Graphical Glitch with Mactier Route Grass

[Der_Hans]

I asked this question of the manufacturer, naturally, and sent them logs and screenshots, but never got anywhere with a solution.

So here's the problem...The grass on the Streamlines Mactier route has a tiny little horizontal strand of pixels that floats above the main body of grass, but only when viewed from a distance. It's annoying.

I wonder if anyone here has seen similar things and if anyone has got a solution handy?

[geepster775]

The "manufacturer" was a freeware route creator. The route was subsequently "polished" (scenery enhanced) by multiple other freeware contributors and each version was hosted at different sites. These other sites are simply distributors that charge no money for the route and offer no "annoyance warranty" of any kind. One distributor also offered an equipment pack for sale, built to MSTS specs, even though MSTS is a product they no longer (since 2016?) support or build new material for.

[charland]

This occurred year ago in MSTS with trees. The solution was to open the ACE file in an editor like TGA Tool2 and trim the 1 pixel off the top of the ace file, then save the file as 512x512 again (or whatever it was before you trimmed it).

Paul :-)

[ZachBell4400]

Didn't know you could go "tree-trimming" in MSTS or even today's OR scene

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Yep - three common vegetation issue texture fixes:

1) The Cruciform - as Paul stated - you need to blank (alpha channel) some pixels around the edges of the vegetation - because textures wrap a couple pixels from the opposite edges. When the vegetation textures have a wider base - you'll notice a wider cruciform floating in the sky. Grass textures by their very nature tend to be the worst offenders.

2) The Sparkles - when vegetation seems to shimmer or sparkle constantly - you need to add MipMaps to the vegetation textures.

3) The Flashing - many times you may notice ROW textures - textures that repeat a lot in a scene - all flashing on and off in unison. The fix is to convert the textures to DXT1 compression. DXT3 and DXT5 have a more sophisticated Alpha Channel which I believe is related to the issue. As per a very old post from James Ross - all vegetation should really be DXT1. Most times you can just convert the specific textures that are flashing.

Regards,
Scott

[Der_Hans]

Hi Folks,

Yep - three common vegetation issue texture fixes:

1) The Cruciform - as Paul stated - you need to blank (alpha channel) some pixels around the edges of the vegetation - because textures wrap a couple pixels from the opposite edges. When the vegetation textures have a wider base - you'll notice a wider cruciform floating in the sky. Grass textures by their very nature tend to be the worst offenders.

2) The Sparkles - when vegetation seems to shimmer or sparkle constantly - you need to add MipMaps to the vegetation textures.

3) The Flashing - many times you may notice ROW textures - textures that repeat a lot in a scene - all flashing on and off in unison. The fix is to convert the textures to DXT1 compression. DXT3 and DXT5 have a more sophisticated Alpha Channel which I believe is related to the issue. As per a very old post from James Ross - all vegetation should really be DXT1. Most times you can just convert the specific textures that are flashing.

Regards,
Scott

Thanks for that!

This has completely fixed my glitches on the Mactier route. I haven't had time to do ALL of the foliage yet and it appears that the trees are actually doing this too, but for now I have fixed the ones that I notice and annoy me when playing.


I have a related question:

What/Where is the game told when to load different textures?

I have another route (Conrail Indy 3) which experiences a glitch causing a number of tree objects not to correctly load seasonal textures. I have checked and confirmed now, using TGATool, that the correct winter textures are in place in the correct folders.

It almost looks like, for some reason, these objects are missing a command to actually LOAD the correct winter textures and simply revert to loading summer textures all season, and I'm wondering where I can check up on this?

[jovet]

https://msts.jovet.net/tutorials/textures1.html may help someone.

[Der_Hans]

Looks like I need to tackle the flashing textures now, with a bunch of DDS files.

Is there a good editor or program to use for converting DXT3/5 into DXT1 compression?

[scottb613]

Looks like I need to tackle the flashing textures now, with a bunch of DDS files.

Is there a good editor or program to use for converting DXT3/5 into DXT1 compression?

Hi Folks,

Glad the info was helpful.

I use a free program created by NVidia called NVDXT - it's a command line texture tool that would require a simple batch file - but it can process a large number of files easily.

NVDXT Download:

https://developer.nvidia.com/legacy-texture-tools

If you're only converting a couple of textures that are flashing - which is what I find most often is the case - Gimp and Paint.net will do it natively - I believe (I don't use them). NVidia also makes a free plugin for Photoshop - that will work in both Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro but I think you need an old version of the plugin for DDS files - the new version doesn't support it. I think I have it stashed somewhere if you need it.

Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

https://msts.jovet.net/tutorials/textures1.html may help someone.

Hi Joseph,

Nice write up on textures.


Regards,
Scott

[jovet]

This occurred year ago in MSTS with trees. The solution was to open the ACE file in an editor like TGA Tool2 and trim the 1 pixel off the top of the ace file, then save the file as 512x512 again (or whatever it was before you trimmed it).

Actually, the problem is at the bottom edge of the texture.

I made a basic editing tutorial ages ago:

https://msts.jovet.net/tutorials/textures1.html

I wrote a few detailed explanations about why this happens years ago, but I can only find one of them now and it's a bit worthless since Imageshack blocked all the images. And I can't find the images I used.

[rdayt]

Open the shape in Shapeviewer,

Use Shapeviewer to export a .tga. It will go in the shapes folder.


Open the .tga in your editing program.

It will include the alpha.
Select the bottom couple rows of the texture,

and delete,

[rdayt]

Continuing from above.

It looks like this when done.

Save as a .dds in your textures folder.

Done.

Randy

[yellowdog]

Der_Hans said "Looks like I need to tackle the flashing textures now, with a bunch of DDS files. Is there a good editor or program to use for converting DXT3/5 into DXT1 compression?"

Route Riter has a batch conversion tool under the Graphics tab

[Der_Hans]

Hello again guys,

Thanks to everyone who contributed here to this thread. I did eventually use the tips you all left for me and have solved almost all of the problems I was facing with those routes. It's been a slow process as I typically am not a dedicated OpenRails player but come back to it when I need a change of pace.

I'm saving this thread as screenshots because I know if I don't I'll be back in two years with the same questions!