Night Lighting effects

[jands1]

Have recently tried running some trains at night but am disappointed with the lighting effects
Cars and station lamps are alright but buildings etc seem eiher very poorly lit or not at all.
Is this right or am I missing a "night setting" here somewhere
Have tried changing to night in the weather in scenario but seems to have no effect

Perhaps this is still an area where MSTS is better - you can get some nice effcts at night in MSTS if you try

[skiddaw]

Hi,
Some freeware scenery definitely has night lighting effects. This is particularly noticible with scenery downloads from the italian RW site AmiciTreni. In the download list buildings often have an inset photo showing the night view.
Foe example see
http://www.railworks.it/download/index. ... ds.dl_date DESC&ENGINEsessID=4200acad2d0a5dcd65cc9a1e8208d739&start=25

The lighting effect comes on automatically in the appropriate nighttime scenario - you don't have to do anything to switch the lights on as far as I know.

You may be right about MSTS being better in this respect - I haven't used it for years so can't comment.
-John

[Kariban]

Apparently dynamic light sources are coming in the Big Update(tm), whenever that arrives - supposedly this year.

[jands1]

Excellent - thanks to all - as long as its not just me.
in my personsal view the night lighting and weather are not as good as MSTS although they clearly will be at some future stage
looking forward to the big update.

[skiddaw]

Hi,
Some freeware scenery definitely has night lighting effects. This is particularly noticible with scenery downloads from the italian RW site AmiciTreni. In the download list buildings often have an inset photo showing the night view.
Foe example see
http://www.railworks.it/download/index. ... ds.dl_date DESC&ENGINEsessID=4200acad2d0a5dcd65cc9a1e8208d739&start=25


-John

This link gets curtailed - try
http://tinyurl.com/6lbj2nc

[Acorncomputer]

Hi

The lighting effects are very much down to the modeller. These are models I have made whilst trying to master lighting as well as many other aspects of modelling -

[jands1]

These are great
Still shows how much room for improvement there is in the standard bulidings though doesn't it, but the platform lighting is great as is the signal box

[Acorncomputer]

Adding lighting effects to buildings, mainly windows is just a matter of placing a night time object in front of the window, such as a window with a drawn curtain, giving it shader that glows in the dark and giving that object a name that ends in -fx-night. Although the object, or objects, are part of the model, they only appear when the simulation is in night time mode at which point they light up in front of the basic model windows and give the impression of a lit window.

The lamps in the shots are my first attempts at this sort of object but they are still missing the misty light cones from the lamp to the pool of light on the floor. I know how to do this but 3D Canvas is limited on what it can do and this is one features that it cannot do (although I think 3DCrafter can).

Like much with RailWorks, the simulation can do a great deal but not all features have been used as yet and much is still in development. The core update is due soon and I suspect there will be a lot of improvements in the way light is handled in the simulation, we will have to wait and see.