Public Beta Build 75.4b

You can switch between (download) Beta and Normal. Just opt out of the Beta. To be honest Beta in Borderless mode has been very stable for me.

 

Thanks guys !

 

Just know that it will do a file verification, so if you have any 3rd party modifications they may not work as intended. Make a backup beforehand.

 

If you have 3rd party modifications then you should not be using Beta since it is a work in progress. If you are only using DTG code plus DLCs from 3rd party you should be fine. I have the complete suite of AP running on my pc using Beta.

Respectfully

 

Absolute rubbish!

You apparently have no idea of the intention or the idea of a public beta, you're supposed to test it till you break it, you chuck every modification that you have at it, you do things to the game that DTG would never in a million years think of, that way if/when it breaks you write a detailed concise report of what you did, what you did it with and what you did it on, and you then give that useful information to DTG so that they can then go "Oh, we didn't think that would break the game, we better look into that".

THAT is how you Beta test!

Former SCS ETS2 & ATS Senior Closed (unreleased DLC and base game unannounced features) Beta tester.

 

Was just about to say something like this.

I’ve just backed up my entire railworks installation as i am thinking of joining the beta.

 

so if i can revert the beta to stable is their still need of backup of asset/content folder ?

cheers

 

No.
If you intend to flip-flop, it might be worth to set up a robocopy mirroring script and then just keep it.
You only need that backup if you have modifications.

I'd argue in favor of putting TSC into its own folder, part cleanup, part the ability to have multiple versions side by side neatly - x86 and x64 are already a bit of a mess. Of course I don't know how much of it is hard coded.
In that case, starting the beta would be as simple as starting from a different folder, without having to set aside so much space for an option.

 

I understand the concept of Beta testing. There are those of us who have the time and inclination to throw everything at a platform to see what breaks. There are also those of us who chose to use Beta in its normal environment without recourse to add variability into the mix by adding 3rd party software to qualify the stability of the platform out of the box. Both are valid.

Respectfully

 

Amazing what an uninstall and reinstall can do. I can now confirm that, as long as the Wellington signal mod has been applied to the route, it now runs in all modes: 32, 64 and 64-DX12. And it runs superbly smoothly! One of the reasons I chose this route as it uses the SilverLining 3D weather. Below are a couple of screenshots that reveal just how nice this feature presents the sun at dusk:


Connecticut River

A rare beast: Alco DL-109

 

I'm pretty sure this is not a SilverLining weather, but a TimeOfDay season in your screenshot. SilverLining has a completely different halo around the sun, and different sky colour grades (dynamic, in ToD you only have 8 presets per day). Turned DynamicClouds on? In fact, the sky is much too dark in your shot, with the sun looking slighty unreal, because the sky gradient suggests the sun has already set (and ToD sky gradients are always spanning the full horizon, so you have the red glow on the opposite side as well, which is not happening in SL).

SilverLining (3D 1.Clear) at Narvik, 1am, looking at the midnight sun in the north. SL allows this, but ToD can't have the sun over the horizon at night. (And has sunrise/sunset always at exactly 90/270 degrees, which only happens on two days of the year actually.)


SL Dusk


So while you can achieve good effects without SL, it's all just "trickery" with TimeOfDay files, AP makes clever use of the SunGlare parameters, making it really big to get a 3rd gradient that is circular as opposed to the cylindrical ToD gradients, to have a nice dusk, but SL emulates a real environment (there is actually an atmosphere) but it still needs some config tweaking imho.

To sum it up:

ToD needs: 2D weather blueprint, chosen Season
SL needs: SL (3D) weather blueprint, Scenario Date AND DynamicClouds enabled.

Season is not of importance for SL, only for texturing, it only needs the scenario date and the route coordinates to work. The further north your route is located, the longer days you'll get in summer, without having to create specific ToD files for that latitude.

Unfortunately, the night sky is still missing stars (SL has these, accurate skymap as seen in Run 8), TrainSim-Steve this needs to be looked into.

 

Yep, it's SilverLining. I chose the VNHRR Springfield Line because a) it's one of my favorite routes, and b) the folks at VNHRR tend to use SilverLining in their routes, like the aforesaid B&O Kingwood Branch. Here are some screenshots of my installation:

 

No.

VNH: clear skies (filename VHN Weather 14.bin) is NOT an SL blueprint - do you see <cSilverLiningWeatherBlueprint> in there? No, it's a 2D ToD <cWeatherPatternBP> type.

SL weather blueprints have a "3D" in their display name by convention.

Your screenshots are using VNH: clear skies instead of VNH 3D Clear Skies.

Just choose on of the core SL blueprints like "3D 1.Clear" to see the difference. (Or simply play it in QuickDrive, which uses SL by default if DynClouds are enabled.) You will see that the sunset will occur farther north, as is correct in summer (WNW).

Note that SilverLining is not automatically applied by turning on DynClouds - only if the scenario has an SL weather specified - but an SL scenario will fall back to a core 2D weather (1. Clear, 2. Cloudy, ...) of the specified weather type (clear, overcast, rain, etc...) if DynClouds are OFF.

 

Hi Spike,

By Jove, you're correct! I had (naively, as it turns out) assumed that because the Environment\Weather folder contained all those "VNH 3D XXX.bin files that all of them were SilverLining. Oops, not!

So I looked at all of the DTM DL-109's scenarios, and then the scenarios that are bundled with the route (though not all 20 of them) and not a one that I observed used the SilverLining weather ... all ToD! Why would the developers include the 3D weather patterns and then not use them? It's not like the end-user doesn't have the files, as Steam includes them when you download the game in the RailWorks\data folder. They are there just as much as the old default RW weather. Mystified ...

 

Creative freedom, you have more control over the appearance using ToD, within its restrictions of course. All sky colours can be hand picked, and the devs chose to deliver their own sky.

 

For me personally, though it is an improvement, the night time is still far too bright. This is 9pm in winter in the south of France, it should be near enough pitch black; it still looks like the end of sunset.

 

Remember the date is important for SL, not the season (only for texturing). What date is the scenario set to? And according to the shadows, it's a full moon night on your screen. Advance 14 days and it should be darker.

15.01.2010, 21:00, 3D 1.Clear


Looks good to me. Remember you can finetune the appearance using the ingame options menu and adjust ambient light and contrast.

 

Spikee, do you have the NJT GP40? Can you check the early morning (5:30) scenario?
It's one that used to be orange, now it's sort of okay but definitely bright by my standards.
There was a discussion - possibly with you - about fog having its own color, assuming a specific ambient light level. Maybe it's cyclic, even, which is why a lot of scenarios alternate between pitch black and near daylight.
Bellminsterboy's screenie looks like slightly foggy weather.
My record is flat white everything at midnight. Except for actual objects (trees, train), which are pitch black. Like literally, 000 and fff pixels. That's with 2D, the RS-11 scenario.

Editing too much, but one more thing. With foggy weather, it's important to understand where we are. In a city where I live, my evening walk path is pitch black with clear skies but certainly gray in fog, due to nearby industries and street lights in general. So Bell's photo is actually valid for a city.

It's a good hint, but I'd also prefer if the default settings would be just fine.
In my view these settings are best used if someone specifically wants some extreme appearance, or compensate for a screen.
I find that the game tends to be a bit dark, when exiting the gamma-brightness actually goes up (since Win10 my game gets stuck for a few seconds after pressing Quit, supposedly while saving some database). However it isn't overbright at noon. (Particularly 3D, PRR-NS-SP stock is just too dark as only the roof is bright.) I'd love better defaults and more adaptiveness - accepting the golden hour to be 25-50% light means it's too washed out.
(This is mainly aimed at DTG, yours is just a good preamble.)

 

I have the NJT, I'll check.

The ambient light slider is VERY useful for ToDs that have too bright ambient light values defined, good example is the Norfolk Souther N-Line, or the vintage Bristol-Exeter (which does have terrible TimeOfDays).

 

Thank you, I will try what you suggest. I personally find ambient light and contrast have no effect on the night sky though? I agree your screenshot looks good.

 

Which still, to me, begs a question: are there any routes in which the scenarios are, by default, using SL weather?

Until I subscribed to the beta channel I had never really given much thought to weather patterns. I had previously purchased the AP weather mod, which, of course, is 2D. Now I'd really like to play a route with nothing but SL 3D weather, but it's not, as far as I know, an advertising point in any Steam - or otherwise - descriptions.

 

[QUOTE=

No such thing as default 3d weather. Or 2d for that matter. It is a user option that the game is not supposed to override. Dynamic clouds on and you have Silverlining. Fynamic clouds off and you have TOD. Your choice.

 

DynamicClouds on will only activate SilverLining if the scenario is set to use it.

Many scenarios use it, I remember noticing it for the first time on Semmeringbahn years ago, suddenly being able to drive through a cloud in the mountains.

 

Yes, most of the routes around the time it was introduced:

• New York to New Haven
• Soldier Summit

SL doesn't create distant clouds, which makes it inadequate for rolling views or picturesque sunsets.
Specific patterns aside, the cloud cover is usually fairly even, and there is a rather small transition between wispy clouds and full overcast.
Regardless, it means that as you see far, the normal real life experience of a moderately cloudy sky is that you are sunbathing with a small chance of having your little personal cloud; all the while in the distance, closer to the horizon you see several little clouds.


Of course the opposite can happen:

In any event, what SL creates:

It is perfectly fine for games like Skyrim where - just like in TSC - distant scenery is questionable or expensive, so terrain (and fog) is designed so that you don't see far. For a route like Sherman Hill, nyah. That's why I think it's not that much advertised.

Unironically, combining 2D and 3D skies might actually bring the best results.

 

Yes, clouds are generated in a certain radius around the player.

As they are real volumetric objects, they probably take more computing power than displaying a ToD bitmap only.

Question is, can this radius be adjusted in the Silverlining.config?

Though I have to say, SCS did a great job with their own sky system on ETS2, those bitmaps are awesome and the daylight time is dynamic and gets longer the more you go north...

 

Probably, question is, would it be sufficient without getting overly expensive. Google says,

 

Not talking about the height but the radius where rendering ends towards the horizon.
Your cloud layers, heights and types can be defined in an SL weather blueprint.

It's probably that people only know this default Cloudy SL weather, which is in the core files and therefore can be used by any scenario without asset dependencies.

It seems you can have clouds show up in certain locations only (lat/lon), and IsInfinite will always be drawn around the player. But the radius should be found in the SilverLining.cfg, as it affects performance.

 

Considering a fair 45° viewing angle (still not great), you would need the same rendering radius. 5-15 km.
Currently everything else is like 1. So maybe high clouds could be simulated as simply being small. So maybe 2-3 km does it.
Sherman can be the nasty example for it's flat, settings are perfect if the clouds meet the terrain (grass) on the horizon while they aren't particularly low.

This is why I added the 2D + 3D note to my first post. Also I'm not sure it's really meant to do this well, and maybe it would look awkward anyway. 2D skies do look nice with the sun shining through. It's equally fine when driving a route with lots of trees - or, of course, mountains.

 

Is that your native resolution? I had to go into the NVIDIA control panel and enable the custom resolution as it had been deactivated for some reason. But TSC just quit, didnt stay like yours.

 

I can report that RW Enhancer Pro works with the Beta, without any problems I've found so far.

However, the new 3D snow looks far too white and bright when falling in gloomy conditions. I think the flakes are a bit large as well.

 

triznya.andras and Spikee1975, thank you both for the very informative responses to my questions regarding SilverLining (in the DarkCloud ;-). The depth of both of your knowledge and experience with RW is greater than mine, and this is how one learns. Bravo!

 

Spikee is the true Meister and doer, I'm just observing
Just to spite me, during my short walk home I saw plenty of small clouds above me but none on the horizon in any direction.
Matrix / Westworld confirmed.

 

Agreed, needs alpha channel adjusting. I've also suggested that.

 

Thanks for the flowers.

Looking at the SL weather blueprints, they show interesting parameters. You can let clouds grow if you want to. May experiment and create my own SL blueprints to really explore the potential. (Which 3D 2.Cloudy does not)

 

Triznya.andras, with your suggestion, I went into my archives and loaded up NEC: New York to New Haven and - sho 'nuff - the weather patterns were all 3D. Interestingly, out of 6 of the career scenarios, fully 4 of them were cloudy. Only 2 were clear. And I saw immediately what you and Spike have been talking about: SL takes the prize with clouds, but the 2D weather looks better with clear skies.

Below is a screenshot of the very first route, the GWML, that I modified with AP track and AP weather (the first edition of the latter). I love the play of the light on the ballast and the aura around the sun, but the clouds are 2nd rate. I have ETS 2nd ed., but have never loaded it up. I'll have to do so to investigate their 2D weather. Thank you all for bringing this to my attention.

 

Die DX12 Version in der Beta 75.4b funktioniert wunderbar auch die DX9 64 bit, habe auch Routen von dritt Anbieter gespielt keine Probleme

 

The DX12 version in beta 75.4b works wonderfully as does the DX9 64 bit, I also played routes from third-party providers with no problems

 

did u have tested the beta with VR locos ?

greets

 

We are on to 75.6a now.

 

yes, that is the native resulation. The game generally has problems in widescreen and window mode.

 

I'm excited to report a new (to me) error - loading a QD - got loads of these with no apparent ill-effects:

2023/10/07 17:48:23.431 - [Core] - Trace D:\RGBuild\CoreRelease\Code\Libs\Foundation\Library\Delta\cDeltaSerializer.cpp : 1488 = Delta Serializer MakeID pointer address exceeded 32GB

Anyone know what they portend?

 

Una consulta por favor si son tan amables, he descargado la nueva beta pero no funciona el sonido en el simulador,(solo en el simulador) he vuelto a quitar la beta según las instrucciones, pero persiste el fallo, m¿ me podeis ayudar? . gracias.

 

A few people are having the same problem - try this thread: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/train-sim-classic-has-lost-all-sound.75135/