Feedback On Invisocar

Two activities so far, Marias Pass MOW rescue by LHW, and my PO&N activities update pack, that use invisocar for AI train horn sounds. Still not much in the way of feedback, but some reported "failure to add/remove (AI service name) from world", followed by failed to load SMS object messages. I just duplicated that one today on the PO&N, I've been fooling around with front coupler hacks and replaced the updated TexasTeaHEAVY.act with the original, so I could test it with the US2chemicar loose consists instead of US2freightcar3, which I already know works.I replaced only the .act file with the original, so I still got AI trains running around honking their horns, but all the US2chemicars are back. I started in Texas Tea, collected 30 tank cars, ran to Northland Grain #2 and dragged 4 grain cars out with the front coupler, and after reassembling the train heading towards Northland Grain #1, suddenly I'm getting "failed to add/remove west15oil from world" half a dozen times, followed by about 30 "failed to create sms object" errors, then the same with west15log. All the .srv, .trf, and .pat files are the same, the only thing changed was the .act file for the US2chemicars instead of US2freightcar3. The .act file does list the .trf and all the services within it, along with a string of numbers which I assume are the starting times for each. I have no idea why they need the same listing in the .act file as they have in the .trf, but there it is. Runs fine in the VCR, the two services it claims it can't load are loading and running the whole route, so I have no idea what it could be. Haven't gotten much feedback on the invisocar or the two activities so far, LHW's MOW rescue for Maris and the PO&N updated activity pack, so I have no idea if we have another limit bug here with number of sounds or SMS sources in an activity.I suppose I shoulda posted this as a poll question, come to think of it.Anyone having the same problem?
Anyone having different problems?
Anyone having no problems?
Anyone for tennis?
Anyone too drunk to know whether you're having problems or not?
Anyone ever done experiments with mixing & matching activities, services, and traffic patterns before?

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RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, jtsdadinaz, Jun-12-03, 09:52 AM, (1) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, jtsdadinaz, Jun-12-03, 09:54 AM, (2) Screwed the pooch, sniper297, Jun-12-03, 10:57 AM, (4) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, MasterChief, Jun-12-03, 10:41 AM, (3) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, sniper297, Jun-12-03, 11:08 AM, (5) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, jtsdadinaz, Jun-12-03, 12:09 PM, (6) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, sniper297, Jun-12-03, 02:06 PM, (7) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, jtsdadinaz, Jun-12-03, 04:05 PM, (8) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, MasterChief, Jun-12-03, 04:31 PM, (9) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, sniper297, Jun-12-03, 05:33 PM, (10) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, jtsdadinaz, Jun-12-03, 07:00 PM, (11) *&^%$#!, sniper297, Jun-12-03, 08:07 PM, (12) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, hdpayne, Jun-14-03, 10:39 PM, (13) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, sniper297, Jun-15-03, 00:49 AM, (14) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, lnghairedwizard, Jun-15-03, 02:14 PM, (15) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, raytuck, Jun-16-03, 09:35 AM, (16) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, sniper297, Jun-16-03, 08:00 PM, (17) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, raytuck, Jun-18-03, 01:31 AM, (18) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, sniper297, Jun-18-03, 07:05 PM, (19) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, raytuck, Jun-18-03, 10:52 PM, (20) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, sniper297, Jun-19-03, 09:25 AM, (21) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, raytuck, Jun-20-03, 04:45 AM, (22) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, sniper297, Jun-21-03, 01:40 AM, (23) RE: FEEDBACK ON INVISOCAR, Bing, Jun-21-03, 06:18 PM, (24)

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Yep, as I am leaving Texas Tea, I get the failed to create sms object, about newcastle it starts with the failure to create/remove AI trains and does this all the way into Stevens Point along with failure to create sms object. I was getting the sms errors before changing to the updated stuff in various places.

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Side note: My train has all of the cars from Chippewa, Northland elevators and Texas Tea. Makes it interesting to beat the AI trains on the way to johnsburg!!!

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Turns out on mine that zero length invisocar was causing the problem, I fixed it once by changing it to 0.01 length, then posted the wrong wag files in the patch zip. Downloaded and installed the patch zip to test it, worked fine the first hour, so here I am running with the wrong files.http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3ee813291f0a0fb8.zipThere's the correct ones, again if you have the original invisocar just the invisocar.sd, plus invisocarDSL.wag and invisocarSTM.wag, if you have Harold Payne's update copy the whole smash into the invisocar folder.Gonna sort all this out by asking Nels to remove both my original and Harold Paynes's update, replace with Harold's update with the coupler length, break, and bounding box fixes. If I don't get some *&^%$#! feedback on this in a few days I'm gonna assume everything's hunky-dory, so no further patches are necessary.Which brings me to you, Joe, "failed to load" AI services and "failed to create sms" BEFORE the activities update with the invisocar sounds? And I'm hearing this now for the first time?! Choose your excuse from the following list;I'm too polite to criticize.
Didn't want to hurt your delicate sensitive feelings.
Hey, I'm busy, just now noticed it myself.
My wife/girlfriend is a Victoria's Secret model, sits in my lap while I'm playing trainsim, what bugs? "all of the cars from Chippewa, Northland elevators and Texas Tea"
Hee-hee, that makes for a hell of a long train, off the top of my head that's 12 log cars, 30 tankers, and 7 grain cars. Been fooling with the same thing with the old activity loose consists (US2chemicar) combined with the new AI traffic speed and invisocar sounds, so I got the same train. Once I sorted out the failure to add (it is ADD, not remove, I checked in the VCR) west15log and west15oil (try the invisocar patch above, something about the coupler length or break values in the original gives the sim hiccups), I found a weird effect I hadn't thought of for long trains;The AI train blows twice when it first approaches within 900 meters and 500 meters of the player. If you have the #2 outside view centered on the engine and the #3 view on the last car, by changing from #2 to #3 view back and forth gives almost continuous honking, since each time you switch to the view farthest from the AI train you're moving outside the zone, and when you switch back to the nearest you just "decreased distance past 500" (or 900), thereby triggering the play one shot wav again. Is that a flock of geese heading for Canada?!

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Jim,I placed the invisocar in a few AI trains in an activity I'm working on for the FBL. The invisocar is placed directly behind the lead locomotive on the AI train. It works great, except that sometimes (not always) the horn sounds the requisite 4 blasts (2 and 2) as the locomotive approaches, then well after the AI train has passed the end of the driver train, I get 2 more blasts of the horn from the AI train. This seems to happen with certain AI trains and not with others, not sure why.Otherwise, I like it.One question; is the 2 and 2 blasts of the horn the norm for real railroads when two trains approach one another?Thanks for a really neat add-on,MC

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Hey, Your Saltiness, just noticed you were posting while I was posting. Yeah, see the bottom section of the drivel above, for longer trains changing views will move you outside the zone and back in again, triggering the horn blasts a second time. As for whether or not the double blast is prototype, I dunno, I posted a question about it in the general forum, but back when that was common practice it depended on the road, no standard signal for one train to another.Don't forget to get the patch from the zip above, save you a lot of grief from AI trains uncoupling/derailing/flipping sumersaults and then getting "failed to load" errors.

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I think I thew an e-mail at ya about awhile back when I sent ya the new conbuilder..

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That one must not have made it thru, Joe, last email I got from you was the suggestion about engine facilities in Anderson (gonna do that for V7 if I remember!) on May 30th.I was just looking in the file library and noticed that was you who did the dfltwags.zip, just curious, did you use BBoxedit to do those? Some of them don't fix anything, the US2chemicar.wag being one example, sometimes don't want to couple to a reversed US2chemicar. Gotta see if we can apply the magic TrackDancer/Baldwin formula to those and see if that works.

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TrackDancer/Baldwin formula? which post is that in? All of the cars were working for me. I used a combo of bboxedit and length. I have seen recently where, just because bboxedit changes the bounding box it is not always correct in length, box does not change until the length is made correct, this on one of my own models. Which brings me to another thing, ever get the "point indicator error"? Adjust the length and bounding box a little and it might just go away. Was just playing with that one the other night on the GP38. At the moment I can not even load an activity without it hanging up on me..

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>Yeah, see the bottom section of the drivel
>above, for longer trains changing views will move you
>outside the zone and back in again, triggering the horn
>blasts a second time. Yeah, that makes sense now that I think about it. It happens when I switch views. As to uncoupling/derailing/flipping, I've had no issues whatsoever there. All runs fine. I'll install the patch anyhow, just in case.Thanks,MC

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Some people reported flipping derailing uncoupling from Bill's update to the MOW rescue activity, AI trains were doing funkadelic things. Patch also fixes the issue of driving an AI train consist that has invisocar in it yourself, without the patch it will uncouple/derail/flip a car ass over teakettle shortly after starting. You can drive them now as a player train, not sure why anyone would want to cuz the minute you start "WHONK-WHONK-WHONK-WHONK!". After that it runs as a player train normally, with no further noises unless you cut invisocar out of the consist (and you better remember where you left it since you can't see it!) and then drive away from it and come back. Too wierd for my tastes.Joe, actually started in threads with other topics;http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID3/18452.htmlhttp://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID5/6748.htmlAnd ended up with this;http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3ee6b8d1321f6f0e.zipBeen using that to switch assorted cars with the front coupler for days now, haven't had one single lockup (knock on wood) yet.As for that *&^%$#! chemicar, I tried starting from Johnsburg and trying to duplicate exactly what I did with those tankers in JB yard, and damned if they didn't couple up first try. I suspect this is one of those subtle devious bugs where it shows up only when the exact conditions are met, maybe you gotta use the front coupler at least once first. Come to think of it, maybe I can duplicate it easier using the front coupler, I'll just turn the player service path around and try that.There's the rub with this, First Things First, I got to be absolutely certain I can duplicate the bug before I go hacking anything, otherwise how do you know if you've made it better or worse? It's a seemingly random thing, altho by starting in Texas Tea and grabbing the two loose consists closest to the mainline, going to Northland Grain #2 and pulling the four graincars out with the front coupler, running around them to add to the back of the train, running to Northland Grain #1 and pulling those graincars out with the front coupler, push them into Johnsburg, drop the cars behind the engines at Johnsburg station, push the graincars up toward the Port Ogden cutoff, then back down the yard ladder;
Track closest to the main, (don't have them labeled but we'll call that track 1) pull the mixed consist out and shove the single tanker at the back into track 2 with the tanker string and drop it, go over to track 4 (?) where the other mixed consit is, cut the tanker out of that, shove all the other cars somewhere to get them out of the way, and then try to couple the two loose tankers to the string of tankers. It can be done, it just depends on what order you do it. Same thing with Stevens Point yard, string of tankers plus tanker mixed with other cars.By tediously doing the same thing over and over I usually get some US2chemicars that fail to couple unless rearranged in a different order, even with your hack. I have no idea why, the correct formula is ESD bounding box exactly the same for both ends (you got that, -7.8271 and 7.8271), and the two should add up to exactly the size (missed it by a teeny bit, 15.655m divided by 2 = 7.8275). You missed by 0.0008, a figure so miniscule by all that's holy shouldn't make the slightest bit of difference. Your break values "Break ( 9e8N 9e8N )" seem a little excessive, and what I found was that break values too high can actually cause breaks of themselves, altho on that particular car it don't seem to do it. The spring length;
r0 ( 20cm 30cm ) might be a key, same as the default, possibly changing it to the r0 ( 5cm 30cm ) might fix it. I also got that double coupler entry thing to prove or disprove yet, but first I gotta see if I can make a shortcut to consistently triggering the refusal to couple so I know if these hacks actually make any difference or not.Off the top of your head, you know exactly what the inertia tensor does and what else it affects?

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Have you used Justin's Gp38? I had it on until you did the fixes to the default one. Made an AI engine and swapped a driveable for the AI and the darn thing would bounce back and forth while moving. The inertia tensor seems to have something to do with the amount of this bounce. I have had the entire train rubberband while picking up those cars at Combs landing and other places, was trying to nail down which one was causing it. The high break is waht seemed to keep them from derailing when they did that. Oh, they would bounce entire car lengths before settling down, kinda like what was being talked about in the other thread with trains seperating and coming back together. If you look at some of the cars/engines you will find that the bounding box numbers are not in the middle like they should be. Re-working my flat car to see what happens when it is exported out of TSM and even when it was built with the midlle at dead center the bounding box would be offset instead of centered. Doing that is where I found that if you use bboxedit to decrease the bounding box as it should be, at the center of the coupler, it would not change until the length was also changed. If I can get the damn thing to load tonite I'll get some shots and show you what I mean.Kinda at work right now.

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Uh, no, haven't tried Justin's geep on this, just the default so far. If the formula works it works, should work on any engine.Thought that bounce was in stiffness & damping, I think it was plainsman suggested a fix for the Jason Dilworth SD40s. Download PO&N SD40s #12 and #18 if you don't have them in the unmodified form. Just before bed couple them together, run up about 5mph and then shut the throttle and apply the engine brake. Go to bed leaving the sim running, when you get up the next morning the helper is still bouncing back and forth to the limit of the slack. Lots of fun!Spring (
Stiffness ( 0N/m 5e6N/m )
Damping ( 0N/m/s 1e6N/m/s )That's the original;Spring (
Stiffness ( 1e6N/m 5e6N/m )
Damping ( 1e6N/m 1e6N/m )That's the hack, now they don't do the rubberband rumba anymore.Anyway, back on the other off topic, still trying to duplicate that US2chemicar thing without running all the way up from Texas Tea, made an activity using the string of 5 reversed, one forward, and two more reversed, engine reversed to use front coupler, all of them couple up no problem. OK, so I'm gonna drag that mixed consist out and cut the tanker out of that and see if that will couple;Hmmm. Now can I do that every time? If I can I at least have a starting benchmark, can try various things with the US2chemicar to see if it fixes it.Well, back to work, MSTS 5, anyone?!

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LAST EDITED ON Jun-14-03 AT 11:16 PM (EDT)

I did not find issues with the cars before I added additional sounds to the collection. I have some trains that are backing by the player, so I modified the sound file using the updated shape and bounding box to have 3 blasts for the SDA steam engine and the default diesel. Is there any interest in adding these to the folder?

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Well, you could email them at me, jwarde@ameritech.net , I can clone the wags and make seperate invisocars out of them. I am gonna replace both your upload and mine with the fixed ones since I haven't heard a discouraging word, might as well stuff in whatever else you got. Or maybe you could do it, just shoot an email to Nels asking him to remove the two bad ones and replace with the one good one. Important thing is to get the two bad ones out before somebody else comes along and uses them as a template!BTW, I'm gonna use your speedster for Alco RS2 horns, unless you have something that sounds closer. I'm also stealing the Invisocar_SDA_STM whistle for my 0-8-0, I like the sound a lot better than what I hacked (invisocarSTM is the wav file from the 380 dropped an octave and assorted other fiddling around, I used that for both invisocarSTM and my 0-8-0 whistle, yours sounds a hell of a lot better!).

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LAST EDITED ON Jun-15-03 AT 02:21 PM (EDT)

Heya Jimbo!!!Once again, awesome job on the inviso-car. I havent gotten any email from people having problems with the MOW rescue duty update so I assume no one has had any problems with it. If any has and reads this...pleas let me know!!!
EDIT: RE: "Some people reported flipping derailing uncoupling from Bill's update to the MOW rescue activity, AI trains were doing funkadelic things. Patch also fixes the issue of driving an AI train consist that has invisocar in it yourself, without the patch it will uncouple/derail/flip a car ass over teakettle shortly after starting. You can drive them now as a player train, not sure why anyone would want to cuz the minute you start "WHONK-WHONK-WHONK-WHONK!". After that it runs as a player train normally, with no further noises unless you cut invisocar out of the consist (and you better remember where you left it since you can't see it!) and then drive away from it and come back. "Oops...spoke too soon I guess...I didnt use the invisocar in the player consist and im not axactly sure what "flipping derailing uncoupling" means.....(to be honest, I only test the updated version partway before any pickups or drops offs were scheduled so if there was any problems there I wouldn't of caught it. I did pass plenty of AI trains with no problems though during the short testing!!!)such is life!!...great job anyways, the effect is pretty convincing and is something kuju should of handled from the get-go.
Bill Bzak aka Longhairedwizard]bbzak@msn.com

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Jim, I put in the new invisocar files and started the Johnsberg Heavy from scratch. I got a lot further this time (no broken coupler or derailment issues at Combs Landing), picked up some empty log flats in Newcastle, and headed towards Armstrong. Just after the left switch for the tunnels I started getting "Failed to create SMS object" and then after about 30 of those up came the "failure to add/remove (AI service name) from world" error.It appears I am back to the original problem. http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID3/18452.htmlI did notice just before this happened I had a big hit on framerate (dropped to < 10). I normally get over 20 fps on this activity, but even that seems a bit light-on considering I have a Ti4200 128Mb Video card. Dunno what is going on there. I might have to try some different drivers for the video card.
Ray

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Wierd. My brother finally bought trainsim last month, he's been playing the PO&N activities, and he was getting that failed to create sms object last night too, altho he hadn't downloaded the update with invisocar yet.Turned out his problem was that he had replaced the default GP38s and SD40s with some downloads with bad .eng files. I D/Led the same ones he had, a GP30 and two GP7s, all 3 had "Sound (GP30eng.sms)" and "Sound (GP30cab.sms)" in the .eng file, but those .sms files weren't included in the zip.The only way I can duplicate other than replacing an AI engine with a faulty one is to;1. Install PON6Update.exe
2. Run ponV6.exe with the box to autorun the batch file unchecked, so it just extracts the zip and overwrites the new activities services etc. with the old ones. The install bat calls consists.bat, which copies the original consists from the Portogden6\Consists folder to the \Trains\Consists folder, so without that having run you get the old services combined with the new consist files, which throws the whole AI speed control into the scuppers and gets them stacking up and trying to spawn on top of each other.Running the PON6update.exe again to overwrite the old stuff cures that, altho the invisocar patch has to be added again unless you install manually."considering I have a Ti4200 128Mb Video card", most activities on PO&N6 I get around 20-25 FPS with occasional jerky drops to 15, sometimes as low as 8, with this;Gateway something (Ec-6000, I think)
Motherboard: Intel D850EMV2
CPU: Pentium 4 2.66ghz
Video: ATI Radeon 9700 PRO, 128mb (driver 6.13.10.6166)
Memory: 1024mb 533mhz RIMM
Sound: SB Audigy
Hard disk: WDC WD1200BB-53CAA1 - 111.79 GB
OS: Windows XP home (5.1, build 2600) SP 1, DX 9My son has my old system;Tower case, 350 watt power supply
Three 80mm 12v case fans
Motherboard: ASUS A7A-266
Processor: AMD Palimino XP1600+
Memory: 512MB PC-2100 DDR RAM
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti-4400 128MB AGP (detonator 40.72)
Hard disk: WD Caviar Ultra ATA-100 7200rpm 80 gig hd 8mb buffer
Sound: Creative SB 512 PCI
OS: Windows 98 Second Edition, build 2222, DX 9And he gets slightly lower framerates, 18-20 range, altho due to that Western Digital JB model HD with the 8mb hardware cache (gonna be my first upgrade for this system!), he gets a smoother, less jerky display. And WITHOUT the drops to 8! (GOTTA get me that WD Jumbo Cache model!)Again, the only way I can duplicate on either system is installing in the wrong order with the autoinstall turned off, maybe it's a hardware thing. Note both systems have Creative labs soundcards, one has 512mb RAM and the other 1 gig, could be a factor.So, questions;
1. Are you getting all this with unmodified default engines & wagons? Do you have enocell's replacement cars installed?
2. What model is your sound card?
3. How much RAM you got?That last might be a factor, I got a system sitting next to me I had configured to run at 1ghz, 128mb PC-133 SDRAM, and a 16mb Voodoo 3-2000 PCI video card, but I robbed the HD out of it to use in one of my grandkid's computers and haven't gotten to putting it back together yet. So anyone have a low end system sitting around, try the PO&N update on it and see if too much "Whonk-Whonk!" eats up your RAM and gives you those sms errors.

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Jim, in answer to your questions:I am running the original GP38-2 #2081 with your modified .eng .sd .cvf & .sms files that I got from the link in post #10 of this thread.
I have not installed enocell's replacement wagons. The only change I have made to the wagons is to change the damping to (1e6M/m/s 1e6M/m/s).My system specs are:
Homebuilt system
Motherboard: Asus P4PE 533Mhz FSB
CPU: Intel P4 2.4ghz
Video: NVidia GeForce4 Ti-4200, 128mb (driver NVidia 44.03)
Memory: 1024Mmb PC2700 DDR RAM
Sound: On-board using ADI AD1980 AC ’97 Audio CODEC (6 channel 5.1)
Hard disk: Seagate ST380021A 7200rpm 80Gb (OS and other stuff)
Seagate ST3120023A 7200rpm 120Gb (MSTS stuff only)
OS: Windows XP Professional SP 1, DX9 I increased the RAM tonight from 512Mb to 1024Mb and reloaded the saved activity (north of Newcastle heading for tunnels to Stevens Point)and was able to go all the way to Fowlis until I encountered an emd of siding buffer at 40mph. So maybe it was a memory issue. It was still jerky with framerates less than 10. I did notice that if I ran in explore mode I could achieve framerates close to 35fps.I also noticed that when I go into Windows Explorer and open the 'trainset' folder the hard disk lights come on solid for 30 seconds or so before the contents of that folder is displayed. This also happens the first time I fire up MSTS after a reboot. It doesn't happen when I am running activities in MSTS so I doubt that this is a cause of the jerkiness and low framerates.Ray

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Yeah, I generally move all the routes except a few to a backup folder, I find trainsim loads faster that way. Probably the same for consists and trainsets, but I'm too lazy to sort those out, one of these days I gotta hunt up and try out trainstore."until I encountered an emd of siding buffer at 40mph." Been taking driving lessons from the AI engineers?! Hee-hee, I am working on that, the whole point of the telephone poles alongside the tracks are to let you know you're on the mainline, absence of telephone poles means dead end siding. There's usually a yard marker somewhere too, but the shape files I'm using for those are extremely dim, and shape file manager won't fix them, so I think I'm gonna replace them all with something that stands out against the background a little better.Anyway, I just duplicated part of it, I changed Texas Tea HEAVY starting time to 09:25 and the traffic now starts at 07:00 (all this is for the next update, to coordinate the improved traffic flow with the starting times). So I grab the two strings of tankers closest to the main, head into Northland Grain elevator 2, and pull the 4 graincars out with the front coupler (I was getting frequent lockups with those, but not this time), pushed them onto the siding and ran around to the front. Dragged tankers & graincars to Northland Grain #1, pulled those four graincars out with the front coupler, and since there's no runaround siding I pulled tankers & 4 graincars and pushed 4 graincars into Johnsburg. Dropped the graincars on the main, backed out and ran around those on the yard ladder, pushed the whole mess back onto the main by the passenger station, and left the sim running while I went to go get the kid from school. Came back about an hour later, AI traffic still running by every 10 minutes like clockwork, and before proceeding I saved the game. At 11:19 the game froze up while I was cutting out all the tankers from the yard to add to the train.
Hmmm, I'm using the back coupler here, not the front, why the lockup? I hit the "S" key (send/don't send and other error messages are frequently hidden behind the frozen trainsim screen), and instead of exiting the program and getting the "error message sent" screen, I got nothing, still frozen. So I tried a few other keys, including ENTER, and this time got an hourglass and it started running again for a few seconds. After it locked again, ENTER followed by other keys finally gave me the "failed to insert/remove west15mix from world", and judging by the number of hourglasses I must have gotten the error message about 100 times before I finally gave up and hit escape to get out of there. One engine and 15 cars causes 100+ failed to insert/remove errors?! So I open the activity editor to check it out, west15mix spawns at Spawn 2 on the hour, and reaches Spawn 1 to stop and be removed 2 1/2 hours later. So at 11:19 there are no west15mix services either being added or removed, the ones that started at 07:00 and 08:00 are long gone, the one starting 09:00 is currently approaching Johnsburg from the South Pass, the 10:00 is just coming onto the triple track main north of Fowlis, and the 11:00 has already spawned and is coming off the double deck bridge halfway from Tinkers Dam to Van den Hoven.Well. Having the savegame just before the problem handy, I reloaded the savegame at 11:14:42, and since I was in a yard region I switched to the hacked #7 camview and flew around to find and examine all 3 west15mix trains currently running. No problems I could see, all 3 were running just fine. 11:20 came and went, and no errors this time.Conclusion? I dunno, could be related to invisocar, could be related to the PO&N route or traffic pattern or signals, could be just one of them unholy random KUJU bugs that decides to *&^%$#! up your day when you're having a good time.Since I got the save game 5 minutes before the errors, I'll load and run it a few times, but I don't know if I'm ever gonna find an answer short of MSTS version 3. Assuming they have some of these bugs rectified by then.

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The above was all done with only 1 route in MSTS (PO&N6) and about 7 consists. I do use trainstore. Couldn't live without it."Been taking driving lessons from the AI engineers?! ". No, that was caused by taking a coffee break without pausing MSTS ...... doh!Ray

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Only one route and 7 consists? It strikes me that there are 10 consists required for the PO&N activities, so that wouldn't work.PONplay1.con (player, one engine, Lite activities)
PONplay2.con (player, two engines, Heavy activities)
PON2e20coal.con
PON10grain.con
PON15log.con
PON15mix.con
PON15oil.con
PON20mix.con
PONway1.con
PONway2.conHee-hee, if you really do only have 7 consists maybe that would explain the failed to load service! Question is, does trainstore also store the trainsets? Unless you have a few hundred add-ons I can't think of any other reason why explorer would take 30 seconds to display the contents of that folder. Unless you haven't defragged in a while.
I just broke down and ordered a WD 1200JB for this thing, the WD 1200BB model is probably the only choke point on it. My son's system (my old one) has a 1.4ghz AMD to my 2.6ghz Intel, 512mb PC2100 DDR RAM to my 1024mb 533mhz RIMM, and the Ti-4400 to my ATI 9700. I got a 1.2ghz faster CPU, twice the RAM, and a faster video card, but his animation is considerably smoother at lower FPS cuz he has that WD 800JB hard drive with the 8mb hardware cache buffer. On his I also never get the flashlight in explorer, on this one I get it with every folder that has a lot of files in it."No, that was caused by taking a coffee break without pausing MSTS..." Yeah, I do that all the time, sometimes leaving for hours, when I'm testing to see if AI trains are gonna go tumbleweed. The difference is I bring the train to a stop first before climbing down from the cab!!"... doh!"THAT's what we're missing, need Homer J driving the Acela Express into a nuclear power plant! Bill Burnett will probably beat me to it for Seaview 4 if he hasn't done it already. Well, I loaded again and again from that 11:14 save half a dozen times, followed the 09:00 west15mix until it stopped at Spawn 1 and was removed, couldn't duplicate it again. So I continued from there to see what would happen.
Finished adding all 7 tankers to the train, backed it past the north wye switch, and headed up into the Mountain Division. Stopped at the South Pass helper shed, cut the second GP38 out, and replaced with a Dash9. Up around Topatchame loop to Combs Landing, pulled the empty log flats and loaded plywood cars in the hump yard out with the front coupler, added all that and the two other loaded plywood cars on the stub, took the right exit north (shoulda taken more than the one Dash9, needed full power and the sanders to get up that short steep grade), and then left into Newcastle.
Cut the Dash9 out in Newcastle (only one more gentle upgrade to the Rio Grande Southern subdivision, then it's downhill all the way from there, and I do like a challenge!), added 3 tankers and 2 empty log flats, and dragged the whole mess up to the summit with the single geep (full power, sanders, I think I can I think I can). Left exit at the tunnel wye, full dynamic brakes for the downgrade (shoulda kept the Dash9!) and occasional heavy trainbrakes. Since I've only been picking up and not dropping off, by this time I'm up to 38 cars pulled by a single GP38, so I wussed out and bypassed Armstrong, Stevens Point, and Fowlis without adding any more cars, and pulled into Anderson at 13:28. Saved it there and went to bed.Well, back on topic, I noticed the SD40s had a big ugly gap behind the engine on some of the cars with the short couplers, so without thinking the problem might be the SD40 I hacked away at invisocarDSL again. I started hunting for a rigid coupling, found this in the 1100 (whatever that is):Coupling (
Type ( automatic )
Spring (
Stiffness ( 2e7N/m 0 )
Damping ( 0.2e7N/m/s 0 )
Break ( 1e7N 0 )
r0 ( 0.1 1e9 )
)
CouplingHasRigidConnection ()
)
Buffers (
Spring (
Stiffness ( 1e7N/m 0 )
Damping ( 1e6N/m/s 0 )
r0 ( 0m 1e9 )
)
Centre ( 0.5 )
Radius ( 1 )
Angle ( 0.5deg )
) So I'm currently testing with that. Didn't fix the gap, the default KUJU SD40 needs to have size, bounding box, and inertia tensor corrected to fix the coupler gap, but I'm testing invisocar with those values anyway, see what it does. Again tho, it's beginning to look like (and I'm probably wrong) this is a random bug unrelated to invisocar.

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7, 10, hmmmm .... I took a guess as I was replying from work and they won't let me load MSTS on my PC there. "Question is, does trainstore also store the trainsets?" Trainstore moves the .trk file from the route folder to it's storage area when the route is stored and moves it back when it is unstored to be used within the sim. It also moves the .act and .srv when either the route is stored or when the route is active but selected activities are stored. As far as trainsets and consists are concerned, only the .eng and .con files are stored for those trainsets and consists that are not required by any unstored routes or activities. All other files within MSTS are left in their normal locations.The problem with my hard disks is that they only have a 2Mb buffer and I can't seem to get them to run in ATA/100 mode. Time to read the manuals.More exploring on Johnsberg Heavy last night and no problems evident apart from 'bad driving'. It would appear that the extra 512Mb DDR fixed the problem with loading services and Sound Mangling System errors.I loaded "Enocell's" wagons and also found a replacement for the default GP38-2 # 2081 which turns it into #2099. This didn't last very long as it had 2 areas I didn't like. First it uses the SD40 cab so you need to hang your head out in the breeze to see where you are going, and it didn't work well with your modified geep .eng & .sd files. The bounding box was about 2' too long at either end which caused immediate uncoupling of the engine from the helper as soon as you applied any throttle. That also might have something to do with the 2' gap I noticed between the couplers. I noticed when negotiating the downgrade in the Armstrong/Stevens Point area that there was no apparent change to the sounds for both the in-cab and outside view when dynamics were applied. I had to use train brakes anyway as the dynamics didn't slow down the speed buildup.I think I will do the whole thing over again as I am not sure what bounding box and .eng file changes, and the changes to using Enocell's wagons do when resuming a saved activity.The good thing about this is I don't need to keep looking at the maps.
Ray

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Hee-hee, ain't that the truth. They say an engineer is supposed to be familiar with his route, that's one thing all this testing has done, I never need to look at a map! Well, except for the coal mine maybe, go down to the third level sometime and try to find daylight, stop to ask Jimmy Hoffa for directions, finally study the map and discover you've already bypassed the switch to the top level four times.Saved activities were nagging at me since you first asked, so I set out to find out once and for all. I got the latest saved at Northland Grain #2 with 4 grain hoppers and 10 tankers, so I hit CTRL and the keypad + to look at the bounding boxes for the tankers, and got a screengrab. Exit, open the US2freightcar3.wag and .sd in wordpad, change the length of the car from 18 meters to 20 meters and save. Back into the sim, load the activity, and it comes up without errors but I get a broken coupler immediately as the tankers try to spread out to their proper distance.
So the answer is yes, the changes do take effect since the activity save only stores the positions of the .wag files on the track database, not the values themselves. So the answer is, probably, if you uncouple the engine first, then changing the values slightly might make a save game restorable with the new values."It would appear that the extra 512Mb DDR fixed the problem with loading services and Sound Mangling System errors."I still don't think that's a factor, I got 1 gig and it happened once to me, my son's system has 512mb and it's never happened on his. Just another one of those random bugs is my thinking.I haven't tried enocell's wagons since I started playing with the front coupler, cuz I don't want to introduce yet another variable into my experiments, but the one time I installed and looked at them they looked great, but the size & bounding boxes were way off on some, and a few wouldn't couple properly. That's another project tho, they're way too pretty to cast aside just cuz they don't work out of the box, I think they're worth a little hacking on the box lengths."I noticed when negotiating the downgrade in the Armstrong/Stevens Point area that there was no apparent change to the sounds for both the in-cab and outside view when dynamics were applied"Seems to me that was missing from the original KUJU engine, When I go fooling around hacking and replacing with the original geep I frequently lose the dynamic brake sounds. I'll have to look and see if I have them now, but I thought that was a hack somebody made which added Dash9 dynamic sounds to the GP38.Harold Payne found a problem with the latest invisocar version I sent him with a rigid coupler, when coupled between two back to back engines it either derails or uncouples on a 50 meter radius or smaller S curve. Couple behind the engines and there's no problem, it only happens when it's between two back couplers, not two front couplers or a front and a back coupler. Wierd, but nothing I've tried fixes it, so I guess it's gotta go between the last engine or tender and the first car to avoid that.

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LAST EDITED ON Jun-21-03 AT 06:21 PM (EDT)

All this talk about an invisible car reminds me of a true story involving a disk jockey in an Iowa commmunity; I can't remember the name of the place, however it is large enough to have a municipal airport with a part-time control tower. Business commuter flights, that sort of thing, in addition to private aircraft.One morning the DJ started telling people the Stealth Bomber was going to visit their city. They better get down to the airport if they wanted to be in on it, it would be there only for a couple hours before taking off.After a short pause, people started calling in - lots of them, apparently - saying they were at the airport but they couldn't see any military aircraft. Nothing unusual at all. "Of course you can't", he replied, "it's the STEALTh bomber. YOu're not supposed to be able to SEE it.", he persisted in his announcement, not letting up for a couple more hours, also insisting the bomber really WAS there.He was suspended without pay for I think a week, maybe two or three. His employer did not view his practical joke in a tolerant fashion, nor did the embarrassed townspeople. Invite your friends over to see your invisible car. When I lived in Detroit we used to take girls out to Belle Isle to watch the submarine races. Some of them fell for it, too. Bing

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