I picked up TSW2 a few months ago and have found it much more enjoyable than I expected. Plenty of positives about the game, but there are some things that could be much better. This is my first post to the forum. I've been having a hard time running trains at night because of the “realistic” darkness away from cities. When I run a timetable service at night I have resorted to setting the sim to January and making sure that there is a good amount of snow. This lights up the scenes enough that the game can be played. It's effectively unplayable because it is so dark. Realistic stars! As an astronomer I tend to look at the night skies in simulators to see if the stars are correct. I have not found this to be the case with TSW2. As far as I can tell the stars are random dots. Adding correct star patterns and animating them correctly for the month and time of night should be a pretty straight forward task for a programmer. This would be a big improvement for night operations for anyone familiar with the night sky. Add the moon! As the simulated nights are so dark in TSW2, they are not realistic for most of the month. The moon is in the sky for part of every night, except for a single night each month at New Moon. I have not noticed the moon in the night sky yet. Perhaps I just haven't seen it yet? The game should allow the player to choose evening crescent moon, visible for only a few hours after sunset and providing only a little light, 1st Quarter, visible for the half of the night and providing more illumination, Full Moon, visible all night and providing a lot of illumination. And then Last Quarter, less illumination again and rising only around midnight, then a morning crescent, again providing only a little illumination for a few hours before sunrise. New Moon would be the current setting with no additional illumination. Someone like me who doesn't like the current total blackness of night operations could then set the moon to full and have a well lit night scene, while another player who likes the challenges of total darkness wouldn't lose that ability.
As a sidenote, to solve the darkness issue without having to wait for devs to change anything, I can recommend using ReShade.
Thanks. I am not seeing an explicit mention of TSW2, just TSW, so I can assume it works with "2" as well?
This is train simulator world 2 not sky simulator 2. Yes sky is bad but they add need to more train and route (in china also) and also do bug. This not very as importent. Yes
I'm no astronomer but I have been asking me the question what was wrong with the night sky. Haven't seen the moon either. I don't know how difficult it is to pull of but a real night sky but it would be awesome. Add on that all recorded weather data for the calendar and have real life and even live weather effects.
Well if you go to timetable it will automatically bring you to the actual month. So if you would play London commuter and it is raining in real life in London it is raining in the game. Or if it is night the stars would align with how the stars are aligned right now when you view them out of London. Routes with less light pollution would have even a better view over the night sky etc