That wasn't sarcasm. It was something I'd not really noticed before. I normally don't do services at night.
Oh dear, newmoon with reflections of full moon is "the perfect night lighting" for you? And what would be the yellow reflection on the left (and what you can't see in the pic because of the bridge is that this reflection repeats on the right side as well)? Reflecting WHAT exactly? This is as surreal as it can get. But of course, people are entitled to like it.
I was being sarcastic. I can clearly see what's wrong with it. Stupid autocorrect decided to say something different.
I'll let the screenshots speak for themselves. The last one is Kassel Wurzburg and shows the contrast. It is excellent. The cloud shadows are excellent. Lots of screenshots are photoreal and it is difficult to tell if it is real life or from the game. So I'll let the screenshots do the talking.
Agree. Luzern Sursee, Rapid Transit and others you must have summer time season and near lunch time. Otherwise it is like you are looking through tinted sunglasses and throught a dark tint windscreen. Even winter in Europe is not that dark!!! TSW3 lighting and TSW4 lighting is amazing 20/10! Very realistic.
I'm judging just by youtube vids, becasue I don't own the game, but I see there a lot of the same issues that TSW has, i.e. total lack of ambient light at nigh ( at 9:50). It's the same, as we have in TSW, pitch blackness with few white patches representing lit up lights in window. No big city is this dark, unless there is a power outage. For a game that is all in a big city I consider this the opposite of a well done lighting. Similary when I look on the comparison video (Hmmsim Metro - Comparison with the real city), I see there the same shadows issues and foliage lodding that I see in TSW. DTG is very sloppy when comes to proper implementation and playtesting (i.e. how the heck did the in-cab signal lights in ÖBB 4024 Talent 1 pass QC? Even on full brightness you can barely see the PZB lights). They also need to start finetuing their system post launch, and work on small fixes continuously, like why the heck do we still have that ugly rain texture, where the droplets are obviously made from aluminium, as they reflect that much light, or the super powerfull tailights on BR 425 on Bremen - Oldenburg. But if you start to examine close, you'll also see that a lot of the issues TSW has are also present in other UE games. ACC also has a lot of the same shadow and lighting issue.
From what I’ve seen as a complete laymen UE4 is just a total pig to set up properly. It seems that every single light needs setting up with specific parameters etc to work properly, so to make a harmonious scene is not at all easy. However, my issue with TSW is that DTG have had years to sort this out, to learn what they need to do and to fine tune the process and ensure that that process is then followed with every light in every DLC going forward, both DTG and third party. That hasn’t happened, and we still have the same crappy night lighting as we did in CSX:HH. Environmental lights are not set up properly and lots do not come on based on a seasonal curve or ambient lighting but on a stock 7pm-7am setting (despite being told this had been consigned to the past), TMS screens are too bright and don’t have the dimmers set up correctly, instrument lights are either too bright or too dim, PIS can be too bright, too dim or not visible at all, tunnels are still just a complete dogs dinner (I mean how, in a 7+ year old game that simulates trains can you still not set up lighting in a tunnel reliably and consistently) and so on and so on. The list is endless. This stuff could be forgiven in the early days as it was all new to DTG, but it would appear they have no processes in place at all to set a standard workflow for this sort of thing then ensure it is applied 100% of the time. It is completely unacceptable that tunnels on Antelope Valley are brightly lit when going through them. How in the hell is that still happening? It absolutely blows my mind that this sort of sloppiness is still going on, and I worry that the people that matter in DTG have become so habituated to this that they no longer see the need to change.
ps Also Voralburg - night lighting on a flagship launch route. I can’t figure it out. Is it meant to be some sort of sick joke? People pay actual money for this stuff, or did we forget that?
Nice screenshots, not going to lie. But now what about these? Lit up snow effect in the dark. Absence of glow around lights. Locomotive headlight shiny when looked at from the sides, but dim when looked at from the front. Tunnel lighting darkness suddenly changing mid tunnel. Headlight brigh as the sun in reflections, but dim when looking at it directly. Station light appearing lit up when looking at it from beneath, but pitch black when looking at it from the sides. Now you could argue that all of these are old routes, but then we have the Boston Sprinter TOD4 update, which resulted in this. And this effect on the glass of the F40PH gauges. And in this pitch black collectible poster. And of course, the beautiful tunnel lighting! So as I said earlier, TSW can generate some beautiful screenshots, that's for sure. I also have many pretty screenshots in my library. But at other times it will keep doing things like these. And all of these are the result of the lighting, brightness and material values not being set properly.
