Whilst there have been no proper in game shots of the London to Brighton route yet (apart from very early WIP screenshots), I want to stress that the night lighting needs to be adequate for this route. This route features quite a few iconic London landmarks, and will naturally have a lot of light with the adjacent houses and buildings around London. The Glasgow Cathcart route was a bit of a disaster in terms of night lighting, as the light sources are pretty much non existent. The station lighting is far too dim, too. This makes it really off putting to drive at night as the immersion goes out of the window. Back on to the said route, below is a long exposure shot of the view out of London Victoria. In the background is the iconic Battersea Power Station, with cranes illuminating the skyline. Bear in mind as it’s a long exposure shot, it’ll make some of the light sources brighter than they actually are, but you get the point.
Absolutely. I think many of us have been harping on about the lighting issue for long enough for DTG to get the picture. CRR and CCR are practically undrivable at night. The Rush Hour routes have to turn the page on this issue. Otherwise, the nagging will continue.
I honestly don't think TSW can/will look anything like that in the near future - I think you're just setting yourselves up for a disappointment. Here's a couple less long exposure pictures I found: And here's how it looks in TS1, which (from what I've seen) is often stated has having much better night lighting than TSW. (Actually this is the Chatham Main Line route, I just couldn't be bothered to change the route in the Quick Drive menu). I'd expect TSW to look much more like this, but with the ground (and possibly everything for that matter) a bit lighter.
Despite me remaining hopeful, I believe you will probably be right. Night lighting has always looked bad in TSW, with there being next to no light sources. Though they’ve got to improve at some point. I’m remaining hopeful that they may improve it with this route.
Can the route builders of this route also make sure that we have depot/yard lights please? On East Coastway, Lovers Walk depot, just outside Brighton station, as well as a few others, were completely dark at night, as they had no lights. This made runs to/from the depot not very enjoyable.
I'd also like to add the Thameslink depot at Three Bridges to that suggestion for the BML. Even if no trains, the lights alone make for an impressive appearance at night in real life - thus should not be missed in the upcoming route.
This is the weakest part of TSW. Absolutely. Even if it is possible to work hard on lightening and make big changes, applying this to all routes could be a mayor task. Core updates should be easier to implement on "old" routes. Something its not working the way it sould if we still have old skyboxes in preserved routes. Here is when i think this good looking engine might had been not the best idea from the beggining. This is just a thought, not an statement...
