Hi all,

I just started up the A&O yesterday evening after around 2 weeks of not running the sim at all..... I found that all the bridges on the route seem to have gone rather funny....... I've attached a couple of pics to show what i mean............... Instead of being displayed normally with the wooden effect of the bridge i now have a half/half effect of normal bridge top and normal ballasted track. Also if you look closely there is a gap where the edge of the bridge should be and you just see straight through to whatever is below as though the top of the bridge is floating in mid air....... I also noticed that every so often as your driving along the shadows from all the stock will dissapear under the ballast/track that your travelling along..... then re-appear again as though certain sections have differant properties to others.

Ok so this is what i have tried so far....... At first i thought it was just the old prob of MSTS crashing so i restarted the PC and tried again..... Same results.

The only thing i can think of that i have installed is the latest XTracks last week so i re-installed the previous version of XTracks and also the previous TSection.dat....... Still same results.

I have also deleted then re-installed the A&O Sub and patches....................... Still same results.... (In fact the pictures were taken at this point)


Anybody got any ideas....... Short of re-installing the whole MSTS AGAIN!!!!!



Cheers

Dave.

Ughh.

I heard there were some folks having some trouble with the latest xtracks.

I used it on an install that contained Downtown Trolley, And a few other routes that also needed New roads.

Didn't have any noticeable problem on those routes.

However, I have yet to use New roads 3.2 or the latest Xtracks on my Master install to prevent just that sort of event occuring.

Andre, I was meaning to ask you what you ended up discovering after your intensive investigation into the new roads situation. The long extended explanation please, so I can fully comprehned it. I am getting a little tired of trying to keep track of which routes change this, and what addons change that.

I know you made SURE not to modify anything that would effect others global data. It is a shame that the people who sort of standardize these things for the community do not adhear to that thought process.

I am all for the expansion of new track types, road types, and other modifications, but they could just as easily be included as additions, and not replacements. All it did was save someone some time once, by replacing a default item with something else. Thus, no going back and renaming the new item in all of the places it was altered. Yet, that same time saved ends up being wasted ten fold by those of us, trying to get our routes back into standard running order after installing some of these "fixes".

I am sorry for this micro rant. But I find it rather hard to imagine that people who are willing to invest 100's of hours or more to create a route to share with the community, could not be bothered to create their addons so that they do not ruin the work of many others who have slaved equally as hard to produce their own work. Worse yet, is the fact that it still happening and seems to be generally accepted by this community. I know Andre has had to spend some serious time trying to help sort out some of this very sort of problemn when it effected his route. I am sure that he could have found a much more satisfying way to spend that time.

Please be sure you understand me. These problems that I have been seeing pop up all over train-sim, here, and even a few other boards are not caused in any way by Routes like Andre's. They are being caused by some of the standardized tools, that many of the latest routes are utilizing. Namely Xtracks and New Roads. Hopefully the very talented folks involved with these almost essential mods will address these issues, and sort this out once and for all.

The only advice aI can pass along at this point is, make seperate installs for routes needing New roads, and stick to Xtracks 3.12 until the latest release gets sorted out.

Frustrated,

MFOS

Ps. Andre please get back to me about the fix for newroads. I thought you had isolated the specific files that needed to be either left uninstalled or needed to be replaced back to the default versions to keep from wrecking the appearance the routes that do not use them. ( Or whatever ) Email is fine, if you care to be very detailed. Thanks buddy.

MFOS.... Only thing is.... I already have gone back to the previous version of XTracks that was working ok the other week... and also i don't have new roads installed.... As far as i know....... and it's still behaving like this.... which is the bizarre part because now everything is back to how it was when all was ok.

Anybody know if just installing the old XTracks back over the new version would be good enough???? i also deleted the TSection.dat before doing this so that XTracks (version from 2004) would install the previous tsection.dat that i had been running ok with.

Cheers

Dave.

Did you switch MSTS to a 16 bit display resolution? The ZBuffer (which determines which object are drawn in front of others) is a lower resolution in 16 bit mode and can result in rendering errors such as depicted.

David:

I'm at a loss to explain what you're seeing. It appears that something has possibly tampered with the alpha ace file for the track texture.

I personally stopped downloading/implementing add-ons into my MSTS installation some time ago, so I don't have any recent experience with same.

MFOS:

I didn't extensively experiment with New Roads. As mentioned above, I avoid add-ons. The conclusions I reached were based on experimentation via telephone with Marc and emails with a couple of beta testers.

I am not willing to risk compromising my MSTS installation with add-ons, thus I will not install New Roads in order to pinpoint the problem and create a fix. Having to reinstall MSTS and all the associated tools/etc into my machine would be blow I'm not willing to endure. I will leave it to the add-on developers to find solutions to the problems their add-on creates.

Having said that, I believe the New Roads issue was with the shape file for the JP road sections. That is, I believe New Roads changed the height of the default JP road shapes found within the Global/Shapes folder. Replacing the modified JP road shapes with default shapes should stop the malady of having submerged JP roads on a route that used the default supplied shapes for construction. Unfortunately, this will RAISE the roads on a route built using the New Roads modified JP roads.

I also recall being told there was a "batch file" or something that comes with New Roads that can reinstall the default JP road shapes?

IMHO, a developer should never tamper with default Global shapes/etc and then distribute the work to others.

Andre

Hi JohnCS:

FWIW: I typically run my MSTS installation in 16 bit and it has never displayed as above.

We're certainly open to any/all suggestions as to what is causing this.

Andre

Andre thanks for the reply.................. I think what i might try is installing MSTS to another directory...... then just copying over all the track ace files to my current install to see if that rectifies the problem....... rather than re-installing the whole thing along with all the various routes etc....... i reckon it may well be the xtracks lataes version that's caused the problem as all was well a couple of weeks ago when i last ran on the route....As i said above i have allready gone back to the previous version of xtracks but i'm wondering if it hasn't replaced all the affected files hence my idea to copy over a fresh set of track ace files etc.....

Cheers

Dave.

Just re-applying it over the newer version wouldn't get rid of any of the new track shapes that were added.

This latest build had new track from Cyko works or something and a few other goodies. (If I recall correctly)

I thought of that too.

To make matters even more complicated, I thought that a New Tsection.dat was just released too. Has that been incorporated into the latest xtracks installer? If not, should we install it, if we wish to running the most current trackwork?

That is why I have so many installs of this game on my system. MY master install with my "must have" routes is as clean and pure as Dove soap partner. The other installs, are my more exotic routes that require some extra addons to run.

It does save on some of the headaches, but not all of them.

MFOS

Ps. Just noticed a new thingy below my Signature. Cool !!! Thanks to whomever placed it.

Hello All!

I have not experienced the problem, but I have avoided it by doing a couple of things. I did not install the latest X-Tracks. I also have a separate install of MSTS just for A&O Sub. I renamed the current MSTS folder, then made a new install, then installed A&O Sub, run it a couple of times, then deleted all other routes from that install, then renamed the new MSTS folder, and made shortcuts to the desktop. Now if I want to run the A&O Sub, I click on the shortcut and go! It really loads a lot faster and runs a lot smoother. I have done the same with several other routes. I can add or delete X-Tracks, NewRoads, etc. as the route requires, without affecting other routes. Hope this helps! The one downside, uses a lot of drive space. Guess I'll just have to get a bigger drive!

Bob