Railworks America

I am running 2017 on a route I am building. It is a mountainous route. There are umbrellas in the sky (similar to mountains) that appear on the route. As I get closer or change the view angle to them they disappear. They show up in other places too. When I change the view angle they are gone.
I made some alterations to the route, and this is occurring since my changes. I think I have done everything correctly...BUT.
Does any one have a suggestion on how this can be fixed?
Thanks.

railduffer wrote:I am running 2017 on a route I am building. It is a mountainous route. There are umbrellas in the sky (similar to mountains) that appear on the route. As I get closer or change the view angle to them they disappear. They show up in other places too. When I change the view angle they are gone.
I made some alterations to the route, and this is occurring since my changes. I think I have done everything correctly...BUT.
Does any one have a suggestion on how this can be fixed?
Thanks.

Could you happen to post a screenie so we know a bit better what we are looking at?

This is an example of ghosts that appear in more than one view through out the Route. The view from a distance is labeled "Ghosts". The view closer is the same angle, and is labeled "No Ghosts". Both pictures are from pretty much the same angle.
When I move away from the "No Ghosts" the Ghost does not appear. Changing the view detail makes no difference. I have checked the local files more than once. I believe my 2017 file might be corrupted, and I don't find a way to re-download the program.
Thanks for any help you can give me. I hope a quick fix.

I have the same issue with the Marias Pass route, I made some mountain area's flat and from a distant, it shows like the 2nd picture.

Your OP's title had me confused for a bit: ghosts or goats? Turns out -- neither. I've seen similar partial distant terrain features while running scenarios in lots of mountainous routes. Rather than some hob-goblin, they may well be caused by individual video settings. Similar visual illusions do occur in the real world as well. Simply changing your point of view may make them vanish. Just think of them as mirages and move on.

Well I'm glad I'm not the only one. As I said before, I have tried almost all the resolution settings. Oh Well.
Sorry about the misspelling of ghosts.

I just noticed this happening on Marias Pass last night.

Hi,

I guess that you are seeing a mis-match between the Distant Terrain and the standard (near) terrain tiles. If that is a route you are working on, you could try to regenerate the distant mountain tiles in the editor, or use the DEM extractor in the editor to expand the standard terrain a bit further out in the areas where those artifacts occur.

Edit: A more likely possibility could also be a "hole" in the terrain grid, a missing tile. So you simply see the backside of the mountains of next terrain here, showing up as these "ghosts". RW only renders the surface of the terrain, so if the near side of a mountain is missing you'll be able to look through the far side of it.

Back up your route's terrain folder before attempting any of these changes.

Cheers
Michael

GreatNortherner wrote:Hi,

I guess that you are seeing a mis-match between the Distant Terrain and the standard (near) terrain tiles. If that is a route you are working on, you could try to regenerate the distant mountain tiles in the editor, or use the DEM extractor in the editor to expand the standard terrain a bit further out in the areas where those artifacts occur.

Edit: A more likely possibility could also be a "hole" in the terrain grid, a missing tile. So you simply see the backside of the mountains of next terrain here, showing up as these "ghosts". RW only renders the surface of the terrain, so if the near side of a mountain is missing you'll be able to look through the far side of it.

Back up your route's terrain folder before attempting any of these changes.

Cheers
Michael

You provided good info, if you don't mind you said " regenerate the distant mountain tiles in the editor, or use the DEM extractor in the editor to expand the standard terrain a bit further out in the areas where those artifacts occur." How to do that?? Like how do you regenerate the mountain tiles? Like in my situation I am using the Marias Pass route creating a fictional route, which used to be a mountain area, but now is track, and have made it leveled. However it seems when afar distant mountains show up or the "artifact" of a mountain that used to be there.

NS349 wrote:You provided good info, if you don't mind you said " regenerate the distant mountain tiles in the editor, or use the DEM extractor in the editor to expand the standard terrain a bit further out in the areas where those artifacts occur." How to do that?? Like how do you regenerate the mountain tiles? Like in my situation I am using the Marias Pass route creating a fictional route, which used to be a mountain area, but now is track, and have made it leveled. However it seems when afar distant mountains show up or the "artifact" of a mountain that used to be there.

Hi,

To generate distant terrain requires only two mouse clicks and a cup of coffee:

In the route editor, go to the Painting Tools tab.
Click on the last icon in the toolbox (black symbol with small orange triangle).
Click "generate" in the following pop-up window.
Have your coffee, the tile generation process will take a while on large routes like Marias Pass.

You can also run this process after painting large areas of terrain as it also creates/updates the distant terrain paint information. It might fix the mountain artifacts, if that's indeed what you are seeing. But I would guess it is if you have flattened or lowered the original terrain.

Cheers
Michael

That worked for me! Thanks!