On some routes the game is super dark, this is particularly an issue on German routes where speed boards and kilometer posts are impossible to see until a few meters away! Can someone explain or is this a bug?
Its not technically a bug since it isn't unexpected behavior from the software. Its just one of those things that need to be improved upon, and the community has been bringing this topic up for a long while. It does get too dark under certain circumstances, and inexplicably it can be fine in others. Here are a few examples: As of right now, there are no plans to do anything about the lighting as a whole, at least according to the roadmap. Lighting can indeed have minor adjustments that are specific to each route, so maybe we might see small improvements there? Otherwise there isn't much else to it, unless they plan to make another engine upgrade for TSW
Thats not too far off actually. Personally, I'm thinking we might get the same thing that happened with TSW2020, which was a big free update that came with a bunch of changes. Now that steam trains are in development, that could possibly mean that there's a new engine upgrade to UE 4.26 too. It definitely offers the possibility to tweak and make changes to the lighting (especially when one of the highlights for UE 4.26 was changes to the sky and clouds). I'm hoping this means that they can nail nighttime lighting this time, and make it where it isn't soo dark. This is all entirely speculation though, its really up to anyone's best guess
I find some routes dark, but others like tees Valley and peninsula corridor far two bright. I have brightness way down on TV for those routes, only thing is makes cab to dark then.
Sometimes when I do the bakerloo line at night in winter, it's so dark and at times the station lights don't even turn on which makes no sense
Hmm, interesting. For me, the station lights always turn on (Bakerloo). But just the other day, I came into one of the stations on HMA at around 8 PM and noticed that the lights were on, but weren't emitting light.
The lighting at night needs vastly improved by DTG, it should be one of their main priorities. Everyone likes new routes, trains and DLC, but improvements like this should come first. The fact that's its not even on the road map baffles me.
Lighting will forever hold TSW 2 back visually and I don't think DTG will doing anything about it until their next game release because how much work that will take.
You would think though if this has a updated engine and new features, they would've improved lighting by now. It should be a core improvement on the roadmap
Just to point out how unrealistic the lighting is. Brighton at night in-game. Brighton at night in real life. The game looks like the city has a power outage.
That is one major difference. The game does make it look like there was a power outage. Lighting you would think would be high up on their list of improvements because it needs to be improved
The lighting is odd and differs with every route and with different weather settings. Sometimes I find myself admiring how realistic everything looks like on a run I did a while back on SKA in the snow, when it just looked so real I could feel the dark snowy night. Other times, I have to check that I selected the right service, like a run I did on SPG yesterday, because I was expecting a dark night and it’s so light it might as well have been the middle of the day. The ambient light inside trains is off as well a lot of the time. The cab of the Dash 8 in SPG is far too brightly lit when the cab lights are off. It appears as if the cab lights are on when they are off. It’s interacting with the outside ambient light, as it does go completely dark when in the tunnels but then, despite it being night and the outside ambient light being a fair bit too light, the inside of the cab goes brighter than outside again when exiting the tunnel. This isn’t an isolated case but it is one of the worst ones I’ve seen for a while. How in-game light sources (rather than the general ambient light) add light to a scene is completely wrong. I think it’s mostly down to performance, as the game engine is probably capable of having much better light projection than is in TSW2, but it isn’t utilised as it would take up too much processing power. Different kinds of lights are visible from different distances and cast different amounts of light, and the two properties don’t match. Signals can be seen from afar but cast no light on to surrounding objects, while high beam train headlights cast plenty of light but are only visible as light sources when fairly close. Those odd occlusion artefacts where all ambient light completely disappears are an issue too. SKA is riddled with them and there’s one near Reading in GWE. I don’t understand how that happens. Overall it varies between too light, just right, and too dark. What will you get on your next run?
For next gen consoles and PC maybe, but because next gen wont fully be available to many for another year or so, that's probably not gonna happen. The lighting we're looking for would send an original PS4/Xbox One into meltdown.
GTA 5, Los Santos, it can be done easily on PS4. It's not ultra realistic lighting but it's more than passable for a city at night.
GTA 5 isnt in the Unreal Engine, it's in Rockstar's RAGE engine. Secondly, Rockstar not only has the time but money to properly develop the night lighting. The scale of work for DTG to fix the lighting would be too much of a task with their new route developments and fixes to preserved collection.
Unreal Engine can do it as well and the PS4 handles it absolutely fine, Final Fantasy VII is in unreal engine 4. It doesn't need to be of Rockstar's standard though, it just needs to be passable.
I get what you're saying-I know it's possible in Unreal engine, but comparing the development of TSW 2 vs. a AAA game is not comparable in any way. As much as I hate to say this, it's more likely that we would get a TSW 3 game with a much better lighting system before DTG would overhaul the entire lighting system in TSW 2. I'm sure Matt is aware of this and wants to change it but I think its achievablity would be possible if the roadmap wasn't full of fixes, improvements, add-ons etc.
If you're lucky you can get yourself your very own glow in the dark world on selected routes. Because who needs it to be dark at night, right?
The comparison to AAA games was because you said the standard PS4 couldn't handle a good standard of city lighting so I went for fairly detailed and impressive examples to show it can easily handle it. I just think that it should be fairly high up on the list or at least they could implement better lighting in upcoming DLC to show it can be done and they are working on it instead of complete radio silence over an issue many players deem important for the game.
And I agree with you, it is possible and it absolutely should be higher on the list. But not when its disadvantageous for DTG to do and because TSW pushes UE4 to the very limit. If TSW has memory problems just with signal lights imagine the problems they could have with station lighting and time of day based shadows that are properly integrated.
It should be high up on the list. Heck it should be a priority. The amount of times these issues have been stated and nothing has been done makes no sense
It's too bad the priority is new routes and content over core fixes, but unfortunately it's what we should expect. Like Zeenoz said, sound too.
To be honest I doubt TSW barely scratches the surface when it comes to graphical potential. Visually it’s quite obvious that it doesn’t when games from a decade or so ago look better than it.
Matt and Sam have stated multiple times that TSW is not meant to be used in UE4 and that their development of the game pushes the boundaries of the engine constantly. They said it recently on the end of year stream.
One of the weird things is the daytime lighting can be really impressive at times so it's not an issue of it's too difficult for the developers, they clearly are good at what they do in that department, it just seems that lighting at night was an afterthought and they didn't pay much attention to it.
Yeh I know but it's a joke in my opinion that night time lighting still hasn't been improved but it it is what it is
Yep. Same with environmental fixes like the look of trees in winter time, the lack of sight distance when it's raining, etc.
Unreal Engine is a catch all engine, it can be and has been used for almost every game genre. What Matt and Sam were getting a was that it's not a proprietary engine build specifically for train sims. It will their more their physics engine that taxes aspects of UE4, particularly there will be things UE can't do that they want it to do, rotational motion blur for example.
Yes. I'll have a service set to winter clear but with no snow to just make it a cold day and for some strange reason there are leaves on the trees. This happened in tsw2020 as well. That's simply not realistic at all and could use a change as well
So then my question is, if the physics/radial blur are more of the problem when it comes to UE4 development of TSW, wouldn't the lighting already be fixed by now? There has to be a reason why this wasn't a top priority fix. Fingers crossed this gets fixed.
I've no idea why they haven't but looking at the high standard of daytime lighting in TSW I can be certain it's got absolutely nothing to do with what the engine or platforms can and can't handle.
Then my other guess would be the time it would take to revamp. I don't know a ton about game development but I'm sure that redoing the lighting would take a decent amount of hours that they'd rather spend on route development.
That's true. I started playing TSW 2020 near the end of its life cycle so it was at a point where it was at its most developed/optimized. Maybe that's the same strategy with TSW 2?
Yesterday I snapped this on the East Coastway route as a passenger and the photo doesn't even do justice to how good it looked in-game. The lighting there is absolutely stunning, so there's no reason in my option for DTG to be unable to make a town or city look like the street lights are on at night.
Probably but something like lighting should not be fixed by the end of tsw2's life cycle in my opinion
But clearly, something is holding them back-we just don't know what it is. I was playing HRR last night and it looked absolutely stunning in a ~6:45 summer morning service. But when you play at night the only thing you can see is 5m in front of you.
For reference, here's what it looks like to drive into Munich Hbf at night. Obviously, it doesn't look like what the game shows. When looking at these photos, there are tons of lights surrounding the station, the side streets, station lights etc. Anybody that knows more about game development than me want to chime in? Is programming these lights in-game achievable without dropping frame rates/memory problems? To me, this seems more than achievable but I don't know what it takes to do all of this in a development engine. The sky lighting would be the other part of this too. I'm loving this discussion btw.
I avoid services at night. The lighting completely ruins everything. It’s not fun driving in almost pitch black - so I stand no chance of doing all services on most routes.
Ironically with TSW, you have the surround world looking too bright, as shown with my snow covered picture, but everywhere is like a post-war apocalypse. Why are there no environmental lights? All houses and buildings have their lights off. We need this reversing with the ground looking dark and the buildings emitting light.