Night time in TSW3 routes: I saw some posts about headlights and would like to elaborate and ask for DTG to assist? Hopefully the fix can be done rather quickly. Or is there a fix we can apply ourselves? I found a video to demonstrate. Is it possible that headlights can have beam? In Cajon Pass the SD70 seems to have lack of this beam. Light is dispersed in a 120-150 degree angle but there is no beam that represents the headlight in the middle (not ditch lights). Is it missing? Even though it is Norway you will find US equipment is no lacking in the central beam either. I think the other US locomotives also don't emit strong beams. I will go and test.
That's just a limitation of how the headlights are implemented. I don't know whether it's changed or not but from a while back I remember dtg explaining how us freight headlights are extremely bright which you can see from far away. You want headlights to also not cast during the day but cast during the night. Tsw couldn't do that. Making the headlights bright during the night also made it bright during the day. Ai freight with their headlights on bright could blind you or due to how bright the headlights are, could wash out the environment.
I think the OP is discussing a different problem, which affects every train (except the 612), not just the American ones. In a nutshell, the light emanates from a headlight in a cone- but actually only the surface of the cone; it's hollow rather than solid. This is why, for example, trackside signs are illuminated but you can't see down the tracks, and why you get nice illumination of tunnel walls to either side but can't see down the tunnel.
Well how come street lights and station lights can illuminate the pavement better than a locomotive light?
This topic has been brought up quite a few times in the past and is a real bummer. The headlights/flares look totally unrealistic and I really hope DTG can fix it in the future.
Most of us just want to make the centre globes (2) as bright as the ditch lights. It seems the ditch lights are bright near the track but the centre lights have no brightness. In reality you can see the track for about 75-125m. The globes are much brighter than car headlights. I hope this can be fixed in the next 12 months by DTG etc. A quote from a thread on a forum below: "It's a very narrow beam (about 4°). 200,000 candela (1 candela=1 candlepower) average intensity over 4° equals about 800 lumens. Probably when you account for the inefficiency of focusing at such a narrow angle you might need closer to 2,000 or 3,000 lumens. A 200W light can easily deliver this. In fact, that report I linked to shows the 200W headlights putting out well over 200,000 candela. LED manufacturers use the same trick. A 10 candela LED with a 20° beam angle only puts out about 1 lumen (actually about 25% more counting what's outside the main beam). It looks very bright. However, if the same light were spread out over 180° (i.e. a hemisphere), the intensity would only be about 0.2 candela-not conspicuous at all." https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/what-light-did-i-see-on-the-front-of-a-train.56182/#:~:text=Locomotive headlight wattage was determined to range between 200 and 350 watts.&text=Short answer-locomotive headlights are blindingly bright and visible for miles.
Looking at the video it seems the headlight is 3 times brighter than the ditch lights, if not twice as bright. In TSW3 it might be just the headlight is missing totally apart from the globes being lit, but has the rollingstock actually got the headlight set to illuminate in the route? The ditch lights work. But the headlight is totally missing.
