Stormy Weather

soap__

Member
Perhaps I am missing something.

I remember the stormy weather back in TS2010/12 being really beautiful. No matter the time of day it got very dark, you would be able to see lightning flashes and the thunder was always nice and loud. It was one of my favorite situations to drive in.

I've been (finally) changing the weather in 2022 and the "stormy" setting is.... super underwhelming? It's basically the same as the normal rain with occasional booms of thunder. No darkness, no lightning flashes. Am I missing something? Is there a way to go back to the classic stormy weather? Even if it's a bit of a janky way? Why did this even get changed in the first place?
 
TLDR - we haven't got around to it yet.

Longer version:
The transition from Jet to the 64bit "E2" game engine meant that entire systems needed to be rewritten. So things like derailment physics (which everyone hated at the time) and "weather" needed to be rewritten. This was alongside adding things like procedural junctions etc. Quite simply, the new engine has the capability of far better effects than the old one, but we've never got around to it. (And if we did, people would ask why we were making a "weather sim" rather than a train sim.)
 
Basic things like:
-weather/lightning
-moon
-rainbow
-no(less) shadow when overcast
-animated rain on cab windows


should be the first things that are good (when changing engine) in any Simulator
the change from Jet to E2 was around 2014? 8 years?, wow time sure flies
 
Basic things like:
-weather/lightning
-moon
-rainbow
-no(less) shadow when overcast
-animated rain on cab windows


should be the first things that are good (when changing engine) in any Simulator
the change from Jet to E2 was around 2014? 8 years?, wow time sure flies
And none of this has changed in such a time ... And I would very much like
 
TLDR - we haven't got around to it yet.

Longer version:
The transition from Jet to the 64bit "E2" game engine meant that entire systems needed to be rewritten. So things like derailment physics (which everyone hated at the time) and "weather" needed to be rewritten. This was alongside adding things like procedural junctions etc. Quite simply, the new engine has the capability of far better effects than the old one, but we've never got around to it. (And if we did, people would ask why we were making a "weather sim" rather than a train sim.)

TLDR - you are incorrect. Do it! The atmospherics in trainz very much hold it back in terms of standing up to the next thing (and you know what I mean). Idk if it needs to be pointed out again but that was almost 10 years ago. It is really amusing to me what takes priority sometimes in terms of what is being developed when you consider many other inconsequential or even additional things that have changed over the years. There are various and very simple ways to make vast improvements but yes you haven't got around to it yet.
 
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It was 2022... Why do we need weather and effects at all? Don't you want to play in a beautiful, modern game? I have been connected with the game since 2009, during these 12 years there were not much changes in the graphics, only crooked shadows were added and that's it, and an unnecessary multiplayer played by three cripples in two rows.
Trainz Sim World 2

Trainz
 
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It is hard to even take this post seriously. You taken brand new content in a brand new game and compared it to an ancient route with ancient rolling stock.
 
It is hard to even take this post seriously. You taken brand new content in a brand new game and compared it to an ancient route with ancient rolling stock.
I took what people are rolling now in games, because in Trainz no one wants any promotions, junk suits
 
New weather is very much needed, this is one of my first wishes for trainz.
This is a shame for 2022. This should have been done right away in TANE, and then to make multiplayer editors. This is the face of the game, each player turns on the snow and rain and sees Trainz 2004 in 2022
 
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Realistic weather, raindrops on the winscreen (removed by wipers). Pitch black tunnels, all things that are part of reality.

So if it's a simulator, it needs to embrace reality.

Mike.
 
It has taken how many years just to have moving points in turnouts?

N3V seems to be in a business of writing a database management program. I'll trade weather for a program that runs without endless error checking, rebuilds and stupid build numbers. No other games run like this.

I left Trainz in 2012 because of this. I am leaving them again now. I'm done with this.cluster.

Open Rails is not pretty. It doesn't eat my hard drive up. I don't have to suffer through database rebuilds because someone changed a KUID to :2. The route editor is a pain. When it messes up, it's actually something I have done wrong, not a glitch in the matrix of N3V programming.

Adios to a bad program.
 
Wow, this blew up.

For me personally, I don't need it to be beautiful. It just needs to be distinctive. The stormy weather in the older versions of the game may not have been super graphically impressive, but it really captured the feeling of a storm. Even something akin to that is all I need. I don't want fancy weather effects (stuff like raindrops on the windshield) though I wouldn't complain if they were added... but hailing from a part of the country where thunderstorms are common during the summer it's disheartening that the sim has taken a step back in this regard.

I don't need it to be better or more advanced than it used to be, N3V. I just need it to *not be worse*. And right now, the weather is worse than it was in TS12.
 
Basic things like:
-weather/lightning
-no(less) shadow when overcast
-animated rain on cab windows

Just to confirm that you can reproduce some of these effects if you want to, albeit not automatically, when creating a session.

I'm not sure if they made it to the release version, but the 3rd and 4th sessions on Bairnsdale to Orbost specifically change the lighting to represent a day that goes from fairly clear to very overcast.

In a similar method I also setup the sessions on the TRS19 version of my Healesville route to have a variety of different environment settings to represent different weather conditions.

Pulling these from the Trainz Store, as that's what I have on hand right now, but these two screenshots are from an 'overcast' session on the Healesville route:

a8ORk5z3WrSL.jpg

Ao2Vfbyg8tHu.jpg



OTOH these two screenshots are from a 'hot summer day' session:

jw39T6Bp_iE1.jpg


hHuSkZK5LcO.jpg


We would absolutely like to introduce the ability for different weather conditions to also create different lighting conditions, but this is a large task to do properly, so is still being looked at.

What you can do though is go with 'timed' weather changes (ie the weather changes occur from weather rules indented under time check rules in a session), and then alter your environment settings to suit this.

In regards to animated rain on windows, this is something we would also like to look at (likely separately to the weather systems themselves), however at the current time static rain textures are relatively easy to introduce for content creators. TBH either way it will still require creators to actually configure their content for it; with the number that won't even introduce PBR materials on their content it does make it difficult to justify new features that require creators to support it directly...

Regards
 
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