New TSRE route editor tips & tricks

[jonpd]

Just to clarify TDB saving. Is setting ctrl-Q to disable writing to the TDB the same as setting writeTdb=false in the settings.txt file?

In other words, if I set writeTdb=false in the settings.txt file, I can still force a write to the TDB by using the Z key, the same as if I had toggled ctrl-Q. Do I understand thsi correctly?

Ideally if this is true I would like to set writeTDB = false so then I would always manually do TDB (and RDB) writes using Z and not worry about whether I hit ctrl-Q or not.

[Pecho Lata]

writeTDB = false is equivalent to writing nothing to the TDB and RDB when saving the route, regardless of what you did during the session in the route editor.
writeTDB = false ideal when we only want to work with static elements.

[jonpd]

Unfortunately I verified this the hard way. I had writeTDB = false and took out a bunch of track and relaid it, using the Z key to update the TDB or so I thought. I now have track that are static objects and yellow TDB lines in a different place with no track. Not sure how I can correct this now other than going back to a backup and losing a lot of other work.

[rdayt]

You can use the new error correction function in TSRE. It may remove the left over tdb lines. Worth a try. See this thread https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...ighlight=error
You can then go in and click on each new track piece and when you click away it will add the piece to the tdb.
You will have to have write tdb enabled in the settings.

[jonpd]

The error correction function does not show the track issues, only some platform markers I added which have no corresponding TDB entry.
I also tried the procedure where you delete the connection between the bad track and the good track then add a piece to use the hack function. Adding the piece just crashed the TSRE.

Looks like I'll have to go to the backup and lose a day's worth of work

[jonpd]

I have been working with Car Spawners and thought it might be useful to document in one place what I have picked up from other posts and from experimentation.

In order to create a car spawner you need an entry in the route's REF file like this. The class can be anything, I put mine in the "vehicles" class:

CarSpawner (
Class (Vehicles)
Description ("Car Spawner")
StoreMatrix ()
)

To add a car spawner select it from the ref file list and select place new as you would for any object. When you place it on the road section you will see 2 purple squares ("handles"). Pull them apart and note which direction the traffic is flowing. If it is going in the wrong direction, pull one handle past the other to reverse them.

When you select a handle it turns a lighter shade of purple and data for the spawner will display on the left side pane.

You may move the handles either by dragging with the mouse or using the arrow keys. I am told that Selecting the "Expand" button expands the spawner to the extent of the road, but I have not tried that myself. Note that it is not recommended to have a car spawner longer than 2 km.

The values "car number" and "car speed" affect the speed and density of traffic. The car number refers to the average number of seconds between spawning a car so higher numbers mean less traffic such as for a rural road. I have found that a car number of 1 tends to produce vehicles so fast that they are sometimes bumper to bumper or worse. Note that the spawning mechanism randomizes vehicle appearance so this is just an average number.

Car speed is in meters per second. 60 mph is approximately 27 meters/sec. I have seen a table somewhere that converts m/sec to mph but I don't recall where it was. Basically multiply mph by 0.447 to get meters per second. For kilometers per hour to meters per second multiply by 0.278.

If the car spawner handle refuses to cross a road joint it means you do not have a good joint there and you need to remove the road sections and rebuild them. Road sections can be finicky to join especially multi lane highways that sometimes will join misaligned. Roads on a grade or over a bridge can be difficult. Try using shorter road sections and turning off "stick to terrain" (Shift-Q).

The cars spawned by the car spawner are defined by the "carspawn.dat" file in the root directory of your route. For MSTS there is only one car list. For Open Rails you can define multiple car lists. This is useful when you want to have different cars for different roads or lanes of a road. For example on my 6 lane freeway I have cars and trucks in the right 2 lanes but cars only in the left lane, which is common in many US Interstates and freeways. To set up multiple car lists see section 15.5 of the Open Rails Manual.

[joe_star]

A very good summary above on Car Spawners and TSRE. Some points to add on from my own recent testing.

You may move the handles either by dragging with the mouse or using the arrow keys. I am told that Selecting the "Expand" button expands the spawner to the extent of the road, but I have not tried that myself. Note that it is not recommended to have a car spawner longer than 2 km.

Yes, I was pleasantly surprised that the expand option has made car spawner laying so easy. It works as advertised. No need to drag handles over long distances. I just tested a 15km car spawner and it worked fine in OR, so the 2km limit may be more relevant for MSTS compatibility. One point to note though, the display of the car spawner handles in TSRE seems to be tied to the origin tile of the spawner. Move more than a couple of tiles away from the origin of the spawner and it will stop displaying. So, if you are trying to lay a really long car spawner like I did, DO NOT put the spawner at the mid point of the road and expand it, as you'll never be able to access the handles to delete it again (and have to manually delete via text editor in w file / RDB)

If the car spawner handle refuses to cross a road joint it means you do not have a good joint there and you need to remove the road sections and rebuild them.

Bad road joints can be identified by a longer blue pole at the bad joint than a standard "good" joint. Anyway as you say, the car spawner will not move past it, so thats a good enough indicator something is wrong. I try my best to lay roads end to end rather than trying to join them up, as the precision pieces are somewhat limited (at least for the road sets I am using)

[GokuMK]

Yes, I was pleasantly surprised that the expand option has made car spawner laying so easy. It works as advertised. No need to drag handles over long distances. I just tested a 15km car spawner and it worked fine in OR, so the 2km limit may be more relevant for MSTS compatibility. One point to note though, the display of the car spawner handles in TSRE seems to be tied to the origin tile of the spawner. Move more than a couple of tiles away from the origin of the spawner and it will stop displaying. So, if you are trying to lay a really long car spawner like I did, DO NOT put the spawner at the mid point of the road and expand it, as you'll never be able to access the handles to delete it again (and have to manually delete via text editor in w file / RDB)

In this case you can increase tile rendering radius "tileLod" in settings.txt and wait until cars reach location of car spawner placement and you can select car spawner by selecting a car. But that's the reason why it isn't recommended. In MSTS car spawners longer than 2 km may cause issues, in TSRE longer than 6 km.

[joe_star]

In this case you can increase tile rendering radius "tileLod" in settings.txt and wait until cars reach location of car spawner placement and you can select car spawner by selecting a car. But that's the reason why it isn't recommended. In MSTS car spawners longer than 2 km may cause issues, in TSRE longer than 6 km.

increasing the tileLod radius now allows me to view the spawner path, but I still cant select either end handle, nor any car on it. Not a big issue though.

The spawners are working fine btw, all 15km long

[joe_star]

Be careful when "painting" terrain. I am not sure how, but it appears brushing the tile to increase height might affect other tiles as well. Case in point, these spikes below which always appear after I have done terrain editing on adjacent tiles.

Perhaps using the "add if in radius" setting would avoid any unwanted artifacts like these being generated.

terrain artifacts.jpg

And no, before anyone asks, these are definitely not DEM artifacts, as I have been over every inch of this route in past several times!