I have not bought any DLC's this year due to the fact that I hate the washed out look of TSW5. I have more or less given up playing. I own nearly every DLC prior to 2025 so I have invested quite a bit of money in TSW over the years. Although I know there are mods that attempt to fix this issue, but I just want to play the game out of the box. Do you think DTG will ever fix this issue? Surely it cannot be that difficult to add sliders for hue, brightness and contrast in the settings. Failing this I will have to see what TSW6 brings.
There still seems to be a weird washed out/bright effect in cab imo, but when walking around outside of the train it feels much better/realistic. Not sure why. All without mods though. Maybe it's my setup.
The overexposure is still the most off putting thing in TSW for me and the reason I mainly resort to TSC with AP Skybox. I can´t believe DTG have not done anything about this for so many years.
To an extent yes though it depends on the route, plus the adaptive eye feature with long bridges or tunnels is particularly irksome. Desperately needs an option to turn it off or moderate the effects.
Yes, the over-exposer problem is still a common problem for TSW. I always find myself picking light clouds or setting the meter to at least 50% clouds, playing on clear skies (sunny) is horrible. The picture loses so much detail, you can barely see any blacks, shadows on screen. I have tv settings that I use that sort of help with this, but not fully. I use a blackness setting on tv that adjust the picture in real time which drops the exposer levels a little and adds more black to the picture and game assets, but on clear sunny skies there’s no helping that situation. TSW2 for me had the most natural lighting in any of the TSW games so far.
Here is your solution: https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/m...sw-5-lighting-visual-quality-enhancement-v230
Thanks for the feedback, Yes I am aware of what you suggested, like I said in my opening post .... "Although I know there are mods that attempt to fix this issue". Though in my opinion I expect DTG to fix this issue as they broke it in the first place (it was better in previous versions of TSW). The 2025 route DLCs are not cheap and as such I expect them to be visually great, not something that needs fixing by loading mods and messing with INI files. Just expressing my honest opinion here, but maybe I expect to much!
It baffles me to no end, such a basic feature missing. They can add all these fancy light, filter settings to photo mode, but the main game gets left in the dark. Hmm, that’s not entirely accurate more like left in brightness of the safari desert to bake and blind you.
If you don't want to use a mod, then go into your graphics card's software and make a brightness/contrast/gamma profile, presumably a darker one, that applies specifically to TSW 5. Takes less than 5 minutes
Its ridiculous that DTG STILL has not given players ANY gamma or brightness settings in game. The fact that they think it is going to look correct out of the box on every single device, console, graphics card, TV and monitor out there with wildly different presets and settings is wild. I can't think of any other game in my entire library that doesn't have brightness and gamma sliders. In fact most games force you to adjust them as literally the first thing you do when you open the game (adjust the slider until the logo is barely visible, etc) because every dev out there should know that their intended result might not be the default on every different display. The only way to adjust brightness and gamma at all when playing TSW is to actually physically change the settings of your monitor or TV. Or, be on PC and find some mod that allows you to access what should be a basic feature of any game in 2025. Asinine.
Question is, in the case of DTG is it either developer arrogance that they know best or do they not understand how to code such basic features into the game front end?
Not sure it's "developer ignorance" rather than a focus on make and sell more DLC's rather than fix fundamental issues with the base game. As route DLC's are circa £30 I made the hard personal decision to stop buying them until this issue is resolved. Though it may never get fixed and this would therefore be very sad for me. Come on DTG please .... Fix the lighting. Introduce more options in the graphic settings. Add HDR Include DLSS and FSR to boost FPS. Add/update any other modern UE and GPU technologies which could help improve the overall player experience.
Indeed. And as I’ve mentioned elsewhere the simple functionality of chaining together services which seems to fall down even without a save/load in the middle. It’s probably a forlorn hope but it would be nice if some of the work being done for TSW6/the big annual update actually included some of these much needed QOL improvements rather than fluff like photo mode or passengers opening umbrellas when it rains.
I wonder what " fluffy " new features will come with TSW6 instead of real, substantial improvements to the core? Perhaps ( my gosh ) people standing in the rain without an umbrella. Or an extension to all routes of " teleporting " between platforms. Why not teleport between stations and forget about trains altogether? How about giving all players a free set of night vision goggles so we can at least see where we're going in the nuclear winter that seems to affect most all routes after nightfall.
And who can forget TSW4 where the solution to the save game core issues was simply to nuke the feature out totally, until forced to concede under the weight of customer outrage. At the end of the day, keep our expectations low and they might surprise us. But there’s no indication the corporate mindset or approach to TSW at DTG has changed one iota over that we know and love.
I have no problem with keeping my expectations low, DTG must know the lightings poor but seem reluctant or incapable of fixing it. Maybe they should get a "lighting expert" in to sort it out once and for all. It's a shame really as TSW is a fantastic piece of train simulation software with no real competitors. Though maybe that's the real issue!
The problem I have found is you can mess with contrast, gamma, light intensity etc... while you can get the area you are in looking natural, get on a train or move to another area and it's either to dark or too bright. Look up to the sky or down to the ground and it messes everything up. Maybe this is to do with light baking? Idk. If dtg were to introduce contrast and brightness settings, would the lighting need to be baked separately for each level of brightness etc?
The funny thing is, there is a mod by Bescot that eliminates the washed out effect in TSW5. The effect is really nice as the lighting seems more natural. While I am trying to play the vanilla game, these mods are definitely tempting to try as they greatly improve TSW and adds to the immersion
Seems to be a problem with lots of Unreal Engine games, especially if the devs use the default lighting system. Fernbus, Subway Sim, TheBus, and Tramsim have the same overexposure issues.
Perhaps DTG need bite the bullet and make a shift to UE5 and utilise Lumen lighting which is dynamic by default. Plus also get the potential benefit of Nanite which allows highly detailed meshes that do not seem to impact performance as much. I am no expert but to keep the grey cells ticking over, I have used UE in various versions over the years to make open world games for my grandkids to play. I found the result of updating my games to UE5 though not perfect turned out to be very worthwhile.
Yes. A lot of routes feel very overexposed and way too bright in places. Lighting is still poor in a lot of places too, like cabs going dark 2-3 seconds after entering a dark tunnel, when it should be more or less instant given the speed.
