As per the title says, the night lighting in this route should be the new standard for ALL upcoming TSW routes from now on. It may not look as good as the Dresden - Riesa route, however it still looks miles better than what we have in every other route. As per the same preference as Matt, I like driving at night, when it actually looks and feels like night. The 'fake' moonlight/artificial lighting we have in all other routes, which makes nights look too bright, is a big immersion killer for me, personally. It would be a shame for this route to be another 'one off' in terms of the night lighting, with all other DLCs retaining the same sub-standard, mediocre night lighting. Lets hope this is a new turning point for DTG when building routes. It'd certainly make me, and perhaps some of you guys, play services at night if we could get that same level of lighting standard across the board, for all DLCs from now on. Update: For those of you playing on PC, you’re in luck. See here for more information.
DTG Team Hopefully, the team will implement this to all the old routes and the upcoming ones. I think Adam's team is the one that does this, but I'm not sure. I also agree the nighttime lighting is a little much better than what we had on all the other old routes.
I subscribe to this to other features that evolved over time. I would understand them not using all the features available if their routes DLC system would be with tiers like mobile device manufacturer has (flagship, mid-tier, low tier etc. each at a different price level) but DTG sells all their routes for the same standard price so why after having access to a new tool they don\t use it to make all routes of higher quality from there on? I absolutely fell in love visually with Dresden - Chemnitz, at least from what I've seen, but it feels like they failed short of making an excellent route by not adding the lighting because of time constraints. Again. Or maybe like PegasusLeosRailwayFanatix says it's another thing to be added later by the Preservation crew.
I need to be the voice of dissent here. Nights are too dark and we need an option to make things brighter, not darker!
Here I have to agree. Simple example: go outside on a dark night and wait a moment for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. In our light-polluted modern world, you can actually see quite a lot. At the very least you can always see some kind of outlines. It's only really pitch black if you stand in the middle of a pine forest and look down (and there is no moon and lots of clouds).
What I always have to think of with the request for darker nights is Clinchfield. Due to the frequent switching and horrendous headlights, the night services are borderline unplayable or at least un-fun (depending on your definition of both terms). To my mind, what we really need are two things: Prototypical headlights. The BRD locos are already a step in the right direction, but especially US-strength headlights still seem to be problematic. A toggle/slider for moonlight. Give everyone the option to choose for themselves whether they want realistic dark nights or light game nights. That‘s the only way to satisfy everyone.
Completely agree, especially about the abysmal headlights. A very good route spoiled by the inability to drive after dark.
Totally agree. I'm all in favor of settings and sliders, however, so people can have it how they want.
This inconsistency with the night lighting from route to route drives me nuts or to drink, whatever's nearby. If DTG ever do come up with a solution, settings and sliders would be great, except that our console siblings don't have the sliders that PC players have even now, so parity would take another hit. So much of this game seems like Catch 22.
DRA is the only route i can really drive at night enjoyably. I also share the opinion that night is way too dark, generally- i think if we're sticking with the current lighting system, then the reflective signage from DRA needs to be the standard going forward.
There's no reason consoles can't have adjustable graphics settings fwiw. Plenty of Xbox games allow quite a bit of customization. DTG has chosen not to allow it, for whatever reason.
It’s far too soon to be saying it should be the standard when none of us have even got the route to evaluate how it looks at various times of night and in different conditions. Taking away all ambient light, plus the ambient moonlight (but leaving the reflected moonlight) completely in DRA plus the oversaturated artificial light that casts no shadows made that route’s night lighting truly awful. The reflective signs were great and more light sources seen in the scenery was most welcome but the night cycle was completely ruined. But that was DRA. As I say, it’s far too soon to say how good or bad this is, or whether it is an improvement on either the old lighting or the first failed attempt to make it better on DRA. The system needs to be changed rather than butchering the current system with bad settings just to make it darker.
I’ve got to be honest, I just had a quick look at the stream and I’m not overly impressed with this ‘new’ night lighting at all. Yeah, it’s very marginally better than what we’ve had before, but it’s still complete rubbish in comparison to TS1. You know TS1, it’s the 15 year old DX9 game who’s lighting knocks spots off TSW in every respect (with the AP skies/weather packs of course). This new lighting looks to have less of the artificial light but the train itself was still incorrectly lit when they switched to the outside view. No light source looked to be casting light anywhere and there is zero eye adaption (which is surely absolutely critical?). It’s gone from being totally wrong for one set of reasons, to almost as totally wrong but for a whole new set of reasons. What is wrong with UE4 that DTG are finding this so much of a struggle? Why does it look just so consistently wrong?
Long story short their dynamic TOD system they use is flawed. The current ‘patch work’ they keep doing fixes one issue but introduces a new problem somewhere else. I think some of the materials in the assets aren’t set up correctly, as well. That’s why some assets glow and other don’t. It’ll require a complete overhaul for things to look and act correctly. Something I don’t expect to come anytime soon.
We need to have a sliding scale for night lighting. Having a full moon and no moon and everything in between - like the weather sliders. Surely this is something that can be easily implemented.
I always thought the night effects were best on LIRR, don't know if it was done different to other routes though.
I'm glad I'm not the only person who is frustrated by night lighting. On London Commuter for example, I just can't play at night with no cloud cover, the amount of stars make it look a bit like day time - in fact, for most services at night I normally put it as foggy. Moreover, on this particular route, I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but the mornings in winter seem the best time for adequate night lighting compared to late evenings or the middle of the night.
What's frustrating is that lighting is such a fundamental element of video gaming, especially simulation, that it ought to be triaged to the very top of the list of issues to be solved. Yet for DTG it seems to be the elephant in the room. Go figure!
Echoing some of the other thoughts here, but I don't want either of the Dresden routes night lighting standard until: 1- Headlights get fixed and actually illuminate in front of you like a light should, particularly in the US. The reflective signs were a neat feature, but there's also a disconnect that the sign is reflecting light when it first comes into view, but the sign itself isn't visible/readable until it's about 5m in front of you, the ICE3 is the first thing that comes to mind for this. 2- The overly saturated orange military-grade spotlight station lighting in Riesa-Dresden is fixed or removed 3- A gamma slider (and/or other light configurations) is added to settings so those of us, like myself, that don't want absolute darkness can still see Off the top of my head Ghost of Tsushima did night lighting really well, it felt dark, but there was still enough ambient light you could make out where you were and what you were doing.
Yes, this is really annoying and I do hope it gets fixed at some point. I have seen on the stream that the 612 seems to still have the same problem. So, basically the only advantage you have with the reflective signs is, that you know a sign is coming. Once it would be close enough to read it, it gets too dark again and you are left to read it the last 5m it passes your train. Room for improvement, I would say… The 185 in DRA does the best job of keeping it bright in my opinion.
You want to make something no one has seen standard? I mean it may well be the way forward, but let's not jump the gun and was lyrical about it until we've got our hands on it.
Just on the note about incorrectly set up assets, the museum poster collectible on L2B is a perfect example. Unless it has a light shining directly at it you can’t see it at all. How on Earth did that make it past QA? The poster on West Somerset is the same. Just not enough care and attention put into making the assets.
