A Very Strange Evening- Just What's Going On?

[jetstream]

I thought I would fire up Railworks and have a look at the one of the Black 5 scenarios on Bath-Templecombe.

It loaded OK but I took a look at the loco and the entire subframe of the engine and tender were missing. Hoveering over the station was the 'Missing texture' square. So I took a look at another Black 5 scenario and and the same was seen. OK, what about the 8F, the pigeon run scenario? The engine was fine but the cattle wagons that make up the train were almost transparent (ie the frame and buffers were there but no planking) and the guards van was perfect. Again the 'missing texture' sign was there.

I had read that this accursed Steam could check your installation so I let it take a look.

No change to the Black 5 or cattle trucks but I noticed that my Oxford-Paddington route had disappeared from the menu. Windows explorer showed the route still on the drive but, as I discovered, the routeproperties.xml had been erased. I tried a few other scenarios with the HST at Newcastle and the scenarios failed to load saying the HST units were missing. The more I looked at the folders the more obvious it became that a number of files had been corrupted or erased during the time period that Steam was verifying my installation. The entire collection of Class 37s were being reported missing but I discovered the class37\Simulation file had been erased and the Time of Day folder had been accessed.

Thankfully, I had a copy of Railworks and was able to undo most of the damage.

However, despite doing a direct replacement of the folder holding the Black 5s and the Cattle trucks, the textures are still not showing so if anyoone could provide some pointers as to where they are i'd appreciate it.

Of more concern is this deletion and corruption of files when have the install checked via Steam.

Just what's going on?

[rabid]

Hi, are you using an ATI graphics card? If yes, check if you have adaptive anti-aliasing enabled. This mode does not work well in RW and can cause symptoms similar to what you are describing. It has been reported to RSC but no-one's sure if it will ever be addressed (I ended up switching back to Nvidia!).

[transadelaide]

You just need to turn it off if you have an ATI card. RW manages anti-aliasing from within the program. It's not something that needs to be 'fixed.'

[Kariban]

AAA is not AA. Adaptive AA does do strange things to certain textures, although it certainly won't corrupt them to the point they won't load.

[bigvern]

Interesting... as I remarked in my User Experience thread I had a very similar experience with the Ovee Class 57 and the Meshtools Class 24 the other night. Could this be indicative of a wider problem? Has there been a "stealth" update (i.e. no increment on the version number) which has broken something?

[rabid]

You just need to turn it off if you have an ATI card. RW manages anti-aliasing from within the program. It's not something that needs to be 'fixed.'

AAA is the nearest thing ATI/AMD have to Nvidia's combined SS/MSAA. As I said AAA does not work in RW so if you want the best image quality with an ATI card, you have to use full SSAA which makes RW stutter (even more). Because of this (and other reasons) I switched back to Nvidia, got a GTX580 and now use 8xS combined AA, which gives me great IQ and very little stuttering. As I'm sure you know the AA "managed" by RW is only MSAA which does the job (depending upon your personal expectations), but to me the IQ is far from satisfactory.

[jetstream]

Thanks for the reply re the ATI glitch. I deselected adaptive AA and the Black 5 and cattle truck textures reappeared.

However, I have always had AAA selected since I first installed the game and had never had any problems until last night.

The file deletion and corruption during a link-up to steam is still disconcerting.

[Kariban]

I've had issues with AAA from the start, although it has to be said, not very many issues. It might even just be models from a particular version of the model exporter.

[1S811985]

Hi,

I had the same problem a few weeks ago. The routeproperties.xml's for both Oxford Paddington and the Isle of Wight simply dissapeared. I've since learned that a friend has suffered the same problem. It's also been the subject of posts here before.

Verifying the file cache in Steam did nothing and I had to manually resolve Oxford by using a backup copy. IOW was resolved by Steam a few days later when it uploaded what I took to be a minor update. Can't say that I noticed any missing texture issues but then I didn't really look prior to getting Oxford fixed.

I was a little put out, to be honest, when the reply I eventually received from RSC support told me that it was a local problem to my machine.

As you say, its a matter of concern, not only that files can be deleted without any apparent action on the part of the user but also that the Steam cache verify system is unable to identify the issue and restore the missing files correctly.

Regards,

1S81

[blackthunder36]

all i get is a massive picture in the sky on editor saying missing texture, quite annoying really

matt

[Acorncomputer]

all i get is a massive picture in the sky on editor saying missing texture, quite annoying really

matt

Like this



This topic may help -

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 4&t=114359

[jetstream]

Well Jo, what d'ya know?

I mentioned in my first post that I had a 'missing texture' box and I noticed at the time that it was positioned in the sky.

I've just read the above link and it makes reference to a missing sun texture that is located the 'Time of Day' folder.

That 'Time of Day' folder was another that had been erased during the mysterious 10min conection to Steam last Sunday night.