How often does dynamic weather give you a light rain without turning into a thunderstorm? Seriously, the last time dynamic weather generated light rain for me was on the ECML in TSW4. Since then, it has generated only thunderstorms.
I gave up on dynamic weather when I started noticing it all just ends up being foggy/rain and thunderstorms for every single run. Setting a weather preset is so boring, so I'd rather not do that either. Now I use the Route Annotations mod purely for the live/historic weather and it's like a totally different game. Can't play without it.
Ps5 . On ny Trenton and Morristown, Id say fairly often especially in the summer. I think most thunderstorms occurred in the fall. Now i remember Matt saying that in the winter months you’re more likely to get rainy weather, and less likely in the summer months.
How much of a hassle is getting Route Annotations setup? I like the concept but i generally don't run mods especially if i need to install other mods to get the one I actually want to work lol
For getting weather to work it's pretty much zero aside from actually installing it. The page with the download is github style so it can be difficult to find the actual .msi for installation if you're not familiar with the layout. It's the only mod I've ever actually bothered to install. Besides that, you just make sure you have the -HTTPAPI flag in the startup options for TSW in Steam (this allows the mod to "talk to" TSW), start the app before you start TSW, and it just works. You set the weather in the mod app to Historic if you're running anything with a timetable set in the past, or Live if you want current weather, and set the weather in TSW to Custom so the game doesn't try to override the mod. The Annotations part for showing your location info can be a bit more involved because you have a lot of customization options for the layout and such, but the thread has a lot of helpful info on that. I don't use the Annotations part because it doesn't play nice with Lossless Scaling, so it's all about the weather for me. I have the app set to Historic, so I just start it up and then start TSW, crank back the date a few days in the timetable before I start my run, and I can minimize the mod while it does its thing.
It isn't really a 'mod', in that (AFAIK) it makes no changes to TSW software. It just (easy to write, much trickier to program - thanks Winzarten!) uses TSW's built-in HTTP API to read the geographic location and date/time, look up the relevant weather in a public app, and then update the TSW weather (again using the built-in API). It can display its own information for 'known' locations 'in front of' the TSW screen if you wish.
I gave up on dynamic weather right after it came out since I didn’t like the transitions but would rather set custom weather for most runs. Especially since weather wouldn’t change that drastically over the short periods and distances of most timetables in the real world. But once I learned about TSW Route Annotations from The General Discussions thread (see what I did there ) I used live or historical wx ever since. It has added greatly to my enjoyment, increasing the time I use the simulation and probably been a catalyst to purchasing some of the latest routes.
The only reason dynamic weather is a good thing is that you can't predict what's coming. I mean of course you can - there will be a thunderstorm. But on paper, it should add variety. And even create interesting situations - like snow on a difficult climb, and so on. But we all know that it always behaves the same way. It starts raining in the same places, and it stops raining in the same places. And we all just "love" this sudden disappearance of fog.
The times I remember most light rain were when I was shunting around Kirkham on Blackpool Branches (either the right distance or time from the starting station to let the weather start to happen is my guess). It feels like the lack of movement across the map stops the weather evolving into worse weather, at least as quickly. Or that may all be balls, but it does feel like you can conjure light rain and enjoy it for a bit if you do the right thing at the right time of year.
The problem with dynamic weather from Route Annotations is that its really abrupt when the open meteo info changes. I was working on an overlay anyway, because I find the ingame ui obnoxious and distracting so I thought I would add a live weather injector that does what I want. Uses position aware snapshots and pulls data based on your lat/long in game from real world sources, polls at a high frequency without introducing stutters to capture the most accurate weather (taking into account for passing storms, sudden rain etc) transitions between different weather types in a predictable real world manner, reworked how fog is rendered so it reflects regional differences more accurately, uses a 4 component wetness model (current/recent precip/humidity). Ran it through Claude Pro and had it fine tune it for accuracy. Works incredibly well, i was driving Frankfurt Fulda today, and it was beautiful watching an overcast sky transition to thick broken clouds as the late afternoon sun broke through. The transitions between the weather systems are what's key to making it look good. Pretty easy to do if you have a basic understanding of UE4SS and LUA.
Dont use Dynamic weather to be honest. If I want rain then I will just put a wee bit of rain on in the settings.
