The Ground Is Lava...ahm...white? Lighting Problem In Tsw3?

Watch 1hr 40min into this and you have your answer from Sam

 

I dont think its that easy at this point. There is something just fundamentally wrong with the TSW code. SO i guess only a complete re-write would fix many of the issues we have ingame. Thats the only reason i can think of for example why we still dont get seasons in scenario planer or why the sun still shines through the cab of the loco

 

I agree, I’m wracking my brains to think of an opportunity to finally address some of these problems. A new game maybe, something like TSW3 perhaps?

As I said above, DTG seem to be on a divergent path to many of their player base. Anecdotally many of us want a specific set of features, or at least fixes to many of the problems in the game (and I can say that objectively because DTG keep saying that’s the feedback they get) but their words and their actions do not marry together.

 

I saw that and totally disagree with what he’s saying. Aside from the humongous chip on his shoulder about FS2020 & Microsoft (and lets not forget flight sims have been using ‘live weather’ for decades) I would suggest that many flights that people take in that game don’t last more than 1-2 hours. In the real world that is also often the case both in recreational and commercial flying.

There are plenty of scenarios and services (even more so with these longer routes) in TSW that last that long. If you were to travel 115 miles in almost any European country it’s a fair bet that 50-60% of the time the weather at your destination would be different to the weather at your origin. It sounds like another thing that’s been put in the ‘too difficult’ box never to see the light of day sadly.

 

I guess one problem of DTG is that they are still developing the core features of a train sim and have to sell content to fund its ongoing development. A completely new UI is hard to do in an existing game. I get the business side of things. It is essentially one game base that is continually developed and has to be sold as a new game from time to time to be able to introduce backwards incompatible changes.

I hope that with TSW3 all locos (loco DLC AND route locos) are independent of a route so you only have one instance of each. Whenever DTG wants to include a loco in a new route with more features, they should update the existing instance. After all, they would spend that time anyway. By continuously upgrading previously released locos to newer features, whenever they are necessary for a route, DTG would add value to previous locos for free without additional effort.

In a sense, each loco bundled with a route could be an invisible loco DLC that is awarded to you by buying the route. When that loco is later included in another route, owners of that route get the same (upgraded) loco as well. Conversely, if you don't buy the new route, you still benefit from the upgraded loco if you had access to it already.

The lighting system on the engine editor side is not completely from scratch. UE4 supports physical-based lighting out of the gate, you just need to have the correct values for the lights. But from a workload perspective, it is from scratch, because they had to touch every single light and reconfigure it. What remains is the change to the material function and I hope that DTG will give a commitment that they work on it.

 

Absolutely, but we don’t have to feel sorry for them, that’s their blinkin job! At no point should you buy a product with the caveat that ‘here it is everyone. Sorry it’s only half done because it really was an awful lot of work’.

People need to stop making excuses for DTG. This is a business transaction, you pay them for a product and it’s only fair that you expect that product to a) work and b) work as described.

 

Sams answer still doesn't make too much sense (in relation to my suggestion). He's correct in suggesting the vast amount of resources Microsoft have for weather (for flight simulator, they use a very expensive service by meteoblue). But a metar strip is cheap and near freely available, and provides a sufficient amount of detail for a train simulator to use.

 

I just started playing Sailaway after getting totally pee’d off with the TSW situation. That plugs into real world weather every six hours and updates, for the whole planet.

In addition the save game works. The graphics and sound, okay there’s not much of the latter in a sailing sim (!) and lighting are superb. From what I can see the game is largely programmed and developed by a small team yet they seem to be doing far better at it than DTG’s so called professional studio.

 

I don’t get the obsession with real time weather. It might make a good randomiser or a good permanent rain setting for routes in Manchester but it isn’t realistic to be playing a service at noon in December to have the current weather at 1am in August added to it. I know there will be people who play services at the current time of day in the time zone they are set and always play in the current month but for everyone else the weather will be wrong. It’s a bit gimmicky really, and certainly not necessary for a good simulator experience. A waste of developer time when they have so many other things they need to be working on to make the game better, such as tweaking the settings to the track textures to ensure they never show up as completely washed out white unless they are covered in snow. The rest of the textures may not be so urgent to alter but, as the tutorials tell us, a lot of time is spent in the engineer’s seat staring directly forward at the track.

 

Just because you think it’s a gimmick doesn’t mean others see it that way but it’s a very fair point re season etc.

What would be neat would be a button where you pick your route (or no route at all) and simply hit ‘real-time’ and the game picks a service that matches the current time and date. If it could read a simple METAR for the origin and destination of that service and utilise the dynamic weather function to recreate it I think that would be a very worthy addition to the game. I also don’t believe that would be overly complicated to get working either…nor does it have to be 100% accurate like a flight sim. It would be enough (just an example) if the weather at Heathrow was clear and sunny (Paddington) and an airfield near Reading had a METAR with overcast skies and a 70% chance of rain to see that play out before you. I don’t see that as a gimmick at all.

ps Someone made the point about FS and Meteoblue. That is way in excess of what DTG would need to do…the Metoblue stuff is predicating the whole atmosphere based on real world modelling, TSW doesn’t need anything that level of simulation.

 

I don't get this obsession with calling everything a gimmick tbh. You may subjective dislike a feature or not compelled to use it. But this is the literal definition of a simulator :

one that simulates especially : a device that enables the operator to reproduce or represent under test conditions phenomena likely to occur in actual performance.

Again, it may not be a critical area to fulfil your requirements... but I think live weather is just as important as the plethora of issues that need addressing in TSW.

 

You basically wont be able in this day and age to find another pc game with the same strange and big issues (broken saves, massive lighting and sound bugs) even after years of development other then TSW.

 

I imagine with weather, it's a bit of a faff to find a live solution which works with TSW, given how we select our services from a timetable, and it's almost never the current time. Historical weather might work, where it pulls from a database of historical data on that location, but that means adding an extra layer to the weather selection UI for choosing a date to do the run on. (I loved how back in 1999 Shenmue had an option for accurate historical weather for each day in 1986/7 Yokosuka, but that was a very narrow focus on a specific place and time).
Live weather pulled from a service providing it would only really work for spawning on foot at the present time. Doable, yes, but how practical is it really? And don't forget, a majority of routes are not in the same time zone as a player will be, so that throws it off again. If I spawn in at the present time on my XBox's clock, it doesn't matter if I spawn in Cane Creek, London, or Arosa, it's 12:39pm local time right now everywhere. In something like Flight Sim the time of day defaults to whatever it presently is for the location. It would require a whole new set of options requiring both backend and frontend work.

 

After reading the very interesting explaination on how this effect comes to life, and why it looks like that, thanks to Maik Goltz, I still wonder if it really is that bad? It might not look like real life 1:1, but I remember seeing lots of train stations look like this when it rained, to a degree that I needed to turn away from it as it was starting to blind me. And looking at google images, they are a few that portait exactly that.

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/sun...-rain-carnforth-railway-station-231390889.jpg

https://c7.alamy.com/comp/S16CY0/lone-figure-on-railway-platform-beneath-a-way-out-sign-S16CY0.jpg

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/she...sheffield-railway-station-empty-243082254.jpg

It might not look as nice as it could be, I totally agree there. But is it really that bad and away from reality either?

 

Problem is that ingame it looks not remotely close to what we see on those pictures.Ingame you basically have plain white ground that looks like it is covered in snow, without nuance

 

What I find interesting is that no one has pointed out that this isn't really a problem on new TSW routes. The very shiny reflective gravel appearance was a prevalent issue in old routes, especially pre-TSW2.
But I personally cannot recall seeing this issue on a route like London to Brighton, or the Harlem Line, or any of the routes released in the past year.

So my question is, if this issue has been addressed in some way before, why has it showed up again? Is this a direct cause of the new brighter lighting? This really is an issue that should be fixed as soon as it possibly can be.

 

This was back in SoS or maybe it is so noticable because of materials / scenery configuration there.

 

real-time weather is a waste of time, just look out of the window and pick some suitable weather accordingly, if you want it to change during the run then that is what the dynamic weather is for.

If you want it to be exactly the same as it is now, but you aren't there, then pick the season/month accordingly and pick random and dynamic, you'll never know if it is right or not.

And as for simulating, it is a train simulator, not a world simulator. Everything except the trains is just scenery.

 

Careful, you're going against the narrative here- TSW3 is an abomination that should be pulled from sale until everything is exactly as certain posters want them.

DTG shouldn't charge for TSW3 because they're lazy and everything in it should have been in the original release 5 years ago- and it looks worse than MSTS did in 2002. Seriously TSW3 could be ported to PS2!

After all, it's just a gamepass cash-grab for console kiddies who've never even been an engineer (sorry, train driver) way back in 1977- they only want plastic trains that you push one button to go brrrrrrrrrrrr!!! ZOOM! I see a plush dinosaur- my eyes are literally burning!!!

If only they released an editor, all of TSW's issues would be solved in a weekend.

P.s. I agree that the new lighting system still needs more work, but the hyperbole in this community is at another level entirely. Seriously, try to have some perspective.

 

Ok, I have a simple question: if this lighting is so hard to code/fix/whatever for UE4 - why they don't change the engine for i.e. UE5?
Is it easier to program this dynamic lighting in UE5 or it is also a trip through seven rings of hell?

 

Do you remember the hassle they had when switching a minor Unreal Engine version? Another major version means that they would have to completely start from scratch (practically), since UE5 is not compatible with UE4. That would also mean: no more access with all previous released content.

It would be a dramatic cut, take more time to just release the core with maybe some routes and start over again. Plus, the 8th generation consoles would likely have to be scrapped. Imagine the outrage then.

And that is not even including the question if things would actually work better with UE5. It would take many years just to get back to where we are now. All processes would have to be adapted.

 

Congratulations dear user, you are the 15000 person to ask this question without spotting the other 14999 times on the forum

Please collect your free hat and copy of tsw3 from the steam counter

 

By the way, did we see night time footage from TSW3 yet?

Probably still the same as in TSW2, I did not hear about night time improvement in lighting

 

They did show a little bit but I haven’t seen it properly because when I was watching the stream by that point youtube had started rendering it in 144p so I turned off and haven’t watched it back later. That’s not a typo, it was 144p and I didn’t even know resolution went so low. It was like watching through bubblewrap.

I did briefly flick over to the stream on Twitch while they were running in the dark and it looked too dark to me but nighttime lighting is different under different conditions and times of night (if it’s anything like TSW2) so it’s not easy to tell from a snippet of one service if it is any good. I just want there to be sufficient moonlight to be able to see the scenery and trains faintly, not too light but definitely not totally black.

 

Lukas showed about 5 minutes of the BR 185.2 sitting at a red signal at night, as well as a brief walk around Würzburg Hbf close to midnight. It looks good in my opinion but we have yet to see a cabride through different areas at night.

Cheers