Color Saturation

JimDep

Well-known member
How do you reduce overall color saturation for Trainz ? Is there someway to edit it withing the software ?
 
There is no single, overall control of colour saturation in Trainz, other than adjusting the settings of your monitor. Within the game itself, you need to adjust the RGB dials for Ambient, Sun and Sky colours at each individual position of the daily clock found in the Environment menu. It’s quite arduous.

Holding down the Shift key while rotating one of the RGB dials will bring each of them to the same value and rotate them all in sync, which effectively changes the greyscale intensity with no colour bias.

In TRS19, and in TANE (I think), there is also a slider for overall brightness, but that’s not the same as saturation.
 
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The default settings are similar to T:ANE so I reset the environment to defaults the go up from there as I adjust water, lighting, and everything else.

2019-01-26 003325.jpg

This is untweaked and my default settings because I was testing my session and doing work in Surveyor. Having the brighter environment makes placing and adjusting assets a lot easier.
 
Thanks John.
What I've been doing lately is using the early morning lighting to place scenery. Early morning and for a short time at dusk, the lighting effect can be horrible for certain vegetation. If I can get it rotated to be acceptable during morning or dusk, it will look great for the rest of the day.
What bugs me though is the over saturation of colors in general. I found when making content to reduce the saturation greatly in textures for a more realistic effect. If I can find a way to universally do that, I think everything will look more realistic to my eyes. For some reason, the saturation control on my monitor isn't working very well.
 
Thanks John.
What I've been doing lately is using the early morning lighting to place scenery. Early morning and for a short time at dusk, the lighting effect can be horrible for certain vegetation. If I can get it rotated to be acceptable during morning or dusk, it will look great for the rest of the day.
What bugs me though is the over saturation of colors in general. I found when making content to reduce the saturation greatly in textures for a more realistic effect. If I can find a way to universally do that, I think everything will look more realistic to my eyes. For some reason, the saturation control on my monitor isn't working very well.

Does your monitor have HDR enabled? That is a color saturation setting that "makes colors richer", which will in effect cause things to be over saturated in some cases. This is also affected by the very nature of LCD displays, and the latest LED-displays tend to run a bit warmer. Also on your display, is there a color temperature setting? I set mine down to the greyer-bluer range so that the colors aren't so distinct.

I tend to keep stuff at noon for most of my work. I then will test the lighting at various other times of the day such as dawn, morning, and afternoon. If the world looks good, then I'll leave things alone, otherwise, I'll do some texture adjusting.
 
Get the NvIDIA app which allows you to adjust "everything". Saturation, Hue Brightness, Contrast, etc. Adjust R & G & B individually or in concert. Monitors control seem to be more for adjusting the best showroom presentation which is saturated "dramatic" colors. You do not have to live with that. Get the APP.

PS: I usually keep a TV new window open and I set my monitor for the best TV picture. BUT, that is no longer valid. Studio quality lighting is gone. Home lighting is not good. I believe the anchors are given lights, mikes and top quality cameras for their homes, but it ain't no studio.
 
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Get the NvIDIA app which allows you to adjust "everything". Saturation, Hue Brightness, Contrast, etc. Adjust R & G & B individually or in concert. Monitors control seem to be more for adjusting the best showroom presentation which is saturated "dramatic" colors. You do not have to live with that. Get the APP.

PS: I usually keep a TV new window open and I set my monitor for the best TV picture. BUT, that is no longer valid. Studio quality lighting is gone. Home lighting is not good. I believe the anchors are given lights, mikes and top quality cameras for their homes, but it ain't no studio.

It's a bit more than that with TV. Back in the olden days, there was such as thing as "video safe" lighting. The anchors and actors never wore particular colors, stripes or dotted patterns due to color saturation and Moiré effects. The lights themselves were particular colors too and used to cut back on stark shadows and harsh lighting. With the development of everyone is a cameraman these days, none of this applies and the art of the lighting department has been lost.

I agree that the NVidia control panel settings will help. I would still check the temperature settings of the display. This determines the overall color brightness and color gamma of the display. It took me a few days to find the optimal setting for my ancient Samsung 27-inch display, but it finally works with a "cool" temperature setting rather than the higher and brighter settings.
 
Thanks for the discussion. The settings for my Sony TV doesn't apply...for some reason.... to the PC input , where my computer runs a line in to. I tried to reduce saturation on the NVIDIA control panel and it just makes it look all washed out. I increased the contrast and that didn't help. I'll see if I can find the temperature settings......I don't remember seeing them , but I'll look again.
Curious boleyd, does the app have a name so I get the right one ? Thanks.
 
Should be able to do it in the Nvidia Control Panel, which is installed with the drivers, it has a gamma adjustment. If it's missing, needs reinstalling if you got lumbered with DCH drivers, it's available from the MS Store

TV's are not very game friendly, may do better using VGA rather than HDMI, worked on a TV I use as a third monitor / TV, HDMI looked dreadful, had to get a DVI to VGA adaptor though, now pretty much matches my other two monitors.
 
Should be able to do it in the Nvidia Control Panel, which is installed with the drivers, it has a gamma adjustment. If it's missing, needs reinstalling if you got lumbered with DCH drivers, it's available from the MS Store

TV's are not very game friendly, may do better using VGA rather than HDMI, worked on a TV I use as a third monitor / TV, HDMI looked dreadful, had to get a DVI to VGA adaptor though, now pretty much matches my other two monitors.

True ! My old set from many years ago had a knob for adjusting how much color you wanted. From full blown saturation to black and white with everything else in between. That's all I'm looking for........but this so called advanced technology makes something so simple into a needle in a haystack to adjust.....if at all.

Gamma: I do use the gamma slider on the NVIDIA control panel for running trains at night, but it doesn't really effect the color saturation. Maybe a little but not very noticeably.
 
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Thought, what I do is turn the sun down to a dark grey in the environmental controls and then use the slider to brighten things up a bit.
 
Mystery solved.
I just discovered that the new "progressive" , state of the art name for color control is called......"digital vibrance". Now some of you are thinking " OH...that's what he was looking for ? I could have told him that ! " Well, it's news to me. The slider was right in front of me on the NVIDIA control panel. For whatever reason...my mind associated that with some kind of digital vibrator....whatever that is. I quickly rejected it thinking that it's probably something I want to avoid messing with and not helpful for Trainz. I finally got brave and did start cranking it to the left. It controls the color saturation. I'll have to play with it, along with mixing in the right amount of gamma and brightness. Hopefully it will work out.

Why I want to reduce the saturation is because the colors seem so enhanced that it reminds of when I was a kid and watched the cartoon Underdog or even Batman for the 1st time in color. A lot of folks back then would keep the color levels high so they felt like they're getting their money's worth out of their brand new and expensive color TV's. Over saturation was never for me. I remember watching a baseball game in color and wanting the grass on the ball field to resemble the same..uh....vibrancy...as my front lawn. That worked then and I think it will work now. Thanks for all your input. Much appreciated.
 
Lol I've never touched that digital vibrance thing, wondered what that was for, good find! Yes you would correct on the 1952 and I also thought that colour TV looked a bit unnatural when it first came out.
 
I long for the days when monitors had knobs on them you could turn. I hate "digital" controls that are hidden under an edge corner and the graphic indicators are so small and light you can barely see them, let alone "read" them. Or the digital button is not even named and "name" of the control pops up on the screen when you hit it but the name is between two buttons so you of course, hit the wrong one the first time.

"Knobs are good!" "Hooray for knobs"
 
Agree ! Knobs are your friends. Turning a knob saves a lot of time compared to a lot of time wasted trying to figure out the digital alternative with a new and unknown name.
 
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