The issue is that us headlights, especially freight are extremely bright that you can see from miles away (exaggerating a bit). Also you're required to have them on even in daylight. That means if there is an ai train, it will basically blind you and stuff. They haven't got the tech or anything to have really bright headlights that allow you to see long distances without it blinding you or washing everything out in the daytime. There are certain routes where the headlights are decent like Harlem, some freight routes (especially in tunnels), peninsula corridor. However, because of the reasons listed above, the headlights are poor
I only play a few games other than tsw2, one of it is Snowrunner and the truck headlights is really effective in the evening/night and there is nothing about washing out in the daytime. I'm not a developper so maybe I don't understand anything but they got it right. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0ysWZnz1ytA/maxresdefault.jpg
Thank you for reply. I understand the point. However in other games works well, like said by dgagnon720:
It has always seemed to me that the obvious fix is to increase the brightness of the "bright" setting, but have AI trains run on "medium" or "dim"
Unfortunately dynamic lighting is one of those things that COULD be worked on but isn't It's why the lights on platforms turn on at the same time all year round rather than being dynamic, even thought they've made a dynamic sun and moon (so they're in the right places at the right times of year) To me, adding in a reference to the ambient lighting setting of the sun which ups or downs light flare and distance effects so that in the day lights on trains are "a twinkly spot" but don't cast on the ground but at night light up what they should do would be the way, but this would be an additional load on CPU and GPU so maybe there's a reason we don't know about as to why they haven't implemented (or developed) it
Headlights on routes such as Boston Sprinter, Riesa-Dresden-Chemnitz, Peninsula Corridor, Harlem Line and LIRR are decent and actually light the track ahead of the train. Also the headlights on modern British trains/locos need to be a bit brighter then they are at the minute. Now if they can also sort out reflective signage…
Would have to disagree with the headlights being decent on the US routes! I think they are a terrible representation of US locomotive headlights and need a lot of work.
The topic of the weak US locomotive headlights had been brough up again during the discussion of the new UP Heritage Pack for Sherman Hill. While not Sherman Hill related, but the other day I was stupid enough to try one of the evening services on Cane Creek, which starts right around sunset. After about 20 minutes it got so dark that you couldn't see anyting anymore. This is how I had to drive the remaining 1 hours... Looks fun to anybody? To have at least something to look at besides pitch black darkness, I had to resort either to the head out view or the fixed chase cam positioned above the hood. So the question arose in me once again, will we ever get proper headlights in TSW? It's not even just the US. Other than the UK, I am pretty sure most countries have proper train headlights, even in Europe.
Headlights are probably going to be brighter, not sure how much in tsw3 dlc. Cuz of the new lighting, most lumen values had to be increased so it actually is visible. Cajon Pass is alright. Sehs had some good headlights as well. So it's possible. Dresden riesa has the best german headlights that actually light up more than the few meters in front of you. That ended up being the one and only though.
I am not going to hold my breath! The headlights have been terrible since TSW and its really sad that DTG does not fix the issue. Am really hoping that Simrail gets some US content.
Simrail is getting us content. The route map was shared on social media and they already got part of train. Also using photogrammetry to build the route
I very much agree, in the past I did not mind night services but with this level of pitch blackness I'm not finding them very fun anymore. The range of all light sources just seems really truncated. I realize that some pre-TSW3 routes were way too bright at night which wasn't great either but I would like to see them err more on on the side of it being a little too bright than that almost 100% blackness out of the cab window. DW