An uphill of the track is displayed as a down hill in the UI. This is confirmed by the fact that the train gains speed when going up hill and loses speed when going down hill if you compare to what the UI shows. It's most visible in areas when traversing tracks by going over them as the gradient reaches up to 1.4 %.
Check to see how frequently this occurs. The UI is tied to whichever end of the locomotive it considers the "front" and always alligns off that, which is a real pain with double ended locos. The Class 20 is easiest to observe it on, as the game considers the "front" the long hood, so the UI is always backwards. I believe the rest of the British double cab locos have a "front" cab as well, which confirms the issue.
Sorry to say this, but the gradient display is wrong not only on TVL, but on all routes, because in TSW 2 it's always displayed in relation to the loco front (or no.1 end) and not in relation to the direction of travel. The method used in TSW 2020 was correct, and I can't think of any well thought-out reason why it had to be changed at all.
Isnt it most pronounced on the 20's where it is driven "backwards" for visibility so the train thinks its going the other way?
One really has to wonder. Actually I like the new visualization, but not at the cost of confusing user data... Makes you ask how this ever came to be designed and implemented... Probably was not an issue for the base routes and only showed up predominantly in the diverse preserved routes.
The numbers are always correct for the direction of travel with a minus sign for downhill but the icon doesn’t switch with the direction of travel. Someone was having a bad day when they approved this design. In TVL nearly all trains think they are reversing, leading to the wrong gradient icon on nearly every service. It was a problem even before they reversed the class 37 to match the nose to nose nature of the Class 20 in double headers.
If you're really lucky the game throws up nose to nose 08's shunting in Tees yard, which is always strange to see, if they wanted class 13's, could have gone slightly better than that........
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Now that you've mentioned it, I remember that all the services I drove so far displayed the locomotive reversed on the map so it looks the information on the UI is connected to the "virtual" front of a two cabin locomotive. Off topic: Sometimes I have more hopes in Santa Claus existing than in a healthy, correct and timely development from this company.