Rail car Textures Missing Only When Running an Activity!?

[meeshu]

Just created a simple activity to take a stack train (2 locomotives and 165 well cars) from Collington to near Washington for the NEC V4 route.

No AI traffic.

Running Open Rails 1.4.

On starting the activity, I've noticed that the first 5 well cars are missing their textures!!??

On testing the exact same consist in Explore Mode and starting again from Collington, the first 5 well car textures have now returned!!

As a test, I created a couple of other activities for NEC V4 but at different locations using the exact same consist. But on running these test activities, the first 5 well cars had shown their textures (as expected)!

So it seems that for whatever reason(s), running an activity with this consist starting at Collington seems to cause texture loss issues for the first 5 well cars.

The well cars are from this file in the File Library - atwellsoceanset2.zip and for the cars under this folder ATW.BNSF_237362.

Screenshots taken for reference -

train_at_Collington_activity_mode_annotated (FM99).jpgtrain_at_Collington_explore_mode_annotated (FM99).jpg


Why are the well car textures not appearing when running under an activity (at Collington) and textures only appear when running consist in Explore Mode!!??

Very strange!!

[Vince]

Please attach your OpenRailsLog.txt file needed to diagnose the problem.

[meeshu]

Log attached (zipped text file).

I had a quick look at this log and there seem to be a lot of textures missing, but the textures are present within the main folder for the well cars. But for some reason the "path" for texture location within the log refers to "spring" directory which does not exist!

The activity is, however, set to run during spring season. Maybe that's where the spring came from? But why are textures (trying to) be located within a "spring" directory to begin with? Maybe MS Activity Editor somehow messed up the activity??

This is the first time I've come across this strange situation with mixed up texture location!?

OpenRailsLog.zip

[geepster775]

What is all this ' \\spring ' nonsense?

[spoony1999]

I have this car set with the same issues. For some reason, I remember coming across another topic on here where they didn't show up correctly in certain seasons. I can't seem to locate that thread now

[R. Steele]

The problem lies in the ".sd" file...see the screenshot...this has popped up numerous times in the forum, cannot locate the threads now.
Andre joined in the discussion and explained it.

bandicam 2022-01-21 08-26-59-974.jpg

[wwhall]

Several of the atwells cars have this issue. Here is how to fix it. Andrey Tucker Wells made several of the cars with Snow textures, but somewhere along the line, the snow textures and its required folder were not part of the car folder when it was made available for download. The affected cars have an .sd file with an ESD_Alternative_Texture entry that is not " ( 0 ) ". That will make the sim, depending on season and weather condition look for a texture that it not there. Changing the .sd file entry will fix this. The result should look like this:
ESD_Alternative_Texture ( 0 )

One other note, the ATW files have separate loaded and unloaded .wag files and .sd files, so the .sd file must be modified in both the loaded and empty versions.

That should fix the missing texture issue.

[meeshu]

Many thanks folks!

Yes, changing the *.sd files entry for "ESD_Alternative_Texture ( 252 )" so it now reads "ESD_Alternative_Texture ( 0 )" seems to have resolved the missing textures issue.

Thanks again!

[meeshu]

As an aside.

The same (and some other?) cars also have sound errors! The *.sms file points to non-existent *.wav files. The *.wav files could not be located anywhere, so I had to edit the *.sms file to exclude references to the missing *.wav files.

In addition! Some well cars have 0kN as maximum braking value ( from MaxBrakeForce( 0kN ) entry ) within their *.wag files. This is nonsense, as all cars must have some braking force value! So more editing required!

[derekmorton]

Are you sure you are not seeing the handbrake force set to zero?
I have 126 of them, which I have just changed.

[meeshu]

I'm fairly certain I saw the 0kN for the "wagon" brake force and not specifically for the handbrake, although the handbrake setting also seems to be at 0kN. That was not right at all!

Looking at (some) of these files at the moment.

EDIT: found one wagon so far with 0kN entries for both the wheel and the handbrake - BNSF_237362_C.wag

EDIT 2: and another wagon here - BNSF_237362_E.wag

[derekmorton]

Yes, I have modified about 40 wags so far.

I use a program called textcrawler v3 for this.

https://textcrawler.soft32.com/

[meeshu]

Thanks for the tip regarding TextCrawler, Derek!

I'll have a look at this software shortly.

[geepster775]

In addition! Some well cars have 0kN as maximum braking value ( from MaxBrakeForce( 0kN ) entry ) within their *.wag files. This is nonsense, as all cars must have some braking force value! So more editing required!

If the articulated car platform shape has no wheels, then that specific platform would have no braking force. If you revise to add braking force to a platform where no wheels exist, you are giving the entire 5 platform car too much brake force. You are converting it force-wise into a husky stack type car instead of an articulated type car.

Usually on a 5-pack, end platforms A and B and middle platform D has 2 complete sets of wheels, while platform E and C have no wheels and thus should have no brake force.

[meeshu]

Good point!

Yes, I missed triple checking to see if well cars had wheels or not. So more editing required!!