signals are WAAAAAYYY too dim

[justinroth]

I cannot find a thread on the topic? I cannot see the signal aspects clearly unless in surveyor during daylight hours. Is there anyway to edit corona brightness? I mean, standing track side in real life one can see signals for a mile+ but I can barely see in T2010E until I am on the signal, usually have to turn the the headlights off to help a bit. Any suggestions? I am using csxt4617 NYC style trilights, though even included USA signals do not project long enough.

 

[sniper297]

It's complicated. What a guy named Scott Miller did for MSTS back in the dark ages was create a signal light that was really really big at a distance and got smaller as you got closer to it, the only problem was the alpha image around the lens if there were trees in the background.

For the default USA2 04 signal, I edited the corona images to increase the circle size by 2, one on the right is the original, on the left is my hack;

A little brighter at a distance, easier to tell that it's green.

Closer up starts to look a little funky;

And really weird when you're right up to it.

One solution would be LOD settings where the lens was really large at a distance and got gradually smaller as you got closer to it, but my guess is it would take a lot of LOD levels to make it look good - 3 or 4 levels wouldn't be enough since you'd get sudden "pops" when it changed sizes.