For me the news that Riesa to Dresden is getting the TOD4 lightning is very disappointing. The daytime lighting in TSW3 routes is just awful. Eye adaptation is completely destroying exposure and night time just doesn’t look good. The same issues are being seen in TSW4 routes and now we’re seeing it being added to Dresden, it’s just frustrating. it desperately needs looking into. It’s not UE at fault here I know, it’s just being set up completely wrong in this game. I don’t mind having new lightening systems if it makes the route look better, but right now It’s doing the complete opposite and I much prefer driving routes without TOD4. So I’m probably never going to drive this route again now that it’s had the nuclear bomb lightning added to it, which is a shame because it’s a phenomenal route (even if it still crashes on Xbox). And no I do not wish to keep TSW3 installed just to drive this one route, without the Vectron. Can I stay with the original lighting please? Is that possible?
Unfortunately, it is not possible. You can keep TSW3 installed to play it in its current state, or you can install TSW4 to get the Vectron, TOD4, and possibly some updates too.
My TSW2 install size kept growing throughout the last year as more routes got the TOD4 treatment and I went and uninstalled them from TSW3.
Lately I have been thinking the same thing. I am concerned that the "upgrade" for DRA to TOD4, within TSW4, will actually detract from the current lighting that DRA has within TSW3 (unchanged from its TSW2 lighting I believe). One particular area to be watched would be signal visibility. The signals on SEHS and CJP are hardly visible. If the signals on DRA get the same "treatment" then it might be undrivable with PZB, fairly ruining it at least for me and in line with the OP's concerns. I would also be interested to know how the volumetric clouds and fog will effect the performance of DRA. To be fair it should be noted that I have no plans to purchase TSW4 anyway and only planned on "upgrading" when/if a high-quality route gets released for same, or possibly at a deep discount. However, DRA is a go-to route for me and I suspect others as well. Although of course it could still be played in TSW3 even if one purchases TSW4, obviously making DRA worse would not be something to entice me to buy TSW4 in any case.
Something must be up with your settings then, I have no problems reading signals on SEHS, or any of the other TSW3 routes.
Perhaps you are correct, although on Xbox my settings are somewhat limited. With the overall brightness/gamma of TOD4 which has been commented on ad infinitum, for me at least the aspects do not show up at range as well as on other routes. I also recall the assertion that DRA could not realistically be upgraded to TOD4 because of the special work that went into it's unique lighting scheme in the first place. And yet, here we have DTG doing that very thing. Even if the lighting for other routes running TOD4 was without problems, which is not the case, applying TOD4 to DRA does seem like a special challenge that might not turn out any better, or even worse, than what we have now.
And of course here are some others who spoke about how the visibility of signal aspects seemed to be adversely affected in TOD4, just as I have mentioned, as well as talking about how the lighting in certain German routes (including DRA) is so good to begin with. So, I think it is a legitimate concern. I for one will certainly be interested in how others perceive this change to DRA after it becomes live. Time will tell.
I'm the same. On both PS5 and XSX, with routes that are in TOD 4 some signals are near impossible to read in daylight and sometimes reds can look orange or yellow. Greens can get overblown in the whiteout that is daylight. I'm playing on an LG OLED in the gaming dobly vision mode but with the colour setting set to warm 2 instead of the default cool blue that was just too harsh in the eyes and not accurate at all. Not an issue on older non TOD 4 routes.
100% disagree. I prefer TOD4 to the horrible mess that came before it. But of course it's a preference thing.
I really don't think the current lighting on DRA is good, I don't really play many of the pre TSW3 routes anymore, because their lighting is so bad in comparison to the modern routes.
The only ones I really play are LBN and BKL because there great routes. EDIT: That is pre TSW3, albeit even then I dont have the biggest catalouge.
The current DRA lighting is the worst night lighting in TSW. I don’t know why so many players think it is good just because there are some reflective signs and more street lights. The actual lighting on it is really unnatural and bad. The moonlight that reflects off surfaces but does not illuminate anything is totally weird. TOD4 isn’t that much better either with nighttime always being too dark but it should be an improvement on the current lighting.
I personally much, much prefer the TOD4 lighting and struggle to go back to play TOD3 and earlier routes. The volumetric fog also looks like another substantial improvement and I'm delighted that it's coming to every TOD4 route.
I find it quite interesting how some sort of inconsistency seems to occur in the way the lighting effects the user experience (assuming we all have some similar eyesight and judgement on what we find visually appealing and what not). On my 2015 series LED TV and Series X I find myself finding the old lighting far too dark at certain times of day, especially on DRA. Especially at dusk and dawn the whole ground is most of the time near pitch black looking totally out of place and far too dark resulting in absolutely ridicoulous screen settings which even don't help too much and leave everything else totally overexposed. On TOD3 lighting however this has gotten absolutely a thing of the past, but with the hardly visible PZB / signal lights being present as well. I assume that's down to the rather old TV, but every other game or movie looks very fine on its standard settings. It's not a thing on all older routes, but TOD3 was a major upgrade in that case - at least how I'm experiencing it. But that seems to be totally out of the usual...
As others have mentioned, there is definitely room for disagreement about which lighting system is best. However, whether or not one thinks DRA is better or worse as it is right now, when compared to other routes that already have TOD4, I think the OP's point stills stands that there is a risk of DRA becoming worse when it is ported to TSW4. I genuinely hope that is not the case, as I was hoping to someday purchase TSW4 (or maybe TSW5) if there is ever a personally compelling reason to do so. I will be watching closely if/when they talk about DRA (and SKA too!) in the preview streams.
This discussion is kinda annoying. A lot of people talk about the lighting like it looking ‘bad’ is a fact when it just isn’t, I saw someone yesterday say that is was the worst thing to happen to tsw which is an insane thing to say. Everything thing about this is subjective and I for one much prefer the new lighting. IMO all time of day look fab, especially around early morning to late evenings all the colours pop a lot more and I can look out my window and say it looks like real life. Now that’s not to say it’s perfect obviously but I think people are it won’t to be much worse than it really is. And whilst I’m here, what’s up the night lighting discussion? People say it’s awful but I don’t understand what they’re talking about specifically, is it how well lit the areas are (building & streetlights etc) or the actual darkness of the night sky? Again in my opinion it looks fine, especially when it’s moon lit. Could someone explain?
For me, and clearly others, it is the worst thing that’s happened to TSW. I really don’t enjoy many of the TSW3 routes because of it. I was driving Linke the other day and it just looked awful. However, I think the eye adaptation makes everything look a lot worse when inside the cab (which is where you are for 95% of the journey), so it’s not exclusively the lighting that’s an issue.
Night lightning is one thing, and I agree it’s not great on DRA, but it’s the daytime lightning that’s the major issue here imo.
I’m sure that was the route with the best night lighting, it got a very good implementation compared with other routes at launch.
The TOD3/4 does have its quirks that need adjustment (mainly in and around tunnels), but overall it is a much much more realistic lighting system in all conditions. I found it jarring at first, and sunny days seemed way too bright/washed out... but I mean, walk outside on a sunny day in July and guess what, it is pretty bright/washed out (sunglasses exist for that reason). And in other conditions, like overcast skies, sunsets and sunrises, etc the TOD3/4 is just beautiful compared to the old system. Looks much more like real life. So I am happy to see more routes switch over, the only thing I am hoping is that the graphic treats don't hurt performance. Dresda-Reisa currently runs smooth as butter so I don't want it to get choppy.
Assuming you’re on Pc, does this mean you use the lighting mod then? Is that why you continue to play tsw?
I agree, the night lighting on DRA, which DTG touted as the next best thing, is dreadful, so unnatural. But then the night lighting is awful on TSW generally, except for a handful of routes. What gets me is that, looking back at SPG and other early routes, DTG somehow just abandoned their whole night lighting prototype. The worst recent example is BCC which is almost completely dark at night. Perhaps Birmingham is experiencing a permanent city- wide power failure. I haven't watched the Voralberg stream but someone decried the night lighting on that route too. And then, in the daytime, you have that dreadful abomination, otherwise known as the eye adaptation feature. Makes me look away sometimes, it's so bright. Soon to come is the fog which will make the daytime even worse. Fortunately the latter will have a toggle which, for me, will be permanently off. And I agree that, on some routes, like CJP, the lighting makes some signal aspects unreadable until you're almost on top of them. I realize that lighting is a very subjective feature. But there seems to be a general consensus that DTG is unable to get it consistently right, day or night. After 6 years of development? Go figure.
The night lighting I saw on the Austrian route during the stream is horrific. I can’t see myself ever driving at night (only if a scenario demands it and maybe not even then).
BCC street and building lighting was built with default 1900-0700hrs timer for some really odd reason. Older routes had a light blueprint linked to a seasonal curve, but not BCC - so if you drive in winter months before 1900hrs, everything is in darkness. Another problem is that many of the buildings didn't have window lightings - especially those high rises in the city centre. Shameless plug: my BCC PC mod has many of these problems fixed. I changed the lighting blueprints so they react to the seasonal lighting curve, and added over 1000 new lights right across the route. Totally agree, while TOD4 skies can stunning, the signal aspects need a lot of work. LM fixed them for BCC and SEH, if only those fixes could be used by DTG. Currently default signals are nowhere near bright enough during the day and the colours are miles off. Red looks like orange, and yellow looks green in some of the german signals. I honestly think that the sunlight intensity could be dropped by two thirds.
I never drove at night in TSW2020 or 2 for that reason, looks the same now as it did then. My guess is headlight projection would impact performance too much, just a guess of course as I have no clue about game design.
I didn't know there will be a toggle, that is very useful informing so thank you. Totally agree about the eye adaptation "feature" being less than ideal as well. And the signals on CJP, maybe the worst offenders! I don't think it's too extreme just to hope that DRA doesn't end up like that. I could probably live with eye adaptation and other things, but I don't think I can compromise on signal visibility on DRA.
No I’m Xbox. I will occasionally load the game up if I’ve got a spare hour or so and really have nothing else to be doing (which isn’t often). So yes I still play it but I don’t much enjoy playing it. I thought I’d give Linke another go just to try it out with a few different weather settings and see if that made any difference to the lighting.
TSW3 lighting looks so real. And I am very happy with the lighting upgrade. Can you post some screenshots from TSW3 please so we can know what you are seeing? As you can see below I don't see any problems.
Are you posting pics of DRA from TSW3, to support that it looks fine now and would not necessarily benefit from a lighting upgrade to TOD4 in TSW4? This is my position. Although, my main focus is signals which you have not shown. Also, perhaps a more pertinent comparison would be signals for some of the current TOD4 routes compared with the existing signals for DRA.
I believe for once we are in agreement! What you are looking at is TSW2 lighting (within TSW3) and I do agree it looks much better!
Where are the pictures and videos of this new night lighting for Dresden - Riesa that you’ve seen? Or are we just making assumptions?
TSW2 looks too dark, especially if you are in a shady area, some parts of the Cathcart route immediately spring to mind.. I much prefer the lighting on TSW3, there is the odd route where perhaps it is a little too washed out, although I find it never looks as bad on my setup as it has done on streams, both DTG and by others. I would like to see more routes changed to TOD4, the aforementioned Cathcart route for example.
Im glad you think that lighting looks more real, because that’s TOD3 lighting. And people wonder why they get accused of blindly defending DTG (maybe Tod4 caused that blinding).
Stopped playing Dresden in TSW3 because the lightning looked outdated compared to TSW3 routes. So I'm really glad Dresden Riesa is being updated with new lightning.
Dresden to Riesa is better than some (BCC) but you still don't really get that ambient glow in built up areas. Lighting effects are primarily attached to each building or light source such as a street lamp. And there should be a noticeable difference between a clear moonlit night and an overcast new moon.
It's a bit unfortunate you'd have to choose between black tar everywhere or nuclear explosion like over exposure.
Many people in this thread only focus on the illuminance, no one addresses the great 3D volumetric clouds that are included with TOD4. Personally, I find the older routes with TOD3 to be a little too poorly illuminated. In reality, however, the sun shines much brighter. All light sources in TOD4 are based on physically correct measurement data. If someone then draws comparisons with atomic bomb explosions, then that's very bizarre. If TSW had appeared in TOD4 when it launched 5 years ago, no one would have been upset about it today. TSC offers you the option of manually regulating the light intensity level. But you could also work with additional filter effects on the camera lens, which function similarly to photo mode. It would be like wearing sunglasses in the game and the bright light wouldn't blind you so much.
If lighting doesn’t look good then it doesn’t look good, saying that people wouldn’t dislike it, if it launched with it, is bizarre. TOD3 looked bad, TOD4 looks bad.
How do you mean? TSW does not support HDR was my assumption Also: why doesn't the game ask you on first set up to change the color preference? Or is this only with HDR games?
When DTG announced one of the TSW4 routes, will be Dresden Riesa but"upgraded", I was very exited about it. Due to DR is one of my favorite routes!. But with "upgraded" I believed, it was like what it happened with SEHS on TSW3. I mean will be longer, as it deserved it!. But it seems it will only get the visual and new effects of the other TSW4 routes. Then will have the same length instead.. So then... I am disapointed.
Maybe we get the airport branch? Well not gonna happen i guess . Im looking forward to tsw4 riesa dresden. Hope the sound mode for the 187 is still working.
Sehs was advertised as sehs extended and was remade as a base route. If dra would have gotten an extension, it would be called dra extended, but that's not the case. Sherman Hill, Bpe and sos all got visual updates but nothing was changed to the route because they were not advertised that way.
The biggest failing of TSW night lighting is the complete absence of urban ambient light or "light pollution." While pitch-black dark is realistic on a route far out in the country, say Clinchfield, any city-set route should never get completely dark- all that artificial lighting creates a "haze" of illumination (especially in a low overcast, with the clouds reflecting it back down). On BML northbound, you should be able to see a glow on the horizon, gradully increasing as one gets closer to the metrop. But TSW does none of that; Glasgow and Birmingham are as lightless as a whale's belly.
