A Plea To Dtg Regarding Draw Distance

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by JetWash, Sep 20, 2022.

  1. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    My plea/beg/whatever is a simple one…DTG, please can you give us (the players) the options required to set the game up how we want. It should be up to us to decide where we want the balance between graphical fidelity and fps to sit, not a hard coded limit baked into the game by developers.

    Before I make my point this isn't really about shadows. However, my understanding is that on later routes (post Rush Hour) DTG started using Distant Field Shadows which did improve the shadow situation somewhat. Players can help that along by changing .ini parameters such that it doesn't look too bad. Still not ideal, but not too bad. How it works with older routes however is very questionable and I'd hoped that given the extended Southeastern Network is native to TSW3 that we wouldn't be seeing this sort of thing any longer;

    1.jpg

    This doesn't actually do justice to how jarring this particular experience was however, but hopefully it illustrates the point. The reality of the in-game experience was very visibly bright scenery filling in with detail and shadows as the train moves along the track. It kills the experience frankly and really detracts from the gains made with the new lighting.

    Whilst the shadows are one thing, the grass is quite another. The way this is popping in right in front of the player is ruining the game for me. It is so completely distracting, and it seems the have become particularly jarring in TSW3 because in SEHS at least the ground textures seem to change with the season. In Autumn for example, the ground texture is a darker colour but the grass remains a bright vibrant summer green. When you add those two factors to the poor grass draw distance it just looks awful. There is an engine.ini change we can make on PC (r.MaterialQualityLevel=0 aligned with r.ViewDistanceScale=10) which shows what can be possible with virtually zero fps hit. Unfortunately, this command reduces the overall quality (including removing the 3D ballast) and the trade-off is probably not worth it. As much as I've tried I cannot find a way to increase the grass draw distance without using this command and subsequently reducing the quality of other scenery. You can see the change in graphical quality however, with this example being set in October. The way this changes the driving experience from the cab is off the chart, and is similar to the way CSX:HH looked when it first released.

    r.MaterialQuality as standard
    Before.jpg

    r.MaterialQualityLevel=0 & r.ViewDistanceScale=10
    After.jpg

    My understanding is that DTG are able to give the players the opportunity to change these parameters through graphical option sliders or similar. Whilst we have sliders, the range of those sliders are hard coded into the game by the developers.

    Nvidia are about to launch the 40XX series cards and I think the time has come for DTG to stop dictating how the game should look and give us the options needed to set it up to our liking. I have been very critical of certain aspects of this game as some of the design decisions in it can be so frustratingly nonsensical at times. This is one of those times, but with the grass drawn out properly, the tweaks to tree popping and the new skies and lighting the game starts to look pretty awesome indeed. It doesn’t need a super-computer to run it like this either, but it does need DTG to give us the freedom to make it that way. I honestly don't understand why they wouldn't do this. What are they gaining by preventing it?

    DTG Protagonist, Is this not your area? Is there anything you can do to feed back or influence the thinking in this area? Pretty please.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2022
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  2. Snek

    Snek Well-Known Member

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    Please, I can't stand how the grass grows right in front of you. I just can't not look at it when it's so obviously appearing right out of the ground. I've been using the r.MaterialQualityLevel=0 command in TSW2 and it was soooo much better and worth the missing ballast, but it doesn't seem to work for me anymore in TSW3.
     
  3. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    It does work in TSW3, those two images demonstrate what the game looks like without and with that command. You need to team it with the DrawDistanceScale command to get the most out of it. Unfortunately as you know you lose ballast, sleepers, it causes shimmering on distant scenery and so on.

    There’s no reason that we can’t increase the grass draw except it’s set at a maximum by DTG and no matter what I (and many many others) have tried we can’t work around it unless we use this materialquality command.

    Having the option to set the grass to that level of draw distance without losing the rest of the graphical fidelity would make this game look so much better!
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2022
  4. chieflongshin

    chieflongshin Well-Known Member

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    The grass pop in on Sehs from dartford is not eye pleasing
     
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  5. chacal#2181

    chacal#2181 Well-Known Member

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    The lack of graphical options may be linked to the fact that for consoles they want to keep it simple, however there is, no reason to not give some advanced options to PC users at least.
     
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  6. Compared to other games I have that are multi platform, TSW has several graphics options whereas other games have a couple of dozen graphics options.

    I think tsc has more graphics options than tsw?
     
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  7. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    Of course DTG could include more graphics options for PC just like basically all PC games do but as we know, DTG has no time and no money for such silly things.

    "The people" want DLCs an this makes DTG money

    Seriously...it's just a matter of time before the "DTG has no time and is a small company, also I want more DLCs" brigade arrives here ;)

    And, as we know...this (more options) will never happen, at least not with TSW3...maybe 4 or 5.
    No matter how much they "look into it".
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2022
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  8. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    I’m not (for once) criticising DTG here. Just asking that they give very serious consideration to allowing PC players of the game to have the option of settings the graphics to match their machine.

    That is certainly the case with draw distance across all areas, but particularly grass. I just don’t see how anyone benefits from locking it down in this way.

    Something weird is happening with this MaterialQualityLevel command anyway, as all the UE4 documentation I can find does not in any way suggest that setting the quality to low should massively increase the grass draw distance.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2022
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  9. zappatime

    zappatime Well-Known Member

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    For me, by far the worst visual problem is the rail shadow that is only drawn a few feet in front of you, it can be seen quite clearly in every live stream being drawn in rather haphazardly, some times smoothly, sometimes plopping in in 6 foot chunks or darting about in terms of how far it gets drawn, it looks terrible, it's so distracting and immersion killing. God alone knows what's happening to the track alongside the cab in SoS which is literally completely different to that being drawn just ahead of the loco.
     
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  10. I wish there was a way to turn those track shadows off. Also the track draw is concerning, especially on sehs, its a train driving sim, tracks is what you are mainly seeing, all that work put into the sky, don't get me wrong I like the new sky but it's not a flight sim, I'd prefer options to increase track draw distance rather than the quality of the sky.
     
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  11. Something weird is happening with with a lot of the settings. The screen percentage on tsw3 makes a big difference to quality I've noticed. Everything goes blurred if you go below 170%.
     
  12. Cygnific

    Cygnific Well-Known Member

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    It is indeed weird how they made that option work, it is probably a bug because I can't think of a reason why you would do it on purpose.
     
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  13. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    Last edited: Sep 20, 2022
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  14. Cygnific

    Cygnific Well-Known Member

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    Maybe both. ;0 (same for me though, hehe)

    Btw, I just made a reply in another topic with this sort off subject. Do you know if normalmaps are also affected by this setting? I noticed more materials use normalmaps now in TSW3 scenery.
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2022
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  15. JetWash

    JetWash Well-Known Member

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    Trying to figure this out has me well on the road I think!
     
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  16. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    It's just another one of those strange "TSW/DTG" bugs that you will not find in any other game...
    Was the same in TSW2. QHD at 100% looked horrible in TSW2 while it looks super sharp even without AA in all other games.

    So yeah...a TSW/DTG thing
     
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