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Southern_Railway (297 posts)
Feb-26-02, 05:56 PM (EST) "&%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" My route has a lot of water. I'm beginning to have more and more of a problem with the water blinking a lighter color and then back to normal. Very frustrating! Is there any way to stop this. Last night I placed the new animated helicoptor in my route. The water blinked off and on (in the Route Editor) as the blades turned. I turned off the animation and the blinking stopped. Still the water changes at times (day or night) creating a very unrealistic appearance. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks in advance,
Bill Burnett Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Table of Contents

Subject Author Message Date ID RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... LawrenceKellie Feb-26-02 1 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... smolds Feb-26-02 2 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... sniper297 Feb-26-02 3 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... Southern_Railway Feb-26-02 4 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... rjdiii Feb-26-02 5 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... JohnCS Feb-26-02 6 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... burgoofj Feb-27-02 7 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... sniper297 Feb-27-02 8 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... Southern_Railway Feb-27-02 9 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... sniper297 Feb-27-02 10 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... sniper297 Feb-27-02 11 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... Southern_Railway Feb-27-02 12 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... lightbg Mar-03-02 13 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... kyleh24 Mar-03-02 14 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... Southern_Railway Mar-03-02 15 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... NickF Mar-03-02 16 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... lightbg Mar-03-02 17 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... Starlight Mar-04-02 18 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... tark1054 Mar-06-02 19 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... Southern_Railway Mar-06-02 20 RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any... tark1054 Mar-07-02 21

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LawrenceKellie (1456 posts)
Feb-26-02, 06:21 PM (EST) 1. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Unfortunately, I have not heard of any "solution" to the problem, except as you found out it appears to be related to animation. Thus, no animation, no problem (more or less).Lawrence Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
smolds (78 posts)
Feb-26-02, 07:28 PM (EST) 2. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Then the Orcas playing in Puget Sound are out of the question? Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (1738 posts)
Feb-26-02, 09:30 PM (EST) 3. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Nothing like rotary motion to screw up your water. Most people noticed it early on with the steamers, but from certain angles even the diesels with their little bitty wheels do it. I suspect the problem has to do with the alpha channel for the wheels arguing with the alpha channels for the water over who gets priority. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm guessing the only fix would be to make the water opaque, or change the texture and/or alpha channel for watertop.ace. I'm curious if this is universal to all video cards, or just the NVIDIA series? I have a GEFORCE 2 GTS/PRO 64mb AGP. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Southern_Railway (297 posts)
Feb-26-02, 09:49 PM (EST) 4. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Alpha channels? I only know English, but the blinking water looks terrible with so much water around.My video card is an ASUS V8200 GeForce 3, 64MB, 4xAGP, with DDR Frame Buffer. There is a new water texture available for download at UKTrainSim. I may try it.Bill Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rjdiii (55 posts)
Feb-26-02, 09:50 PM (EST) 5. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" I would imagine its just part of the GeForce antialiasing problems/limitations. Supposedly the GeForce 4 cards have much improved full screen antialiasing to we'll see if that helps.
Richard Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
JohnCS (336 posts)
Feb-26-02, 11:08 PM (EST) 6. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" It did it with my old TNT card also, though only in the external views - not the cab view. I havent tested with my GF3 yet.-JohnCS
DEMEX
http://www.demex.vcn.com Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
burgoofj (2 posts)
Feb-27-02, 08:47 AM (EST) 7. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Saw this for a period while playing with route builder. On a laptop with an ATI Rage Mobility 128 8Meg. Lasted for a couple rounds of changes to the route then went away. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (1738 posts)
Feb-27-02, 09:07 AM (EST) 8. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Is it just me, or does anyone else have trouble replying/posting in the evenings? Sometimes I click on reply and get the "loading page" bar at the bottom, and it just sits there forever without loading this screen. I have no idea if it's train-sim being all jammed up, or if it's on my end. I downloaded the Hoboken Shore at 4 minutes per section last night, so it's not currently affecting the file library, but sometimes I have to quit, shut everything down and reload the DSL software, start up Netscape Navigator, and re-connect a few times before I can get to the message window to type anything. Can't even log out when it happens since the logout page gets locked up.
Sorry for being so techie on ya Bill, an "Alpha Channel" is the part of the file that makes things transparent. Three ways to make a house with a see-thru window:
1. Make a box, with an actual hole in the shape where the window goes. That results in a very complicated object, and doesn't give you glass.
2. Make a solid box, create a 1 bit alpha channel (single transparency), and paint the window area with the designated transparent color. Same effect, but faster and easier for the computer to draw.
3. Make a solid box as in #2, make an 8 bit alpha channel, which gives multiple degrees of transparency depending on shading. This allows tinted/dirt-streaked window and reflection effects in the transparent part, looks more realistic, makes a much bigger ace file. One of the mad-scientist experiments I tried to shrink "tree_tropical_03.ace" from your route was to reduce the alpha channel to 1 bit, but that results in a rather crappy looking flat tree with shiny white edges around the leaves. Here's the texture and alpha channel from a flatcar:

Note that the wheel is actually square (could explain the bumpy ride!), but the black parts are made transparent by the alpha channel so they look round. As the wheel rotates, the square corners would give reflections resulting in a flashing effect depending on the rotation speed of the wheel if it wasn't transparent. Since this is yet another bug in the worst graphics engine ever seen in a 3D game, you get reflections from the square corners anyway from certain angles even tho you can't see them, which results in the flashing effect. One way to eliminate it would be to make the water completely flat by eliminating the alpha channels from watertop.ace or watermid.ace, that would lose the "depth" effect, altho it could possibly be faked well enough in the texture to create the illusion of depth. Or you could get really wierd and do a North Pole route with the water texture painted to look like ice. Trouble with that is, the water itself is animated and actually "flows" in a jerky fashion when watertop gets an actual texture instead of one solid color. The animation really looks awful tho, which is probably why they elected to go with a single shade color, altho it would have been better if they just disabled the animation instead.
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Southern_Railway (297 posts)
Feb-27-02, 11:06 AM (EST) 9. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Sniper,
Yes, I am having the same problem posting replys at peak times. Now I understand alpha channels. You must be an exceptional teacher. Guess I am going to have to dig in and learn TGATool2.Isn't there any way to turn off the water "animation"? Seems like that would solve the problem.Bill Burnett Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (1738 posts)
Feb-27-02, 12:26 PM (EST) 10. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" LAST EDITED ON Feb-27-02 AT 12:35 PM (EST)I honestly don't know. There were some guys playing with this a few weeks back, but I forget where the thread is. The animation seems to be in the \envfiles\*.env files, here's the relevant section from sun.env: world_water
(
world_water_terrain_patch_map ( 256 Wsib-W.raw )
world_water_wave_height ( 0 )
world_water_wave_speed ( 0 )
world_water_layers
(
3
world_water_layer
(
world_water_layer_height ( -1 )
world_anim_shader
(
world_anim_shader_frames
(
1
world_anim_shader_frame
(
world_anim_shader_frame_uvscroll ( 0 0 )
world_anim_shader_frame_uvtiles ( 8 8 )
)
)
world_shader ( TexDiff
terrain_texslots ( 1
terrain_texslot ( waterbot.ace 1 0 )
)
terrain_uvcalcs ( 1
terrain_uvcalc ( 1 0 0 0 )
)
)
)
) world_water_layer
(
world_water_layer_height ( -0.5 )
world_anim_shader
(
world_anim_shader_frames
(
1
world_anim_shader_frame
(
world_anim_shader_frame_uvscroll ( 0 -0.008 )
world_anim_shader_frame_uvtiles ( 8 8 )
)
)
world_shader ( BlendATexDiff
terrain_texslots ( 1
terrain_texslot ( watermid.ace 1 0 )
)
terrain_uvcalcs ( 1
terrain_uvcalc ( 1 0 0 0 )
)
)
)
) world_water_layer
(
world_water_layer_height ( 0 )
world_anim_shader
(
world_anim_shader_framelen ( 0.6 )
world_anim_shader_frames
(
4
world_anim_shader_frame
(
world_anim_shader_frame_uvstamp ( 0 0 4 4 )
)
world_anim_shader_frame
(
world_anim_shader_frame_uvstamp ( 0.5 0 4.5 4 )
)
world_anim_shader_frame
(
world_anim_shader_frame_uvstamp ( 0.75 0 4.75 4 )
)
world_anim_shader_frame
(
world_anim_shader_frame_uvstamp ( 1 0 5 4 )
)
)
world_shader ( BlendATexDiff
terrain_texslots ( 1
terrain_texslot ( WaterTop.ace 1 0 )
)
terrain_uvcalcs ( 1
terrain_uvcalc ( 1 0 0 0 )
)
)
)
)
world_water_layer
(
world_water_layer_height ( 0 )
world_water_layer_sky_reflection ( 0 )
world_anim_shader
(
world_anim_shader_frames
(
1
world_anim_shader_frame
(
world_anim_shader_frame_uvscroll ( 0 0.1 )
)
)
world_shader ( BlendATexDiff
terrain_texslots ( 1
terrain_texslot ( test.ace 1 0 )
)
terrain_uvcalcs ( 1
terrain_uvcalc ( 1 0 0 0 )
)
)
)
) )
)
A lot of that is greek to me, but the sections for waterbot.ace, watermid.ace, and watertop.ace are obvious, the layer heights are self explanatory, and judging by the wave height and speed entries I would say they planned to animate the water, but due to Moneysoft Corporation's insistence on premature ejaculation they never finished the water subroutine. I'm guessing that the "world_anim_shader_frame_uvscroll" lines are the actual motion animation, basing my SWAG (Scientific Wild-Assed Guess) on the fact that waterbot.ace has a double zero, while the other two have different numbers. I'm gonna play with this a bit and get back to you, the worst trouble I can think of is that all the env files would have to be edited the same, or you would get rid of the flashing (assuming it works) on a sunny day, only to get it back on a rainy night. One fun thing to play with would be to change the layer heights to see if it makes any actual depth to it. I'm also gonna have to examine all the sun.env files from the different routes to see if there's any difference in the data blocks for water, that could be a clue as to why the water is opaque underneath only on certain routes. If you remember when your water was invisible from underneath then all of a sudden it was a roof, possibly you replaced some .env files and that was it. If you doubleclick on an env file, since it isn't associated with anything you'll get an "open with", just choose wordpad. If you screw up the env file beyond repair, just copy the original from template\envfiles (which are the ones in Seaview, I wouldn't swear to this but I believe you have to delete sun.env to get it to use something like USA2sun.env, haven't played with that yet) and overwrite the one you botched.
As the Terminator said, "I'll be back." Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (1738 posts)
Feb-27-02, 02:07 PM (EST) 11. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Too cool! I haven't found anything that fixes the flashing yet, and increasing the distance between layers just makes it look flatter, but while I was playing with this, I decided just for the heck of it to try the wave height and speed:world_water
(
world_water_terrain_patch_map ( 256 Wsib-W.raw )
world_water_wave_height ( 5 )
world_water_wave_speed ( 3 )I just tossed in 5 and 3 to see if they did anything at all, and I got this;That's just in the editor, now I gotta try it for sun.env and add some texture to the top layer to see what it does to framerates in the sim somebody help me I'm hacking and I can't stop AH, HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!! Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Southern_Railway (297 posts)
Feb-27-02, 06:22 PM (EST) 12. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" I know my eyes are getting old, but I don't see a significant difference between your two screen shots.Here is a screen shot of Sea View 2 with an animated watertop.ace. I does not appear to blink, but the animation is unrealistic. Well, I'm back to the standard water. I at least need to make it just a little bluer. Bill Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
lightbg (393 posts)
Mar-03-02, 07:47 PM (EST) 13. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Bill,Since it appears that I am the culprit of your "blinking water" ( I created the heli and V22 models ), I attempted to see if I could locate the problem. I tried different cycles of animation, different speeds, and different locations. No luck. Then I added my V22 tiltrotor to your route, and I had no blinking problems. Upon further research and a hunch, I disabled the anti torque rotor animation ( the small blade at the rear ), and the blinking ceased. Apparantly, the vertical plane animation is the problem, since the horizontal rotor does not cause blinking by itself. This also lends creedence to Jim Ward's theory about alpha channels conflicting, since the tail rotor and locomotive drive wheels have the same vertical orientation. I know of some windmill models that are available - I wonder if they would cause the same fault? I realize that this is no solution to the problem, but at least we have one more piece of the puzzle in place.---------Jake------------
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kyleh24 (75 posts)
Mar-03-02, 08:35 PM (EST) 14. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Before you take all the blame in your animated objects, I just wanted to say, that I get the blinking water in the Seaview route. I am not sure if there were any animated objects in the view or not. I also have a Gforce2 video card. I didn't worry much about it, because my mouth was hanging open as I looked around this magnificent route. Anyway my point is this, that animation may not be the total culprit, and we don't want you to beat your head on the wall if you didn't cause the entire event. Kyle Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Southern_Railway (297 posts)
Mar-03-02, 08:38 PM (EST) 15. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Jake,You are hardly "the culprit" of my blinking water, MSTS is. Your objects are excellent. I couldn't do without your helicopter in my route. I just had to turn the animation off. My problem is probably unique since most routes are mostly land with some water, but mine is mostly water with some land. Sea View 3 or 4 will eventually head inland and then I will get away from the blinking problem. What happens to the vertical plane animation if the helicopter is tilted like it is making a turn?Jake, thanks for your great objects. Keep up the good work.Bill Burnett Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
NickF (778 posts)
Mar-03-02, 08:53 PM (EST) 16. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" For Goddsake pull yourself together, man! People's lives are depending on you. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
lightbg (393 posts)
Mar-03-02, 09:54 PM (EST) 17. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" I think I'll try a McDonnell 520 NOTAR - No Tail Rotor - that should work fine!
---------Jake------------
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Starlight (228 posts)
Mar-04-02, 08:57 PM (EST) 18. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" *laughs*If you're getting into helos, might consider making a news helo that circled around a certain area like the blimps; or even take that one step further.Make a police helicopter with a working searchlight for night scenes in those big cities. It'd be funny to run a train and watch that search light ghost around. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
tark1054 (19 posts)
Mar-06-02, 02:42 PM (EST) 19. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" If you have access to uktrainsim. then they have a water tile there which mostly does away with that and looks to be animated as well. It's not perfect but better than anything else, Yet. If you don't have access to that url then I can send you a copy of the tile via e-mail.
tark1054 Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Southern_Railway (297 posts)
Mar-06-02, 02:58 PM (EST) 20. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" Tark, thanks for the offer. I do have that water and posted a screen shot of my route with it a while back. http://www.train-sim.com/cgi/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=6905&forum=DCForumID3&omm=0But, there is so much water in my route that the blue was too intense for me and the animation didn't work well with that much water.Bill Burnett Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
tark1054 (19 posts)
Mar-07-02, 03:58 PM (EST) 21. "RE: &%$#@&% blinking water! Any fixes?" I wonder if one could use that water top as the second layer instead and use the original water on top?
I'll have to check that out!!!
tark1054 Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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