Lazy animation - who's looking?

[sniper297]

This has been bothering me for a while, and I figured as long as we have an object design forum now, somebody in here oughtta know.

First trouble - some sections of the PO&N are over five years old, and a few tiles haven't been touched in that long. In the oldest tiles, the switchpoints have "gone stale". You can throw the switch, and it works the same way, but the points animation is gone - points don't move. Otto discovered this last year in Johansburg (oldest section of the PO&N), and deleting and replacing the switches "freshened them up" so now they work again.

Item 2, Hank's switchstand indicators.

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/111993.jpg

Throw the switch behind the engine curved, switchstand rotates to show red. This works even tho I'm looking at it from the opposite side.

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/111994.jpg

Look away from the switch, throw the switch curved;

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/111995.jpg

And when I turn back around, the points have moved, but since I wasn't looking at it, the switchstand didn't rotate. If I flip it back straight the switchstand will momentarily flip halfway to red and immediately back to yellow, then if I throw it curved while looking at it it works fine and rotates to red.

Odd thing, the earliest swtchstands he made don't do this, primary difference being the early switchstands were actual 2 state semaphore signals, and these don't show up as signals.

Any idea what would cause that?

[Swissie]

Hi Sniper,

as for the blade animation being lost - probably some case of a messed-up safe when more track was added during an expansion of the route - you'll just have to open the .w file in WordPad and edit the
JNodePosn ( ) line back in with any point missing it. Example for a 10° left hand manual point located on tile
-012578+014766.w

TrackObj (
UiD ( 24 )
SectionIdx ( 218 )
Elevation ( 0 )
JNodePosn ( -12578 14766 -593.992 935.513 -622.373)
CollideFlags ( 551 )
FileName ( A1tPnt10dLftMnl.s )
StaticFlags ( 00200180 )
Position ( -593.992 935.513 -622.373 )
QDirection ( 0 0.777191 0 0.629265 )
VDbId ( 4294967294 )
)

Format of the JNodePosn line is as follows:

bold: x and z coordinate of the tile (same as .w file name without any leading zeros)
italic: x, y, z coordinate of the point on the tile

Simple as can be, and that's all you need to do to get the animaetd blades back.

As for the switch indicator: I guess the fact that they are distant signals - and thus also somewhat depending on the next absolute or permissive signals - might explain why they don't animate if they're behind you: I'd assume that as you're moving away from the next absolute / permissive in your back, MSTS does not bother about updating and checking any signal states behind you as they are irrelevant to your current path - as long as it is out-of-view for your camera, that also seems to apply to the switch stand a.k.a. distant signal.

On the other hand, if you are moving towards the stand, your throwing of the switch casues MSTS to evaluate and adjust all signal aspects up front on your path, and that of course includes the indicator. Now yes, I know, if your in an outside view and can see the switch stand, then MSTS updates it even if it is behind you. No explanation nor guestimate why this is so...

Lukas a.k.a Swissie