Is it just me or does it rain an awful lot in tsw? 9 times out of 10 I'll start a service on a nice clear day for it to start raining or snowing. I know it's winter but it don't rain every single day.
If you're using the default system time, you're in Autumn - so yes it will rain a lot. try changing the date to a summery date and it will rain a heck of a lot less
I see. Yes I like to play with default system time. I still think it's a bit much for this time of year, I remember it used to rain a lot in the UK but not anymore. I'm guessing the weather patern is just randomised dependent on season then? I thought it was random by the day, so some days it rains and others it don't. Thanks.
The whole thing is randomised. I explained it in another thread somewhere. Essentially the game has four distinct weather patterns, within each weather pattern you have weather states like "clear", "cloudy", "light rain" etc and then each state has a chance of moving to another state - so you might say start at "light cloud", and after some random amount of time it might decide to take you to light rain, or by some other random chance, it might take you to clear skies and it just wanders around the weather pattern randomly based on that. I think the percentages need tweaking, agreed, however. Matt.
I think that’s quite well done! What I did notice though is that it often starts to rain even though there are almost no clouds above! About every 10th time the weather changes to rain it has a clear blue sky above and almost no clouds; maybe that could be changed at some point?
The problem there is that "light clouds" is adjacent to "light rain"; but in "light clouds" the cloud cover can sometimes be very light indeed. Overall, though, the percentages in the progression tree need to be rebalanced; I believe some time ago somebody reverse-engineered the system and found that there was an (accidental) statistical bias towards weather worsening more often than improving. Also, it rains way too much in spring. When I choose April or May it's because I want a pretty drive!
My thoughts on dynamic weather improvements: - We really need a 'haze' option - like a very light fog. You can occasionally see this during a transition in or out of fog and it looks super atmospheric. - There doesn't appear to be an 'overcast' option so we go directly from pretty sunny light clouds to rain - a thoroughly British overcast / full cloud option would be excellent and help smooth some of the transitions. - The transitions could do with being a little slower generally - particularly into / out of stormy weather - Some variation in temperature would be useful in winter, not just across the course of the day but more generally as at the moment every time there is precipitation in winter it's almost always snow, whereas I'd like a good mix of rain / snow as per reality (for most places). The temperatures generally seem very low particularly for the UK routes. - I wonder how difficult it would be to implement rainbows? Not a priority though. Overall though I really like dynamic weather and it brings a lot to the game.
It’s a balance because some players only play for like an hour at a time but still want to see weather changes. Others will run a few hours long session and would prefer more realistic changes over the day. All said the current system is still improved from day 1 where you’d basically be facing a biblical storm within 10 minutes of starting any service.
The problem seems to be, once it starts raining it never stops - just continues to decline into an endless thunderstorm. Should also go the other way and brighten up after a bit.
I agree with a previous comment that there needs to be a "heavy clouds" setting between light clouds and rain/snow. Also currently I use the default time, which is obviously winter for now, and on every run it gets foggy after a while. But in my opinion it doesn't make sense to get random thick fog in the middle of Cajon Pass at noon, for example. I think fog should be rebalanced to have a lower chance of appearing.
Are these percentages set per route, or are they set globally and only depend on a date/time, temperature and perhaps latitude of the route? (Sorry if it's something obviouis, but I haven't played in TSW3 yet, so I don't really know if I can expect a similar pattern on a desert in North America to what I would encounter for example near London.)
I think this is global. I may be wrong but I've seen the same weather patterns in the UK and us, like cajon pass, started a service and within minutes it's started to rain, same as Clinchfield and uk and German routes.
I have experienced these weather patterns. Like on sehs where ill start a service, sunny and gone to fog then snow then back to sunny. Cjp I've experienced fog half way thru a service then it's gone back to sunshine or rain then sunshine.
In case you're not aware, this brilliant must-have mod solves all your weather issues. You can change the weather in realtime. https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/mods/c3-train-sim-world/c75-utilities/i2703-tsw-god-mode-alpha-020
Interestingly, on mountainous routes like the US freight routes, the temperature does change as elevation changes; I have started in rain, climbed up into snow, and descended into rain again. However, there was also one weird effect: on a SKW run, it started in snow, but just at 0 C, and it turned to rain. But when it turned to rain, suddenly all the snow accumulation vanished as if by magic!
