In TSW3 I’ve noticed that, with various engine.ini tweaks, I can get the external view colors and brightness fairly acceptable. But in cab view looking forward there is a noticeable difference, with the view being very bright and washed out (this is less noticeable looking out the nearest side window, but even worse looking out the opposite side window). This effect is particularly noticeable on a clear bright day on Cajon Pass. Any explanation and/or tweak is appreciated. TIA
After a bit of digging around I think the problem is 3 fold. 1) There is a lack of ambient occlusion in almost all the cabs. Some are worse than others (the 700 & 323 seem to be particularly bad) 2) Many structures (bridges, gantries etc) don’t cause the cab to darken as you pass under them 3) The main problem is that there is something very wrong with the intensity of the sky under overcast conditions, which is likely down to a combination of issues with eye adaption and with the intensity of the light cast by the TOD4 system If you’re on PC I’d suggest getting the God Mode mod from TSC and under all conditions use the Skylight Intensity slider at 0.3. It makes the whole experience more bearable. Ultimately only DTG can fix this properly, but history tells us it’s barely on their radar. Half the time they don’t seem to think anything is wrong which baffles me. Additionally, it would appear that 3rd parties are not using the tools consistently correctly either with light values often all over the place, a perfect example of this being the Mk3 coaches on MML. It’s nothing short of shambolic.
Much like in TSC also? Some 3rd party dev's do not care to adhere to the rules or think they can do better? And DTG's overall QA let this pass? It will be interesting to see how management tackles this rising problem with more 3rd parties trying to get onboard.
If there was ambient occlusion in the cab it would make the issue of the outside getting washed out even worse as the overall scene would be darker and therefore the eye adaptation would open up even further. The main issue with the eye adaptation is that it opens up too much when there is any kind of dark texture on the screen, such as a large number of trees close to the track. There needs to be a complete rethink as to how the eye adaptation reacts in all circumstances but especially when in the cab.
There’s more to it than that. Something is fundamentally wrong with the way both the train externally and cab itself is lit in relation to the external ambient light. It's always been a problem in TSW and the eye adaption in TSW3 just exacerbates it. As I've said since day one of TSW3, to suggest they ripped up the lighting and started again simply cannot be true otherwise it wouldn't look like this. We wouldn't be subjected to over-exposed and oversaturated colours with some lights looking like they're being powered by some greater being than resides on this Earth, and others like they're on the verge of a power cut. Just look at this image, the unit looks superimposed on it's surroundings (bare in mind also that the SkyLight Intensity there is turned right down to 0.3 from it's standard value of 1.0) and in the natural world be much much darker. I don't entirely blame DTG for this. Setting up lighting in UE4 is clearly tricky to do (just Google it and see the myriad of threads all of the internet from developers ripping their hair out) but that doesn't mean it can't be done. Wherever you read one of these threads eventually someone generally comes up with a solution. The problem, as I see it, is that DTG seem to give their devs one window a year to change stuff like this, and once the Summer release has passed we, the players, are stuck with it until they're allowed to work on it again. If I'm wrong, and that isn't the case, then it's beyond baffling because the only logical conclusion you can reach is that they think it's fine as it is.
Although I don't think I've ever had the game looking better than it does now it can still look downright awful at times. These are some images of it not looking awful but happily highlight the issue with the cab. In each of the following 2 images the cab is just totally independent of the ambient light. What's going on outside has virtually zero impact on the way the cab looks and again, the Skylight intensity is turned down by 2/3rds from default and I have a raft of engine.ini changes going on; Finally, the worst offender. Again, given where the sun is the back and left-hand side of the train should be dark. You can see all the detail in the cab which is consistently the same brightness and obviously that is not how natural light works. How much of this is DTG and how much of it is UE4 I don't know, but either way it's not right.
Also, interesting to compare a TSW3 title and a TSW2 title in the same game. The overall lighting is probably marginally better in SEHS, but without question the cab is more realistically lit in L2B
