PC Eye Adaption/exposure Is Way Too Aggressive In Tsw 3

One thing I don’t like about the eye adaption feature is how it automatically increases exposure in dark areas.

Often when I’m travelling by the side of a tree row, it’ll automatically make everything unrealistically bright, including inside of the cab. This obviously doesn’t happen in real life, but I see DTG have gone for more of a camera effect as opposed to how our eyes react. I’m not sure if it is just an issue on SEHS but I personally do not like it.

It’s like the game is constantly trying to auto compensate for light whenever it goes dark. This also makes cloudy days look too bright and washed out in my opinion. There's also a noticeable lack of deep and black looking shadows.

An example can be seen in the image below. Travelling at 10:00 on a September day with light clouds. You can see how the game has automatically increased the exposure as the train travels in a darker area, making it look way too bright and washed out.

I am running with stock settings, with no ini tweaks which will affect lighting.

This issue only seems to happen during the day. Early morning, evenings and nights are fine. I have a theory that lighting has not been as finetuned on SEHS compared to the German and American TSW 3 routes. The Liverpool to Crewe route also seems to suffer from this over exposure issue.

 

The lighting in the screenshot looks good to me, but of course, we all see the lighting and colour differently.

Then again, I don't have TSW3, so my opinion may not be as valid as yours.

 

Grab the Bescot mod. 1a probably the best. It helps a lot, until/if DTG give us some sort of control over the effect which as you say is horrid and blights the new German route and Cajon too,

 

For me it is OK overall but SEHS differs from the new routes in the "washed" direction, maybe. Or it is just an impression.

 

I dont think DTG will do something like that

 

Me too, as unlike the save game situation I don’t think there has been one official comment about the adaptive eye complaints. We are back to the used car salesman on that one, “bought as seen”.

The other thing I’m starting to find a bit irksome is the over dramatic lightning effect. Came across this last night doing a night time trip on RSN. It is really quite intrusive literally exploding in front of the cab with a bright flash. Thankfully I’m not epileptic but by god that could cause serious issues for anyone who is.

 

My current take on this is that the eye adaptation in TSW3 is closer to how a camera behaves and is not representative of how human eyes behave, even if they've gotten the numbers correct and straight from Wikipedia, or something like that #science

When exiting tunnels in TSW3 the exit is overexposed to the point where it's all white and you can't see a thing until seconds later after exiting. For example, is this how human eyes perceive the same situation when driving a car in and out of tunnels? I'm curious now as I don't remember being blinded like that IRL. If I shut all light out by holding my hands over my eyes, and then remove them, my eyes adapt rather quickly it seems. I don't get blinded either. Maybe there's something wrong with my eyes, haha.

If you go to 10:40 in the video below you can see how overexposed a real-life camera gets similar to TSW3:


I'd like to see this effect being toned down too, if possible.

 

As mentioned earlier, it seems DTG has adapted more of a camera effect as opposed to how our eyes see things.

For example, when nearing the tunnel exit, everything outside of the tunnel is totally washed out and cannot be seen. This would be an effect a camera has, however our eyes would be able to make out detail beyond the tunnel exit. Similarly, the white ‘flash’ when transitioning from dark to light seems to be too prolonged and dramatic looking in my opinion.

 

Can we get an official response from DTG on this, please?

 

They added brightness/contrast/light intensity sliders in Train Simulator after some 10 years (in TS2020), so there's hope something like this will be added in TSW on its 10th anniversary, too.

 

Motion blur is as well cinematic only & non like IRL too. Etc Etc

So the solution is possibility to ON/OFF or better a slider for adjustements. BR o7

 

DTG Alex Sorry to tag but this is becoming quite an issue for many of us and some official response or indication the complaints are being looked at would be appreciated.

 

Now that's how to make everyone happy, make it adjustable or optional.

 

Hate the the feature, another + for having a switch or slider, it just makes either scenes washout or go really dark depending on where you point the camera.

 

My money is on: "we are looking into it but we can't promise..."

 

I have the feeling that this was not made user controlable because it is meant to be there to hide an ugly shadow effect when exiting darker areas like a tunnel or passing under a bridge.

I remember from TSW 2 that when a train was passing under a bridge, the shadows cast at the exit were unnatural. The coach/locomotive would be darker in its entirety rather that getting out of the shadow as it exits. It was an all or nothing type of shadow cast.
The "eye adaptation" will definitely resolve this as you won't be able to see it anymore so they don't have to fix the shadow cast and make it behave properly.

Otherwise, why not allow users to set its intensity and even switch it on or off!?

 

The eye adaptation should NOT be disabled. Disabling eye adaptation would make any routes with the new lighting (ahem, excuse me for the cliche but in this instance it is completely valid) LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE. Here are a couple of screenshots from SKW with eye adaptation disabled:


Riveting gameplay, no?

What can (and indeed should) happen is for the ability to adjust the transition periods of the auto-exposure, what Epic Games calls the Speed Up and Speed Down times, to be given. What could also help is the ability to adjust the luminance threshold for transitions to begin (i.e., more sensitive so that transitions happen before the tunnel exit) however this can have knock-on effects for cabs either being way too dark or bright in direct sunlight.

The auto-exposure is here to stay. The new lighting system cannot function without it or you will get the above screenshots as a result. We need to tune the system that we have.

Cheers

 

Could be correct and why, despite the ping, DTG refuse to answer the point.

 

So they messed up the implementation badly?

 

I understand that you think that offering glib remarks of cynicism at every opportunity is clever but I would say the implementation of the auto-exposure is generally quite good. The ability to tweak certain parameters would be nice, however.

Cheers

 

I agree. I really like the effect. it just needs tweaking slightly.

 

The real question is if and when this tweak will come.

 

And if you try to use the ICE 1 on older routes with full headlights you will see that the lights on the 401 are way to bright

 

TrainSim-Matt One thing I’ve noticed is that during the day, the SEHS route looks significantly washed out compared to the KWG and US routes for TSW 3. Low light and night lighting looks fine, however day scenes don’t seem to look ‘right’ in my opinion. The highlights and exposure seems to be blown out, making everything look way too bright.

There’s also an issue with the trees looking very pale and washed out, with them producing little to no shadows and/or ambient occlusion. This has been recognised by quite a few players amongst discussion. You’ll notice it when driving on SEHS, that the trees will just look very flat and pale looking. Like there’s very little colour to them.

 

TrainSim-Matt As we’ve been discussing it on Discord around this very subject, just wondered if you might be able to settle this, as per this thread;

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/distant-field-shadows-tsw3.59852/

Although I think the new lighting is a fair improvement (dawn, dusk and night has been completely transformed so very well done there!) I do think that the new routes, particularly SEHS and KWG (I’ve not really had chance to look at Cajon yet) feel like RSN or San Jose because many aspects of the image aren’t getting any shadowing at all. I thought this situation had been vastly improved with the use of Distant Field Shadows but it almost feels like they’re not working on these new routes. The crazy bright trees/fields/distant scenery that fills in with detail as the train moves along is back again which is a huge shame. Playing that ‘Cornish Circle’ scenario on WCL really looks like it’s the new game, not the other way around, as the trees all look like they should, the distant scenery looks realistic and the shadows that fall onto the track (not the track shadow itself) draw all the way out to the vanishing point.

There’s further info in this thread also…

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/a-plea-to-dtg-regarding-draw-distance.59752/

 

Thanks for the info. I’m on PC but that might explain what’s going on. I’d noticed that IOW22 and WLC seem to have surprisingly good shadow draw, so that would perhaps suggest Rivet have used less by the way of spline assets. Does that apply to trees then too?

If it’s correct and the DFS’s are enabled then so be it, it just looks so much like older routes and it’s surprising that the two tone world has reappeared with vengeance.

That is great news! Fixing that problem could almost have the same transformative effect as altering the lighting so knowing that it’s being addressed is fantastic.

Just re this MaterialQualityLevel=0 .ini command, am I right that something odd is happening there? Obviosuly we can’t edit it in any other way than using the engine.ini but it seems strange that setting the Material Quality level to low (from what I assume is high) should cause the grass render distance to increase dramatically. I’m surprised the two are connected in any way at all, I haven’t managed to find any UE4 documentation to suggest they are.

Is there any way the grass render distance can be potentially unlocked as an optional slider? That would equally be a game-changer visually IMHO.

Cheers & thanks,

JW

 

I just wear my shades and it's like playing tsw2.

 

I really like the effect and hope it doesn't get removed.

 

Glad to hear it's being looked at but would have thought with hindsight something which had such a severe effect on graphics without being subject to user control should perhaps have been held over until it could be (controlled or adjusted).

 

Hi again TrainSim-Matt,

Just to confirm exactly what it is I was talking about on these routes, this is exactly 1745L on Sept 22nd using the Autumn Clear custom weather preset. The top image is from SEHS extended, the bottom image from WCL.

Cheers

 

One thing I highly recommend you PC users to adjust is the DF scale.

This is 1 (default) vs 10. Changing it only gave me a small performance hit. The command is r.DFDistanceScale (number)

 

I should have added that in those shots I took I already had that DFDistanceScale=10 command active, shadow distance set to 2 (both in the .ini) and Bescots eye adaption mod 1a active.

Without all that it looks considerably worse as LM has demonstrated. I think we surely can agree something isn’t right, it really does look like the DFS aren’t working as they should.

Here's what the vanilla game looks like for me on Ultra Settings. Those distant trees look identical to how San-Jose to San-Fran looked when it first released (SEHS Extended first, WCL second)

 

Where do you get this preset?

 

If you’re still on TSW2 then just change the weather to Autumn clear. On TSW3 you can change the exact date.

Using the GodMode mod you can also set the exact time.

 

Why can't you remove the shadows from the rail(s) or atleast a option to turn it off? (And a rework on the imposters would be nice also.)

 

Thanks for the reply Matt, and glad to see it's being looked at. Not a easy task, but a nice challenge though.

 

TrainSim-Matt Is there any way you can adjust and/or control the exposure of the sky? As soon as you look down from the sky, you loose a lot of detail from the sky and clouds.

In other words, is it possible to have higher dynamic range?

 

I find snow actually helps balance out the exposure a lot better compared to dry/non-snowy weather. I think its because the game automatically tries to increase the exposure against the dark ballast and terrain, which washes out both the sky and ground.

Here you can see both are nicely balanced out, with the clouds retaining their individual details. With no snow everything would look pretty washed out.

It sounds like the auto exposure gain needs to be adjusted on SEHS.

 

Even in the screenshots of the RHTT, you can see how much SEHS suffers from this problem.

Just look at the grass a trees, very pale looking with zero shadowing and/or ambient occlusion, making it look very flat. There’s also no variation in greenery.

I’ve made a quick edit of the default (top picture) vs how I think it should look (bottom picture)

 

Is there any update with this TrainSim-Matt?

Just exiting the tunnel here and this is way, way too aggressive with blowing out and overexposing everything outside of the tunnel. At this stage in real life, the human eye would've adapted to the outside world.

I assume the eye adaption isn't linked to the speed at which you're travelling at, but instead it always responds in the same way regardless?

 

Hope there is an update

 

I'd love for the eye adaption to be more center focused. That way you'd get proper exposure "WHERE YOU'RE LOOKING", instead of trying to balance the whole screen space.
Either that, or a wider dynamic range, but people would cry about washed out images then, probably. It's certainly one of those "can't win" scenarios for the devs.

 

Did you read the roadmap?

 

Is there any update for a fix which resolves the medium cloud setting, which makes everything significantly brighter and washed out, DTG Matt?

Iirc this bug goes way back from the launch of TSW?

 

Where do I add this in engine.ini? Just at the bottom or do I need to add [SystemSettings] first?

 

Add add [SystemSettings] first.

 

This is still a problem for me on PS5, whenever i am driving with weather where there is some sun, the sky is blown out, andwhenever i am at a station witch a roof, its so bad thst everything the sunlight hits will be blown out.

would be good to have some sort of maximum brightnes and minimum darknes sliders for lighting/HDR

I even tried to adjust my HDR settings on the console without any luck