Just getting back into TSW2 really, loving the GWE port over. However, just had a play on Sandpatch with Spring clear weather and noticed some really nice realistic high level cirrus cloud - however, I cant seem to replicate on GWE or NTP? Is this weather specific to Sandpatch? I must admit ,TSW2 seems to be getting better and better. Little bits like these really add to the immersion, for me anyway!
The new weather stuff is part of TSW2. GWE, and NTP are a couple routes that are "preserved" meaning no major changes to the route, so they are the same as they were in TSW2020 SPG in TSW2 is brand new because it was such an old route and needed an upgrade. The only thing it shares with the TSW version is the locos included and the represented route.
Unfortunately these new cloud features are only available on TSW 2 routes, with HH too. The older TSW 1 routes still have those ugly, flat looking clouds.
Ah Ok, thanks, makes sense. I just assumed wrongly that weather was common to both. Bodes well for the future though.
I’m hoping one of the things on the ‘Preserved Teams’ hit-list is to bring Skys 2.0 into the older routes. It would be a big (and relatively easy I would have thought) QOL upgrade for older content, particularly as they’re releasing DLC for preserved routes.
There is a Sky 2.0?! All my clouds look flat and lifeless. The only difference is that the flat clouds get moved when it's windy in the new content.
Only in new TSW 2 routes do the improved clouds feature. If you select Spring Clear, you will see a realistic ‘small like’ clouds called cirrus clouds. I personally think they should just redo the clouds altogether as there is a clear distinction between new and old looking clouds. It just doesn’t look good at all.
Sky is terrible, in plain words. It´s a skybox background with some flat clouds textures tuned with diferent bloom levels and transparency that move around as time pass by, and the color/light adjustments to match the sunrise and dawn cycles in the route geo area. It does its job, but honestly I don´t see any improvement other than they used different texture sets. So preserved content gets no update for no reason other than laziness. But as sky sets appears to be linked to each route to match the route enviromental conditions, as it has been since first train simulator, we have those bizarre situations. If they had created an idependent and global weather + sky system, as they already had it in Flight Sim World indeed, and feed it with variables such as route geo position and the route local time it would be much better and powerful, as it could be used by any route and it could inject the weather in the sky, the sky colors and ambient light with shaders, the skybox texture itself and the sun position with much more flexibility for them, allowing realtime weather even if they wanted. Also updates to weather system would be easier as routes would not need to be touched. Anyway this is what we have... To me the main problem is that there´s 0 changeability in weather. If you set a 10% coverage the same thing turns around during 24 hours. If you set rain it rains till end of 2021 if you leave game running. At least some dynamic changeability should be implemented. Cheers
This is the issue we face in TSW/2. It's because each route has its own independent lighting setups, it varies massively between routes. Some look good and others look outright awful. They really need to centralise the lighting system so all routes have the same, good looking lighting and bloom levels.
To be honest I would even pay for a proper weather DLC... I´m serious. It´s like with flight simulators. If there´s room for improvement, use it to make money. There´s always people willing to have such things. If I were Matt I would paint all routes skies in a generic green chroma and start from scratch, injecting the weather, the clouds textures to simulate volumetric clouds at different altitudes, skybox textures, sun light source and color shaders independently per scenario and in real time on top of it. Cheers