PC Tsw3 - Your Awesome Lighting Pictures

As the evening draws in, we've had a lovely evening sky.

 

DTG's efforts...

Mission Accomplished!

Well done DTG - now I just have to wait for the regional bundles!

Also these screenshots are simply amazing!!

 

Yup, Cajon is definitely my favourite of the new lineup.




Cheers

 

Just don't forget to control the train. That's happen to me lol, i've enjoyed to take so much screenshots without realising that the train already cresting the summit, and boom the train simply reaches uncontrollable speed. Haha cheers. XD

 

Great shots. Great views of the new skybox.

But, again, no headlights. I guess you guys in the UK are used to it.

 

Probably yeah. There's been a few times I've seen trains on sehs with tail lights on. Guess it adds to the experience.

 

And everyone was saying it'd be a boring freight route. Definitely not.

 

I've always liked the American freight routes. There's nothing more challenging than 30mph for 20 miles or more.

 

Yeah that's still disappointing. Even the locomotives on Riesa-Dresden have further reaching headlights. I pointed it out in the live stream and Matt P. responded with "but we put in the correct lux values!" and someone in chat says "that looks about right for North American trains." Quatsch! There's more to light sources than brightness values.

Hey, I am a dual citizen! I lived in Washington state for 19 years. Though living in Germany now.

Cheers

 

Unlike Sherman Hill where half the route you stick it into notch 8 and leave it, or Sandpatch Grade where the speed limits are sometimes dreadfully low, I have found Cajon Pass to be ever-changing in gradient and speeds and the dynamic weather can make uphill running difficult--especially with only a few dinky SD40-2s on power.

Cheers

 

Not a picture, but I just can't help but be amazed how damn good the dawn and dusk now looks.

 

They really did go from being the worst to the best looking times of day.

Cheers

 

If you're going by how far our headlights reach at night in real life it really varies. The older stuff I drive it doesn't go further than maybe 5-10 meters ahead but the newer stuff reached a good 20-30 meters

 

No one wants lightning to hit the shed....

 

Nice!!

 

Yeah. The person you’re commenting to was always going to pull the lighting apart no matter what.

 

No I wasn’t, and I haven’t pulled it apart. Where there’s clear improvement I’ve said so, and where issues from TSW2 persist I’ve pointed them out constructively. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

There is a clear improvement over aspects of the TSW2 lighting. How much of that is down to the realistic looking skies and how much is down to the lighting itself we don’t know. There are still very visible issues however, particularly with how the trains themselves are lit and how they sit in their surroundings. I’m not gonna apologise for calling that out because it needs sorting.

 

I wish someone would post TSW2 & TSW3 side by side shots because I can't see anything I haven't seen in TSW2

 

Your imagination is outstanding. In TSW 2? WOW

 

I do have mods installed but it must be easy for someone to post some SEHS shots from TSW2 and TTSW3 taken from same angle and same time of day

 

Please share such pictures from TSW 2. Together we will try to draw some conclusions.
Moded or not. Just show us

 

Be careful getting too carried away. It’s easy to forget that at times TSW2 could look amazing yet at other times, particularly around dawn and dusk, it looked like absolute trash. It does look like that specific issue has maybe improved somewhat but it might also be simply that no one has posted a shot of the witching hour when it all went horribly wrong in TSW2.

I think the improvement in the skies is making the lighting changes look more than they actually are but there is still no question that the skies are 100% better. They have to be having an effect on the lighting though given they’re an integral feature of the engine, but whatever it is it’s an undoubted improvement. That still doesn’t alter the fact that there are issues with the trains themselves and on SEHS at least, at least one of the tunnels (as seen on the stream and studiously ignored, as is the DTG way).

 

The trouble is partly the fact that they are two separate games and switching between them is very tedious (TSW2 takes about 5 mins just to load up a route - more if there is an update to the Steam Client).

Also the timetables are different, so you can never really get the same shot if you want a train in it.

 

These are some from the steam community screenshots tab (disclaimer - all taken by different people, not me )

 

It's so damn frustrating! Clearly so near yet so far at the same time. That shot with the 465 looks like absolute junk (and again, where are the cloud shadows?!), to such an extent you'd be forgiven for thinking it was TSW2, but then the shots below it look pretty cool indeed.

Please don't give up on the lighting DTG and see it as a done deal...it's really getting there but definitely isn't over the line yet.

 

For those on PC who are bothered by how blown out TSW3 can look in broad daylight, check out bescot's eye adaptation mod. It makes the game look more like TSW2 for whatever that's worth. I've only done a little bit of testing but I'm personally not sure whether I prefer it.

Here's an example at 13:00 on a clear day in August.
Before:

After:


Before:

After:

Which do you prefer? I think the after images are too reminiscent of TSW2's lighting looking rather dull and murky. I think I'll stick to vanilla for now.

Cheers

 

Yeah! The Before images are miles better.

 

I need to second that...

 

Fundamentally, neither option looks realistic.

 

Everybody is obviously entitled to their opinion, no need to argue with that. But the real question was, which one would you prefer?

 

Ray-tracing (direct shadows, global illumination, reflections) would go a long way to tidying up the bits of the lighting which remain strange. However, it also requires a ton more compute power and artist time to set up. Unfortunately, there are some things that just can't be done with the traditional rasterised lighting tricks used to improve performance and are best done with ray-tracing. It would be nice to have as an option, but I doubt DTG will invest their time into it so long as consoles/PCs which don't support raytracing make up a large portion of the userbase.

Cheers

 

I think the lighting is a huge step forward, so is the distant haze and what looks like better distant scenery.

Obviously the key point will be what the preserved collection or compatible routes looks like on Monday with just dynamic weather but nothing else. Would love to see even the Rush Hour routes get the lighting treatment, as I predict there will be a huge difference between these 4 routes and all the others.

 

The colours this new sky has unleashed!

 

Oh god please don't mention ray tracing, I can't imagine what tsw would run like, 5fps!

 

will be nvidia experience filters avaible maybe ? because there i can set filters like i do in ATS
its a good option to get the max quality out of enviroments

 

It's not worth the performance hit to me. But maybe some users will be content with low FPS so long as the lighting isn't "all wrong."

Cheers

 

Night time shots look underwhelming to me. Lacking some magic and bit too dark in some cases.

 

I'd like somewhere between the two. Without, a lot of textures have this washed out look.

 

I don’t think raytracing is necessary. Plenty (read almost all) other games don’t use it and don’t suffer these same problems.

I really don’t think it’s choice between raytracing or nothing. MSFS doesn’t use raytracing but it’s lighting is different league to TSW.

 

I can do 50-55 mph on Cajon beetwen Barstow up to Oro Grande (or Victorville), and the gradient constantly changing in between.

 

Headlights on an american train to show they are there

 

Arriving at San Bernardino Intermodal Yard

 

Thanks for the mention. I've updated that light adaptation mod to add a middle step 'Level1a' if you'd like to try out that one..

I only did this mod as SEHS can look very blown out when you're near the ground - and in something like the 465 your camera kinda faces down to see the drivers panel. I also could only find one way of editing the exposure which is via a compensation curve. There's a whole host of settings which could be changed via hex editing - but I'm unable to find any mention of post process stuff in the umap file.

I hope that DTG can tone down that blown white effect though.

https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/m...3-auto-exposure-eye-adaption-compensation-mod