San Bernardino Line as well as Antelope Valley Line, as well as many other routes... Many sources says that sunset in California on June 20th is around 20:45. Why does sunset on June 20th in California occur at 19:00 in TSW? Why do we have to create dozens of such posts? Why is there still no reaction? Is it so difficult to appoint a person who will sit down and set up the sun cycle for all routes in accordance with reality? And I'm so curious why do you continue to create the wrong sun cycle year after year?
Is it really that important? Can we not concentrate on making the train part of Train Sim World better than the "world" part?
It is a tedious process to make every day's sunset and sunrise identical to real life unless they use real time data which would be resource intensive
I was playing Blackpool branch in June month and it starting snowing part way through whats that about
They would also have to do it for every single route, region, season and even every time it changes in real life since timings aren't perfect in order to please those wanting realism to the smallest details. Until dtg start streaming in real time data which would only use up more performance, it's not going to match up to real life exactly
Oh, I see how this forum changes. From first topics about this problem with comments like "Yeah, this is sucks", "Also there is a sunrise at 02:20 on some Germans routes" to "who needs realism in simulators". I don't care if the time is half an hour off from reality(for example the same for the whole month, set for the 15th). But not by 2 freakin hours!
Yes it is. Because we are getting fewer services during daylight hours, on routes where there are already very few services.
There's exactly 3 variables: date, time, latitude. If DTG can't handle that complex programming challenge that doesn't give a lot of confidence. My god, you set the bar so low it's on the floor
It is not though. If you know the coordinates and the date, it is very easy to calculate the position of the sun on the sky. I'm pretty sure there are countless of plugins that will do that for you automatically in Unreal Engine, even if you don't want to do the calculations yourself. Literally the first google search. It's a single plugin that you input your coordinates and datetime into. https://dev.epicgames.com/documenta...ccurate-sun-positioning-tool-in-unreal-engine
I would say at least an approximation of the correct sunrise and sunset times is desirable, as part of the seasonal effect. The higher latitude you go to the more noticeable any inaccuracy would become. I mean, in the unlikely event we ever got something like Kiruna to Narvik, north of the Arctic Circle in summer it never gets fully dark (midnight sun and all that), but in the winter lucky if daytime gets a slight twilight, around the Solstice. FSX was managing this nearly 20 years ago so why can’t TSW routes have a data field where the appropriate times can be input. Monthly would do, doesn’t have to be varied each and every day.
As far as I know, the daylight system is working fine when it comes to determining the sun position based on date, time and location however, it can't switch between summer and winter time so you have to set it according to one or the other, which makes the other one look very weird. Can't believe this hasn't been resolved through 4 iterations of the TOD system and 5 games.
If ambient temperature falls below 0 celcius, rain becomes snow. Above 0, it becomes rain again and snow on the ground begins to melt.
It seems to be the matter of incorrect handling of timezones and lack of daylight saving time implementation. UE already does the calculations.
Yes, his stock excuse for every suggestion is either " it's too hard " or " it would take too much time ". Not the greatest attitude to life or business. ( And not, I hope, DTG's actual approach. )
You forgot the good old "why would you need this in a train simulator?" argument, lol. Like sure, might as well drop the whole scenery approach as well, lol.
I swear he has to be a bot or the biggest DTG, fanboy. Always defending what can’t be defended and most of the time he’s answering with his approximative opinions and act like DTG’s spokesperson. If his goals are to annoy others (which is already the case) and become a DTG ambassador, he’s on the right track. About OP’s post, yeah sun cycles are weird, on some British routes when starting a service at 3:30 in the morning on summer, it’s as sunny as it was midday…
The sun cycles in TSW are frustrating, I don't want it accurate to the second as that isn't possible (I assume), but in the UK it doesn't get dark at 7pm in July.
Well known problem. I often choose Services and weather depending on the real life time and weather around me, then its super weird when you look outside the window, its daylight and in TSW the sun is already set. Particular services (like extra services at rush hour time) would absolutely benefit from a more accurate day light cycle. If we can shift the time by around 2h, i think that would fit most cases (based on other threads regarding this topic). Surely nothing high in their priority list, but seems to be a rather quick fix compared to other problems i assume.
I have no interest in either Rivet nor UK routes (or scottish, whatever Fife is), so I have no idea what you are saying, or trying to say.
It's not? For San Bernandino it's at 20:03 Computing sun position, if you have longitude latitude and utc time should be quite straightforward. Where it starts to get messy is when you want to do it for local time, as there you need to know the timezone and potentially offset for daylight saving. So this might be one aspect that DTG does not do (wrong timezone, wrong daylight saving adaptation). Another issue is that TSW world is flat, so you won't have sunrinse/sunset difference at different part of the route. If it's computed, then its most likely computed based on the route origin point. There is some kind of simulation going on, becasue the sun is shallower in winter months, and by feel I would say the northern region also have shorter daylight period in winten when compared to southern regions. But it should be fairly easy to check how correct it is. Just us spawn on route, use godmode to set the desired UTC time, and compare the sun elevation over horizont with what some online tool will give you for that region and UTC time.
It's a simulator. If it was a game then I wouldn't be bothered. Flight sims can match real world conditions of which data is available instantly TSW has storms every 50 mins and sunsets at random times. We should be doing better, this along with unrealistic rigid signalling routing shouldn't be here in 2024. Instead we get guard mode. Also in TSC there is a RWenancer mod that puts real-time weather in can't be that hard.
I'm googled for the whole state, not for the city, cause no one in their right mind would bother so much when developing a route. Some sites says 20:35, someone says 20:48. Different years I supposed. Either some count from the beginning of the sunset, and others from its end, I don’t know. Funny thing, after I googled right now - most sites says 20:08(where are those sites from previous result?). Still not 19:00.
It is a game. It's a lot of hassle and more source for things to go wrong for an infinitessimal difference. Outside of someone just nitpicking is ANYONE else going to notice the exact time of day to the minute? There's so many other things that could use the resources to fix and THIS is what people consider "important?"
The team consists of different people with different specializations. If you think that everyone should sit down and fix optimization, then it doesn't work that way. First of all, I would like to hear a comment from DTG about the reason for such a clumsy sun cycle in the game. Maybe they just need to assign 1 tester and 1 person capable of writing configs to fix it? Or maybe the problem is much deeper? I also want to clarify about my title message in this topic. Regional Google is evil. The search results are completely different!
You're the one assuming it's "clumsy" or even necessary to "fix." I don't demand that much "accuracy" in a game. If it's something you don't even notice when playing and you have to look it up... it's unnecessary. We can agree to disagree on this one.
It says Sim in the title, that's important. Realism is important when I want fantasy stuff fire up Deux Ex or GTA. Real-time sunsets and realistic weather should be a walk in the park now 8 years in. Flight sims have been doing it for decades. A few minutes out isn't the issue, being hours out is.
Yeah, and DTG follows exactly the same direction with "no one needs accuracy in simulator". This game have "sim" in its name, so it should realistically simulate every possible aspects. And the sun cycle isn't a NASA technology, it doesn't requires thousands of best programmers to implement it correctly.
Well, good thing this isn't about you only then. You'd have to be blind to not notice it. Night time driving in TSW simulates very well how it is to be completely blind I'd imagine.
Good thing it's not just about you then too. Gee.. that was a hard logical leap now wasn't it? ;-) Nice jump to something unrelated though.
So... if I like it that way... and DTG likes it that way... and most of the player base like it that way.... then maybe it's a popular, rational position? They can't be everything to everyone and make reasonable compromises. If you get TOO "sim" you drive off more casual people as well. It's really a lose-lose trying to cater to every group since it's impossible to keep every single person happy.
Pretty sure "having realistic sunrise and sunset times for the location of the route" is not going to put anyone off for being "too" realistic.
So you speak on behalf of the majority of player base? Were you elected to this position or did you decide to occupy it yourself? I would say the "most of the player base" don't even visit this forum, so calm down and don't overscale.
The day/night system TSW uses does all the hard work and there are different sun and moon positions and moon phases depending on what date you choose. Even the recent eclipse was visible in the game on the correct date. I’m guessing that it’s only daylight saving time being omitted that is causing the sunrise and sunset times to be out by so much in the summer. If that can be added then we have a solution. If it can’t then we will always have the time out by an hour for six months of the year.
...but the majority of playerbase, who actually wants the game to improve, I happen to be one of them, you clearly aren't.
For a game that is also about the surroundings, the surrounding environment matters just as much as the trains. The op isn't asking for much to be honest.
The issue from my understanding is that DTG never bothered it implement daylight savings time so the sunsets will be an hour off for half the year basically. It’s funny because they’ve taken time to do things like model the recent eclipse on the right day, which is a once in a generation event, but not the daylight savings time which effects 182 days of the year.
Yes! It’s annoying playing the New York- Trenton route when it’s dark outside at 6am, but super bright in game. The sun rises at 3:45am in the summer on SEHS! The sun will set, then slowly begin rising again.
Which is exactly what the sun does in northern regiion in summer (it's the reason you get polar day beyond the polar circle), it is just one hour off, because of daylight saving not being considered. Atleast we get to experience how 'fun' it would be without daylight saving, having the sun up before 4am I really doubt DTG implemented the whole system, most likely it is an Unreal Engine Plugin that models sun and moon position based on longitude, lattiude and UTC time. This is easy to do, and if you do it, you get stuff like eclipses automatically. You don't have to program it like 'at this date, these region will experience an eclipse'. You just model sun and moon positions. DTG are just providing the longitude, lattiude and UTC time to the plugin. And for UTC time conversion they ommited daylight saving. The thing is implementing daylight saving would solve this issue, but would create another... What to do on transition day? Dayling saving changes between 2AM and 3AM and irl trains are either hour late, or are waiting at a station for an hour... Neither of those would be quite enjoyable I guess and it might also break the timetable at those days. Also people would most likely report such behavior (time changing instatly by 1 hour) as a bug. Fixing UTC offset to spawn time is also messy, as you could you get more sunlight if you spawn sooner, because the later spawn time has different UTC offset... I mean, as a dev.. local time is a huge freaking mess
I think I could gladly live without this. Just make it so that if the spawn date is within summer time, offset the sun by 1 hour. Done. That would still be much better than not having any daylight savings.
