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I thought my white tile problem was solved by selecting a new RE Start Tile in the RGE. Green showed everywhere I wanted to go in the RE, so I added about 35 miles of track today from Folkston to Waycross. Then I fired up my test activity. Going north, I take the turnout at Folkston, but a mile later my world is WHITE again! Did another test activity, this time SOUTH from Waycross. All is green, including the exact spot where the northbound activity went white. Okay, why is everything green in the RE and in a southbound activity, but going north loses all the green at one particular place? The white/green boundary appears to run north and south at lon 82.02, lat 30.83. I have no DEM (this is flat north FL and south GA). and from my search of posts on the UTM boundary issue, seems unlikely there is one at 82 west lon...84 maybe, but not 82. Does anyone have any ideas for anything else I can try?

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White tiles, green tiles :-( [View All], flarrfan, 08:16 PM, Mar-03-02, (0) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, Southern_Railway, Mar-03-02, 08:47 PM, (1) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, landnrailroader, Mar-03-02, 09:28 PM, (2) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, landnrailroader, Mar-03-02, 09:32 PM, (3) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, JohnCS, Mar-03-02, 09:56 PM, (4) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, flarrfan, Mar-03-02, 10:25 PM, (5) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, Hobart, Mar-03-02, 11:08 PM, (6) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, bnsf4794, Mar-04-02, 01:27 PM, (8) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, Hobart, Mar-04-02, 10:38 PM, (9) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, bnsf4794, Mar-05-02, 04:33 PM, (13) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, JohnCS, Mar-04-02, 09:56 AM, (7) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, flarrfan, Mar-05-02, 06:49 AM, (10) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, dvdhoven, Mar-05-02, 01:41 PM, (11) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, bnsf4794, Mar-05-02, 04:31 PM, (12) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, flarrfan, Mar-05-02, 05:01 PM, (14) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, bnsf4794, Mar-05-02, 07:37 PM, (15) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, JohnCS, Mar-05-02, 08:44 PM, (16) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, bnsf4794, Mar-05-02, 10:06 PM, (17) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, Railfan727, May-23-02, 08:38 AM, (19) RE: White tiles, green tiles :-(, Railfan727, May-23-02, 08:14 AM, (18)

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flarrfan,Sorry, don't know anything about your problem, but I sure am looking forward to your route. I have stayed in the Gator Motel in Folskton and have visited Waycross some. You have a real challenge making your route look realistic. You are going to need a lot of Spainish Moss and some alligators. Bill Burnett
Marietta, GA

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It sounds to me like you failed to generate scenery on the tiles you just created. If, for whatever reason, we fail to generate or extract scenery on tiles, they will be white. Since the area in question is close to sealevel, there will probably not be a large "cliff" at the edge of the white tiles. If this is a test route, just be sure you have included sufficient data - I assume you are using some version of MicroDem, and some version of DEMEX, to cover the area, i.e. enough DEM modules.However, if the area was at a high elevation, the lack of scenery would be more obvious because there would be a large drop-off at the edge.I'm playing with this thing in Jacksonville, FL myself, and I gather you are close at hand to be interested in that particular stretch of track.I essentially completed the north end of the Clinchfield, and distributed it by CD to a couple of colleagues. Now I am working out the 2001 income tax, and as soon as that chore is done, I will start on the south end of the Clinchfield. I have also extracted scenery for the abandoned Milwaukee Road between Alberton, MT and Plummer Jct., ID., which will include the also abandoned BNSF branch between Haugan, MT and Wallace, ID.J. H. Sullivan, P.E. (retired from CSX)

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I failed to notice something.Does your route cross a UTM boundary - if it does, there are special problems involved. Secondly, have you "touched" the tiles yet. Go into the tool where you select terrain, and get the black checkerboard lines & Blue tile lines. Select one of the small squares (it is easier if you are in wireframe mode & select the intersection of crossed lines in a little square). When one comes up with a red box around it, it is "selected". Then do a right-click, and select the option for tile floor & ceiling heights/scaling. Add one to the ceiling, and close the window. There should be some change in the shadows & colors in the area.JHS

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This is an MSTS bug. I have not seen any solutions for it.It has nothing to do with UTM zones - that is a DEM / DEMEX issue.If you look in your TD directory, you will see multiple td files for your route. The RGE splits the tile definitions into multiple files at certain boundaries in the quadtree. When crossing one of the boundaries is when all hell breaks loose in MSTS.The only solution known so far is to shift all the terrain/track by several degrees so it all fits in one TD zone, if possible. And no, I don't know how they're defined. Experiment.-JohnCS
DEMEX
http://www.demex.vcn.com

JohnCS
dem_ex@hotmail.com
visit the DEMEX website:
http://www.dem-ex.com

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Thanks for your input, John. I had thought maybe going the DEMEX route would fix the problem, but if I hear you right, sounds like it just won't work unless I relocate the route to somewhere else. Oh well...

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Hey All,
My route has the same problem. The last 9 tiles of my route are all white if the activity starts from outside the problem area. I've tried all I can think of and searched in vain here to find a solution but to no avail. If you come up with a solution please post it. One interesting thing is that Crow357 is doing his route from Barstow to Arizona and had no problem generating sound tiles in this area. Hmmm, maybe if I add tiles to the Colorado river it'll fix itself. Best Regards
Hobart

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Hobart,I had the same exact problem in Barstow. I had the problem right around the North\South tile row -12800, east of there everything was white. I had had the editor start tile somewhere around Cajon Summit. When I moved my route editor start tile more towards Barstow, the problem was solved. I don't know why, but it worked. John Greenstone

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Hey John,
I hate to tell you this but your problem isn't solved. If you create an activity that starts west of the cut off line it'll be all white when you get there. Its an internal MSTS bug with no fix as of yet. Activities that begin inside the white out zone work fine, the ones that begin outside the white out zone will be all white in that area. Ditto the above for the start tile location. Best Regards
Hobart

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Yep Hobart, you're right. Unknowingly I had my activity starting in the offending area, so I thought it was fixed. Moving the Route Editor Start tile only seems to affect the route editor.Well, on the bright side at least it happened at the end of the route. John Greenstone

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If someone wanted to figure out the td file format (the one which encodes the quadtree), from that I think I could pretty easily make a utility which would <shift> all the terrain tiles and objects by a specified number of tiles, letting you move away from one of these boundaries. That would solve this problem (unless the route is so long it crosses 2 boundaries). I wouldn't contemplate trying to shift the track/road/signal database files though, so you'd need to rebuild the database afterwards and thus would want to do it before placing signals/mileposts/etc.If someone would find this useful then figure out and post the format.-JohnCS
DEMEX
http://www.demex.vcn.com

JohnCS
dem_ex@hotmail.com
visit the DEMEX website:
http://www.dem-ex.com

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So, let's summarize...there is an east-west TD boundary at lat 30.9 (not N-S as I originally posted) that runs through southeast Georgia. There is a north-south boundary in western N. Carolina per romerails' post on his Saluda route from December. Hobart and John Greenstone report a north-south boundary in California just west of Barstow. In looking at the RGE for my route, there is a black line running east hundreds of miles into the Atlantic Ocean, far outside my quad tree, along the boundary line. Does it run west also and, if so, how far? Any affect on routes north from FL/MS, etc.? What's interesting is that in the Saluda thread from December, Chuck D. reported a similar problem with his Whitefish-Sandpoint route, but whatever his problem was (maybe just RE Start Tile?), he got it fixed and posted his route. I have an e-mail to him asking for any suggestions.In looking at the default and downloaded routes, I found only one TD file in each one's TD folder. Thought at first I'd found multiples in some routes, but turned out to be separate .td and .tdl files (.tdl apparently for lo_tiles with distant mountains).Is there anyone finding boundaries other than the three above? If so, is there anyone who's found a workaround?

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Hi,The NaheTal bahn route has the same problem. Has -00012+00028.td
and -00012+00029.td
The Along the Rhine route suffers from time to time, specially when saving an Activity and running from the saved activity.
Has -oh surprise - -00012+00028.td and -00012+00029.tdDick van den Hoven

Dick van den Hoven

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Sorry this is long, but hopefully it will shed some light on this dilemma.I've been studying this a bit and I think I've kinda figured out what's happening. As we all know, the simulator world is broken down into many tiles and sub-tiles and sub-sub-tiles etc. There are two high-level world tiles that just happen to border eachother right there in Barstow in Hobart's and my case. These tiles encompass hundreds of miles, they're big.If you look in the TD folder, you'll see the names of these huge tiles, they're the .td files. You'll also see their corresponding tdl files if distant mountains are used. Also you'll see the index .dat files for regular and distant terrain. These dat files can be opened with a text editor, but the others cannot. Inside the dat files, you see what calls out the proper td files, plus some other goodies which I haven't figured out yet. Since my route crosses a boundary, there are two listings in my dat file. I tried reversing the entries, but it did not change anything in the game.If a route crosses a boundary, you'll have more than one td file. The starting point of an activity seems to decide how they load. Apparently, due to a glitch, they will all load correctly in one order but not the other, so it matters which one you start in. It seems so far in my case that they will load properly from East to West, but not West to East.I'll post more if I come up with anything. There must be a way to trick the simulator into working. John Greenstone

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Go, John!!! I want to run in AND out of Barstow when your Cajon route is ready. And I sure would love to run in AND out of Waycross on my route, but for now, it's southbound traffic only on the virtual CSX Jesup sub.

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Don't worry Flarrfan, one way or another there will be a functional Barstow! In fact I've got most of it built already.John Greenstone

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Yea, thats what I said. -JohnCS
DEMEX
http://www.demex.vcn.com

JohnCS
dem_ex@hotmail.com
visit the DEMEX website:
http://www.dem-ex.com

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I just tried swapping the filenames between my two .td files, but that didn't do any good. My quad tree ended up over in New Mexico I think. John Greenstone

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This post got me thinking, so I looked through all my routes' TD directories...the Ohio & West Virginia has 3 TDs, yet it works fine! Obviously this can't be the problem in every case.

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There's another N-S boundary near Sidney, Ohio (long. 84.11 West)...I'm having the same problems a lot of you guys are, except they're happening in RE. Starting from Indianapolis, everything looks fine all the way to Sidney, then there is nothing but white all the way to Marion. Starting from Sidney, eveything looks good towards Marion, but featureless white west of Sidney. No DEMs have been applied yet (nor has track been laid), so this rules out a DEM or activity issue.Bruce BridgesConrail Indianapolis Line
Indianapolis, IN-Marion, OH

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