Montitor settings

JimDep

Well-known member
Do you tweak you monitor settings when using Trainz ? More or less brightness, gamma, contrast, digital vibrancy..etc , or just stick with the default / factory setting ?

The default settings on mine aren't very realistic, regardless of the time of day in Trainz, especially with the color saturation. If you make a route and want to upload it for others, you'd like to make it so others see it they way you do, so I'm curious what changes , if any, people make on their monitors.
 
Do you tweak you monitor settings when using Trainz ? More or less brightness, gamma, contrast, digital vibrancy..etc , or just stick with the default / factory setting ?

The default settings on mine aren't very realistic, regardless of the time of day in Trainz, especially with the color saturation. If you make a route and want to upload it for others, you'd like to make it so others see it they way you do, so I'm curious what changes , if any, people make on their monitors.

Unlike previous versions of Trainz, there is no way of setting the gamma, brightness, or contrast and that's up to the system to handle that. Because of that, I leave my monitor at the system settings, or whatever they are when I first set it up. The default settings for the display are fine for everything. As for monitors, I have two but the one I use for Trainzing is a Dell S3222DGM, or 32-inch LCD curved display. The other is a Samsung 27-inch LC27RG50 display that works well for gaming but is now my second monitor. It's great having two large monitors for editing and doing stuff.

I set my lighting in Trainz by initially setting up the default lighting in Surveyor when I edit the route.

In the Environment settings, I click on default. There's a warning about doing so, but I confirm yes, I want to do that then set time to noon by placing a green dot. (I can't remember if I have to hit the green dot first or afterwards!) I then adjust the ambient lighting up and down to where I want it along with the sun brightness. I use noon and bright for Surveyor because I want to see if there's anything floating off the terrain. The default lighting is similar to what we had in TS12 and TANE and is great for editing.

When I setup a driving session, however, I'll use that default setting as my basis and then adjust the lighting accordingly for the time of day I want to set the session to. I usually start early in the morning with fog and a low orangish sun and let the brightness increase and the fog decrease as the time of day progresses.
 
I have ever been seeking the Holy Grail of arcane knowledge that some folks use to post photograph-quality screenshots here of Trainz. I have yet to find it. Once someone posted some developer settings as a recommendation to me and it just seemed to turn everything pink and lime green! I had to do a reset to get Trainz back to normal, so I no longer try to fiddle with it. But I have never been able to do the kind of screenshots I see here on an almost daily basis. I may never be part of the occult inner circle. You would think that if Trainz could really look that real, then N3V would change the default settings to match. It would be the greatest sales incentive they could ever have. But so far, no luck.
 
Screenshots hot of my monitor are hardly photo-quality. What I do is add some post-processing using my photo software. Over the years, I've noticed that photos which look fine on my monitor when I finished, seem a little washed out once they get to a web site. So, I tone down the brightness a little so they are slightly darker than I'd normally use before uploading. Seems to work just fine.

Bill
 
I have ever been seeking the Holy Grail of arcane knowledge that some folks use to post photograph-quality screenshots here of Trainz. I have yet to find it. Once someone posted some developer settings as a recommendation to me and it just seemed to turn everything pink and lime green! I had to do a reset to get Trainz back to normal, so I no longer try to fiddle with it. But I have never been able to do the kind of screenshots I see here on an almost daily basis. I may never be part of the occult inner circle. You would think that if Trainz could really look that real, then N3V would change the default settings to match. It would be the greatest sales incentive they could ever have. But so far, no luck.

I tried those settings and ended up with an awful mess. It's a good thing I backed up the lighting.fx files, otherwise I'd have had to reinstall everything as well.

As I said, I found setting the overall lighting to default settings first then working from there other than attempting to take what's already there and trying to fix that. I learned this the hard way while doing other things where it's sometimes best to start over rather than fix what's already there.
 
I use a Sony flat screen TV for my PC monitor. The PC has an Nvidia integrated video card.
In the Nvidia default settings, there's nothing I've found in the TANE environment controls that would help Trainz look more realistic. What works for me is adjusting the PC monitor first to my liking and then tweaking with the TANE environment controls to get lighting through out the day and night that I can live with. After doing this, then I reskin just about all scenery that I can to usually darken it a bit and lower the color saturation with the Paint Shop pro photo editor.
Here's the problem though. If I upload a route made with my customized settings ( and permissions needed) , it's going to look different to anyone who uses it, and not for the better......depending on whatever monitor adjustments they've made themselves. How do uploaded routes gain any consistency with realistic lighting and color saturation ?
 
Most of them don't. I can't remember downloading a route where I haven't messed with color/lighting at least a little bit. When I upload a route, I aim for a middfle ground. knowing downloaders will alter it.

Bill
 
Excellent discussion here on Color and Ambient light issues,

I have a hard time with those Color Dials, I wish there was Number Increments, so I could write down certain Colors that are appealing for Water and Sun Colors. The only thing I can think to do, is take a Picture of the Dial Settings and what the Color shows to remember what Color appeared for each element change, Water especially.:(

Great idea on Setting 1200 Noon for floating objects, I have missed a number of them, because lighting I was using didn't show them up until you had your Camera at particular angle, and that was usually by just good look moving around the tiles and looking up for Hills or Mountain leveling adjustments......;)


@ JimDep -------------Interesting on the Fog issue......Makes sense.........:cool:
 
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Here's another thought, and something I'm doing now. Set the fog level at zero for the noon hour and then look around at the scenery. This will definitely help you find missing / floating things. Once it occurred to me to start using the zero fog level for a base line to use in judging all scenery and textures, I found that I went too dark on reskinning some of the assets and still go through them again to get it right.
 
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