It has no Dynamic Track and no zero degree points. For your long straight you will either have have an occasional 0.5 degree curve of the largest radius so that it is least noticeable, or by trial and error place some track forward of your current position which is 0.2 degree off the current direction and then connect it from the new position backwards to the current position. It is like using a piece of 10m skewed track but you don't have that in your armoury.
If all else fails, bring it round Wayne and we can work on it together.
Cheers

Thanks Allan and SHS for your comments.
I had forgotten that VM track didn't have Dynamic Track, so of course that isn't an option.
Allan, I have relaid the whole of Thevenard Yard to correct the misalignment at the Jetty end.
Have also relaid the sections where the curves were too sharp.
Now working on the long straight, as I'm not happy with it in it's current form.
Better to get it right now, than later on when there is more track to relay.

Cheers,
Wayne

Wayne,
Someone sent me something a couple of weeks ago that although I have not had the time to install and play with, just might (maybe, possibly, perhaps) give us a solution to your 0.2 degree curve. Give me a bit of time to "play" - I'll keep you up with any progress.
Cheers

We have a work around. Pretty simple really - I use this technique with roads all the time. Road parallels railway - railway curves 8 degrees - roads only have 5 or 10 degrees - want spawning to have no breaks - so ...?.
Lay about 4 x 5m straights. Then continue on with (say) 4 x 0.5 degree curves. Now return to the join between the straight and curve and lay a 1 x 1m straight on top of the curve and about a metre from the straight and revolve it until it lines up with the curve it is sitting on. Now add a couple more pieces of track to it to anchor it and then remove all the curved pieces of track.
Now join the small gap between the original straights (bit fiddly to get a perfect join) and the new straights and you have about a 0.1 degree deviation which is no more noticeable than some joins done by MSTS itself.
Let me know. I have just done it in my test route and it works fine.
I will pursue the other option just in case. But lunch comes first.
Cheers

I hate them equally to you Wayne. In laying the Terowie route, the straight from Dry Creek to Chidda was bad enough.

What you could also do is to use dynamic track with radii equivalent to what the metre gauge provides. If you're normally using a 600 metre radius curve, then set up the dynamic track as exactly that.

Tinker the end of it by one radian until you're exactly on course. Once you have it setup add a straight to it. Remove the dynamic track piece and replace with metre gauge track of the same radii. You may need to use the occasional shorter track section than 1 degree 600 metre curve pieces to avoid the end of it overlapping and subsequently having all your trains abruptly terminate there

Alternatively, you may to remove nearby and set the straight piece in just the right direction manally. You do not do this at the very start of the straight of there will be an abrupt jolt when you connect the rest of the track. Instead do it about 20 - 50 metres into where the straight should be.

Laying track in MSTS is a horrible task, to put it bluntly

Wayne, I've got some mallee eucalypts that have been gathering dust on my hard drive for 3 months. I threw a few into the sim tonight. They may or not be suitable for Thevenard, but anyway here they are.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y255/SAR704/MAL1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y255/SAR704/MAL2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y255/SAR704/MAL3.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y255/SAR704/MAL4.jpg

They look quite good Michael, wouldn't look at all out of place in some of the locations on Eyre Peninsula.
I badly need some tips on texturing. Perhaps Russell or someone else with plenty of experience could start a tutorial about making textures for the ground and general scenery/vegetation/scrub, etc.

The download library at train-sim.com has a number of tutorials that may be of assistance.

tpictut.zip is a MSTS pictorial tutorial For creating trees by Michael Sinclair.

phototer.zip is a photorealistc terrain tutorial by Michael Stephan that describes how to use google Earth images to create terrain textures using the Mosaic program. This tutorail is also available on steam4me.

terrtut.zip is another terrain texture tutorial by Andy Miller.

steam4me has an extensive number of tutorials to help all MSTS content creators.

http://steam4me.railpage.org.au/trainsi ... index.html

Those three tutorials should be enough to get you creating your own material.

Marek.

Thanks Marek, I already have all of those tutorials, and have tried using them.
These 2 pics show ground textures I made by following one of those tut's, it seems to me they cover the basics of creating the texture, but not the finer detail of really making it look good/lifelike.


This is my first attempt at a saltbush ground cover.


This is meant to represent a Gypsum ground cover.

In my opinion, they are both OK, but they don't have the same finish/polish that some of the textures created by other Route builders seem to have.
I'm assuming it's all in the effects they use on the final image which make the difference, and this is what I was looking for in my original suggestion.

Cheers,
Wayne

Wayne,

I have been artistically challenged from an early age and my kindergarten paintings prove it.

I found using a small sample and pasting it repeatedly over the entire texture results in a regular pattern forming in game as these patterns are then tiled repeatedly over the terrain. There are no straight lines in nature and having any in a terrain texture compounds the regular pattern problem.

I spent time comparing my initial efforts with textures from routes that I thought looked good and tried to see what was different between them. For desert terrains at least I found that the best ones were not ‘busy’ and did not repeat a pattern.

For raw material google Earth came to my rescue and I let Mother Nature do all the hard work. I panned to the areas of the route that represented typical terrain. Zoomed in and out till I got a reasonably random but even colour distribution in the terrain and print screened it into my graphics program.

Resized, chopped and cropped as required to 512 x 512 pixels and all 4 edges massaged so that they tiled seamlessly. Some looked OK in game and some were rubbish.

Below are two textures I knocked up in an hour or so. They both still require a bit of tidying up around the edges as there is a noticeable seem on the first texture at some angles in game. No fancy 2D graphics program filters or tweaks, just a photo image of ground terrain as seen from the air and clean up the edges for seamless tiling.

Marek.

A nice start, Wayne.

To redue the 'square effects', in blend mode change the shape to a circle with a blended egde from a solid square. Then change the hardness setting to something less than 50. The transition will be much smoother.

For best texturing results I have found that a good camera is imperative. Even a 200 dollar digital camera should allow you to create highly realistic textures. Cheap cameras can oversaturate the photos.

One thing that could be perceived to be wrong with the first one is that the bushes are embedded in the terrain texture, rather than 3d. It may be suggestible to do the brown texture as a terrain texture, and make some clumps made up of bushes and grass textures to place on top of it. On flat terrain, you can make these clumps larger without them ending up floating in the air as they would in hilly terrain. It shouldn't murder your framerate, but it is a toss up between visual appeal and high framerates.

Solved the long straight problem.
Used an Excel spreadsheet called "Object Rotator", by Michael Vone (Author of "Step by step guide to route building").
Results are shown below, covered a distance of 38 Km's without a curve and ended up right on the marker.



Now I can get on with all the other problems associated with creating a Route.

Wayne

Thanks Marek and Michael for the suggestions and tips, I will try them out soon as I have time.

Marek, can you explain a little further what you mean by "massaged the edges" please?

Wayne

Wayne,

Terrain textures are tiled like a chess board if you are covering large expanses of area. To ensure they tile seamlessly, the left edge should match the right edge of your texture as well as the top edge and the bottom edge.

If the edges don’t match then the join between the terrain textures in game can be quite apparent.

One of the textures I posted above has this problem. See the arrows in the following screen capture that clearly demonstrates this.



Marek.