SD Files

[dcarleton]

The latest Daily (AKA unstable) release of OR now looks for an SD file to go with each Global Shape file. That's release U2024.08.18-1352. If a track or roadway piece does not have a matching SD file, OR crashes to desktop without warning!

[eric]

Well that's either a big change or an oversight... my replacement atracks do not have SD files, which would be a problem for anyone who hasn't installed XTracks previously.

[R. Steele]

In the forum discussions (TS & Elvas ) there always has been some confusion as to whether OR uses/or needs SD files...I think some code work recently included some SD file work...could be wrong on that point.

[ossie]

That's interesting. I know we haven't needed sd files in our locos and rolling stock but does ORTS treat global shapes etc differently? I have no knowledge of how that side of the sim functions. Maybe an April 1st update next year that starts looking for them in our trainset folders again might catch a few of us out. 😊

[SD40-2]

That's interesting. I know we haven't needed sd files in our locos and rolling stock but does ORTS treat global shapes etc differently? I have no knowledge of how that side of the sim functions. Maybe an April 1st update next year that starts looking for them in our trainset folders again might catch a few of us out. 😊

While rolling stock doesn't need SD files, if you're clever and make a set of seasonal textures for a piece of equipment, such as a snow texture, you can set up the SD file to have snowy textures when it's snowing. You can also set up night textures, such as groundlights,in a similar manner.

[eric]

All fine and good, but ORTS hasn't required the SD for over ten years. Don't go making new requirements without some conversation first with the content creators.... hopefully this is a bad assumption by a developer.

[ossie]

While rolling stock doesn't need SD files, if you're clever and make a set of seasonal textures for a piece of equipment, such as a snow texture, you can set up the SD file to have snowy textures when it's snowing. You can also set up night textures, such as groundlights,in a similar manner.

Thanks Parker! As far as textures go, I've never got beyond messing around with those belonging to locos and freight cars and didn't realise the .sd files had the capability of adding snow textures etc. No clever badge for me. Hopefully Eric is right about the bad assumption though as a sudden unannounced change in direction a decade down the track isn't great if it adversely affects those of you that do the "under the hood" content creation.

[derekmorton]

I for one, have NO sd files on my OR disk.

[yellowdog]

It would be nice if this were treated similarly to ace/dds files, where the sim looks for both and applies whatever is there but doesn't choke if one isn't there. In other words, look for SD files and apply them if they're there, but don't require them and crash if they're not.

[pwillard]

Just a peanut gallery comment here: The mere fact that *some of us don't know this for sure* speaks of a larger issue of "where is is documented so we can be sure people know what is reality?"

[pschlik]

Drama much...a change was made to create a cache for SD files so that OR could 'remember' which SD files it has and hasn't seen, only loading the SD file if it hasn't been seen yet (reading or writing files is slow-so it's worth simply keeping file contents in memory if they are used more than once). The check for 'does the SD file actually exist?' got removed from scenery objects specifically which is probably unintentional since the change there was simply some reorganization.

Still, I'd generally recommend leaving SD files alone. If it's an SD file for a piece of rolling stock that only contains the bounding box info and no seasonal textures or anything like that...then sure it's probably not needed (the bounding box is not used for much), but blindly deleting every SD file will ultimately catch and delete something that is useful.

[derekmorton]

>The check for 'does the SD file actually exist?' got removed

I suggest it needs to go back in after 10 years of SD file being not needed.

[rdayt]

An sd is only needed when it's needed.
No seasonal changes? No lights? No sd.
Do you know trees used to come with night textures?

Randy

[eric]

Drama much...a change was made to create a cache for SD files so that OR could 'remember' which SD files it has and hasn't seen, only loading the SD file if it hasn't been seen yet (reading or writing files is slow-so it's worth simply keeping file contents in memory if they are used more than once). The check for 'does the SD file actually exist?' got removed from scenery objects specifically which is probably unintentional since the change there was simply some reorganization.

If it's unintentional, that's good to hear. That highlights perhaps some incomplete unit testing, and something I've pushed for over the years but been shouted down in the past -- getting a second set of eyes reviewing changes and negative impact testing.

However... don't dismiss this so quickly as "drama" if it's causing a crash to desktop situation. Think about the experience for someone who doesn't know these forums exist when they're getting a crash to desktop. That's gonna be pretty frustrating.

[pschlik]

The unstable version is supposed to be not stable and a breaking change can happen any day. The whole point is to do testing and break things fast before reaching testing (or worse, stable), especially for the 'non stock' installs. Remember everyone has had 20 years to dream up their own list of highly questionable workarounds; even if everyone wasted their life away to load test every route, train, activity, etc. they own on every single change they made y'all would still find a way to cause a crash (did you know the lights code would work totally fine...until an AI train was deleted from the world while in render range of the player? Took a few months for someone to encounter that problem). Anyone who can't handle things breaking (and more importantly-letting people know that things have broken!) should not be on the unstable version.

Besides, next unstable version will have a fix.