Railworks America

I notice the shadows only extend back a few cars in the train.

These screenshots are from Donner Pass, but it occurs in other routes.

Is this a game problem, or do I need to change my video settings?

Rob

I believe it is your video settings.

As what Buzz said, shadows are also limited to a fixed distance.

You will also notice shadows appearing in front of you from trees and buildings etc. I just ignore it and get on with driving my train.

The way I remember it is this: When I was a young lad and before the update to Train Simulator 2013, I had full train shadows, or they at least went farther back.
Then after the update to TS2013 I had fewer cars showing shadows.
They have increased the FPS a little over the last two years, but some things actually don't look as good.
It seems like FXAA+8XMSAA shows more jaggies for instance than it used to, in addition to shadows, I suspect Water quality were downgraded some.

Nice screenshots, I don't remember Donner looking that good...

I really never noticed that. Is it a compulsion of some sort to just find stuff? It definitely as Hack said a distance thing, I'm sure designed in there to improve frame rates.

Some people will just go on and on finding minor faults in games/simulators TS/FSX, Far Cry4 etc.

As we used to say in college, "Get a life!" Okay, that's a bit harsh, but there's Mister X, making his way through a long-haul freight scenario, switching camera views from time to time to keep boredom from putting him to sleep. He selects the #2 view and finds himself looking toward the rear of his train and ... oh, my stars and garters! ... only the engines and the first few freight cars are casting shadows. "Well, that's probably RSC's fault! Or maybe it's something to do with video settings?" he reacts. "Finally, I, too, can post about a peculiarity at RWA!!!!!" And as his train starts running away from him, that's what he does.

Maybe I should "get a life", too? After all, why am I bothering about this? Well, actually, I just returned home from a taxing bicycle ride and am waiting to cool off a bit before showering. Gee, thanks for reading! Hello? Hello? Anyone there? Hello???????

Hack wrote:As what Buzz said, shadows are also limited to a fixed distance.

IIRC, there was an xml file containing system settings such as draw distance in the older versions of the game.
If that file is still present, perhaps it can override the settings you make in the Advanced Graphics dialog windows.

Also there are lots of shaders defined in the Dev/Shader folder, I believe they are programmed in DirectX language and can be manipulated through their definition text files and then compiled.
Has anybody tried to tinker with these?

I too am wanting a greater drawing distance on my powerful games PC and laptop.

Having this short drawing distance ruins screenshots with a powerful telephoto effect, as there is nothing in the background.

Anybody know what a .fx file is and how to look at what's there? There are several files that might lead to changing the distance stuff if I could figure out how to see what's in there.

It's just text, you can open it in notepad. They are effects files.

NYWhiskey wrote:It's just text, you can open it in notepad. They are effects files.

Thank you sir.

It never ceases to amaze me, at how others will spend hours upon hours complaining, about a person complaining. Or in this case, the OP was simply asking some questions of curiosity, not complaining at all.
Some people apparently spend hours a day looking for complaints to complain about.

Ericmopar wrote:It never ceases to amaze me, at how others will spend hours upon hours complaining, about a person complaining. Or in this case, the OP was simply asking some questions of curiosity, not complaining at all.
Some people apparently spend hours a day looking for complaints to complain about.

Hey, if you want to complain about complaints about complainers, this isn't the place for that. Better off going to the complaint complaining complainers directly.