Nights too dark? Just playing the "Heavy Traffic" scenario on WCML. Pitch black night (which is sort of alright for the area around Tring, but for gameplay, why not have a bit of light smog?) Unreal has a variable to control the light pollution, which should be visible on an overcast sky like in this scenario, as ground light sources will brighten the cloud cover. GodMode easily lets you adjust the night lighting using TimeOfDaySystem.SkyLightPollutionLuminance [default 1.6] Set this value to 6 or higher, as you wish, for city night sky feeling and much better visibility. This change applies on the fly and doesn't need a ToD reinitialization.
it looks like one of those settings you can add to your Engine.ini, so it seems you can directly apply it so the change shows everywhere
Yes, until you quit TSW. (It's not saved permanently.) I wouldn't do that. It probably looks off in daylight. I'm adjusting it on the fly, based on the situation. One click and the menu's there, you can enter a value or use the slider to adjust until it looks good for you. (You won't need it on a clear full moon sky anyway - but when using overcast skies it's helpful to simulate urban light pollution.)
Glad you said that. Be careful with that setting as it can cause some really funky effects, making clouds look really odd at night.
I remember earlier I used r.color.mid - that's bad, because it also shifts colours (moon turned green at some point, it's called r.color not r.brightness for a reason) You can't break anything, just play around with that value - all the stuff in there will be restored when restarting the game.
It does not actually look like it has any effect whatsoever during daylight. But it does make night driving look way more feasible. Good catch!
I can't try this out myself but if this is the fix to add light pollution DTG Matt should just make this setting permanent in the game for all platforms
I don't think you would have to go this far because as of right now, TSW has it's minimum exposure value set to 6.0, which is pretty dark. If we set it to 5.0 or even 4.0 (2x or 4x as bright) and properly darken all of the cab lights and headlights before a night run, things will look a lot more usable.
It isn’t. This provides no direct light, it simply brightens the sky itself. The ambient / light pollution is more complex but not insurmountable.
As said, I wouldn't make this a permanent setting. The TOD4 lighting is very good at night imho (TOD3 was ridiculous). The raised value is meant to simulate urban light smog (not provided by placed light sources) in cloudy conditions - it would be too much in the wilderness where it just IS pitch black at night (unless you have clear full moon sky). That scenario I was playing and made the screenshots had the sky clear up after a while and the moon lit up the scenery - that was when I lowered the value to the well balanced 1.6 again. I was merely trying to show you where to adjust that lighting in case you need it - it's not meant to be a permanent setting.
Bookmarked this thread and will give it a try next time I do a night run, or play Clinchfield in the dark! Long term solution what’s needed is something like the sound “dome” from TSC, but set up to provide the effect of ambient/reflected light over built up areas. The effect gradually diminishing the closer you get to then away from the edge until it fades into rural darkness levels. Surely a game engine as powerful as UE offers something along those lines?
UE4 needs more than that to make it work. I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s involved, and it’s not something that can be done in public editor sadly. They could go a long way to improving things if there was a smidge of volumetric fog added to all dawn/dusk and night by default. Although not everything here is applicable for gaming this video gives a good idea of what is involved setting up night time in UE4;
After quickly looking through the video, fill lights are only suitable for small scenes (think FPS maps) or enclosed areas like baked tunnel stations that also don't have dynamic day-night cycle (same with reflection captures). High-res volumetric fog is nice but very situational in a sense that it only really makes a difference when the light passes through some kind of object (like leaves) and the overall visual feel can be easily achieved without it. How about looking through some other games with day-night cycle and picking what we like? Let's stop arguing about what is realistic and take it from the artistic standpoint. I really like The Witcher 3 and what they did with the night lighting. You can see that the ambient light is fairly bright compared to what you would consider to be realistic, which helps with usability. Then the devs gave it some blue-ish tint to emphasise that it's nighttime.
The provider Kuju has an Asset called "difuse light 100 metres" or something like that... I always place it around urban areas in the editor and it lights up everything at night. I wish DTG would get a real pro to touch up the general UE4 settings in the whole game.
And I wish they got a lighting artist who could really make the day-night cycle stunning. Give proper emphasis to each part of the day, blend utility with good look and in general make things look cool as opposed to just trying to copy reality. It seems like Dovetail has quite a few artists that are really good at copying and replicating real-world things but after all, TSW is a game and it need a good degree of art direction, even if it's going for a realistic look.
I also figured that little bit of fog helps massively with visibility. Difference between 0 fog and 0.01 fog (both with sky pollution 3): It feels also a bit cozier, at least now when the autumn is coming.
