Issue with Taranis dock

[phkb]

I'm trying to fix the dock on the Taranis station, so that you don't end up seeing the large blue ball before the docking sequence kicks in. I solved it previously by reverting to the deprecated method of defining a docking port, but ILS doesn't know how to work with that method, and it's deprecated anyway.

So I'm readdressing the issue. Something odd seems to be happening the moment your ship passes the station's dock threshold. Here's some screen shots to demonstrate.

Here, I've lined up the view with the dock.


Zooming in now, still outside the station bounds, all OK so far.


Here, I'm *just* outside the bounds of the dock.


And here, I've *just* crossed over the bounds to be inside the dock.


The important thing to note on that last screenshot is that you can still see the docking port flashers in front of you (the ones on the back wall of the dock, and a couple of the ones on the side walls). Which means, you should be seeing the walls of the dock around you. But instead, they've all vanished.

I've tried a couple of solutions (grabbing docks from other working stations and massaging them into place; creating a black outer case for the dock, slightly bigger than the actual dock, to block the internal view) all without results. I've also checked the dock itself, and I can position myself inside it successfully (using the "Test Ship Model" tool as used in the above screenshots), so the sub-entity itself seems to be OK.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should be looking for?

[Cholmondely]

To be quite blunt, I really don't see the glimpse of the main station behind as a problem. I always saw it as part of the docking process, that I could see through to the central orb.

The ILS 90° twist is however a real problem in my eyes - especially for users who have never had to disable ILS (which comes on automatically when one tries to manually dock).

Although, having said that, we now have more and more stations for which ILS does not properly work - no longer just salvage gangs and hacker bases, but now also the Isis Interstellar HQ (has KW declared war on ILS?).



Again, you really have done a stunning job with your retexture. I very much like it.

[cbr]

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should be looking for?

So the outer ring is the model 'defined' with the dock entity, is the width of the ring model smaller than the length of the dock model?

[phkb]

To be quite blunt, I really don't see the glimpse of the main station behind as a problem. I always saw it as part of the docking process, that I could see through to the central orb.

It's more of a case of "This *shouldn't* be happening, so what is going on", more than "This is a game breaking bug". I don't understand why the dock walls suddenly disappear, and I'd like to get to the bottom of the mystery.

So the outer ring is the model 'defined' with the dock entity

Yes.

is the width of the ring model smaller than the length of the dock model?

No. The dock entity is only about half the width of the ring, so it fits well inside it.

Here's a short YouTube video that shows the issue in game. In it, I've stopped my ship just as the dock walls disappear. I then use external views to have a look around.
Oolite 1.91 example of taranis dock issue

[Wildeblood]

is the width of the ring model smaller than the length of the dock model?

No. The dock entity is only about half the width of the ring, so it fits well inside it.

Here's a short YouTube video that shows the issue in game. In it, I've stopped my ship just as the dock walls disappear. I then use external views to have a look around.
Oolite 1.91 example of taranis dock issue

Forgive my impertinence, but in the same spirit of eliminating the obvious, but possibly overlooked: you don't perchance have the Cobra's viewpoint set well ahead of the ship model?

[phkb]

Forgive my impertinence, but in the same spirit of eliminating the obvious, but possibly overlooked: you don't perchance have the Cobra's viewpoint set well ahead of the ship model?

Good thought, but no, that's the standard Cobra Mk3, normal view position. Also, you can see in the video that the Cobra has only barely crossed the threshold. Again, you can see the diamond flasher arrangement that sits at the rear of the docking box, but the walls have disappeared.

When I move to the external view, all sorts of weird things happen. Not sure I can explain what's going on there. I'm hoping someone who has done a bit of station modelling might have some insight into what the issue might be.

[cbr]

I moved the dock entity closer to the center. through the gap you can see outside of the ring ( images ).
So the dock entitiy used can be correct and the way the ring model was processed is the culprit in the current game...

[Commander_X]

Not sure if it helps, but looking at the models, it seems the normals are reversed:


The station should be blue on the outside, and the dock should be blue on the inside.

For reference, this is how the oolite_coriolis_dock.dat file looks:

[phkb]

Not sure if it helps, but looking at the models, it seems the normals are reversed:

I've had a go at reversing the normals, but although I could get the everything into Wings3D, I've been unable to fix anything. I'm not sure I'm doing it correctly, even though adjusted the models seem to load into Oolite OK.

I'm sorry to be a pain, but if swapping the normals is a fairly simple task, could I get you do run the process and send me the Obj files (or Dat files, but I've got the process of converting Obj to Dat working, so I can do that step)?

[another_commander]

Inverted faces maybe? You seem to be seeing the model partially inside out.

[hiran]

Not sure if it helps, but looking at the models, it seems the normals are reversed:

I've had a go at reversing the normals, but although I could get the everything into Wings3D, I've been unable to fix anything. I'm not sure I'm doing it correctly, even though adjusted the models seem to load into Oolite OK.

I'm sorry to be a pain, but if swapping the normals is a fairly simple task, could I get you do run the process and send me the Obj files (or Dat files, but I've got the process of converting Obj to Dat working, so I can do that step)?

What happens if the ship is positioned outside? Beware, outside is where the blue sides are facing...
So we'd simply have to place a witchpoint at the center of the station...

[phkb]

What happens if the ship is positioned outside?

Everything looks fine from the outside. Issues only surface when your view is inside the bounds of station dock.

[hiran]

What happens if the ship is positioned outside?

Everything looks fine from the outside. Issues only surface when your view is inside the bounds of station dock.

...but if the model is reversed, outside is not from where you aproach the station.

If the normals were reversed and invisible tiles do not get rendered at all we would see some special effect as the front side of the station would be see-through, while the backside of the station were visible.

Yep it's strange.

[Commander_X]

[...] I'm sorry to be a pain, but if swapping the normals is a fairly simple task, could I get you do run the process and send me the Obj files (or Dat files, but I've got the process of converting Obj to Dat working, so I can do that step)?

Swapping the normals is a fairly simple task (at least in Blender) . The more challenging will be the auxiliary tasks of:

- Converting the DATs in OBJs (w/ textures, unless you really want to mess with re-UVing the model)
- Converting back the OBJs to DATs
- A final conversion from DATs to OBJs to confirm the normals look good.

I spent some time yesterday to re-fix my Dat2ObjTex_local.py file of mine, as it seems the DATs used here (in Taranis OXZ, that is) are not the best example of what I initially worked with when produced the "_local" version.
This could also explain some of the issues you're encountering. It really depends on what/how the in-game parser of the DAT files does when poorly formatted files are fed to it.

EDIT: Will try to send you the DATs by tomorrow. The wolfmk2 DAT file looks good though.

[phkb]

Will try to send you the DATs by tomorrow.

Thanks, Commander_X. Dat files received successfully.

I wish I could report that fixed the issue, but I have really hit a brick wall on this one. Nothing I try corrects the problem. And I have tried:

• Removing everything but the dock subentity (that is, the ring, ball, flashers and turrets)
• Removing everything and replacing the dock subentity with a known working one (ie the "oolite_coriolis_dock")
• Making the ring a subentity.

In all of those experiments, the back wall of the dock continues to disappear as soon as you cross the threshold.

So for the moment I'm going to park this one. If someone else wants to explore the problem, feel free to play around. And thanks to everyone who helped me get this far.