After seeing TSW4 announced I remembered that I purchased TSW2 a few years ago, and now that I've got a laptop capable of running most games without it giving up the will to live (i7 10th gen 3GHz, 16gb RAM, 512gb SSD, GTX 1660Ti with 6gb of VRAM) I installed it. By and large I like it overall. I've got the game running on a customised version of High Settings running at a fairly consistent 60fps on the routes I've tried so far (BKL, GWE, a short run on Sand Patch that ended poorly XD). I particularly like the whole journey mode concept, the motion blur from 1st person view, the skybox lighting in the evenings, but above all the reflections - be it the reflection of a loco in a puddle, or the way everything reflects on the side of an HST power car. It looks incredible at speed with the added motion blur if you can get the camera tucked in behind the power car. As a result I'm now considering buying TSW4, so I want to ask a couple of questions. One of the things I don't like is the way the headlights on oncoming AI trains appear to 'pop' on when the train is almost opposite you. Is that related to the draw distance issue that there is no fix for (as far as I know), or is/was it a bug in TSW2? Is it known if the existing dlc bundles on Steam will still be avaliable once everyone has access to TSW4? If not I'll pick up the Southeastern bundle in the next few days.
Since your on pc I highly recommend searching through this forum for the engine.ini tweaks threads, your still on tsw2 by the sounds of it so alot of the tweaks for tsw3 were identical and lots of them were for increasing parts of the graphics settings beyond what the in game settings could allow, there was quite a few settings for increasing render distance and reducing pop in for certain objects. That might solve your problem with headlights popping in. Be warned though that reducing the pop in may reduce your fps below 60fps since you are significantly increasing render distance in the process, depending on how much your gpu is being worked currently this may or may not impact performance that much. Keep in mind tsw2 uses the old lighting system, tsw3 and tsw4 routes use a newer, more sophisticated lighting system which does seem to take a hit more on your graphics card. I’d expect you’ll need to make some graphic settings tweaks regardless to keep a similar frame rate to what your getting in tsw2 now. in answer to your second one, It hasn’t been mentioned. If I had to take a guess. Based on what happened last year, the old bundles that include tsw3 base will most likely disappear and the bundles that are just a collection of routes that don’t include tsw3 will still be available. Either way new bundles will probably be made either on release or a few months after release that will include some of the tsw3 routes. The base game tsw4 bundles ‘standard’ and ‘deluxe’ will always be available just at a higher price after release.
Here’s a couple of threads if you want to peruse the engine.ini tweaking, since tsw2 and 3 use the same unreal engine 4.26 the tweaks work the same for the most part. Have a play and see if any of them help. https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/engine-ini-settings-ue4-26.44011/ https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/tsw3-ini-settings-thread.60601/
