How do I completely clear trails

[komatii]

I can't figure out how to erase all trails from the screen. I keep running a simulation, and then reloading to tweak some parameters, but each time I run the trails just build up. I've click "x" next to trails, and also used ctrl+t to clear the trail data.
In fact, when I hit "T" and it says trails hidden, I still see them.
Not sure what to do, this is v2 installed sep 22

thx,
Komatii

[vh]

strange it must be a bug
i don't have that problem

try saving and restarting, sometimes the images from the last simulation (like trails) don't go away. Maybe restart the program if that doesn't work

hope it fix

[komatii]

The trails get burned into the background it seems as soon as I hit ctrl+R to restart the simulation and nothing gets rid of them. In fact if I hit the button to clear trail data the current trails become instantly burned in.
  It's very strange, I don't exactly understand what the "burned in" trails are. They don't seem to be image data because they will exhibit strange occlusion with planets, sometimes draw on top of them, sometimes behind them, sometimes intersecting halfway through like a 3d plane slicing through, which suggests they are 3d data being drawn. They rotate with the background, but don't reflect zoom, i.e. they are stuck to the 'skybox'.
   But if I crank trail length to a high number, say 1500 with a playing simulation the framerate drops heavily, to around 15fps. But as soon as I restart the simulation or click clear trail data, and the current trails get burned in, and the trail length drops back to 0, the framerate recovers. 
   Everytime a trail gets burned in, it just adds to the existing burned in trails and it seems no matter how many trails are burned into the background the framerate doesn't drop, which suggests they're just image data in the skybox but then they clip through 3d geometry like they are poly data. I'm guessing the framerate drop from trail length on current simulation is CPU load from calculating the vertex positions of the trail, but the "burned in" trails are just vertex buffer data with no CPU load and won't hurt framerate until there's a much more massive quantity.
   The persistence of the trails is getting frustrating.

komatii

[komatii]

Okay, to make this weirder, but probably means there's a solution...
This only seems to happen with my simulation.  If I load up one of the simulations that comes with Universe Sandbox [Earth and Moon, Saturn and moons] those simulations don't burn in their trails. In fact I couldn't make them do it. I made their trail length > 1000 for some really long trails, but every time I restart or reload them, their trails properly reset.
   The trails burned in from my simulation still persist when I load one of those other simulations or restart them, but they won't burn in their own.
   So it must be some setting on my simulation, but I've got no idea what it is.

komatii

[vh]

hmm, maybe a screenshot of these trails and the toolbox on the left will the trail settings would help us resolve this much!
have you tried restarting the program? does it go away then?

[komatii]

I tried to do a Fraps capture, but the display in Universe Sandbox goes weird when I start capturing. I can't seem to do a printscrn screen cap to past into Photoshop, and the shit+prtscreen in US doesn't save the UI so I'll have to just describe what's going on in these screenshots. However nothing in the options seems to make a difference, and everytime I load or restart a simulation the values in the options dialog all get reset so it must be something other than those parameters.
  The values in the options window for my simulation that does persistent trails, vs the Earth & Moon or Solar System simulations reset to the same thing whenever loaded [is it supposed to reset like that?].

In the first shot, I've set the trail length to 500 and set time step very high so the trail covers multiple orbits and has a low vertex count per orbit so it shows up thick for planet U. You can also see the trail for a small moon with a very wide orbit.
http://www.eos4life.com/temp/US/Universe Sandbox - 00.png

I hit ctrl+R to reload the simulation. In this shot the camera has returned to the starting orientation from the simulation file, trail length has also reset and no objects in the simulation are leaving trails of their own. The orbital trail for planet U is seen remaining at upper left.
http://www.eos4life.com/temp/US/Universe Sandbox - 01.png

I rotate the camera to an angle where the persistent trail from planet U intersects through planet E. The smaller moons persistent trail is also in the background.
http://www.eos4life.com/temp/US/Universe Sandbox - 02.png

Zooming out shows that the persistent trails keep their same orientation in the sky, changing on screen only with camera rotation.
http://www.eos4life.com/temp/US/Universe Sandbox - 03.png

I set the trail length to 500 again, and increase the timestep to a high value, so planet U now creates a thick trail again, and the small moon leaves a long trail as well.
http://www.eos4life.com/temp/US/Universe Sandbox - 04.png

I click the X button to reset trail data and the current trails become persistent [I forget whether it's the X button higher up between the other 2 resets, or the one next to the trail length parameters, but only 1 of them makes the current trails persist]. I've zoomed in to show they again ignore zoom, and have been combined with the previous persistent trails.
http://www.eos4life.com/temp/US/Universe Sandbox - 05.png

The only thing that gets rid of the trails is restarting Universe Sandbox, which seems to take a while.
Hardware is a Dell XPS M1710, windows XP and Nvidia 7950GTX.

komatii

[vh]

strange, i get a bug like this, but its only once every few hours, and it only takes me 5 seconds to restart ubox.
erm, no clue what to do, unless dan does!

[komatii]

It happens for me on my simulation always, no matter how many times it's saved as a new file.

komatii

[vh]

even when you restart ubox?

i don't know anything else about this so i can't really help>

[komatii]

Restarting only gives me a simulation without the persistent trails from before. But the instant I reload my simulation, or click the wrong "clear trails" button, they're burned in again.
   Trying to tune details of a system, and having the wrong details make stuff fly off, necessitating some different values and restarting means I'm restarting the system a lot. Maybe more than once a minute, so restarting to UBox to clear the trails isn't really an option, it's pretty slow to launch.
   Why it's in my simulation, and not the default ones I really don't understand, but I'm going to make some other new simulations to see if happens with them.

[vh]

ahhhhhh!
i don't know whats wrong
and dan dixon has magically went *poof*

./leaves thread

[Dan Dixon]

Sorry for the delay.

Ctrl+T will clear the trail data (although what you're describing sounds like a bug). Have you tried this? (or clicking on the delete trails button in the Gear icon menu (on the left side).

The trail code has been completely rewritten in the next major update. This will likely fix the problem.

[Gilgalad]

i figured it out!! i managed to figure out how to comnpletely and permanently hide trails on my sandbox... but i dont know how to keep them there but have them fade like the normal simulation


im not sure what i did at the start but i managed to make a gear icon appear right under your start and pause buttons on the top left corner of the screen... click on that go down to view optios and uncheck the trails box