Has anyone ever encountered this problem before?

[eric]

It's definitely not rendering the terrain.

[R. Steele]

....I highlight what AI train I want to view (the square turns red), then I click on "See in Game"...Once I select See in Game, and toggle back over to the OR session, camera views 2-8 show the relvant train. Camera 2 shows the Head end of the pig train....The moment I toggle to the Dispatcher screen and select and ONCOMING AI train that is presently west of Keddie, all hell breaks loose. This is an OR/DS screen interaction problem.

I think it is the video card - there may be no problem, just a difficulty in drawing so much information.

This is the first time you mentioned the specific "see in game" function of the dispatch viewer. ( In all the posts prior just the Dispatch Viewer was mentioned.) And when using the "see in game" function your video card has to do quite a lot of extra work to redraw a lot of terrain.

I just tried it and the same thing happens on the L&N Hook and Eye (the version recently released) and I had to wait for a few seconds and then the video card caught up and the image "righted' itself, presenting everything as it should. Perhaps, you are not waiting long enough for your card to redraw everything or it simply cannot handle the load.

[geepster775]

I think it is the video card - there may be no problem, just a difficulty in drawing so much information.

Mine's a GTX 970, only 980 and Titan are better. Has no problem drawing the scene when the AI moves in the same direction. The heaviest routes only tax this card 20% or so. Sorry, can't blame it on the card.

With the Rescue Me act, I did not select "See in Game". I just fired off the D/S screen and toggled over one time. And the terrain stopped drawing a couple miles further down the road, so there was no urgent draw request burden placed on the card. That is more symptomatic of a code leak.

[plethaus21]

I have noticed the exact same issues geepster775 is describing when selecting certain AI trains like that. And I'm running a GTX 980 Ti.

[mword77]

Just went back to confirm, this happens to me with no AI or loose consists in the activity.

Rick's Hook & Eye included basic run activity. Again, with no traffic or loose consists.

Everything OK to start



After toggling over to the dispatchers view, things start to vanish upon coming back.



A bit further down the line we lose a little more. The black dot Kevin referred to is clearly visible below the train



A save and resume brings everything back to normal




I will add that quick back and forth between the dispatcher screen and OR were fine, it seemed to begin when I was in the dispatch screen for longer than 15 seconds or so.
And again, pausing the game before going to the dispatcher screen stopped it from happening.
Without knowing anything about how this game 'works', it seems like it stops rendering when the game is minimized but allowed to keep running.

[OTTODAD]

Vince Cockeram had that in the new route he is working on and I had a Beta off, but can't remember what has caused it ?

Care to comment, Vince ?

Looks like the "big white void" some routes have in MSTS !

[Vince]

In my case OttO it was (on different occasions ) both missing terrtex and corrupted tile files produced what you see. The fact that you can see the block disk means the problem is probably a missing terrtex.
Now the best way to find out just what file is missing/corrupted, Route_Riter would be the way to go. [CHECK ROUTE] looks for missing textures. [ICHK] test looks for corrupted database files.
If the failure occurs at the same spot. i.e. is it 100% reproducable?
The save/reload/okay makes me think about terrtex didnt load in time to display.
Anything running in the background on your macine not needed for OR? Adobe? Allowing your anti virus to scan (hence interefere with their loading) the files OR needs to run . . .like texture files and so on.

Also can be a resource problem as in a texture didn't load because of i/o or cpu load ... Whats the error log say?

These two links below provide a nice illustrated tutorial helps you understand just whats missing will cause what visual effect.

http://msts.steam4me.net/tutorials/h...ders_work.html
http://msts.steam4me.net/tutorials/rt_fold.html

regards,
vince

[OTTODAD]

Thanks, Vince !

I miss Jim and his humor and hope that his heart problems were less serious than mine !

[eric]

I just did some debugging in 3255.... using timetables on the CNW Chicago, I have about 20 trains running at any given time over 150 miles of track.

Using the Alt-9 to switch the camera view to timetable trains, when I finally get more than 6000m away from my original train location, I also experience the blank terrain with big black dot at the bottom of the earth.... 4-6 seconds later, the terrain and terrtex show up, and a few seconds more, track and finally the timetable train and scenery start showing up.

I'm using an Alienware with standalone video card, and even with all that horsepower, it's taking 6-15 seconds for everything to render.

With an onboard videocard or slower processor, it might take quite a while for the processing to catch up.

For me, with the visible distance set at 6km, this only was an issue when I jumped to a location outside the viewing distance (thus outside the tiles that were already loaded in memory).

For those experiencing this with AI and using the dispatcher, can I suggest trying to replicate the problem without opening up the dispatcher and using the Alt-9 function to jump to other active trains?

If so, then there's no actual correlation of the problem to the Dispatcher screen.

[Vince]

I think you nailed it. I see it once in a while the prreast with a bit heavier AI.

And exactly right Eric; Mike, try letting it run and see if it finally loads. Thats my experience on the prreast.
regards,
vince

[geepster775]

I ran the Rockslide activity once more, since the player train is stationary at the start. After kicking off the dispatcher screen, this time, I decided to have the camera ride with the first AI train until it was further away from the player train that was back in Oroville yard. When it got well farther ahead, I hit the camera 1 key to take me back to the player train's cab. When I did I got the moonscape view for roughly 1 minute, before the terrain did eventually paint in.







A couple of GPU values cratered during the moonscape minute, and others only jumped a small bit, but were not near the ceiling. Interesting to note that the CPU load, Memory, and GPU load never broke above 35%. Can we end the claims that this is a hardware issue now?




I also have an example of the hollowed-out consist phenomena. This is from the default VIA train 71 activity on MLT's Dundas route with all default MLT equipment. I get to the point where I'm about to pass a downhill AI stack train. I hit the save key a few curves ahead of the AI meet, then I activate the dispatcher screen and toggle over, and toggle right back, and when the AI comes into view, terrain isn't an issue but there are big holes in the AI consist.





After grabbing that screen, I exit the game, restore from the save, and without activating the Dispatcher view and without "leaving" the game by toggling out, the AI passes just fine.

[roeter]

A couple of GPU values cratered during the moonscape minute, and others only jumped a small bit, but were not near the ceiling. Interesting to note that the CPU load, Memory, and GPU load never broke above 35%. Can we end the claims that this is a hardware issue now?

It's not GPU or CPU load, but time required to read the W and T files and all other related files, e.g. shapes and textures, from disk which is causing the delay in display.
How many files need to be read depend on the maximum visibility - at worst, at 10km visibility, it is an 11x11 square which is 121 world and tile files which need to be read (if these all exist). How long that takes will depend on the type of disk.
If you're out of luck, the loading of all these new files will also cause an increase in memory use which may lead to memory swapping, which will add extra time. There's nothing that OR can do to decrease the file access time when reading from disk.

The gaps in the AI train may be for the same reason. If you restart from save, all files within the visible area will be loaded before the game starts, so the problem will then not occur.

Regards,
Rob Roeterdink

[eric]

Delays from disk reads makes sense. Had the "hollowed out consist" issue today as well. Everything eventually caught up.

And no, I wasn't running the dispatch screen, so in addition to ending the claims on the hardware, we can end the claims of the dispatch window as well.

[UP_4848_Thunder]

I get the same problem when I minimize ORTS. But I overcome it by exiting full screen to window mode with alt+Enter if I need to view dispatch window or check something then go back to full screen when I'm done.

[Vince]

Guys, if you are running the experimental versions of OR it is advisable to run windowed mode. Gives the software less to do when errors pop up. Makes finding troubles a bit easier.
best,