What is the process involved in changing a route's lighting to TOD4? Is it relatively simple or does it take a long time per route? Also, does the age of a route pose any issues? Asking this because I was wondering what the chances are that we will ever get all of the routes upgraded to TOD4.
Step 1: Switch the route to TOD4 - that's a few seconds, the mod that's available does this bit. Step 2: Visit every single light in the route and adjust the brightness of its light emitter, and its emissive texture (two separate things) much brighter so they work in the new ToD. Dresden has thousands of these. Depending on the route, 5-15 days work. Step 3: Visit all light baked areas of a route, resolve all its lighting problems and then rebake and review. Likely some changes will need to then be made to solve the "blue flash" on entering tunnels. Again, depending on the route, i'd say 5-10 days. Step 4: Visit all the trains that run on this route and check and fix all their lights and emissive textures. 5-10 days. Roughly. Some routes will be much quicker, some longer still. We have no plans to go back to old routes and upgrade their lighting i'm afraid. Matt.
Will the displays work on the RABe 523 as the displays lost its brightness after the TOD4 lighting mod. I've seen 523 on Vorarlberg so i hope its a drivable train.
I'm still hopefully that maybe when you release TSW5 (or later) you'll upgrade the BML after it's had some optimization work and bits done especially since you've done the other 2 rush hour routes.
Would be indeed very nice if the community had the right tool to upgrade old DLCs ! With some good explanations from DTG I'm sure that our lovely UE experts could make very nice tweaks (lightings, signals, graphic adjustments, locs updates etc.) Just see what has be done on TSC by the community or external devs!
The mod isn't made or supported by dtg. It is a community made mod and they can only do soo much with the mod because they don't have access to the entire tool set dtg uses.
That was not was I was thinking. You want someone else to do this and then just download aren't you? I was thinking it would be a nice way for people to see how much work that is
There's a financial equation here that cannot be solved. For DTG to execute the upgrade, it would be costly. Players, of course, would expect existing routes to be upgraded for free. That's why it will never happen.
Now but at least if the community could do it, that would be a good start. There is always some people who love to spend hours in Dev to fix things by their free time.
Ok... but you have done on several routes in the past. Dresden now beeing the last one and no hope for more after?
FWIW I’d had a good go at converting BML but hit a brick wall with the baked lighting (station lights etc) with Victoria being always dark as it’s enclosed. Even changing the emissive values of many of the other lights significantly (street lamps etc) did nothing sadly. I did have significant success with the signals but that involved a lot of trial and error as they behave differently to the signals native to the TOD4 routes. Without the ability to rebake the lighting it appears there’s nothing that can be done & I’m guessing that applies to all the TOD3 routes. I've got BML looking great in the daytime but there is zero lighting at night so I gave up on it. Such a shame because during the day it’s like having a new route. Maybe one day if someone figures out how to mod existing content we can do it. It wouldn’t surprise me if that happens, but I don’t expect it to anytime soon. BML Default TOD3 BML TOD4 mod with default signals BML TOD4 mod with modded signals (not keyed-in so no lights etc on)
Same here. Since TSW3 I don't like to revisit BML or Dresden. Something looks weird about those routes on gen 9. I tried Dresden this week and after 5 minutes I was done. Why would I look at this when I can see it in a few weeks with way better lighting. I noticed that other TSW2 routes that were updated but not to TSW3 specs don't evoke that reaction.
It's extremely time consuming like matt mentioned. You can't just press a button and it works magically in a single day. Plus, on select older routes, those were only done because dtg had time and some financial incentive. Just emphasizing that it won't necessarily happen even if there is a financial incentive.
We didn't say we'd do Dresden either, or before that, we didnt say we'd do Boston. So when I say "we have no plan to do that" I literally mean we have no plan, I am not saying "we will *never* have a plan", similarly I am not saying "one day! for sure!". We have no plan to do it at this point in time. If circumstances mean it makes sense for us to do it, we will, as was the case with Boston and Dresden. It's not so much about financial incentive, its more "big picture" - since Dresden is part of TSW4 Deluxe edition, it makes sense for it to put its best foot forward and upgrading the lighting made sense. Sure, finances always play a part, but think more broadly than that. JetWash the challenge with baking in this circumstance is that it basically turns off all the lights - there's literally no light emitters in that area of the route, it's all baked into textures and such with some clever caching that allows it to include baked light levels to do reflections and "shines" and light things up - but there's literally no lights left turned on. If you turn them on, it'll look terrible because of the baking, and there's no way to "unbake" (and if you did, the performance would be ridiculously bad, framerate in an area with lightbake lighting enabled is low single digits on a high spec machine). The only way to fix a light baked area, is to rebake it i'm afraid. Matt.
Not having much of a clue other than what I’m learning through trial and error and what others have nudged me in the right direction on, I struggled gamely for a while. I even spent the best part of a day altering the emissive value of many many lights on the route and fired it up full of naive hope but it very quickly became obvious it was just as you’ve eluded to there. It’s such a shame because that route particularly would look epic with TOD4. I suppose one option might be to add extra lights as Bescot has done with his BCC mod (if you haven’t seen it, it’s a bit good) but I guess it would really hurt performance having the original lights with virtually a whole duplicate set added in. Or would it? Who knows (I’m guessing you likely do! )
A trend I have noticed is that it appears that if a locomotive is released that will work on a certain route, then that route is getting an upgrade. Makes financial sense, since that can influence the purchase of said loco.
I read Matts post and I get that .... I don´t want every old route to get TOD 4, because I don´t play most of them anyway. I think Dresden was a great choice, because its one of the most popular and diverse German routes. If I could choose one, I would love to see London-Brighton get the TOD 4 update. Fingers crossed they revisit the route one day with DLC and TOD 4.
Hi all! My appeal is addressed to the DTG team. At the moment, in our collections there is a fairly large number of routes, the passage of which we are busy. I think that now the moment has come when the team can return to improve the old routes. Personally, I now note a significant difference in the quality of lighting, vegetation and gameplay between the new and old routes. when choosing between a new route and a remaster of the old route, I choose the latter. I think there are a lot of people in our community who think so! I beg you to return to the old routes. No one expects you to work for free. Personally, I'm willing to pay to improve old routes. My favorites in line for the remaster: Brighton Main Line; Sand Patch Grade (cult route, it is the firstborn and should be the best); Ruhr Sieg Nord, LIRR.
I, on the other hand, am looking forward to see new routes, new traction, new wagons, hopefully in new countries. I want to see new passengers, 80% of which should be looking into phones, tablets, and maybe laptops when seated. In case it wasn't clear, I am fine with the current state of BML, SPG, etc. Heck, I was able to gold star Clinchfield, which at night is darker than hell.
with the hope that they nicely react to the trains. no bug on rails, no all leaving the train, entry the trains, don´t stuck on dock etc.
