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Asset Thumbnail Overload?

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2014 3:37 pm
by choccy
On an early exploration of TS2015 I found that the Asset Thumbnail feature was not working on a route I have been working on almost since the days of Rail Simulator. While the route has not received any attention in 2014 and, I'm sure, will never be completed it is large and accesses many providers and products. I began to explore other routes to see if the Asset Thumbnail feature was working satisfactorily on them. I discovered that this feature was not working on either West Coast Main Line North or South, both of which are extensive routes. On each and every occasion it did appear to be attempting to load the thumbnails but gave up after 15 minutes.

On my route I loaded it in edit mode with all the route's folders disabled but the problem still remained. Could this be an issue with the route's .xml file? I deleted a considerable number of providers form the .xml file but the problem stil remained, so find myself puzzled.

I would be interested to know if others are finding that the Asset Thumbnail feature is not working in the West Coast Mainline Routes or indeed any other routes.

Mark

Re: Asset Thumbnail Overload?

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2014 3:49 pm
by fsafranek
I've seen this on both routes and assets in TS2015. Quite a bit actually. It was also an issue in TS2014 the more routes and assets I accumulated. Your title may hit the cause it on the head.

Re: Asset Thumbnail Overload?

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2014 4:14 pm
by rcetank
http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 1&t=139128

There maybe some answers here for you?

Re: Asset Thumbnail Overload?

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2014 4:52 pm
by choccy
Just to be clear as to what I am referring. In the world editor there is a new feature in TS2015 where in the Browser/Asset Menu you can click on a box on the far right called 'Tile View' which should enable you to see a thumbnail of each of the assets you click. The purpose of this is so that before you place an object in the world editor you can see a thumbnail of it. In the routes to which I have referred above I can see no thumbnails, with the exception of textures.

Mark

Re: Asset Thumbnail Overload?

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:22 am
by longbow
What is displayed appears to be not a pre-recorded image but an in-editor render of the asset, as also used by the QD custom consist editor. This is presumably a very resource intensive way of producing asset thumbnails which would explain why both of these features become unusably slow if you have a lot of assets.

Re: Asset Thumbnail Overload?

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 9:35 am
by Acorncomputer
This is an extraordinary feature which is useful in its current format but has greater potential.

The images seem to be created from some invisible rendering process within the program and include all textures and assets, not just those created by Dovetail. The downside is that the images are quite small and whilst they will help if you know what you are looking for, it is a little awkward when trying to choose something suitable for a particular purpose. I think the solution would be the addition of a simple option to open up the thumbnail images into a viewing window that allows closer inspection of the asset images.

Nice to see that Dovetail are continuing to develop the editors and hopefully all the best bits will make it into the new UE version in the not too distant future.

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Re: Asset Thumbnail Overload?

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 2:32 pm
by choccy
My tests on this issue are now, I think, complete. I deleted most providers from the route's routeproperties.xml file, having first saved the original, and on loading up the route in the world editor the 'thumbnails' were visible. I still noticed on occasions they would not display but that by going into scenario mode and then back into the world editor they were once again displayed. It was no surprise that when I restored the original routeproperties.xml file the images were no longer displayed.

I agree it would be a useful feature if it's upper limit could be raised and if the 'thumbnails' were rather larger than they currently are.

Mark