Making The Experience More Realistic(All Trainz Versions)

What do you recommend?
I discovered recently:

• Adjusting Gamma(I persume all versions have this) can really make a difference to the night experience, make it feel dark, rather than pretending to be...(The only downside is yer menu's, as well as adapting back to the normal gamma again )..playing around with it surely will get good results for any, reasonably dark, or mid-dark time..

Many years ago I played with this. Because Trainz does not make night really dark, you have to find a way to do it. As time goes by, the efect is not so relevant and you get used to not having dark nights. The program should really make nights darker, and we should be able to adjust when night lights go ON. As it is now they go on at about 6:25 PM. For winter that is fine, but in summer? (remember most of us live in the Northern hemisphere). Oh well, you have to do with what we have...

Thanks for the good info, i had wondered about this aspect, as my feelings r the same, not dark enough for me too! Been to busy fixing my asset faults and errors.. A blessed day to all.

Hello. This is probably not a good answer but ... I have an older Windows XP computer with a Radeon X800 XT video card..

I found an alternate program to control the video card instead of the supplied CCC (Catalyst Control Center) Name of the program is ATITool 2.6.

It allows you to program in two keys to control brightness up or down. I use the * and - keys on the keypad. It is very convenient in Trainz (and even when browsing the web when a particular picture is too dark). It also controls the brightness of everything on the monitor. It is very handy.

Of course, I doubt if this would work with newer video cards (it is not being developed any more). Something similar to this could be an answer.

Best wishes to you on this! Bob P.

Contributions to discussions r very relevant, all of us have different systems , in fact i have an old XP computer the miss's and kids still use for some games and programs that wont run on newer Win7 OS version's and im going to try your tip, thanks for sharing with us!

If anyone is interested in that ATITool, you might have to to uninstall the Catalyst Control Center, I guess I did, (it's not on my computer any more, but some of the Icons for it are still in the Start menu, they don't lead to anything though).

Be careful however. Back up the registry. This ATITool also has a Nvidia version. It also has a menu for overclocking the video card. I did not continue with that.. It keeps raising the speed until artifacts show up on a rotating box.( I think this is also raising the temperature).The program also has a choice for showing the video card temperature on the Windows task bar, but you cannot see it on 3D game screens like Trainz. Be careful, although, I've had it running for five or six years with no trouble.

Right clicking on the icon on the Windows taskbar brings up settings for AA and AF. (Open GL and DirectX)

No doubt about it, uninstalling your video card's control software can be a hairy experience (it was to me) but I was sick of how that Catalyst Control Center worked !! I am not responsible for any computer blowing up !!! :'(

I did a search on Google "hot keys to control gamma" and there is a more modern program to do this...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_Control

Gamma Control. I have never tried it!

There also seem to be other ways to control Gamma.. See this Google search ... (I searched for Hot keys to control Gamma)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...eys+to+control+gamma&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1

Most certainly, adjusting the colors and lighting in T:ANE, as the water, and overall brightness is washed out, on default settings.

Most railfans do not own a whirly-bird heliocopter, so driving in chase mode is utterly unrealistic ... most railfans are on the ground level, or perhaps up on a low bridge or hill, so trackside rotating tracking cameras placed relatively down low, very much distant clanging crossing bells, and blaring horns, are the way a railfan or employees would view trains.

Do you usually railfan real trains at night ? So driving Trainz at night would always be more lackluster and more boring.

Most railfans do not own a whirly-bird heliocopter, so driving in chase mode is utterly unrealistic

Click to expand...

Perhaps but I'm sure there are plenty who prefer it. I do. It's the way I usually play. Then again, I'm not a rivet counter to begin with anyway.

*Bring back the in game gamma slider, please.

I just realized, adjusting your brightness(in my case, lucky me, it comes with it's own menu at the push of a button) can help make it EVEN darker, I made it feel REALLY dark with a BR 9F(Evening Star) yesterday.