Hi All,

I worked today on MSTS translucency and made some progress. It isn't completely resolved yet but I have found a partial work-around that should allow people to include some translucency in their models.

The main problem, as I see it, is that if you have an object with translucenct windows you can't see the interior of the object. All you see is the track and ground. I have a work-around for this problem that allows you to create windowed objects with interiors.

Here is what you have to do:

o) Create your model including interior, windows etc.
o) Move all of the non-moving parts to the main frame using the hierarchy.
o) Right-Click on all of the "exterior" portions of the object and select "Make Child"

That's all there is to it (I think).

Now the tricky part:

You can no longer export the object by right-clicking on the exterior and selecting "Export Selection -> Microsoft Train Simulator". What you have to do is right-click on an *INTERIOR* object in the *HIERARCHY* window and select "Export Selection->Microsoft Train Simulator"

That should do it. At least it did in all of my simple tests.

There is still one outstanding issue that I couldn't work around. If you look through two sets of translucenct materials (and exterior window and the interior window on the other side) you will not see the objects added to the scene. You will see the track, scenery and other cars however. IMO (correct me if I am wrong) this isn't a major deficiency since windows are typically small and the viewpoints rarely result in this being noticable. A missing interior... now THAT's noticable. If this causes problems for a specific model I would make the interior windows (looking out) opaque or barely translucent to hide this issue.

Following is an example but you'll have to use your imagination. Pretend it is an engine with windows and the cube in the interior is a seat. Notice that you can see the entire interior including the interior walls.

Richard

Since we are on this issue, I've got one more thing. I converted the 3DS model of Scotsman included with MSTS in the "Samples" folder using CONV3DS.EXE. Interestingly enough it had translucency issues. So, this may be an ongoing issue with MSTS. I have no idea if this is an MSTS bug (CONV3DS.EXE perhaps) or if the model provided simply wasn't properly created in 3DS Max.

I also looked at the differences between .s files generated for the Scotsman that works (the standard version) and the one that doesn't and it escapes me as to what the difference is. I'll need an SDK to figure it out

Richard

Richard, thanks for all the effort on this. I had found something unusual that I was going to mail you that might have helped on this topic. But I'll see if I can interpret it in terms of your recomendations now. Have a good holiday, you deserve it Mike

Thanks for the update!  Got it to that point ok now.  This still makes me a bit uneasy as i intend to do passenger views for my coaches and sleepers and such, but i'll worry about that once i get there.  Hopefully this issue will not completely die here, as i still would like to see this totally resolved, but it's good enough for now.
To avoid the see-through problems through the other side, i am making my windows as tinted as MSTS default Superliners.  It's perfect because the shade they use allows you to see the interior, but is too dark to see through the windows on the other side!
Sooooo.... now i may resume my work!