RGE - Terrain cutting off at long -1.888xx

[GSX1400]

Has anyone come across this?

I am trying to create a westcountry line which runs west/east from a north/south line. . no this isn't dungeons and dragons!

Imagine a line going north south from lat 51.38 ish down to lat 51.26 ish at long -2.14 ish to long -2.22 ish. That's the main line
The branch runs west/east off that at between 51.37 and 51.32 and across to -1.7606

It looks like a very drunk capital T on its side.

Anyway, I use RGE to select the tiles I want ensuring that the lat/long given on the status line at the bottom of the RGE window are the co-ords form all of my way points. I select a few tiles either side for good measure/scenery.

When I get into the route editor and select my route I only get the west half of the line, as I pan east the world ends at long -1.88839 ish give or take -0.00010 or so

So I thought I'd create the east part of the line back to the west and low and behold, in RE, I get the east end but as I pan west, the world ends at -1.88839ish give or take.

My final test was to create a short box that spans -1.888ish from say -1.9 to -1.7 at long 51.34 and low and behold the world ends at -1.88839 ish.

I have noticed that the numbers in the camera window agains 'x' go from 1023 to -1023

Any ideas on how I can create a west/east railway?
Someone somewhere is doing a London to Penzance line so they will have to deal with -1.88839ish as well.

Help would be much appreciated

[terrycunliffe]

Not come across that before.
It's not the white-out bug, as that doesn't occur in RE.
Have a look in your tiles folder to ensure that all files are present (.t, and the n , y & e .raw for each tile), if they are then,try this:-

Make a copy of your route and back up to a safe location.

Then, on the existing route, use RouteRiter to shift the whole route location eastwards. (from memory, I think you can do this in multiples of '4 tiles',) so either 4, 8 12 etc.
See then if you have the same problem and report back.

T

[GSX1400]

Hi,

Yes all of those files exist for all of the tiles that there are.

I downloaded route riter 7.027 and read up on how to move the route.

I must emphasise that there is no track laid yet, I'm simply trying to get terrain for it.

in any event, no change - I think I moved the terrain east 4 blocks, but then I'm not sure.

As I say above,what I am seeing is that if I create two rows of tiels at about 51.346 which go from -2.07 to -1.76 the terrain stops at -1.888.

No matter what I don I can't change that.

There may be a correlation between this 'edge of the world' and the 3D tiles which I previously used when doing the "how to create 3d terrain in 5 easy steps" the tiles were N51W002 and N51W003.

Could it be that demex has had a part to play in this which makes it impossible for me to create a 2d terrain crossing that boundary?

I have tried to re-create the 3d terrain but now that fails at round about -1.88 as well

I'm guessing a complete de-install/registry fix/re-install may be in order?

Would you like me to send the files?

[GSX1400]

Interestingly, I have used a the calculator in route riter (misc. Options -> convert tile names) and put in the extreme end of my route which is 51.3461 -1.7606.

It comes up with tile -11cf3f70 which is definately in the list of tiles so you would expect there to be a nice green field there. . . but there isn't.

So we know the tiles are being generated.

Sounds like there is some kind of wiered fault.

I tried re-installing MSTS and now my route which I create as part of the work excercise for the 'guide to route building' is broken, I get error messages "failed to load track database" and "track database read failed" even though I backed up the route and have copied those old backups over the route.
That represents a lot of work

Help!!!

[GSX1400]

Getting there slowly. .

Got the routes back. Aparently when you get the errors about not being able to load track databases, Deleting the .tdb or .rdb files manually fixes this.

I have my tuorial route back.

All we need to do now is figure out why I can't create the terrain for the route I want to build as my first project !

[GSX1400]

RESULT
OH YES {churchill dog stylie]

You'll never believe this. . .

This is from http://www.train-sim.com/faq/msts/tech.htm

1. The Great White Void Problem

This is the problem encountered most often. It is usually referred to as
"THE Great White Void problem" to differentiate between the other two
known conditions. This occurs when your route crosses a specific
North/South or East/West boundary. You will see it in the route editor
depending on where your Route Start Tile is located. If it is located to
the West of the North/South boundary you will see the white void on the
East side. If the start tile is located on the East side of the boundary,
both sides will be OK. The same thing happens at an East/West boundary. If
the start tile is on the South side, you will see white void on the North
side. If the start tile is on the North side of the boundary both sides
will be OK. When you run the route in the actual simulator you will
discover that any activity that begins on the East side of the North/South
boundary has no problem, but activities that begin on the West side of the
boundary will not display any terrain on the east side of the boundary
line. Your track and other scenery objects will still be there and appear
to be suspended in mid air. The same thing will happen if you have an
East/West boundary in your route and the activity begins on the South side
of the line.

This appears to be a true Microsoft bug in the program. The North/South
and East/West boundaries occur at predictable intervals. The simulator
uses boxes of boxes to keep track of each terrain tile. The smallest unit
is the very small box you checked when creating your route in the route
geometry editor. In the route editor these show up as the blue boundaries
and are further divided into a 16x16 grid that allows you to assign a
terrain tile to each one. Outside the editor, 4 of those boxes makes up
the next larger size box, and 4 of those make up the next higher box and
so on. By the time you have done this 6 times you have a rather large box.
It is the boundaries of this large box that mark where the problem
appears. It is at this point that apparently Microsoft started the number
all over again and if you cross the boundary your route will contain a
reference to 2 (or more) of these large squares instead of one. Note that
these boundaries have nothing to do with the UTM boundaries mentioned in
the editor help files. That is a totally different problem.

In a nutshell, I have an west/east great white problem.

I simply selected my tiles again but put my start tile AT THE EAST END OF THE LINE and it all sprang into life.

i hope that is it. More testing tomorrow withe the actual tiles I want to use but for now, I have green field site for all of my route.

I guess, if guys have been doing routes such as London - Penzance, their start tiles will be in London and it maybe that other routes (south east and north east) don't cross the -1.888ish boundary. That is pure guesswork on my part though

[terrycunliffe]

Now I've learn't something!
I didn't think that the GWV appeared in RE....
That's obviously because the start tile in NWE is to the east of the meridian!

Now, I wonder if the BIN patch will fix that in RE.
I'll check it out...

[learnerdriver]

Should this be made a "sticky" either in this forum or in the newbies forum?

Chris

[GSX1400]

I think I can now confirm this problem

I have just recreated the tiles using the Route Geometry Extractor.
When using RGE, you get a grid and one of the large grid-borders is a vertical line that runs dead on -1.88 through the region I'm interested in. On the screenshot below, this is the vertical line just above the horizontal scroll bar going straight up through the middle.



I put my start tile at the WEST end of my track and created the quad tree.
In Route Editor, as I panned EASTWARDS, when I got to -1.88 the terrain disappeared.

I re-loaded my quad tree in Route Geometry Editor and set my start tile at the EAST end of my track.
In Route Editor, the all of the terrain was present.

So that's it, if your start tile is east and North of the your route and you cross one of these boundaries you will get all of your terrain. This explains why the northeast routes all work as I don't think they cross that boundary and the London-Penzance lines work because London is Northeast of Penzance.

The prosecution rests m'lord!