Inspiration For The Dtg Dev Team On Improving Real World Lighting

Well, certainly no. And I'm not expecting them to do that, nor did I ever really ask for it. However, with some optimizations to their workflow, such as iirc one change that made route generation for LGV easier, it could certainly become less out-of-reach than it currently is, despite the fact that it would probably be too out-of-reach for DTG to ever reach. But hey, optimizations in how routes are made would allow for more routes to be made quicker, and assuming that there's no obvious drop in quality, everyone should be happy about that.

 

I'd say that the prices are fine for me as well, especially when something is really worth the value, discounted, or both. But yes, the issue is that DTG shouldn't really be stubborn. Companies like this should be willing to change their business model for the sake of making new customers and a higher profit. It's a pity, tbh. DTG has the only good train simulator products but they're improperly managed. And since they have no competitors, DTG can't be affected by customers moving away unless they make a seriously large mistake. Even then, there will still be people refusing to admit that and keep on buying every single one of their products, even if it doesn't really interest them.

 

Now personally I don't think it makes sense for people to buy every single dlc. I wouldn't do that. Now I do think dtg should consider changing their business model. Like I said the prices are fine but not everything they make is worth that $30 price tag at times. SEHS at launch was not the best quality across the board in my opinion and was not $30. The 70s diesel legends pack which mostly has gotten negative reviews on steam and here isn't worth full price for what it offers. Some wait for sales that don't come often on xbox (even though that's not dtg's fault) and some rightly say that some dlc's aren't worth full price. DTG hold the ball in train sims yet they don't manage it properly. There pre release testing is not good and issues that are found in pre release streams often stay and are not fixed for a while. I still have the issue in the Bakerloo line of passengers stacking on top of each other when leaving the train and that was on a preview stream of the BKL. I found a passenger shooting up to the sky like he was superman on bkl as well. If dtg weren't so stubborn with prices maybe that could lead to more people buying and a increased profit

 

How do you know that the DLC's are not worth their price if you don't know how much development work has gone into a route or vehicle?

The ratio of effort is much higher in contrast to the TS2021, but DTG does not charge the prices. Probably because then fewer people buy the DLC's because they are used to these low prices ... Or maybe because more people are buying the products

TSW should have around 3500 to 5000 players on all platforms in total. It could be balancing out.
In the pre-release stream from Cologne - Aachen it was said that they are roughly the same on every platform. How it is today, I suspect more. TSW sees a lot on social media now, it wasn't like that in the past.

 

Price cuts across the board do not necessarily result in more revenue for DTG. There are pricing techniques being used, as with everything that is sold to consumers, and DTG will know what is the best way to do things. Prices that are fairly high but not unreasonable and then lots of sale opportunities throughout the year. It’s amazing what can be achieved with the offer of a slightly reduced price for a limited time period. Customers buy so they don’t miss out. You can’t offer that without having the price higher to start with. Standard stuff.

Some companies take this to the extreme with fake pricing and fake discounts. Furniture stores such as DFS are renowned for it. Their current range of sofas is in a “sale” with huge discounts of 50% (this is the actual price of the sofas). Then in their stores they have a smaller selection of their next range of sofas at the full price (double the actual price) for the amount of time that is necessary by law to be able to offer the discounts later. You can’t actually buy those “full price” sofas as they aren’t in production yet. In store you will be steered towards the sale items. There is no discount but some customers will fall for it, but most people know exactly what’s going on.

DTG don’t do that, they use the standard methods, not the dishonest ones.

 

I've never heard of a furniture stores using fake discounts before in the u.s at least

 

"Some say he's the only person to buy a sofa from DFS, when there wasn't a sale on... All we know is, he's called The Stig"

 

Seriously? SOP in the business.

Another common one is the rug store which has a "going out of business clearance sale" going on for years and years

 

I am aware about the going out of business sales but where I live those sales are real and not fake

 

Yes, the UE5 update that won't happen.

 

UE5 doesn't even exist yet

 

It does, but it is currently in development. There have been demos of it, however, including Lumen in the Land of Nanite, which was running on the PS5 and was stunning.

 

Indeed. A simple texture replacement for the clouds would make a big difference and complement the other scenery which is very good. I'm unable to get access to the actual texture as I think it is compiled into the pak.

 

How about volumetric clouds. A lot of games use this since crysis 1 , clouds are generated from particles , they react to light and cast self shadow and can be placed lower or higher on the sky. On high quality these can be taxing on the GPU but even lower quality clouds look far better than 2d ones

 

I think Matt said he didn’t want to use volumetric clouds because they’re too intensive on resources.

 

Yeah, he'd rather spend those resources on things like simugraph and world detail. Also the video posted is for 4.25 - TSW2 is on 4.23 (Maybe the 4.26 upgrade will help lighting?)

Also clouds are dynamically generated so idk how much changing a texture will help. (You can prob tell I know nothing on such things as these)

 

Next Gen consoles should handle those cloudes just fine along with last gen as there are other games that have volumetric clouds and perform just fine

 

I thought the 4.23 would help improve lighting but it seems there was no improvement to night time lighting

 

I missed that. I did not think that a today's GPU cannot handle the volumetric clouds considering they are used in games for almost 10 years. But it might be an unreal engine weakness compared to other games

Well the clouds would really step up the immersion and volumetric clouds only use the GPU compared to simugraph that uses the CPU for simulation purpose. I think current PC's and even last gen consoles still have plenty of power to allow improvement in the engine.

 

Did you guys see the "The bus" also developed on unreal engine ? It seems to have nailed the lighting and weather system. Can these be achieved in TSW to ?

 

i have the bus game

 

DTG are planning to upgrade to 4.26 on maybe the TSW2 yearly update

 

Does the general lighting and mood of the game look as good as in the video on your side to ? This might be a good benchmark of what could be achieved in TSW

 

I have the bus as well and the lighting is pretty good. The Bus Is currently in early access

 

yes is very good ue4 bus game

 

It just shows that the not so great lignting in tsw is not a engine issue. It's just tsw2 itself

 

Yes. Tsw 2 stock lighting is not horrible by any means but there is a lot of room for improvement. Unreal is a fantastic engine when used properly and The bus game developers proved this.

 

The night time lighting needs the most improvement

 

Can't agree more. We need more projected light on the ground around populated areas because right now the ground și almost pitch black. Also some more lights to bring houses or buildings alive during night would be nice.
I know from real life when traveling by train or car those small or big cities would look like a small oasis of lights in the pitch black darkness when approaching them.
And let's not forget the horrible headlight range on European locos. Take ICE 3 for example , in game the headlight is almost useless, but I remember seeing a documentary where the driver was talking about ice 3 headlight being very powerful and able to light up an entire tunel. Also same goes for headlight on modern Traxx/Siemens locomotives. While BR 182 light is decent the BR 145 and 185 is horrible low. A friend sent me a video while he took a ride in a real life Traxx 145 at night and the headlight where very powerful lighting at least 150m in front of the loco.

 

Yeah I remember one time doing a service to St Pancras and the area around the station was pitch black. That's not realistic since the lights around the area would make things a bit brighter. It should be pitch black when your going through effectively the middle of nowhere with no buildings around the area. Also when night time does roll along the whole environment seems to get brighter even when driving through the countryside with no buildings like in sehs for example which is also not realistic

If the lights on a ice 3 are powerful in reality then the ice 3 and 3m's lights in game are not simulated properly then

 

Regarding the SEHS you are right. And that is not the only route where this issue happens. Most of them have almost pitch black ground and scenery around very dense urban areas. TS did far better in that respect, i hope you guys remember WCML when it came out inn 2012 how outstanding the lighting was on that route.

Regarding the headlights, i found a few videos.

from 17:22 onward.
This is from an older ICE 1. You can clearly see how bright it is and there is no comparison to what headlights we have in game now for much newer ICE 3. Also tried to find an ICE 3 video going trough a tunnel but i cant find the one where they actually have headlights on .

from 8:50 you will se what huge difference in high vs low beams power.
This is from a BR 193 Vectron, same family as Taurus and BR 189

I will also try and show you a pic of Traxx 145 light during night when i get the video back from my friend since i lost it.

Currently is almost torture to play at night, since everything is pitch black and headlights barely work.

 

...bingo- this pretty much sums up how I feel about DTG these days. Crank out the code- always with issues- as fast as they can to make the bucks, never get around to resolving most of those issues- then rinse and repeat. I really (really) hope things will change with DTG and their sloppy code one day... sadly, I don’t think they’re interested at all in changing their business model.

 

I watched both videos and I believe that sums it up perfectly. The lighting in this game is not properly simulated on the ice 3 as you say and night time lighting is not good either. Hopefully with tsw3 on the horizon I hope they will properly simulate lights on some trains and improve night time lighting. Night time lighting improvements should've come when tsw2 came out to be honest

 

The lirr update still has yet to come out and that route was released almost 7 months ago. DTG are gonna improve their QA process but as to when that will happen is a unknown

 

How about all the German trains from preserved content that have such awful sound in TSW2 that they are unplayable. BR 143, 145.185 all of them have missing/broken sound to a degree that you cannot use them in TSW2 at all.

And regarding lighting we can still hope. TSW2 saw some engine upgrades including different mood better shadows/lights compared to TSW1, so maybe another upgrade will bring it even closer to its potential.

Regarding ETS2/ATS. Basically SCS Software managed to upgrade the entire game from DX9 to DX11 raising the details and implementing new features making the game beautiful and really decent for today's graphics. They are better than most AAA studios, they always improve and upgrade they're games even during the long run. ETS 2 with DX11 was free, instead of making it ETS3 and charging money for it. Respect for that!

 

Yep the preserved german trains have issues as well which is also ridiculous.

 

This is almost too funny. On the one hand whining about DTG rushing out code without adequate testing, and on the other hand whining that testing takes a long time.

 

Really? I must not have gotten that memo that they are unplayable? Shame on me for running those routes ever since they have been brought forward....

Seriously, when I read posts that start out with such dramatic statements as these, I skip over the rest of the post. Unfortunate for the poster since they may have some valid statements but since plenty of people are using the “unplayable” items, it is doubtful the logic of the rest of their opinions are sound.

Don’t they teach debating skills in school anymore? Was a required subject back in the late 60’s early 70”s.

 

First of all, i think you mean the 146, not the 145. And second: The MSB-Locos are fixed, we just have to wait for them to release the fix in the next patch.

 

Because such obvious issues should be fixed before release, not 7 months after...

Although I'm happy LIRR finally gets some fixes, as it really deserved it. And knowing the fixes were finally made, I say take their time with testing it now, if they didn't do it at release. Though from what I understood, they are not testing and working on it anymore, just waiting for a slot to release.

But I also hope that at one point they get to fixing the signalling and ATC system on it as well, as it's obvious it doesn't work propely and even they acknowledged this. But the current LIRR fixes don't improve on the ATC, so we will have to wait for LIRR's next round. Hope it won't take another year to be able to drive on LIRR properly.

 

...I wouldn’t call expressing my frustration (or anyone else expressing theirs) about not getting what we personally expect for our money ‘whining’. I think DTG has, and has had for some time, plenty of room for improvement related to cleaning up the myriad of issues with their code. If expecting a better product and holding DTG accountable for that is whining, then maybe more people should be doing it... maybe DTG would get the message that much sooner and finally take steps to reduce the number of issues.

Do what you want with your money, that’s your personal choice. I’ll continue to do what I’m doing- waiting for that day when DTG finally steps up to the plate and starts making significant progress on reducing issues in their code. Until that day, they’ll get no more of my money.

 

Call it "whining" or "holding accountable" as you please; to me it seems unseemly as a reaction to DTG giving you free stuff they didn't have to give you at all. "For your money?" You paid nothing for the TSW2 version of LIRR.

 

The concept of "DTG giving free stuff" is a bit vague to me

 

The Preserved Collection is free stuff: DTG at great expense to themselves and at no charge giving TSW2020 players ports of their old DLC in the new game. Updating the Preserved Collection to 2021 TSW2 standard is also free stuff, which costs DTG money that they are not charging you for.

 

Uhm ok. I would have called that "Fixing bugs that should be fixed at release".

 

Which release? You mean the free release of the TSW2 port? The one DTG didn't have to give you in the first place?

 

The original release of the route for TSW2020 obviously. Do you think they should have charged for porting the preserved routes onto TSW2 with the same original bugs and in many occasions adding more bugs, like for example sound in LIRR and MSB?

 

Do you really call fixing horrible and obvious bugs "free content"? Man, you continue to amaze me, lol. Let me remind you to the fact that LIRR only gets these improvements to the TSW2 version, while the TSW2020 version remains unchanged. So it's not free to begin with, as you have to get TSW2 to get the preserved collection improvements., while the original release, which is still up for sale, remains a buggy mess.

And sorry, but the whole preserved collection stuff is just trying to get up old routes to the level they should've been to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that they're finally doing it, but let's be honest, it's kind of expected. These old DLCs shouldn't have been released in this poor state to begin with. They're just trying to finish the job half a year later.

 

Ah, so now the whining has moved on from the well-known bugs caused by the port, so that now you're alleging "bugs" going back to the original 2019 release?

The preserved collection stuff is a gift horse, which you are looking in the mouth. DTG did not have to provide a single Preserved Collection route.

Edited by DTG Natster - Removed inappropriate language, please reacquaint yourself with the forum rules before posting again.

 

Man, you have really low standards.