Epic Settings Comparison Video

Today, DTG released a Epic Settings Comparison Video:



A few things I noticed:

• The new lighting is actually hiding poor scenery/asset quality, by adding a filter and god rays over it. You can clearly see this in the Mttenwaldbahn shots
• In some shots the lighting makes it a lot better, while in others it's only add some foggy look. Zwolle - Groningen for example looks worse in my opinion
• At night the epic setting does not that much, or it is making it worse
• With cloudy weather (Nurnburg - Wurzburg), the distance fog seems to be gone and this looks more realistic
• Inside Paddington station, the lighting really enhances the look and feel
• On Miami commuter, the sunlight seems to be gone and it doesn't look better in epic.

So I'm left with mixed feelings. Some effects really do the trick in certain lighting conditions, while with other conditions it don't do the trick at all. At night it seems to add a foggy filter, but I can't say it really looks better.

What is your opinion on this?

Note: I don't want to criticize Jetwash his work in any way of form, this are just my observations and ment as constructive feedback.

 

Overall, certainly better than before.

 

So it's a PS3 piss filter with blinding god rays? I genuinely don't understand why anyone would like this, even over the awful base game graphics. This is not a fix for TSW's endless list of lighting and colour accuracy issues, in any conceivable way. The only upgrade is the extended draw distance, but that is largely separate from the "Epic" graphical settings anyway.

 

PS3 piss filter with blinding god rays, is also a way to describe it The thing is, the more you crank up settings the more stuff like building assets and scenery falls short. The filters and blinding god rays are hiding this somehow, but many assets are from the first TSW routes, which are from almost 10 years ago.

The blinding god rays can be realistic in certain conditions, but when it's very cloudy, there are no god rays to hide those bad assets. It somehow feels like lipstick on a pig.

 

I can't wait to testing this new lighting. I hope external light sources will no longer interfere with the visibility of the speedometer in the cab. I also hope the green, yellow, and red signals will be easier to see, especially when the sun is behind us.

 

The new lighting is a Marmite thing.


It looks like the screen has been smeared in Marmite.

 

Now you can see what it's like to be a train driver with cataracts.

 

honestly? ultra seems better imo

 

The settings seem to greatly improve the appearance of the game with overcast weather and reduce its flatness.

 

The models can play a part but I am certain that the majority of assets would still look better in a different game. There's so much colour and detail that's being lost because they are held back with TSW's lighting.

 

I really enjoy what I've seen of the new lighting. Makes it look a little less like I'm playing in a first-person cartoon train diorama. Assuming I can use it independently from the Epic settings as a whole (my PC is old), it'll probably push me to grab the free version at least. Native DLSS is another factor, so that's one less thing I'll need Lossless Scaling for (still going to use it to smooth out the awful stuttering).

People can say what they want about a "piss filter" and whatever else but I think it gives it some character. I've been really bored of the stock lighting in TSW for a long time but I never bothered to do any of the Jetwash tweaks--now I won't have to. Always preferred the darker look of the older games myself as opposed to the overly bright comic book we've gotten in recent years.

 

I think you are confusing realism with better looking graphics. TSW, like a lot of other Unreal Engine games, suffers from a lighting overexposure problem and colors that are way too saturated compared to real life. The enhanced lighting attempts to fix this and make the lighting more realistic. In some cases that can make the graphics look worse, as in less saturated colors and areas looking more foggy that aren’t in direct sunlight. You mentioned the Zwolle route comparison looking worse with enhanced lighting. I’d argue it’s more realistic because in that shot the sun is behind the train and covered by clouds. There’s nothing wrong with liking cartoony graphics with vibrant colors, but just know it’s not realistic and it’s not what the enhanced lighting feature is trying to bring.

It kind of reminds me of the new Bus Simulator 27 game that just released. It has an interesting setting toggle when you first start the game. You can choose between realistic graphics and stylized graphics, with the stylized option having the vibrant saturated look that looks better for screenshots and at a layman’s glance, but the realistic option gives a more true to life look.

 

I'm sorry but what Dovetail calls "epic" here is ballpark how average contemporary games look nowadays, even on consoles. Their tech is a decade behind the industry. It shouldn't be epic and runnable only on high-end systems, it should be the baseline on every platform.

 

I agree with you on the part that the lighting with UE is not the best. I'm not the one who likes cartoony graphics at all, but I'm also not a fan of adding some grain or fog to hide saturated colors. The yellow on the koploper is not over saturated and the shot on ultra isn't to bright either. In real life you don't see grain or fog with the conditions of this shot, so the filter you see on epic settings in this shot don't make it more realistic. With a low sun, the sun can be blinding, but that's not happening in this shot, you even don't see the sun.

 

Is the UI colour configurable?

 

I know the Epic setting and the lighting is seperate, but in the vid it's combined against the ultra setting.

The point of this post was to share my observations of the new lighting and to point out it's doing a good job in certain conditions but a less job on others. Turning the new lighting off is a possibilty, but maybe there is room for improving possible.

 

Personally I don't like the God rays, while it may look more like what a camera would see, my human eyes adapt better than a camera so the real world I see isn't covered in stripes.

Having said that, the promo video is clearly cherry picked shots where the effect is at it's most extreme, the two route previews they've done so far have looked a lot better so I'll likely start with it switched on and see how it goes in normal play.

 

I only watched the German stream, but most likely the time of day used in the stream was not right to show those effects. From what I remember, it looked a bit grainy when they showed the BR 440 and 442.

 

Do you play on pc or console? Those Epic settings are pc only.....

 

TSW development started in 2014, and the first public builds were in 2016, so the lighting is literally a decade old. I thought the graphics were groundbreaking at the time, but it's almost ten years since then and the core issues the lighting had back then still haven't been fixed.

The colour accuracy of the game was marginally better back then I think. The game still doesn't support HDR even though it's been around for a long time. I've tried Auto HDR on Windows and it helps a bit, but native support would be a good step forward. But even if it did, the tone mapping is still so far behind other games that it's just a bit sad. Ironically, Polyphony Digital released their tone mapping system completely for free for anyone to use on a MIT license. GT7's colour accuracy is pretty much the best in any game, and BeamNG is getting that tone mapping technology soon (or it might already have it, I haven't checked). It's the main reason why Forza Horizon 6 still isn't quite as good looking as GT7 - there's still something off about the colours of the cars themselves.

You can throw as many features at the graphics as you want, but the most important thing for graphics has always been colour accuracy. I absolutely believe DTG know the lighting system is broken, but the JetWash patches can't fix the underlying lighting tech. And like so many other things in TSW, DTG knowing about a problem doesn't mean they actually know how to fix it. I'd like to imagine if DTG ever did make a new UE5-based train game they could start from scratch with the lighting. Running Train and Halo Campaign Evolved show how good the lighting can look in that engine. That said, the few screenshots we got of Metro Rivals showed that they really haven't learnt at all.

 

Very useful. Many thanks, Chris. (DO Ultra or Epic settings require any specific setting in NVidia Control Panel and NVidia App?

 

And of course one can tweak down individual settings if their performance hit outweighs their graphic improvement.

 

Sorry, I expressed myself poorly: If Epic or Ultra settings are used, what should the setting in NVidia Control Panel and NVidia App be (default, or something else?)

 

^
Which, naturally, isn't included in the game by default despite the feature being years old at this point.

 

I stand corrected then.

 

Hi all, are the settings route specific? I am still getting a lot of pop in, and very poor shadow and track draw distances on both of the Just Trains WCML routes. I haven't tried the Blackpool branches one yet. I have played on the Skipton route and the Medway line, both are fine. The 2 JT routes looked better for me on TSW6 using the old Jetwash settings plus tweaks to the ini file seemed to work across the board.

Edit: DLSS and DLAA also turned on

All settings on epic and ultra with enhanced lighting turned on - avg fps 100~ 5090, 9800x3d and 64GB low latency 6000 DDR5 (bought before the world went mad...).

Cheers

 

Thanks Chris, so this would be up to JT to update? sounds like a lot of work so probably not going to happen. I'll post something on the Jetwash lighting mod thread, I had my draw distances and a few other bits on the ini much further out than even his highest level one.

Cheers