So after a few weeks away from TSW2 and having downloaded a number of updates at once, what on earth has happened to the lighting on some of the preserved collection routes? This is what North Trans Pennine looks like at 6am on the Autumn clear setting which is what night time should look like. Pretty damn dark: Now this is what East Coastway looks like with exactly the same weather settings at exactly the same time of day. The scenery is bizarrely illuminated: And this is what East Coastway looks like with Autumn cloud. Cloud should be nowhere near as bright at night: What on earth has happened to East Coastway? It's not just East Coastway either. Great Western Express is like this too.
Each route has their own individual lighting settings and properties when set up. Unfortunately for all routes in TSW, all routes for night lighting are far from ideal looking. They suffer from various issues such as glowing assets and no lighting illumination. So you could get a building with no lighting, but it’s material will glow, despite there being no light source. It all looks very odd.
The night lighting in TSW 2 is very very poor. I never play night time services if I can help it and the night based scenarios are painful to play. The night lighting needs urgent improvements across the board, but I can’t see it being a priority. I’ve complained about night lighting for a while and from what I can tell, it’s barely been acknowledged by DTG (if at all).
This depends on the season mainly. For instance at summer you have quite good clarity to drive at 3am without headlights in GWE route, even with a heavy overcast. So if you want to play during night try to pick spring or summer season or it will be too dark to see. The other solution is to take snowy weather as there the ground snow helps to better see the scenery and tracks. I guess the latitude configured for each route also affects the sun cycles so therefore the amount of light at the same time in different routes. At least they are different as far as I have seen. Cheers
I wonder if what we are seeing now with trains and scenery "glowing" from ambient lighting is a result of previous feedback about routes like NTP being too dark at night. I never had a problem with it, personally, and vastly prefer the more natural dark looks than the artificially-illuminated entities in the newer routes. Cheers
Yes they tweaked the environmental lights (Matt explained it in one of the post this weekend). This is another example of 3am but with snow, as I said in the one above. With this weather you can also have better night driving while still being dark outside. Without snow it will be pitch dark outside. Cheers
There is an easy answer about NTP. That is. It's grim up north. I have to say I am another one who actually likes it dark. As the lights on the front of the trains in the 80s where more for people to see the train, than the train to see people. It just needs a little more light around Leeds and Manchester though.
