List Of Graphical Issues Within Tsw 2

Whilst watching a YouTube video about how to improve the look and feel of TSW graphics wise via ini commands, I noticed the user write down a list of graphical issues within the game. There’s quite a few, some of which are more obvious than others. I shall post them below.

There are way too many choices to provide a poll, but if you could choose 3, which ones would you choose to be fixed as a priority?

- Woeful shadow draw distance - something which plagues us whilst driving, as we’re ever ‘chasing’ shadows.
- Low quality shadows that are not dark enough - like clouds, shadows have absolutely no depth to them.
- Poor grass draw distance, with it visibly showing up in front of you as you drive along.
- Poor foliage and tree draw distance, with LODs changing before your eyes. Trees will turn from Minecraft looking blocks to actually trees right in front of you.
- Low quality meshes used on distance trains - Blurry and basic ‘boxy’ looking trains
- Texture streaming that basically doesn’t work - textures remain blurry regardless of distance
- Lack of textures for lights in buildings, particularly at night - unlit buildings at night
- Terrible night lighting where the game is either too bright or too dark. Objects are lit independently so end up glowing in the dark with no obvious light source
- Broken Motion Blur, which doesn’t work on the wheels and gives weird artifacts on some surfaces (such as windscreens)
- WAY TOO MUCH BLOOM
- Flat, featureless and very low resolution skies
- Windscreen weather effects
- Flickering Anti-Aliasing

 

I vote for the shadow draw distance, the broken motion blur and the terrible night lighting that should be fixed first. It's kinda baffling that they used the same engine for 4 years and there are still graphical issues with the game

 

The only graphics issue that bothers me is the water texture quality. It's better in TS than TSW2 and that is a mystery to me. I want to see trickling streams, flowing rivers and ocean waves.

 

All of them bar one are a priority for me, really could not put them in order

Only one I'm not fussed about is the motion blur on wheels not being correct. I'm not interested about that in the slightest as I don't look at wheels whilst driving or sitting as a passenger in a carriage! Motion Blur works just how I want it....... giving the sense of speed!

 

I would say water quality is possibly the biggest issue for me, the Isle of Wight in particular as there is so much of it, I hadn't really noticed it until then. Distant scenery can be a bit bland too.

Would agree with the points in the OP about bloom and the lack of lights in many buildings at night.

 

Can I vote for all of them?

 

I vote for shadows viewdistance, night lightning and sky. We have suffered them during years

For the Minecraft style trees use foliage.LODDistanceScale=4 in the ini file or higher values. That prevents the issue.

Cheers

 

I can vote for Flickering Anti-Aliasing maybe, Poor water effects, Night lightning (especially those dark night rides in bad weather, when you are just driving into black hole)

 

very nice thread - hope that DTG will have a look on this sooon

+ overall stability in big stations,
+ Stuttering fix
+ electric lines flickering
+ Direct x 12 migration

 

DX12 causes more stutters for me and quite a few who have tried it.

 

Because the game is made for working With dx11.
But the fps gain is very important so the devs have to have a look on this in order to adapt their game with it.

But we can still wait 2 or 3 years..

 

If I may add, I have trouble with headlights flickering.
The lights constantly flickers. Very annoying.

Anybody know something to fix it?

 

Putting an official stamp on this thread. londonmidland if you collate the results I'll make sure they're heard.

 

I'll go for:
- windscreen effects (there are times it's pelting it down with rain and I don't want to put the wipers on as I can see perfectly fine)
- Shadows (I think this is why winter looks absolutely naff IMO)
- Night lighting

 

These would be my three.

 

Those would be my top three as well

 

I'm gonna go with :-
- Flat, featureless and very low resolution skies
- Windscreen weather effects
- Flickering Anti-Aliasing

 

Very hard to only choose 3 of them, like near impossible - so here's 5, highest to lowest...

Direct x 12 migration
Shadow draw distance
Flickering Anti-Aliasing
Flat, featureless, low resolution skies
Terrible night lighting

 

My top three issues:
- Flickering anti-aliasing
- Night lighting
- Shadow draw distance

I think most people will agree with those three at being a priority in being fixed/improved.

 

Here are the top three things I'd love to get fixed-
1. LODs and draw distances.
You can fix everything else thats on this list, but nothing is more bizarre than having an object appear out of thin air right in front of you. Its one of the most jarring things with TSW and it just disconnects you from the experience. Great visuals are nice to have, but a seamless loading experience is a basic necessity for any game.
2. Night Lighting
While day-time lighting is fine and looks nice, the same can't be said with night-time lighting. Its widely inconsistent: sometimes its far too dark, sometimes its unnaturally bright. Further compounding this is the lack of proper lighting around cities and particular buildings, making things feel...off. Driving at night in TSW is discouraged as a result of this.
3. Windscreen Weather Effects
This one is very much a personal preference, and many other people would likely give this a lower priority. But the reason I put this up here is because having improved weather effects can vastly improved immersion and really sell the experience of being there. While the current effects are not bad, they're not great either. Messing around with temperature knobs should have an effect and selecting the wrong settings could lead to the windows being fogged up. Its an amazing little touch thats been seen in games such as OMSI 2, and I feel as though this game could really benefit from it. It would also be nice to see rain droplets being effected by the motion of the train, watching it leave streaks of water as it moves across the windshield.
We can change the seasons in TSW, and so it'll be wonderful to see how the climate systems on board trains handle differing conditions.

 

TSW 2 looks amazing, the trains and Locos always look stunning. But there is always room for improvement. I've chosen 3 that would hopefully be an easy fix.
1. Water (better in TS Classic)
2. Rain on windscreen (better in TS, even better in EuroTruck 2)
3. Flat clouds

I was going to mention stutters but not sure that counts as graphical and probably is a bigger fix.

 

Although in the PC section I would like to add what bothers me the most on xbox:
- mipmap/ LOD draw distance of objects.
This mainly affects tree and fence assets (hello flickering pine trees on LGV), most noticable in winter setting where every tree is a plain white shape from the distance and only looks good when in direct sight (<50m) of the player. Especially the fences already have been improved a bit but there is still plenty of work left. I would not consider it being a performance killer when the LODs/ Mipmaps are extended there (the visibility of the most detailed setting should be increased).
- shadow draw distance. At least that far that not only half of the train is surrounded by shadows and the other constantly in the sun.
- night lighting. Probably the most ambitious project of them all as there are thousands of lights needed to be added for each route. But it would be a start if the assets would get dedicated night textures where it would at least look like the house are inhabited.

I would also like to add that the improvements that were done when the upgrade from TSW to TSW2020 was released easily exceeded everything what EA offers with a new FIFA (add a similar comparison here, I would even consider the Forza series). So it might be ambitious but not impossible since it has been done before

 

My three would be:

Distant scenery, bare hills in particular, often looks worse than in many TS1. I understand you won't get as much detail but for me it is too much of a contrast
Water texture quality, really noticed when IOW was released
Low quality objects like some of the road vehicles and some buildings which although not in the immediate vicinity are close enough to be noticed. The trains and railway infrastructure close up is of good quality in my opinion but the contrast with surrounding areas is noticeable

 

Hmm... difficult to choose actually. In addition to the original list of options, I'm also not entirely happy with weather effects in general, like it being either not foggy at all, or compeletly foggy. Having clear visibility in heavy rain is one of these examples. Also, snowy trees look strange, being completely white in a distance, but as you get close you can see the snow melting away from the branches as their natural brown color appears.

However, when I limit myself to 3 of the original list, here's my pick.

- Woeful shadow draw distance - something which plagues us whilst driving, as we’re ever ‘chasing’ shadows.
- Terrible night lighting where the game is either too bright or too dark. Objects are lit independently so end up glowing in the dark with no obvious light source
- Poor foliage and tree draw distance, with LODs changing before your eyes. Trees will turn from Minecraft looking blocks to actually trees right in front of you.

 

I'd go with
Water effects - it's the same water everywhere. Really need proper waves on seas. IoW and PC look particularly bad. Also stream/ river heights should change in rain (and the colour should change a bit as well). Wet ground would be nice too - it's weird having heavy rain but no puddles...
Shadows
LoD pop in - the odd way that the route ahead appears to be sunny and light when around the train it is overcast...
Deciduous trees having leaves in winter - the tree "skins" need revising too trees are not totally white in winter...
Snow effect needs improvement in general - just having everything white is not correct - there should be some depth to the snow as well.
Distant objects - IoW in particular. you can see the mainland and the Napoleonic forts from Ryde IRL.
People - be nice to have some people in the towns along the way (this exists in SPG)
some moving barges/ boats would be nice too.

 

Bloom and its overuse - easiest to fix and definitely not needed
Flickering trees and trees changing colour as you approach
Night lighting - needs to be convincingly dark but with a hint of visibility but consistent.
No control of fogginess in settings - another easy fix

I know that’s four but two are so simple to fix. All of these should be fixable without any impact on performance, which is important for console users in particular but will benefit everyone.

 

From the replies I’ve seen so far, it’s quite clear night lighting is quite high up on the list of things to be improved/fixed.

Note: For PC users, you can manually fix the LOD problems with textures and trees by editing the ini values.

 

1- Poor foliage and tree draw distance, with LODs changing before your eyes. Trees will turn from Minecraft looking blocks to actually trees right in front of you.

2- Woeful shadow draw distance - something which plagues us whilst driving, as we’re ever ‘chasing’ shadows.

3- Terrible night lighting where the game is either too bright or too dark. Objects are lit independently so end up glowing in the dark with no obvious light source

Also the motion blur would be a honarable mention if they don't fix it before Steam comes

 

I think DTG should put settings into the game UI to let us tweak common things that can be tweaked via the engine.ini file like LOD draw distance and bloom. Don't hard code it. Let users choose based on their personal preferences and the performance of their machine.

Outside of that, I definitely would like:

• less repetition in water and ballast textures (especially on the LGV route)
• Better clouds/weather
• People to cast shadows
• People to not glow strangely when they get near lights (pretty sure this is not just a bloom issue)
• Better night lighting

 

- Night lighting, the lighting is just fake, light sources should be where you expect them to be.
- loading in of tiles makes game lag/hang horribly at times especially when the first load is done or you exit the train for the first time
- draw distance, as seen in fences popping next to the line, tracks appearing right in front of you etc.

 

Medium settings for Pshlicks steam ini guide.
Graphics Preset- Ultra
Screen Percentage-146%
TAA and V Sync on
Foliage- Ultra
Shadow Quality-off
Effects quality-off
Post process quality-low
View distance- Ultra
Texture Quality - Ultra
Motion Blur - on
After endless tweaking, finally landed with this one. Looks as good as any setting on routes GWE NTP LVG SKA SPG to name a few.
Playing on low to mid range i510400f GTX 1650 16gb ram at 1080p

 

I find it quite dumb that pc players have to edit the ini files to improve the visuals of the game. You would think dovetail would already have the lod files sorted either before launch or fixed by now. Players shouldn't have to fiddle around with the game file to improve the game

 

Agreed. I guess it's nice we have that possibility, but it shouldn't excuse DTG from fixing the issues without the need to manually edit ini files.

 

Tbf its a pretty unique game. Miles upon miles of trees and track throwing up shadows here n there. Plus sll the goings on with simugraph. Editing ini commands isnt the hardest thing to do.

 

Neither is providing the user with in-game toggles for settings.

Oh wait. that requires a UI artist just for about everything in TSW, apparently...

 

Which could be the reason why these issues haven't been sorted...5 months after release

 

Can only speak for myself. If those settings were in and I found out about the ini commands. I would still be curious.

 

Part of this is because, and TSW is not exclusive to this, if they provide ini settings that can push things (mainly graphics) to way higher fidelity than most people's computers can handle, many of those people will still pull the sliders all the way up, and then scream bloody murder when their computers can not handle it. DTG just like so many other game developers have to make sure their games run, or are at least decently playable, on as many computer configurations as possible (read: including mid/low range machines), or they will lose money.

No matter how big of train nerds they are, it is first and foremost a company, and as such their main goal is to make money. Money always comes first. At least a big percentage of the user base (read: PC users) have the means to do some tweaking themselves, namely ini tweaks. It's not "rocket science", and be thankful there at least is a way to do it.

 

I would vote for shadow LOD, the one thing which can not be fixed with .ini editing. So we have to stare at those "creeping sleepers" a few meters in front of the train on every mile of every route.

Oh, and some night lighting effects that are just weird, like the "lightbulb head" passengers.

 

I be wondering why some passengers on the train are so bright like lightbulbs. Makes no sense dovetail

 

You know, watching the preview stream for SEHS, I was struck by two things graphics wise.
I. There was at least one fully functioning grade crossing.
2. The water under the Medway Bridge was actually flowing like a real river (I think).
Do these things portend improvements to past and/or future routes?

 

DTG say that any future new features such as pis can come into older routes but we will have to wait and see

 

Shadows and lighting are, IMO the biggest graphical stain on the game as is. If you have a decent GPU you can actually just a few .ini settings to significantly increase draw distances of everything including foliage and grass so you don't get any LOD pop-in like normal. However there is a limit to shadow draw distance even for .ini edits. I want to say that by default shadows begin drawing at 50 or 75m in from of the train. You can bump that to like 100m but no further. This lack of shadow also makes mid-distance scenery like trees on a hill in Sand Patch Grade look very 2010 (or worse) as there is no shadowing at all.

Oh, and in TS1 fall and winter look great. In TSW they're pretty horrid. Winter the trees are just 100% white. Leaves, branches, trunk. Just painted all a uniform white. Plus the track drawing issues with snow. The fall, which in TS1 is GORGEOUS in most routes looks like some sort of Halloween nightmare in TSW with extremely unnatural looking trees. Basically Spring/summer or bust. Oh yea, and the sky. Ooof. Better go 100% clear or 100% cloudy.

 

The clouds don't look great in my opinion

 

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't see weird artefacts on things like windows regarding motion blur - not in TSW2 anyway (although there were a lot in TSW2020)

 

I suppose we'll have to disagree on that. I think we CAN agree on the lighting and shadow draw distance though, right?

 

For me, Motion Blur and Bloom are two factors that could really do with some proper tweaking.

 

I would get on it sharpish londonmidland you could be the chisel that makes a crack in the DTG sphere. Keep going all you talented lot

 

This is a really interesting thread! I’ll hold my hand up...the video alluded to in the original post was one of mine. I’m very happy to see it’s generated some healthy debate, albeit thanks to londonmidland. Let’s hope that it might one day lead to some improvements.

Forgive me, but the link to the video is below if you haven’t seen it...