Hello, while passing through tunnels in Ruhr sieg Nord with the BR185.2, i noticed the walls of the tunnels don't show any reflection of light. They stay dark, eventhough the headlight is on. I had the same bug on the Long Island Railroad with the M7 and decided to investigate. This is how it looked: And this is how it looked from outside, facing the headlights: As you can clearly see, the lights are on and behaving as they should, reflecting off the wall, ceiling, and track. But when you look at it from behind, still from the outside, this is what happens: Pitch black. The lights are still on, but the reflection is not visible from behind the light source. This is how it should look: I tested this with every locomotive and found this: -Long Island Railroad The M7 has this issue. -Ruhr Sieg Nord The BR185.2 has this issue. The BR143 works but the lighting is very dim, and if you get a couple of meters too far behind the locomotive, you can't see the lighting anymore. (i believe for framerate saving reasons) The 767.2 DABpbzfa cab car's headlights are working as they should. -West Somerset Railway The class 33 has this issue. Couldn't see the reflection on the class 47, the headlight is too dim for the time of day (17:50 is the darkest time at which there's a service on WSR). The class 09 only gets marker lights, so it's normal that it doesn't light the way. -CSX:HH, Rapid Transit, NEC:NY All locomotives' headlights perform as they should. -Northern Trans-Pennine Locomotives with marker lights only, no headlights. All OK. I hope i've been clear with what was wrong. If you want to reproduce this "bug", simply choose one of the locomotives which i wrote down above in bold, and spin the camera around the locomotive with headlights on, prefferably at night. UPDATE: I just got a new graphics card (GTX 1050ti), so i've been able to crank the graphics up to the high preset, and this issue disappeared. I was previously using a GTX 750ti on medium preset.
I believe this is just screen space reflections at work, when behind the headlight you can't see the headlight so the SSR on the track won't show the reflection because it simply isn't there, whereas if you're in front the headlights are on screen so do show a reflection. Think this is basically a limitation of game engines in general and can't really be fixed. https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Rendering/PostProcessEffects/ScreenSpaceReflection
Keep in mind, in general, North American locomotives have extremely bright headlights that light up hundreds of feet, if not more, down the track. They are in place for crews to be able to see obstructions on the track, as well as for others to see the approaching train clearly. However, in many other countries, the UK included, most locomotive lights are actually very dim. The only real purpose they serve is for others to see the train approaching. They do not provided very much illumination for the driver. In most of these cases, the track is simply expected to be clear of obstructions. Different theories of operation.