What's wrong with my WP3 Track Profile

[R. Steele]

I'm outta my comfort zone, cannot figure out why the ballast/tracks appears different in certain areas in the Feather River Route. I've got notes that said the profile came from 3DTrains and also from here...Track profile from TrainSim.com ---- ScaleRail Dynamic Track Profile --- File ID 88545

SIMISA@@@@@@@@@@JINX0p0t______

TrProfile ( "Default Dynatrack profile"
lodmethod ( 0 )
chordspan ( 1.0 )
pitchcontrol ( Chordlength )
pitchcontrolscalar ( 1 )
LOD (
CutoffRadius ( 700.0 )

LODItem ( "Railtops"
TexName ( "SR_Track_w3a.ace" )
ShaderName ( "TexDiff" )
LightModelName ( "OptSpecular25" )
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TexAddrModeName ( "Wrap" )
ESD_Alternative_Texture ( 0 )
MipMapLevelOfDetailBias ( 0 )
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LODItem ( "Railsides"
TexName ( "SR_Track_w3a.ace" )
ShaderName ( "TexDiff" )
LightModelName ( "OptSpecular0" )
AlphaTestMode ( 0 )
TexAddrModeName ( "Wrap" )
ESD_Alternative_Texture ( 0 )
MipMapLevelOfDetailBias ( 0 )
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LODItem ( "Railbase"
TexName ( "SR_Track_w3a.ace" )
ShaderName ( "BlendATexDiff" )
LightModelName ( "OptSpecular0" )
AlphaTestMode ( 1 )
TexAddrModeName ( "Wrap" )
ESD_Alternative_Texture ( 0 )
MipMapLevelOfDetailBias ( 0 )
Polyline ( "left_outer" 2
DeltaTexCoord ( 0 5.333334 )
Vertex (
Position ( -0.8125 0.180 0.0 )

Normal ( 0 1 0 )
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LODItem ( "TiePlates"
TexName ( "SR_Track_w2a.ace" )
ShaderName ( "BlendATexDiff" )
LightModelName ( "OptSpecular0" )
AlphaTestMode ( 1 )
TexAddrModeName ( "Wrap" )
ESD_Alternative_Texture ( 1 )
MipMapLevelOfDetailBias ( -1 )
Polyline ( "left_outer" 2
DeltaTexCoord ( 0 .2088545 )
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TexCoord ( .046875 -.280582 )
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LODItem ( "Ties"
TexName ( "SR_Track_w2b.ace" )
ShaderName ( "BlendATexDiff" )
LightModelName ( "OptSpecular0" )
AlphaTestMode ( 0 )
TexAddrModeName ( "Wrap" )
ESD_Alternative_Texture ( 1 )
MipMapLevelOfDetailBias ( -1 )
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LODItem ( "Ballast"
TexName ( "SR_Track_w1a.ace" )
ShaderName ( "BlendATexDiff" )
LightModelName ( "OptSpecular0" )
AlphaTestMode ( 1 )
TexAddrModeName ( "Wrap" )
ESD_Alternative_Texture ( 1 )
MipMapLevelOfDetailBias ( -1 )
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TexCoord ( .2 -.280582 )
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)​

[qballbandit]

When I came across that, I opened up TSRE and selected the turnouts that were giving me that issue (to get the shapes), then I just made the texture a direct copy of the US_Track3 texture. May not answer your question, but right or wrong, it fixed it.

[geepster775]

This route came with rusty rail alternative 'concrete' textures for the lesser used track segments. There were no concrete tie areas in the modeled era, so the concrete sections for scalerail deployed here were converted to little used rusty rail tracks. Superelevation function is just replacing the curves with fully polished 'mainline' track textures that are not displaying rusty conditions. Does the trackprofile know to deploy two types of textures?

[pschlik]

Unfortunately, the track profile does not know how to display more than one texture. You have to make a choice on which track appearance will replace dynamic tracks/superelevation, which is fine for most routes but falls apart the moment you touch something like Feather River where not all tracks use the same texture (or worse-not all the tracks use the same set of shapes in the odd cursed case of routes with both xtracks and scale rail).

Some future investigation is required to see if there's a sensible way to have open rails pick between multiple track profiles depending on the shape of the track it intends on replacing with dynamic tracks.

[eric]

All the more reason to break with some of the current constraints.... which the ORTS team won't entertain.

Track entries, including dynamic track, should have the ability to use an alternate texture.

[R. Steele]

When I came across that, I opened up TSRE and selected the turnouts that were giving me that issue (to get the shapes), then I just made the texture a direct copy of the US_Track3 texture. May not answer your question, but right or wrong, it fixed it.

Thanks folks, I suppose my only alternative is to teach myself Neil's method. I would hope that since the track profile is already in a dedicated folder, it shouldn't be much of coding chore to have OR recognize more than one texture --- perhaps someone will see a way to do it. Patience, all this takes time and effort.

[dcarleton]

Does the problem go away if you disable superelevation?

[eric]

It should... one of the allures of using Scalerail was to help avoid using dynamic track...

[PerryPlatypus]

It's also a thing for Shasta unfortunately, and the problem will be become much more apparent once the upcoming expansion with 20 miles of McCloud trackage is included. The only way for the McCloud trackage to show correctly as of now is to turn off Superelevation.

It would be nice if you could have multiple TrProfiles where each profile has a parameter instructing OR what track shapes it applies to - preferably with the ability to use "wildcards" (the * symbol). For example a ScaleRail concrete tie TrProfile with a filename like TrProfile_SR_Conc.stf would have a line like this with spaces between each group you'd like included for that profile (triple spaces for emphasis here):
TrProfileTrackShapes ( SR_1tCrv_c* SR_1tStr_c* SR_1tSwt_c*

Then you could set up another separate track profile file for ScaleRail wood bridges, a filename such as TrProfile_SR_Conc.stf which would have a line contained in it like:
TrProfileTrackShapes ( SR_1tBrg_c* )

And another profile for wood bridge shapes, possibly ones for tunnel shapes, etc. etc. This would also allow use of standard "A" tracks and/or ScaleRail and/or narrow gauge in the same route. To handle shapes where the end of filename is different like the standard/Xtracks concrete shapes, the parameter could be TrProfileTrackShapes ( *concrete ) to indicate that the varying part of the filename occurs before the "concrete" portion of the filename. Allowing for wildcards in the middle of word would also be helpful.

Perhaps the "default" Track Profile (the one that is used predominantly in that route except when overrode by another track profile) could have:
TrProfileTrackShapes ( Default )

Obviously there would need to be some robust capability built in for ORTS to not crash if someone accidentally set two TrProfiles with overlapping shapes. Probably the best way to handle that would be to revert to whatever the first TrProfile encountered alphabetically

Would be pretty neat if this could be fixed before the next Stable version release, wink wink nudge nudge

[eric]

I've never been a fan of how super‐elevation was implemented... it's a glorified one-size-fits-all solution that isn't suitable for every scenario, and should be enabled on intent for specific curves instead of by default for all curves.

I have long curved yards in some routes where super-elevation looks ridiculous. So it stays turned off for me.

[pschlik]

It would be nice if you could have multiple TrProfiles where each profile has a parameter instructing OR what track shapes it applies to - preferably with the ability to use "wildcards" (the * symbol). For example a ScaleRail concrete tie TrProfile with a filename like TrProfile_SR_Conc.stf would have a line like this with spaces between each group you'd like included for that profile (triple spaces for emphasis here):
TrProfileTrackShapes ( SR_1tCrv_c* SR_1tStr_c* SR_1tSwt_c*

This is probably the most effective solution that works retroactively and doesn't require adding custom properties to tracks (though, now that we have a route editor in active development, adding custom properties seems more feasible than ever). As for actual implementation, I have no idea if the wildcard strategy works easily in C# but I do know it's no trouble to check if a string begins with something, ends with something, or contains something. Worst case this would mean parameters for ShapeStartsWith ( "x, y, z" ), ShapeEndsWith ( "x, y, z" ), and ShapeContains( "x, y, z" ). I figure it might also be useful to have parameters to exclude certain shapes (like bridges) when the other parameters would over-count the shapes.

Doesn't have to just be file names though, Open Rails knows the list of textures a shape uses so I can imagine some cases might be solved with a parameter like ShapeTexturesContains ( "xyz.ace" ) and/or ShapeTexturesNotContains ( "abc.ace" ). I figure that would work well for Shasta, but maybe not all cases.

[CSRX]

I don't run super elevation for the simple fact that, sidings, especially for customers, don't have these types of curves..

[R. Steele]

I don't run super elevation for the simple fact that, sidings, especially for customers, don't have these types of curves..

What you posted & others, I've decided not to run it, easiest solution for me, maybe at some point the track profile coding will be improved.

[CSRX]

What you posted & others, I've decided not to run it, easiest solution for me, maybe at some point the track profile coding will be improved.

After having flat track for years with MSTS and early ORTS, it was extremely exciting to see this feature. Though the longer you used it, the more and more you noticed some spots that didn't require it, or didn't use it to begin with, and looked funky. So I ended up simply turning it off.
After awhile, some railroads in the New England region tend to remove the super elevation in their tracks, not particularly on purpose, just out of not knowing how to properly tamp tracks, because it apparently is hard to keep good
working and knowledge folks with low wages..

[dcarleton]

When I was working in railroad civil engineering (40 years ago!) there was quite a bit of discussion about if it would be a good practice to reduce or eliminate superelevation on curves in freight only territory to reduce the likelihood of longer and heavier trains stringlining.
And since then trains have only continued to get longer and heavier.

I personally don't care for the superelevation feature in OR.