Night Lighting

During the recent preview streams, I can recall very little night driving. And almost no critical discussion of night lighting by the DTG personnel. There seems to be a reluctance to showcase any route at night. The usual excuse is that, to paraphrase, we want to show the route scenery in all its glory during full daylight.

But night lighting is a critical factor for me because I would like to enjoy the routes 24/7. I can't do that on many routes such as BCC, Cathcart and Glossop and some older routes.

Is it because of some technical limitation in UE? Don't think so because some older routes are fun to drive at night, like SPG and BML, for instance.

So what could be the explanation for such poor night lighting on Voralberg, for example?

I really would like a definitive answer if anyone can provide one. It's so frustrating not to be able to drive at night. Here in the States we are used to seeing the world clearly at night, especially in Metro areas, but also in the boonies with all manner of ambient lighting, including moonlight and artificial light from buildings and highways.

Anyone??

 

Good question! However marketing 101: show them what looks pretty and will drive sales. Savvy customers will question what is not being shown. There's usually a good reason behind it, and it's generally never in the customer's favour.

 

Simple answer really. It's due to the night lighting being complete garbage and DTG not bothering to make improvements. They know that this is something players want improved but they haven't bothered and if they do show it and it isn’t good, they get called out for it.

Maybe they can finally have the guts to show it off during the ecml stream but I wouldn't be surprised if they come up with some nonsense excuse to avoid showing it off

 

You’ve hit the nail on the head. The TSW franchise is not an “outstanding” product, it’s “satisfactory” overall with some routes/vehicles a bit above or below that line.

Ideally Dovetail Games would hire more devs and support staff and put them to work killing bugs and ironing out inconsistencies in sound, lighting and quality across the board and they’d have standards that would prevent them from releasing a rail simulator with glaring authenticity and quality issues.

But all that costs money and DTG effectively has a monopoly on rail simulators and has a customer base that complains a lot but buys the product anyway (guilty as charged). So from a business perspective they have no incentive to change.

I admit that I am a huge rail nerd and on PS5 the only option I have is TSW so I buy it even though it’s obvious that releasing a top quality product is not DTG’s main concern. But I am under no illusions and don’t pretend that my “relationship” with DTG is something that it’s not. Caveat emptor!

 

The night lighting (let’s face it, most of the lighting) in this game is an absolute joke. I would put a considerable amount of money on it being rubbish in TSW4 too. It is not UE4 that is the problem.

 

Lighting needs rebuilding from the ground up but there seems to be a certain level of arrogance in operation at DTG regarding the situation. We moved from the black tar over everything of TSW2 to the saturated daylight and shiny track of TSW3 and the ridiculous bloom effect leaving tunnels. The one constant though has been the pitiful night lighting. Large cities should be awash with ambient light but it’s like driving through the Gobi Desert, not Glasgow, Birmingham or Manchester. DRA was slightly better but still far from what a large urban area should look like at night. Even out of the towns, on a moonlit night it should not be pitch black.

Would like to invite DTG into this thread to comment on the situation as, for all I’m looking forward to TSW4, TOD4 is still going to leave us with rubbish night lighting.

 

If people haven’t tried it may I suggest you take a look at Bescot’s BCC enhancement pack. In that, and without official tools, he has created something spectacular. If he can do it there is simply no excuse for the actual game to be the way it is.

 

…because it doesn’t work properly right?

 

Real weather doesn’t turn into fog with 70-80% regularity though!

 

I think what JD was saying is that the main reason for not showcasing it at dark immediately or raininy immediately is so people don't turn there noses up at a route just because their first proper glimpse of it is in bleak conditions. I'm pretty sure dtg have showcased every route at least once at night/with a weather condition so that criticism isn't really fair. Alot of people just find routes more appealing when it's bright and sunny. The weather and night time is an interesting feature but the first thing is about letting people see the route and be attracted to the route. Then you can show off all the cool weather and stuff. Get what I'm saying?
Hopefully this helps.

 

DTG JD
I can understand wanting to show off the route in good conditions. I'd want to do the same.

Perhaps what we need is much more of a variety in the showcase streams. I have to say I tune out just watching someone driving the route. Instead it might be more useful if it was a case of here is the route, we picked this section because of XYZ, now here's the same bit in weather, in night and so on.. ending with a nonstop end to end if theres time so people can see it in its entirety while questions are answered.
That might provide a more useful structure.

 

Night lighting is very poor from what I’ve seen. I won’t ever be driving at night unless forced to in a scenario and even then I might have to think twice. I can’t see how anybody could get any enjoyment from doing so.

 

Note what JD says.The problem is not so much individual buildings (well it is in Birmingham and Manchester etc) but the overall ambient effect. In built up areas light pollution from buildings and streetlights means it is never truly dark. Approaching such an area from out in the country you will see the orange glow on the skyline from miles away. And even in the countryside, on a cloudless night with full or fullish moon, from the cab everything should be illuminated with moon glow.

 

It’s both, and everything else inbetween.

 

With respect though, why not just fix the night lighting so it actually looks authentic? In fact I think it's fair to ask why this was not a priority leading into TSW4 assuming it's a core engine issue rather than route based?

 

That’s the nail on the head.

The reason people want to see it in the day is because, generally speaking, the game looks so damn awful at night!

 

This is why I suggested in my post that you do an end to end non-stop (in daylight) during which questions are answered. You could even collate them ahead of time and address the awkward ones with a thoughtful response instead of ignoring them. Include a shorter segment at the start highlighting whatever, then a run through of the various conditions (or features) that are relevant, night for example, or fog.. in short a structure to show off specific things that you can list in the stream header section. It would make editing easier and mean less rambling, engaging in a targeted way with the content as well as with user questions or feedback. You've got deep resources here on the forum in terms of both.

 

You've nailed it, Vern. That's what I wanted to say in my OP, but didn't.
If not now, when is the question. TSW5,6?
I wonder if JT have addressed this issue in their upcoming route?

 

Generally I think both are true. Night lighting is very poor overall.

Showing your new route in dark gloomy weather with YouTube video compression makes the route look awful, and having previously complained about this myself, having the first run in full daylight makes totally sense. Back in TSW2 days with black tar shadows everywhere, even early morning runs looked very unfavorable.

That said, these days the routes generally look like a nuclear blast zone with daylight overly bright. So maybe we need to go back to early morning runs?

 

There is a conundrum here, though. If night lighting is like weather, that is a core feature, why is it so variable? Some routes, as I have pointed out, have acceptable night lighting, going all the way back to SPG and, more recently, BML. Some people point to DRA as having good night lighting. I actually disagree, I think it looks dreadfully fake. Last night I drove the 101 from Reading to Paddington, an old route with fair to middling night vision.

But then we have the nadir of night lighting - BCC and Glossop. Birmingham is a city in a financial crisis as we now know, but it still should have lots of ambient light and not be in complete apocalyptic darkness.

A few hundred yards beyond Manchester Piccadilly, there is complete blackout. Ridiculous!
I've been to that great city. It's not like that at all.

All this would suggest a route-specific solution. Which is it? Core or route?

To use a British phrase: Sort it, DTG. Please.

 

New routes look pretty bad in the daytime too Need to wear a welder's mask to protect your eyes.

 

It does seem despite DTG participating in the thread, the particular elephant in the room as to why we want a night time demonstration is being ignored. Which sadly leads to the conclusion(s), they don't know how to fix it or don't want to fix it (someone key to budgeting for that sort of thing doesn't see any problem, we're just a bunch of nit picking trainspotters and ex-bashers... ).

 

If accurate day/ night lighting is to be built than the game needs to take into account the latitude of the location. I don't know how difficult this may be to achieve
for example, here are the sun graphs for Glasgow and Birmingham (from https://www.timeanddate.com/ )

you will see that the daylight times change by latitude. The night sky for Glasgow should be lighter than the sky for Birmingham.
That said, here is a night time shot looking toward Birmingham New Street

 

It’s the same old same old sadly. Listen but don’t hear.

 

I´ve had some random journey runs on SoS and was surprised how bad night lighting is there. Arguably it´s the worst route, surely competing with Cathcart Circle. But the biggest offender (to me!) is that godawful double decker bus racing through the landscape. And at night blinding its passengers. The 1950s cars look great, but who on Earth came up with this:

 

There’s none so deaf than those that don’t listen. Although, it could be that JD and Matt etc are listening, but absolutely powerless to do anything due to short sighted management who are only interested in the £$€¥

 

Yes, seen that a few times. I didn't think fluroescent lighting generally started appearing in bus, coaches and trams until the mid 60's at the earliest.

 

I don't think JD is ignoring the question. He just doesn't have the answer as to why night lighting is so poor. It's a question for MP or someone else with the technical expertise to explain it.
As for the streams, I think they are so programmed for the most effective PR these days that only questions that are easily dealt with are answered. Difficult issues raised in the chat or forum are usually ignored or glossed over. I don't think the presenters have much control over the content.
Remember the days when the streams were kind of " free verse " and ad hoc?

 

It's highly likely I'm the one sounding dense JD, but you're very kind to take the hit on my behalf. I'll make sure to tune in for the next one

 

But maybe they wouldn't turn their noses up if night & rain actually looked good. Night and adverse weather conditions can look stunning, much better than daylight imo – you get different sources of light in different intensities and colors, their glow, puddles, reflections, weather effects... If anyone remembers the announcement of the first WATCH_DOGS game: people were in awe when they first saw it, then after release there was a huge downgrade debate. And overall graphical fidelity was indeed lesser compared to the announcement version, but a huge part was also that the announcement showcased night & rain with all the interesting effects that go along with it, while in the actual game you often saw Chicago by day, which was way less interesting visually. Sort of the Revere TSW situation.

Point is, night & weather can look stunning, even better than plain daylight. Lighting in TSW just doesn't look good in general. And that's the issue, not anything inherent to daylight or nighttime itself. A proper lighting system that improves both day- and nighttime light ambience would be one heck of an upgrade.

 

Call me old fashioned, but I can’t help but feel that’s the sort of thing one might expect (I know I did) in a ‘new’ iteration of a game rather than fancy screenshots etc.

 

Even ancient (by todays standards) games like GTA San Andreas and GTA V had better night lighting than TSW. And yes, yes, we've heard all the excuses about Rockstar having huge budgets and a development team the size of a small factory. But it still doesn't really explain how a modern transport simulation set in the real world just completely dropped the ball when it came to night lighting. Rockstar may be huge but DTG isn't exactly two people coding in their bedroom in spare time either.

 

I struggle to think of another game that I’ve ever played that has lighting that is as inconsistent and generally poor as TSW. We know UE4 can do it, so the only conclusions we can draw are that it’s either;

A) DTG don’t know how to set lighting up correctly in the UE4
B) They don’t get given enough time or budget to spend dev resource on it
C) They actually think it’s ok as it is, or
D) They simply don’t care

I suspect it’s a bit of A with a good chunk of B and C thrown in. Fixing this sort of thing is how I believe they will attract new players to the game rather than playing only to people with an interest (however small) in the railways. If you were a new gamer coming from, say Red Dead Redemption 2, giving TSW a go for the first time and were presented with the utter tripe in the screenshot OldVern posted of a bus (I mean seriously, just look at it. I would be utterly ashamed if I was responsible for that) I’d bet a significant number of people would simply walk away and give it up as a bad job.

It’s amazing to me just how much players of TSW are willing to put up with and normalise in the pursuit of their hobby.

 

Perhaps a passenger on the bus is playing TSW3 with the TOD4 lighting system.

 

I don't think you're quite getting it. Even if TSW were to get the Complete Night Lighting Revamp From Heaven and all the lighting looked blissfully wonderful at night, it still wouldn't make sense to run a preview stream in the dark so that nobody can see the scenery except as silhouettes.

 

No... we do. You even quoted it back at us..
"you get different sources of light in different intensities and colors, their glow, puddles, reflections, weather effects..."

 

Of course it wouldn't. Even I wouldn't want to see night time driving for more than, say, 20 minutes, just long enough to get an idea of the effectiveness of the night lighting In urban, suburban and rural environments.

Then again with some recent routes, you only need a minute or two to see that it isn't gonna be acceptable.

 

It was a while ago, I think around the time when TSW 3 was launched, when during a stream TSC was brought up and Matt said that it is amazing how that game still holds up despite being held by ¨stiches¨ in (too) many places.

Slowly but steady, TSW is following the footsteps of TSC by continuing to release a version per year without resolving key core matters.

 

This kind of feeds into why I have an issue with the “new” game. There’s some very obvious flaws like night lighting, passengers or lack of, dead stations etc. that if they turned around and said ok it’s time for a new game but we are sorting all this. Or here’s a big stretch of the ECML that we’ve never been able to achieve before.

There seems very little difference to TSW3. The new routes are exactly the kind of standard that could have achieved in the current game, there’s nothing special that makes it an upgrade, that I’ve seen outwith some gimmicks, like fog. Why don’t they focus on getting the basics looking good before adding something that hasn’t been asked for much if at all?

And that’s before we even touch on existing bug filled routes that will get either little or no improvements going forward….then the chain starts again on the new routes.

 

No I do. Whether they preview an entire stream in the dark, or half or two-thirds or four scenes or whatever is completely secondary. I don't care about the composition of the stream, I care about lighting not looking good. If it did, they could definitely sell that as a feature and - next to more beautiful daytime lighting - also highlight night scenes more prominently. The various lights at stations, trains driving through nighttime rain with puddles, reflections and particle effects, all that stuff. Again, not talking about an entire stream, just a more prominent feature. But it isn't that nice to look at, so they can't and don't put the spotlight on it. Heh.