Is it me, or is the night lighting on TSW3 routes like Line Rheinstrecke and Bremen - Oldenburg better then on newer routes? My impression is, those routes have more street lights, yard lights and building lights, something like those routes were a showcase what they could do, but as it more work to bake all those lights, they do less lights in newer routes. Maybe it's my imagination, but after doing a very early morning trip on Bremen - Oldenburg and remembering the night lighting on Linke Rheinstrecke, this came in mind. What are your thoughts on this?
Yes, you're right. Some of the earliest TSW routes, like SPG, GWE, DRE and even later efforts like BPE and ECML have adequate night lighting. More recent routes have such poor night lighting that I'm given to drive them only in daylight. The nadir was Birmingham Cross City with its total blackness followed by the equally apocalyptic Glossop. It's really hit-and-miss. Decent night lighting is possible. Cathcart, originally just awful, was greatly improved when it was re-mastered.
Some routes are just pitch black at night, with almost no street and yard lights (SKA comes to mind), well others are to bright, but without much street and yard lights. The Bremen route and Linke Rheinstrecke are illuminated by the street and yard lights, this feels very realistic as you actually see something at night. Both routes are well done scenery wise, also in day light.
Just did a night run on Kassel - Wurzburg, maybe overall a little to bright in the not lighted parts of the routes, but the yards, roads and villages are well illuminated by lights.
The biggest problem throughout the franchise has been lack of ambient light or light pollution. At times it's like we are still back in MSTS where light sources emitted a simple cone and building windows simply displayed a yellow/white texture at night. And as for a bright moonlit night... forget it. If you're doing a non Journey night time run, things can be improved by setting weather to slight fog which diffuses the light a bit, but still doesn't look much like real life.
Yes, I've been saying for a long time that train lights, or train headlights, actually illuminate the tracks. At SBB, even the large shunting locomotives that I drive have high beams built in. But even passenger trains in Switzerland had headlights back in 1988 that also illuminated the tracks. And as for the routes, I wrote something good about that today. On the Stuttgart route, the shunting tracks are not illuminated at 16:24, but on the Vorarlberg route, the shunting tracks are very well illuminated at 16:22. I sometimes have the feeling that the route builders can adjust this. It also varies greatly in TSW when it comes to locomotives.
San Benardino,LIRR2, both Boston routes, NYT, and Morristown have probably the best night lighting in the game.imo
I don't know how easy it to implement light polution, also performance wise. Bremen - Oldenburg actually looks quite ok at night, the section around the highway near Bremen was quit illuminated. Are there examples of games where light poplution is implemented well?
There's nothing more boring than doing a night run in complete darkness. It might not be realistic but I'll take "too bright" over "pitch black" every time!
Totally agree, did once a evening run in the dark with the BR101 on SKA, never again. Since the nice night runs on Linke Rheinstrecke and Bremen route, I like to do them more as it is so atmospheric.
I remember people saying how good the night lighting on Dresden (or one of the old German routes) was when that previewed only for it to never be used again IIRC? I do have a feeling we're going to see a new bar set for lighting in general (especially night lighting) on Medway though with the people involved in that project.
Is it really necessary to install this mod vs the weather settings of the game ? Or it's more precise perhaps ?
I did a run on Fife Circle yesterday and on the return journey back to Waverly from Leven it was super dark. The train headlights were pretty much useless for seeing anything. Maybe it was my TV settings but I’ve played other games and night times don’t seem to be an issue so I’m not sure… I did get to enjoy a really stunning sunset on the way up to Leven. The sky and clouds turned into a beautiful mixture of purple and pink with some orange and it was absolutely amazing. Sunsets are truly amazing in TSW.
I certainly hope you're right. Maybe we'll hear something on the subject of night lighting from one of the team at some point. And maybe, for a change, MP will drive the route at night on the preview.
While we're on the subject of night lighting, I will compliment Rivet on the lighting for Berninalinie. No problems driving at night on that route.
Back in TSC, I very often manually changed those settings as the nights brightness was varying from one route to another. Those manipulations weren't convenient at all (though never had pitch black, except maybe on the Midlands route Birmingham - Preston where it wasn't satisfying). In TSW, each 3rd party does its job differently too, but it's far worse, bordering on unacceptable and often beyond. Maybe it could be a thing to have a menu option to adjust night settings (as done in Uboat, WWII submarine simulator) ?
Driving in the dark would so much better if the headlights actually lit your path in front. And we some light pollution where necessary.
What’s so sad about the night lighting situation is that you can go back and play games like GTA SA which are, what, now 20 years old and the night lighting including the ambient glow of light pollution around the cities is far superior to DTG’s pathetic efforts. Take a walk or drive down the Las Venturas Strip at night… You don’t see little cones or halos around the light sources or simple “bright” textures on the building windows. And yes, once again point out this was 20 years ago. And I’m not buying into the, “But Rockstar had a multi $million budget to work with…” DTG bought into a proprietary game engine (UE) so they ought to have known what the capabilities and limitations were. They inhabit a substantial well appointed office in Chatham which must cost a fortune to lease. They are not short of money selling the DLC at the price they do so should be able to hire programmers and modellers who can give us decent night lighting effects.
The tod4 lighting looks more natural in terms of darkness. Tod3 looks like there's continuously a full moon. Ambient light is a big problem, there is none by the looks of it. If the train lights get any brighter it will look ridiculous. Just look at the older models, the lights have been adjusted to suit the later routes. It's like the lights are 5000w.
If I enable blackout mode on gta v you can clearly see the glow is a added effect and not actually emmited by the lights of the city. I wonder if the same can be done on Ue.
Red Dead Redemption 2’s night lighting had it nailed almost perfectly. The thing that ruined it was the moon goes through its entire cycle every single night which is unbelievably stupid…. Another game is GTA IV. Night lightning in that game was awesome. All the city lights made it even better. TSW’s nights do look dark but it wouldn’t be much of a problem if the headlights were a tad bit brighter… they are too dim I feel.
The one constant every time night lighting comes up is that everyone has their personal preferences. Some (like me) prefer to drive in a slight twilight, others like it pitch black. So basically in addition to upping the core effects, night lighting particularly ambient and headlight visibility should be user configurable.
What's so annoying is the inconsistency. Players have mentioned routes which have adequate night lighting. And then there are routes, like Glossop and BCC, which are like a nuclear winter at night. So we know that DTG is quite capable of producing decent night lighting. As with many deficits in TSW, like the save game and poor console performance, it comes down to lack of effort and commitment. Or perhaps sometimes they have the people who are competent at these tasks and sometimes they don't. Or maybe the outsourcing lets them down. Or QA is not up to snuff. Who knows? All we do know is that sometimes they get the night lighting right, but mostly they get it wrong. As I said above, you never know how it's going to turn out, one route to the next. Expect the worst and you won't be disappointed.
If you read anything about 3d engines lighting is just about the most difficult thing imaginable, RTX is trying to be kinda a replacement for pre-baked lighting, but the main issue lies in power, trying to calculate the path of even a few light rays in real-time is monumental to say the least, let alone trying to then calculate those same rays bouncing of 1 material that could absorb x amount of light but reflect the rest hue shifted to another colour and so on and so on, you also then have the problem with our eyes which have the ability to adapt to different light levels which our monitors cant do (Some HDR Monitors mimic this with HDR and local dimming zones) in the end it basically comes down to what can we do that looks almost right without devoting to many resources hindering other factors. Another thing to consider is also most is the most common time of day people play the game in, i would imagine its day judging by the times set in most scenarios in-game, night lighting i would imagine is the hardest to get right, for example i live in the middle of no-where, i can drive around at full dark without headlights at a half moon without any issues at all, and the visibility at full moon you can see for miles, but is that due to the light from the moon or is it because i may have good night vision, my solution is i have 2 different profiles in Godmode 1 for night 1 for day, its easy to i just edit Jetwashes profiles as a base and keep tweak the gamma and light variable till I'm happy then swap out the save file if I'm planning on doing mainly night runs. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and i wish you and yours a Happy New Year
BCC indeed is pretty dark, however the lighting on the Class 323 is pretty realistic. The tracks on this route are not very close to roads most of the time, so no lights from street lights. I named Bremen - Oldenburg as route with good lighting, but there are also very dark parts on this route. Together with the bad lights on the BR110, you not see anything else then some silhouets of the trees on those parts of the route, but it looks realiatic.
Never really had any issues with night lighting on any of my routes. Indeed, I actually prefer to do Fife Circle in the dark to avoid having to look at the godawful "scenery" !
FWIW it’s been a focus of ours on Medway Valley and I sincerely hope people will be just as happy driving the route at night as they are during the day. We’ve also worked hard on lighting curves etc so that you should never find lights not being on when they should be. It’s also an area we will continue to look to further develop going forward beyond MVL’s release.
The published night screenshot of this route looks really atmospheric. Love the floor lighting in front of the station. I hope you will succeed in doing the night lighting well, so people like to drive it at night. Some routes are more suited for night drives anyway, because of illuminated roads, yards, cities and villages. Routes with a lot of track in the middle of nowhere are boring at night. I also noticed on multiple UK routes, the tracks are between walls at several points, like on Southeaster HS and BCC, this doesn't help either for scenery and lighting at night.
There are many, many reasons to install God Mode. Fine tuning of weather conditions on the fly is just one of them.
I have it installed Enhancement | Lighting & Graphic From Jetwash. And all dependencies are listed on the mod's page. I feel like the lighting at night is almost perfect. It's very similar to driving down an unlit street with only my headlights as the light source.
That is reassuring. Out of interest, does UE4 support any means to provide a subtle light “dome” over built up areas to simulate ambient light aka pollution from multiple light sources?
Sadly not, or at least not that I know of. It’s nigh-on impossible to ‘bake’ lighting across the whole map like you would in a first person shooter or something like fortnight (much smaller defined areas or ‘levels’, often without day/night transitions), so for a fast moving simulator we rely on real lights and light sources. What I can say is we do have a degree of subtle but noticeable distant light pollution which shows up against cloudy skies (and generated by the light sources themselves) and a number of different lights and techniques to add to the ‘scene’ which make the whole thing look lived in and realistic. Beta feedback has been very positive so hopefully we’re on the right track. All being well we’ll be in a position to share more on that front before too long. All of the lighting changes etc will be inside the route itself and won’t require mods etc. to work.
Well as I've said ad nauseam, the traction, location and era are inimical to my usual preference. But it's very clear that a great deal of care and attention has gone into this route and the spotlight ( sorry ) on night lighting whets my appetite even more. Looking forward to more screenshots and the previews
