How does 2022 behave at NIGHT?

[JonMyrlennBailey]

Is the lighting now real? Do we now have real-world-like stationary objects illumniation from streetlights, yard floodlights, buildings and etc? Does loco smoke and steam still glow in the dark? Does light and shadow no longer penetrate walls and bridge decks? It would be nice to see demo videos of 2022 city street landscapes at night and see how light and shadows behave, night or day.

I have not played Trainz advanced of TANE SP4 with cheesy-looking light pools on the ground from stationary light fixtures and loco headlight beams that punch through certain bridge decks and some train car bodies. The loco headlights do seem to throw fairly realistic light rays over the landscape. It would be great if stationary light objects as park lamp posts behaved much like locomotive headlights in illumination properties.

Here is what real-world street lighting looks like: it's not little oval pools on the ground but ambient light spread widely and more evenly.

 

[grazlash]

Lighting has not been improved as yet, still the same as it's always been.

 

[H222]

Lighting has got better, but no, what you're asking for is next to impossible without something like DirectX12 or ray tracing... which will be introduced in the near future with Trainz+

If you do think TANE is still worth pursuing over 22 because of this, quite frankly I think you've lost your marbles. TANE looks terrible compared to 19/22.

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

Lighting has got better, but no, what you're asking for is next to impossible without something like DirectX12 or ray tracing... which will be introduced in the near future with Trainz+

If you do think TANE is still worth pursuing over 22 because of this, quite frankly I think you've lost your marbles. TANE looks terrible compared to 19/22.

Nothing has convinced me yet that 22 is worth shelling out 70 bucks for. There is no "try-before-buy" program I know of. I want to see a lot more in animated pictures of 22 before putting money down. I don't see why making streetlight illumination like locomotive headlight illumination is so hard. If they can do it with an engine already since Trainz was born, they can do it with a house porch light or a floodlight tower.

I wish somebody here would post a 22 Trainz play video in a nighttime scenario with landscape lighting. I'm not pursuing TANE. I've had it since 2015. I just started building with it in ernest three months ago. It does have better loco headlight illumination over TS12. I had used TS12 to build for about 7 years.

 

[boleyd]

Perhaps just make the light pool edges a little fuzzy as a quick adjustment. May only be possible in TS22.
There must be a way now to make the ground light pool to extend in a degrading fashion some reasonable distance from the center.
Graduated ambient, reflected and refracted light - that is a problem.

 

[nugget2225]

22 runs 10 times better in my opinion, meaning smoothness and disk space, i am modifying a 160 mile route from the download station for personal use and it's extremely smooth, even with large areas covered with turfx grass, tree's and shrubs. After i am finished i plan on contacting the original route builder and reuploading if i get permission.

 

[Forester1]

It's not just the lights and the pools underneath them, but objects in the light pools need to be illuminated. So, if a car is halfway into a light pool, half has to be lit up and the other half dark. I think as H222 has said, it will take ray tracing or some other advanced graphics. Nothing looks odder than the current dark car sitting in the middle of a light pool.

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

It's not just the lights and the pools underneath them, but objects in the light pools need to be illuminated. So, if a car is halfway into a light pool, half has to be lit up and the other half dark. I think as H222 has said, it will take ray tracing or some other advanced graphics. Nothing looks odder than the current dark car sitting in the middle of a light pool.

Again, what is the theory behind the locomotive headlights? Why do they look so much more natural spread over a nearby landscape than most other light objects? Why can't loco light technology just simply be incorporated into streetlight content?

 

[grazlash]

Again, what is the theory behind the locomotive headlights? Why do they look so much more natural spread over a nearby landscape than most other light objects? Why can't loco light technology just simply be incorporated into streetlight content?

The answer would be performance. If you have a city with a hundred streetlights utilizing point lighting, the performance would drag. Just having a fast processor isn't enough, as most of that work would be done by the graphics card, which is already under load from assets, particularly with motion involved. Route creators aren't exactly known for building efficiently, with scene budgets and the like.

 

[sister]

Anyway I agree with who would like a more real aspect of night's lights as in the way it's today the night enviroment results really poor compered to daylight

 

[H222]

I don't see why making streetlight illumination like locomotive headlight illumination is so hard. If they can do it with an engine already since Trainz was born, they can do it with a house porch light or a floodlight tower.

How many headlights are in any given scene vs how many lights in an ENTIRE CITY SCENE?

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

How many headlights are in any given scene vs how many lights in an ENTIRE CITY SCENE?

I build small towns in rural America as route themes. The number of streetlights is low. I might have a dozen light posts on a train platform. I may put lights on telephone poles in street corners. I might have about 30 floodlight towers in a small yard. I did not realize light objects take so much overhead on hardware. There might be up to a dozen train headlights in a given scene, but that is an extreme case.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Many other game engines have managed volumetric lighting quite effectively for many years. Not trainz though.

 

[H222]

I build small towns in rural America as route themes. The number of streetlights is low. I might have a dozen light posts on a train platform. I may put lights on telephone poles in street corners. I might have about 30 floodlight towers in a small yard. I did not realize light objects take so much overhead on hardware. There might be up to a dozen train headlights in a given scene, but that is an extreme case.

Unfortunately, what you build specifically matters very little to the actual game. N3V can’t realistically advertise something like point lighting in the game and then only allow it to occur in very specific instances where it’s barely useable. If you want it in your rural scene with 30 streetlights, I want it in my city scene with 3 million residents.

And Deane: I believe many games use “fake” point/volumetric lighting as a way to make it look like an object is casting light - games like Red Dead Redemption use a couple of instances of point lighting within the game, but most streetlights and static objects that cast light just use different texture sets underneath them to give the illusion of volumetric