Dtg - Please Fix Night Time Lighting In Tsw/2

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by londonmidland, Sep 2, 2020.

  1. londonmidland

    londonmidland Well-Known Member

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    So as most of you are probably aware, night lighting in TSW/TSW 2 is pretty flawed in the way it looks and always has been. Most noticeably due to the way things glow at night, despite having no light source. The biggest offender is trains. The below image will show this well...

    night tsw 2.jpg

    I did however managed to 'glitch' the lighting so it look like 'proper' darkness, with no light sources where they shouldn't be. Notice how much more natural things look as well as the elimination of that dreaded train glow. The end result looks and feels much better. Shown in the picture below:

    tsw 2 night.jpg

    So DTG, I have a question for you. Why is your default night lighting so bad and way too bright at night, and why can't we have scenes like this, in the picture above, by default?

    I get not everyone likes it 'properly' dark, but could you not at least provide the user with toggles or options for gamma and brightness?
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2020
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  2. skyMutt

    skyMutt Well-Known Member

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    An option to adjust gamma and brightness sliders would certainly go a long way! Its one of those quality-of-life features you see present in many other games, yet its absent here. Personally I think that second screenshot looks miles better than the night lighting we get in TSW2. I really hope they tackle this at some point!
     
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  3. 931105799

    931105799 New Member

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    Totally agree that the lighting looks quite bad at night. I even not want to drive night service. This has been a problem not only for TSW series but also TS series. Wondering why the development team didn't fix this.
     
  4. hightower

    hightower Guest

    That is TSW2, with LM’s workaround. We shouldn’t have to be finding work arounds and tweaks to files to fix what should work in the first place though.
     
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  5. hyperlord

    hyperlord Well-Known Member

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    I noticed yesterday that it's darker from inside the cab (1) than with external cameras (2 or 3).
    But I could be wrong, it was late while gaming, too ;-)
     
  6. londonmidland

    londonmidland Well-Known Member

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    Here is another great example of how night lighting can look. Notice how dark the track is, as well as the surrounding scenery. No light casting on the top of the train too!

    london road depot.jpg
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2020
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  7. hightower

    hightower Guest

    It’s how it should look! So what I’ve always assumed was an issue with the lighting is actually to do with the implementation of the time/season/weather combo?

    I assume you can’t make anything other than services where you set the weather look like this? Anything set in journey mode you’re stuck with?
     
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  8. mariussoare_84

    mariussoare_84 Well-Known Member

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    Clouds seem completely flat and overexposed, one of the worst sky box in games launched in 2020 that want to be a decent simulator.

    So far I couldn't successfully drive with PZB ON on night hours (Koln - Aachen). I can react to magnets placed at signals but I can't see anything in front of the train even with high beam on in order to react to the rest of the magnets placed along the track.

    If anyone has a suggestion please share, it's boring without PZB.
    Best.
     
  9. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    How do real life drivers do it?
     
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  10. JonnE

    JonnE Well-Known Member

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    Everytime I see some of your work (you did some lightning improvements for TSW2020 as well, right?) I get to some of the very rare occasions where I miss my PC days and wished that would be possible on xbox as well... ;) looks very great!

    Maybe one reason for why it's not implemented in TSW2's vanilla version can be seen in your picture though. The night textures of most buildings are a bit... improvable. I only see some very dim lights in one building, the entire rest being nearly pure black.
    And I think it's not that easy to implement this correctly - the lights would have to actual shine a little like they do in real life. This is ok for street lights or everything near the tracks but with hundreds of buildings in sight this might be a huge amount of work.
    And to add this up many video games turn out to be far too bright during night time. And those who don't are often 'too realistic' - I hated Kingdom Come Deliverance not only for it's strange combat system but also for the realistic nights where you could see literally nothing but a black screen...
    ... although I would clearly prefer your lightning style for TSW2 :cool:
     
  11. londonmidland

    londonmidland Well-Known Member

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    I think I've figured it out... Autumn Mist with the clock set anything before 07:30 is the only weather option to give appropriate darkness at night?

    Why? In the other seasons, the moon is apparently bigger and more stronger, and shines through the clouds. Hence that infamous glow you get on the side of the train at night.

    So DTG have two options - either make the moonlight less intense or make the clouds shield the light from it more appropriately.
     
  12. dark-rabbit

    dark-rabbit New Member

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    applications like GammaControl allow you to assign key combinations to control the gamma from any game in addition to the luninosity and contrast settings
     
  13. londonmidland

    londonmidland Well-Known Member

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    So it turns out the lighting system in TSW is completely flawed. Here is a comparison below, with the exact same weather conditions and the time of day stated...

    23:00

    h 1.jpg

    07:00
    h 2.jpg
     
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  14. Shaun123

    Shaun123 Well-Known Member

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  15. Anthony Pecoraro

    Anthony Pecoraro Well-Known Member

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    He already did.
     
  16. londonmidland

    londonmidland Well-Known Member

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    I’m going to make a new thread on this in a bit. For people that want to know how to get ‘proper’ darkness in TSW.
     
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  17. mariussoare_84

    mariussoare_84 Well-Known Member

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    I would love to share that with you, it's what forums are about, right? Sharing.
    Until I enrol, take the exams, pass them and become a real driver I can't tell you but to ask a real driver.

    In the meantime, I am a player, I purchased a computer game. Coincidentally one that severely lacks manuals and tutorials for many, many things. That is why I'm asking here where there are plenty experienced players that can can share their experience and provide useful information.
     
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  18. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    Maybe including how real drivers do it...
     
  19. deppalas

    deppalas Member

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    The screen you've got on the right side of your cab is the 'EBuLa' in reality, which is basically a list of all speed limits, stops and construction sites with their location (the km-post). At night, you then only have to check those km-posts to know where you're at, where to brake, where to stop, etc. Unfortunately, DTG missed to place a few posts in the game, so you don't always have the opportunity to use them.
    (They are missing when leaving Koeln Hbf and after Stolberg heading to Koeln, more I can't remember at the moment)

    Alternatively, track knowledge helps you a lot with PZB. I'm always driving with all safety on, most likely at night. Took me a few drives to remember everything, but it's absolutely doable :)


    On Topic:
    I'd have to mention a couple bridges that block all light sources, making the overall experience pretty weird. You're driving at daytime out of Koeln Hbf and your train disappears in a black shadow - while driving over a bridge in bright daylight.
    I think that DTG has quite some problems with how the Unreal Engine handles light, but come on. It's been 3 years now and no real improvement on that topic. Kind of a shame, tbh..
     
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2020
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  20. Anthony Pecoraro

    Anthony Pecoraro Well-Known Member

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    That's baked lighting, to make a dark shadow under the bridge. Same as in the tunnels.
     
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  21. hightower

    hightower Guest

    Im pretty sure the point he’s making is that there is nothing there generating the shadow, hence it’s broken/a bug, whatever you want to call it. It’s the same on GWE.
     
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  22. LastTrainToClarksville

    LastTrainToClarksville Well-Known Member

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    Where, Anthony?
     
  23. Anthony Pecoraro

    Anthony Pecoraro Well-Known Member

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    Oh, oops.
     
  24. hightower

    hightower Guest

    It’s in a different thread :)
     
  25. mariussoare_84

    mariussoare_84 Well-Known Member

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    II appreciate your time to write all that. It sounds just as I imagined train drivers do it, they remember locations and react in accordance.
    II though there is an alternative to this method for a casual player like myself. :)
    Best
     
  26. ASRGT

    ASRGT Well-Known Member

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    Honestly TSW and TSW2 lighting has always been a point of contention day or night, nothing has really changed.
    There is a heavy use of baked lighting that would be fine in static areas like tunnels or underground stations but there use of it on above ground stations is an eye sore with stations lit at different levels than the time of day. None of the light sources are shadow casting on platforms ect its lazy for the sake of performance. .

    TSW2 is a solid improvement in many areas but the core visual presentation for the sim is still let down by lighting pass and for that matter the dismal skybox.
     
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  27. Scorpion71

    Scorpion71 Well-Known Member

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    I've given up on the TSW/TSW2 lighting in respect of both time and weather.

    All I use now is a bone dry, no cloud, mid morning-mid afternoon day, generally a Summer's day at that.

    A major major fix is required, hope we don't have to wait for TSW3 to see it either!
     
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  28. londonmidland

    londonmidland Well-Known Member

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    I fear that we may have to wait until the next revision of TSW (TSW 3?) for a lighting upgrade.

    Which begs the question, do we now have to wait until a new version of TSW is released for core updates which in terms diminishes free core updates, as we previously got in the past?

    I personally find the core updates to be rolling out far too slow. One core updates per year, which we may have to pay for (again) just isn’t good enough.
     
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  29. hightower

    hightower Guest

    Totally agree. Core updates need to be front and centre of that roadmap and as it stands they’re not even mentioned. They’re throwing all their resources into making ‘preserved content’ compatible with TSW2. The right thing to do, obviously, but the priorities are all wrong.

    Core updates first, then the preserved collection. Not the other way around.
     
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  30. kirbyfisher69

    kirbyfisher69 Member

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    Hello all,
    When I started TSW2020, I found an article on the Steam discussions about increasing the graphic details beyond the ultra settings of the game. That article specified settings to be put in the Engine.ini file. It did increase the overall detail and depth of field. It was beautiful to behold. When I started Sand Patch grade, on TSW2020, it was always so dark looking, even at 12pm, noon.
    Then TSW2 came out. One of the first things I did was add those settings to the new Engine.ini file. I started playing Sand Patch and while the lighting was better than TSW2020, it still seemed dark for midday. Then I tried something. I removed those settings I applied and restarted the game. While the super cool detailed graphics were back to game norms, the lighting was NORMAL. No longer had that darkness even during the day time.
    I bring this up in case some of you are running with those modified engine settings.
    Hope this helps some folks out there.
     
  31. Llewelyn

    Llewelyn New Member

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    A year later it's still rubbish. Proper lighting can be done, SCS software just compeltely rebuilt the lighting system for ATS/ETS2 and it's brilliant. But then they built their own game engine because none of the off-the-shelf game engines worked well enough for a driving sim, unlike DTG who continue to revamp the same game year after year with tiny changes, and, mostly, the requirement to re-purchase it. I count myself lucky that a friend spotted a freeby give-away on Epic launcher. I wasn't about to but TSW again after the debacle of the original release. TSW2 is, to be fair, better - but then it had a LOT of scope to be better and it's not much better even so.
     
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  32. tbaac

    tbaac Well-Known Member

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    Have you seen the previews of the new Dresden route? The night lighting has changed a lot although the changes won't magically appear in the other routes.

    I'm not sure about your comments about Epic either. If you had any DLC for TSW then moving to Epic will have lost that. TSW2 was basically a compulsory (if you wanted to use it) route bundle. It was quite well priced and DTG eventually came round to the idea of supporting almost all of the previous DLC that we owned on the newer version of the simulator. It wasn't a bad deal I thought.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2021
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  33. dhekelian

    dhekelian Well-Known Member

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    [​IMG]

    I'd like to see bright stations as well.
     
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  34. MrDerek

    MrDerek New Member

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  35. filipozaur

    filipozaur New Member

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    It's completely dark outside at night with lights on. Moreover there are bugs like: after saving game at train station you cannot move on the train. It's needed to switch battery off etc. When you start trip on this fast german train you cannot open all doors. You need to open them manually. Then next station they can be opened.
     
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  36. chieflongshin

    chieflongshin Well-Known Member

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    I noticed on boston today that the cab car goes pretty much pitch black in tunnel yet fast forward to the 313 and we’re back to light cabs in the Brighton tunnels. I just don’t get it and almost expect that they’ll be a train with no wheels soon
     
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  37. 5cip

    5cip Active Member

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    i agree that at night its too dark and we need much stronger light effects like the dresden route is a good example how it could be on all routes.
     
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  38. dhekelian

    dhekelian Well-Known Member

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    If only the stations were better lit up. Any Town station even in the countryside was well lit up.
     
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  39. londonmidland

    londonmidland Well-Known Member

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    What we need is some sort of dynamic lighting. Right now, by default, everything is so flat looking/the same level of lighting in both the countryside and in towns and cities. This means that either one or the other will always been too bright or too dark looking.

    Ideally, the countryside should naturally be darker than built up area, with the latter naturally being brighter. It would also be nice to see light pollution from cities from a distance - say if you’re in the countryside approaching a built up area, which is a few miles away.
     
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  40. dhekelian

    dhekelian Well-Known Member

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    Village stations locally to me are better lit than city stations in TSW2 it doesn't seem right.
     
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  41. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    My views on night lighting have been expressed on a number of occasions. It really need a complete rework or at least give us some gamma control. And station lighting need to be dynamic according to the time of year, some of the German Hbf's are in total darkness at 0700 in the morning if you do an autumn or winter run. Better in fact to leave the lights on 24/7...
     
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  42. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    The stupid thing is, they have a dynamic sun and moon system so those bodies are in the correct sky location dependent on time and route geography, but they didn't go a step further and do a sunrise / sunset function which would trigger station lights, which would be based on the same calculations...
    If the sun hasn't risen yet, or is within 5 degrees of the horizon, put / keep the lights on!
     
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  43. tallboy7648

    tallboy7648 Well-Known Member

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    If a feature like that is in the Unreal engine, do you think it could be a easy or quick thing to add?
     
  44. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    Not sure about UE but it woudl depend on whether DTG have written lights with a dynamic state function, ie that they can turn on and off part way through a scenario or timetable.
    IRL lights tend to work one of three ways
    1. on a timer
    2. they have light sensors on them to detect ambient light levels and these turn on when it gets dark and off again when it gets light
    3. A simple switch
    In game it would make sense to have lights which are out in the open tied to the time of dawn so they turn off when the sun's up and on again when the sun's going down
    As it stands on a dark winter's night the lights are still off even though there's no sunlight from about half 4
     
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  45. Anthony Pecoraro

    Anthony Pecoraro Well-Known Member

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    They turn on/off at the same time regardless of season.
     
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  46. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    Good, then this is something they could do programatically rather than on a timer
     
  47. meridian#2659

    meridian#2659 Well-Known Member

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    For me the better night lightening would be nice to have, but right now its not immersion braking at all.

    I love the weak orange platform lights at tees valley line and northern trans pennine.
    I noticed after the last passenger train there were no people waiting anymore, which is nice.

    Just pure nostalgic to make the shift change of the lackenby steel train around 23:50 at a snowy eaglescliffe station platform and no soul is around.

    At routes with the rush hour passenger update even small train stations have people waiting in the night. even if there is no service for 5 hours.., well thats subjective if thats better or not.

    Additional layers like cl31 on ntp or stations, which are too empty would be more priority than lighening for me. But i guess thats up to the preservation crew.
     
  48. davidh0501

    davidh0501 Well-Known Member

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    Agreed.
    There are more important priorities.
    Besides who’s going to be paying for this additional work?
     
  49. dhekelian

    dhekelian Well-Known Member

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    Strange thing to say no? Driving a train should be round the clock and not just daylight hours. We are paying for a full timetable not half of one. It is DTG's responsibility to correct the light situation or should I say lack of light situation. It is another bug to the list.

    What takes priority DTG decides but there is and has been many players unhappy with this. If you are struggling to understand this then the next time you are out at night look at a train station and if it is a town station or above (even some villages) look how lit up they are or even watch some real life youtube videos.

    Just because it may not be a priority to you do not assume it isn't a priority for someone else.
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2021
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  50. solicitr

    solicitr Well-Known Member

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    While I appreciate that some think the game is too light at night, and I agree about mysteriously illuminated trains and other objects with no light source, on the other hand there are routes (Clinchfield, NTP, in some ways Cathcart) which are already unplayable between sunset and sunrise because of the absolute inky blackness. Yes, in part that's because the headlights are no good- although on NTP that's realistic - but IRL at night without a complete overcast moonlight and even starlight provide some illumination, and anywhere near a developed area the ambient light pollution provides some illumination.
     
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