Lighting...what Am I Doing Wrong?

I keep seeing all these wonderful screenshots of the new lighting and I'm looking at my game thinking it looks, well, awful by comparison. I've played with monitor settings etc but it's definitely not that. I'm not criticising but genuinely trying to understand what it is that is wrong here? I want to rectify it because right now it's no understatement to say that this looks worse than TSW2. I just can’t figure out why it looks so washed out and the lighting on the old TSW2 content in TSW3 genuinely looks better than this. I have no mods, reshade or Nvidia stuff going on in the background.

This is the 2nd run in the SEHS ‘Networker’ journey chapter, the scenario ‘Filling In’. GPU Driver is 516.94.



For comparison's sake a shot from MSFS with the exact same PC setup, purely to demonstrate my setup is fine and it’s not a loose connection or something...

 

If you're going to make such a comparison it would probably be wise to line up the time of day too

 

our not alone, I too am seeing very little difference between TSW2 and TSW3 graphically.
I9 1200K, 32gb Ram, RTX3070ti everything set to ultra

 

What's wrong with the first screenshot?
Distant trees and brush look like being covered in white

 

The comparison is there purely to demonstrate there’s nothing wrong with my PC. All my other games / desktop look fine.

We can’t have a new lighting system where certain times of day are unplayable again. Pretty much every time I’ve played SEHS it looks like this. The other two routes aren’t anything like as bad but SEHS looks really not right and to be honest, unfortunately that’s largely what swayed me to buy it in the end.

 

Exactly…this is the problem. I can’t figure it out because I keep seeing all these great shots. Are people using ini tweaks or something? It just looks weird…from the cab the sky almost looks white, you can’t determine clouds from sky half the time because it’s this overly bright mass of light. The settings are Ultra btw.

 

I was told lighting on SEHS was kind of broken, not as good as for the "real" TSW3 routes

 

I’ve also seen barely any difference from TSW2. I fact I think some of it looks worse.

 

This is definetly a matter of taste so sliders are the greatly welcome feature + interiors brightness levels tweaks.

 

Taste? Do you think looks right? Lighting shouldn’t be about taste…it’s either right or not, surely?

 

For me is much better, for you - not, so yeah taste. For me it is now closer to real look.

 

Not for you on your machine. I mean those shots I’ve shared above. Do you think that looks good?

 

Yes. Good and better than TSW 2.

 

Most people are happy with these changes so maybe it is someting wrong with your perception / taste?

 

We’ll have to agree to disagree about this. The sky is better, the lighting in these shots is not right at all.

 

The new lighting is awful in certain conditions or time of day. This is now my number one “DTG must sort” over and above the save game issue.

Have yet to test the TSW2 routes as still got another 40 odd Gb of data to download.

 

No. If you’d read my original post I said that other people’s screenshots look good. I’m trying to figure out if I have something strange going on…you are clearly trolling if you think that top shot looks even remotely like real life.

Barring the skies and the unit model you could be forgiven for thinking that was an early TSC route. Something is off with SEHS, seemingly on my PC.

 

This is becouse some in-cab certain conditions which is separate programming problem I suppose. The whole scene and how it looks now is a big difference and improvement, how the lights behave. I hope for some DTG's tweaks to everynone become happy.

 

Eventualy maybe it is worth try reShade.

 

For the last time, I’m not talking about what it looks like for you! I’m talking about those shots which were taken on my PC. Two of those three shots are external so it’s nothing to do with It being in-cab. I see virtually no difference between the two either way. You cannot argue with a straight face that those three shots look like real life.

As I said, I’m trying to figure out why I keep seeing great looking screenshots yet so far, I’ve not seen anything that comes close. Is there a problem with my PC that I’m unaware of?

It goes without saying I don’t want to use reshade.

 

I don't know why you are so angry about the new lighting. I don't say it is like real life but better. MSFS is not like real life too.

 

I think something is getting lost in translation here. Would you mind bowing out of the thread so I can try and get to the bottom of the specific problem that I seem to be having. Thanks.

 

I've installed reShade now & trying some 'HDR' stuff. Be back with screenshots. BR

PS You're right, it could definitely look better than it does now. However, sharp criticism is, in my opinion, definitely exaggerated.

 

Do you use DX12?

 

Yes. That is a very good point! I’ll have to take a look…hope that’s it.

 

As I said in my original post, I’m not criticising. Something seems to be wrong on my PC and I’m trying to figure out what exactly.

 

...I hope not. It would be terrible if DX12 would not work correctly on TSW3

 

Sorry, I don't troll either. I understand you perfectly because I am an esthete myself. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement still, and I just think the direction of change is good. ReShade can tone down these colors a bit. Give it a try. BR

 

There’s no doubt the game needed better lighting. Some routes in TSW2 looked downright awful with black tar over everything. It just seems they have gone way overboard in addressing the problem giving this washed out look in certain conditions, then not providing any user controls over the scale of the effect.

 

I’d say it’s maybe marginally better, still not looking as I would expect but first impressions are that it is better. I need to do some more testing to be sure either way.

 

No worries. I don’t mean trolling in the general sense…just that there is something clearly not right in those shots I’ve posted. They don’t look like other shots of this game I’m seeing so there must be something not right somewhere, probably something going on on my PC. You insisting that those shots looked better than TSW2 and like the real world when it (and by ‘it’ I mean those specific shots as taken on my PC) clearly doesn’t was what I was referring to.

I felt you were talking about the lighting in general, where the problem I’m having seems to be confined to my PC. Those shots exhibit the problem.

 

I don’t think it’s just your PC or monitor. As I remarked a couple of days ago, I actually discovered a few months ago my monitor was still on factory settings when dealing with TSW2 and Run 8 being too dark. Got the settings so they are really good now in every other game. But TSW2 still looked like black tar and now TSW3 has this washed out appearance…

 

I'll admit that some of the shots I've picked are the highlights - there are other moments when it doesn't look so great - however overall for me the whole experience feels better than TSW2 (appreciate that is an opinion and nothing can back it up ) I am still getting some shots I wouldn't share to highlight the lighting, and I think if others were honest they may say that too

 

I think we are coming to agree that SEHS looks worse than the other routes. Being retrofitted with the new lighting system has come at a cost, it seems; the trees and ground on SKW don't suffer nearly as badly. I haven't had the chance to try SoS yet but I hope it doesn't suffer similarly.

Other things I would suggest are the usual .ini tweaks: increasing draw distance, shadow distance, foliage LOD distance, etc. A lot of people posting screenshots are using custom .ini settings anyway.

Cheers

 

DTG should just add settings so that we don't have to work with ini stuff

 

Having looked into it a bit more I’m fairly confident it’s not DX12 that’s the problem. Additionally the performance loss in DX11 vs DX12 is massive, close to 20fps difference where things get intensive

 

Yeah, on a modern PC DX11 performance in TSW is terrible compared to DX12.

I don't know why they still don't support it in their new game

 

This is the problem I think. In the second shot I'm looking maybe only a couple of degrees angle further up and it's a completely different kettle of fish. Surely this isn't working as intended?

 

It's the "eye adaption" thing going crazy?
Hope DTG can comment on this

 

I'm not pretty sure it's not my PC after all, nor is it DX12. Here I'm using Bescots mod 'level 1', which is 'mid' tone, with the following .ini changes;

[SystemSettings]
ts2.dbg.JourneyChapterLockOverride=1
foliage.LODDistanceScale=4
r.TextureStreaming=0
r.DFDistanceScale=10
r.DFFullResolution=1
r.Streaming.FramesForFullUpdate=1
r.Streaming.PoolSize=4500
r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=500
r.AmbientOcclusion.Method=1
r.GTAO.FalloffEnd=300
r.GTAO.SpatialFilter=0
r.GTAO.NumAngles=2
r.GTAO.UseNormals=1
r.GTAO.ThicknessBlend=0
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=2
r.ToneMapperFilm=0
r.Shadow.FilterMethod=1

I'm not 100% certain all of these .ini commands are actually doing anything anymore...need to look further into that. However, it looks much more sensible to me & I'd be interested to know what others think. The eye adaption on SEHS definitely doesn't seem to be working as it is on the other TSW3 routes.

 

The issue is, is that it seems they haven’t set the lighting up correctly/properly for SEHS, compared to the two other ‘properly new’ TSW 3 routes.

Day lighting often ends up looking washed out quite a lot of the time. I have a feeling that they didn’t give SEHS a full upgrade in terms of the lighting, as they perhaps ran out of time to do it properly, compared to the two other routes.

Night, dawn and dusk lighting looking fine, however. Though there’s definitely something off about day lighting on SEHS.

 

One thing I had noticed whilst playing TSW3 (happened whilst I was live streaming) is that when looking anywhere but the sky in heavy rain/thunderstorms, the clouds do look good and proper grey/dark. As soon as you point your view upwards, everything gets lighter and washed out.

 

Sehs definitely isn't refined as the other 2 routes. I find on sehs anything under 200% on the screen percentage dramatically reduces the quality.

 

Definitely looks like the eye adaptation going too far - as though the default level of the sky and ambient light is a little too bright so it's bleaching everything out when you look at local objects. Sort of feels like the white point and dark points are ok (even on the bright shot, the shadows between the train carriages look black), but the gamma is set with the mid-point too bright. I guess that's why [virtually all] other games have a slider to set it when you first play, although that won't really help if they've got entirely different lighting settings for each route, as appears to be the case here.

 

Just to add to my quote - I use FXAA and high screen percentage as I prefer the look of that to TAA - so that may be worth a try?

 

TAA definitely looks better.

 

I might have to try that too. I concur with the OP: the first route I started was SEHS, and my first reaction was, Why do the graphics look worse than TSW2? Why do textures look lower quality? Why do the trees look a flat, washed-out light green?

I fiddled with Nvidia gamma, etc, in control panel and improved the appearance somewhat. But the lighting isn't set up properly, at least not for this route.

 

It's not just SEHS. Cajon looks awful from the cab.

Come on DTG, cat got your tongue on this issue?

 

If it's the eye adaptation not working well, it seems to effectively remove tonal depth and contrast from textures too, hence they appear lower quality, flat and washed-out. It can be quite horrible. After I messed with Nvidia settings, I jumped into the German route and a random timetable service on SEHS – so although it did look better than before, it might be that I happened to pick a service with better lighting conditions than, say, the first SEHS scenario, which was my first experience with TSW3 and evoked my displeasure with the poor appearance.

If I get time tonight, before I try my legacy DLC, I will run that first scenario again.

I left my playtime at 118 minutes on Steam, though; I was so put off by the washed-out, flat appearance I was reluctant to let myself play past the 2-hour cut-off for refunds, in case I just return to TSW2 for some considerable time until save is reimplemented and, now, colouration, etc., is refined. Although TSW3 is obviously the future, so it seems inevitable that I'd end up purchasing it again anyway even if I did refund it now lol

 

Ah no...seems like the infamous TSW lighting issues continue with TSW3...