I'm currently watching the livestream and can say night lighting is looking A LOT better. Whilst there are still improvements to be made, I'm happy we FINALLY have proper pitch black lighting at night. Lovely pitch black terrain where there are no light sources, as well as there is no longer that annoying 'light glow' inside the cab as well on the exterior of the train and buildings. One thing I would like to ask - is this the new standard of night lighting for all upcoming TSW 2 routes from now on? Screenshots:
I wouldn't expect this level of improvement on London - Brighton, but hopefully we'll see it on routes afterwards.
I think matt said this is route specific (for now) but a lot of work goes into it. I don't think it'll even come in BML but the things like sign posts should be reflective.
I do really like the lighting improvements, but as state its on a route by route basis I hope this isn't the only time we see it due to time constraints. Would really love to see this on the Brighton Mainline but don't see this happening at the moment unfortunately. Lets hope this isn't the last we see of this!
I have no doubt Adam's team can work their magic by adding it to preserved routes, as well as new routes, however as mentioned, it takes time and we all know how long updates can take to roll out.
As I posted on the other thread ( before I saw this one), why only now and why only this route? Are we going to be plunged back into the impenetrable darkness with London to Brighton? Can this improved lighting be retrofitted, say to Cathcart?
As Matt mentioned, two second-party contractors were hired to work on the lighting for Dresden. It's not something that gets "retrofitted." It apparently is route-specific work that has to be done on a per-light basis. If Adam's team were to undertake that time-consuming effort, I imagine there would be trade-offs regarding what else couldn't be done in the meantime.
You are obsessed with pitch black nights Nights are very rarely pitch black. There is nearly always some ambient light especially in built up areas. It is reflected down from the clouds and from other places. Only in the middle of nowhere are nights pitch black. Not being able to see anything unless there is an artificial light source like a streetlamp shining directly on it is not how night is in real life. In a well lit station like in the pictures above the artificial light would also bounce off surfaces and light up the bits that are shown here as completely black. There needs to be some level of ambient light. Those pictures look very unnatural.
I’ve had to put up with that awful reflective light for the past X years in TSW at night, so let me enjoy my pitch black cabs and terrain when and where I can
This night lighting is an improvement in the sense that you can actually see your way ahead (sort of). I'm grateful for that because it means I might be able to run services at night which I could barely do on CCR or CRR. But stujoy is right, it's not natural light. That orange radiance covering everything, almost phosphorescent, looks a little surreal. Part of the problem is that the light does not appear to have any obvious source like station lighting or moonlight. Plus, once again, the trains' headlights add virtually nothing. Mm, I'll see how this all looks when I actually run the route ( I have the season ticket), but I just had another look at the stream and, looking at the stills above, I'm less and less convinced that this is a long term solution to the lighting issue.
All I can say is this night time lightning is amazing and so much better and very Realistic, This Is how all routes should be like at night time From Now On, which i reallly do hope that Dovetail team- Adam, along with Matt, and everyone else realized that, this is what the team should bring to all their upcoming routes and preserved route as well. This is definitely what people should be paying for. I really do hope that we see more of these improvement. So Far the team especially Adam and others have really step up and make huge improvement. Hopefully it won't be too loong to see this lightning improvement added to all their upcoming route along with preserved route, and we will also see Dynamic Weather, added before the end of this year. All I can say Is Keep Up the Amazing Work Team.
I’m not too bothered about the orange light where it is shining as it is somewhat like the light from light sources on streets and stations, it’s the total lack of ambient light from where that light would reflect to (or from the sky itself) in the shadows which would not be completely black. We can’t experience the full day-night cycle until we get our hands on the route, and the service in the stream was at a time of day where ambient light is depicted at its lowest in game, between the blueish night ambient light fading and the ambient daylight fading in. That time of day will have shown the artificial lighting at its best but the overall lighting not so much. One thing I’m hoping for is that the artificial lights at stations come on at all times when it is dark, as that will avoid the times when there is no light at all, which has happened in a lot of routes, and that there is still a fair bit of ambient light when winter is selected. That’s been too bright on occasion in the past but if it has been toned down too much it may lead to it always being too dark at night to see the trains unless they are right next to a lamppost or two.
*cough* Cathcart *cough* The station lighting is far too dim and very directional. The station lamp posts don’t spread the light out, but instead act as a spotlight.
Loved the station lighting and the street lighting. There was a point where the train was in a station and a few hundred yards ahead a cement truck came in and out of the street lighting on an overbridge... lovely My comment from last night's stream is that the ambient buildings need some work. It seems to be that a building is either ON or OFF, as in every window in a building is on and the same intensity for that building, or off. Might be a huge technical feat for a small gain, but how often do you see a house with every window lit up all at the same time, let alone a big office building at 6:30am? Hopefully once we've got this rolled out to the new upcoming routes (so probably those later on than Brighton) this can be nuanced
I meant the ambient light not the station lights. Moonlight and such that has sometimes made night nearly as bright as day on some routes. The small pools of light that the very directional light fixtures make is another problem and the Cathcart ones were also far too dim. Those look much better in this route.
It seems like pretty much all of the lights cast warm yellow light. It would have looked even better (and much more realistic) if they also used some white lights to break it up, which are very common these days. Also, when Matt was driving the 101 I noticed many buildings still had all their windows lit at around 12:00. That should probably be looked at.
It is becoming clear to me that the vision of every route sharing the same tech is just never going to happen. Partially this is because new tech is arriving all the time so they are chasing a moving target. I think this is a good reason especially while there is so much that can still be improved. However the other reason is that there is more and more existing content and so each time a new tech arrives the queue of routes waiting for it is getting longer and longer. The preservation crew is only small and isn't really an income generating unit. Money is made from selling new items not revamping old ones. So the incentive to invest more resource in the preservation crew isn't there. There was a shift in tone in last night's stream where they explicitly wouldn't commit to adding the lighting to old content, I've never heard them say it might be in new but potentially not in old routes before, I suspect there is a totting up going on as to the time required to add these techs into old routes. I am almost waiting an announcment about a new category of legacy routes which once they have had a pass by the preservation crew may not have some new tech added to them moving forward.
I've noticed this with station lighting, in that it's still on at about 10am. I think if intentional it may be a workaround for this issue, where station lights are off in winter because they would be off at that time in the other seasons:
Not sure if the skybox and the station assets are linked in this way, but it would be true in real life that you can set off in bright day light and end up in dusk, twighlight or darkness... I'm sure this is the start of a progressive curve of development rather than the end of it
There's nothing new about TOD transitions, you can experience them in very early routes such as Sand Patch. But, looking back at those older routes like SPG, TVL, ECW and SFJ, the night lighting looks much better to me. It may not be as bright as Dresden, but it looks more white, more natural. The world at night is not that glaringly bright orange, wherever you are. I think the night lighting problem started, for me at least, quite recently, with Clinchfield and continued with Cathcart, though GWE was problematic earlier on. Boston Sprinter is actually pretty good for me, despite some headlight issues. But, the more I look at it, Dresden is not a step forward in night lighting, though it may be a nice route to drive in daylight. I'm keeping an open mind until I get it into my computer, but I'm anxious to see what the lighting is like in London - Brighton. I recently saw a photo of the Victoria throat at night, and it was not orange.
There's a lot of whitish light mixed in there. I mean, everyone has a different set of rods and cones. Each of us sees colors differently, especially at night. I can only judge by my own peepers.
I think I side more with stujoy on this, but lighting is definitely a subjective topic so everyone is gonna have different opinions. Personally, I don't like the pitch black things in this game, and would prefer some ambient lighting. Forget the natural ambient light the real world has in highly populated areas, in real life when it gets dark, your eyes adjust and you can usually still make things out - even with the smallest amount of light. Going pitch black in a game, means that pixel is coded black and eyes can't undo that, meaning you lose that element of realism. It bugs me currently in game when you go into a tunnel and the entire cab goes absolutely black. Especially when there's 2-3 screens in front of you that would provide plenty of light to at least make out where all the controls are in front of you without needing a cab or desk light. Older locos would be much darker obviously, but again your eyes would adjust and instrument lights would probably give just enough to make out what you need.
Couldn't agree more, I've spent a lot of time working in the dark and there is always enough ambient light to see after your eyes adjust, provided there is the dim glow of instrumentation. Totally black would be very unrealistic, IMO.
a bit more generic and this comment could be added to every thread on this forum… (Template) I think I side more with [username], but [topic] is definitely a subjective topic so everyone is gonna have different opinions (/Template)
Not sure if you’re familiar with railways at night but ambient light is far and few between, majority of the time the cab is pitch black, passengers more see themselves in the window, due to light reflections from the saloons bouncing off the windows. The ambient light from build up areas doesn’t penetrate the station or make it feel less “dark” it’s the station lights which are the beacons. Try travelling from St Pancras to Nottingham, I only know where I am once I see landmarks, but at 120/125mph it’s impossible
The notion of an engineer driving at 125mph in almost total darkness without adequate headlights is more than a little scary.
Driving a multi ton vehicle on steel rails at 2 miles a minute means the only benefit to brighter headlights is the driver will be able to better see what they're about to obliterate... In the UK most railways are fenced in so as to be inaccessible by 95% of people, so the danger comes at level crossings, foot crossings, from animals or idiots
Welcome to the UK, where we've been doing that since 1976 and hasn't resulted in mass casualties. Seriously, headlights could be as bright as possible, they wouldn't make much difference, given trains take a long time to stop from 125mph. Here's a video of a HST on an emergency brake application triggered by ATP. The brakes apply 36 seconds into the video, brakes release at 20mph about 40 seconds later: By crude calculation, that train travelled about 940m. Go find a light that can clearly light up everything in front of it 1km away, without causing loads of light pollution and disturbing people/whatevers nearby, and you may have a point on dead straight, flat, track.
Back onto the topic of night lighting, it’ll be nice to transition from station ambient lighting to near pitch black darkness. Unfortunately the tech was done by contractors so DTG will need to ‘learn’ how to do it themselves, which will take time.
But if they don't have headlights, how can they know that a speed restriction is approaching, for example? It could be that they know the route by heart, but how do they know where they are if they can't see the kilometre points either? I ask this because these are the problems I have when I play and all I see in front of me is total darkness. Like the title of the TV show, How do they do it?
I suppose if you've driven a given route enough times, you'll start get a 'feel' of where you are - I suppose station, bridge/tunnel and signal counting will go on to assist, although I'm not a real train driver so don't really know.
They use landmarks and lights to know where they are. They also know where they are as they remember where signals are placed and the way the track curves etc.
I love this new lighting, I would love to see it become a standard feature on new routes and put on Cathcart
Definitely needs to find its way to NTP, which is one of my pet hobbyhorses as regards night lighting in the current crop of routes. More so as the locos represented in that epoch do not have high beam headlights, just markers so the lack of ambient light means you might as well be running Simudrive.
I still think the stations need to be a lot brighter and would help in making driving at night enjoyable.
I’m familiar with how night looks under most conditions, far away from artificial light and also in towns and cities, and it does vary a lot. It is dark away from towns but it isn’t black in most cases. Near towns and cities a even partially cloudy sky reflects so much light back down it can be very bright indeed and it hardly ever goes completely black. And artificial light sources don’t light up one thing and then not reflect some of that light to other things. What is seen in the stations in the screenshots? Unnatural lighting. Nothing would appear completely black in those situations with that many light sources around even with a totally black sky. Enough light would reflect to see something in the shadow areas. It may go that dark in a railway cutting far from a town on a clear moonless night but that shouldn’t mean it should always be that devoid of ambient light everywhere in TSW. I’ll be able to see if all ambient light has been taken out for the whole night cycle when I get the route and if that’s the case it won’t be an improvement as it will be so unnatural for it to be totally black where there isn’t an artificial light source. As the lighting in TSW can’t be totally location specific it needs to be generalised and too little light is as bad as, or worse than, too much. Is it desirable to take away all ambient light in TSW2? I’d say no. Has that been done? Don’t know yet. We’ll see if that’s what’s been done here when the route has released. We don’t want those glowing trains when its dark, a different issue, but we also don’t want trains that absorb all light when there would be some illuminating them. They look like a travelling matte here and so unnatural.
I didn't say "Headlights", I said "brighter headlights". If the headlights are bright enough to show you the number plate on the signals and some markers at the side of the track then the driver will know where they are (in the UK at least) because they have to have intimate route knowledge down to the names of all the level crossings...
Drivers know where they are by multiple factors. Signals, station lighting and other lighting are important - but it’s also the particular sound of a given bridge as you pass over or under it, or the movement of the train on a particular curve or set of points. The problem is that not all of this is recreated on a simulator. The movement isn’t, obviously, and the sounds are generic, so it’s difficult to use them to distinguish one location from another. Even the lights of surrounding buildings are inevitably more generic than those in real life. For this reason, night time driving on a simulator will always be a bit of a compromise. Either you make it lighter than it is in reality so as to see enough of the surroundings to identify your location, or you make it properly dark and just accept that people will pretty much have to drive by the HUD. Neither solution pleases everyone, of course. I find on TSW2 you can achieve significantly different effects by changes to the amount of cloud, and the exact time you are driving. You can also put snow on the ground, which significantly improves visibility (as it does in real life).
To be fair I’d be happy seeing anything at night on clinchfield at times. Nearly completed that one though.
I'd be happy for some realism. People have said TSW2 is a sim but not at night it isn't. stations at night are beacons of light in reality apart from the smaller ones. Obviously there must be some issue but it would be nice to have brighter stations.