I made a mistake. That revert link is only for the author to use. It allows me to revert all subscribers back to a previous version. I've never used it, so didn't know. So, just wait for the next release. It will be a blend of 5.1 and 5.2.

Oh thanks - i did not know you can revert to older version - thats cool!

Looking foward for 5.3 though and will have a look in it

Keiko Agenda, here is another suggestion for you. Until I release V5.3 which you might like, you can easily revert back to a previous version. In the Change Notes, you will see links for each version that say "Revert to this version". The current V5.2 is a complete redraw of the light masks and the design of them is giving me a nicer resolution for the light beams. They are smoother around the edges. I can now improve on this a bit further.

Keiko Agenda, up above and to the right of the screenshots, look for "Change Notes" and then click on "view" for an explanation of why the headlights look the way they do. There is still light off to the sides, but it is less than before. However, in this next update which is V5.3, I am increasing the brightness slightly to the sides of the brighter area. You can't imagine how tedious this operation can be. Depending on the overall shape of the imagery on the light mask and various other settings, there is a certain point to the sides where just one extra row of brighter pixels will send light way out into the countryside.

Hi,

I liked the way you approach the lights in Verion 5 with the view you had, when you are in bumber view.

It's now back to a really straight light edge (don't know how to pronounce it)

is there a plan to get the look of version 5 back? really loved it

That's what I decided to do. The SCS lights are good enough.
Thanks for getting back and helping to sort this out, not many modders have the decency to reply.

That graphics mod must be doing something with the lighting during the day to change the scenery in a certain way. Unfortunately, it affects night time in a bad way. Headlights light up the area way too bright. Even the SCS headlights will light things brighter than they were designed to do. However, since the SCS headlights are so weak, this is probably a nice effect. My recommendation to anyone is to just stick with the graphics the way SCS is doing it.

Ultimate Graphics Mod ETS2
This mod enhances every aspect of the game.

VermenRat, I'm glad you found the problem, and it was the usual problem that others have also had. In each case, it has been another lighting mod of some sort that caused a conflict. If it was a mod here on Steam, let me know which one it is so I can check it out and see what it does that conflicts with my mod.

I think I found the problem. I'm using a graphics mod that also does the headlights. I turned that mod off and yours worked.
Thanks for your feedback as well. Keep up the work

VermenRat, thanks for the followup. Everyone has their own tastes. These headlights are the way I like them. They don't suit you, but that's OK. One good thing about ETS2 is there are a LOT of street lamps. There are entire stretches of highway lined with street lamps. You could actually turn your headlights completely off and see just fine in many areas. I can't believe there are that many street lamps in real life, but then again, I've never been to Europe, so I don't know for sure. When I test drive all the different trucks, I usually turn the street lamps off so I can see what the headlights are doing.

I tried the roof beam and had to put sunglasses on😆 only joking.
I get what you're saying but for me they are way too bright, especially when I'm playing at night. I'm fine with the standard SCS one for now.
I will definitely try your mod again.

VermenRat, I have another thought... Are you using the roof beams? The reason I ask is because in the current update that I released last weekend, I decided to play around with the settings on the roof beams and make them more functional. They light up a fairly large area. Maybe this is what you are seeing. If this is the case, turn off the roof beams and try it again.

VermenRat, there is an issue with the game's internal lighting code that makes the lights worse than they are. In the update I'm currently working on, I am tackling that issue. I can't fix it, but only try to take your eyes off of it. What happens is, the headlights from any headlight mod and even the SCS headlights shine through solid objects. They even shine through the pavement and off through the side of the raised up road and will shine all the way down into a valley. It is not so noticeable with the SCS headlights because they are so weak. In this update, I am softening up the light that is at the side of the road and making the light that is on the pavement stronger, not brighter, just stronger. It's hard to explain. It will make your eyes focus more on the road rather than the valley down below. SCS fixed this same issue not long ago with the street lamps shining through the truck roof and through overpasses and other objects.

The lights are way too bright and the width of light is too wide. The lights light up both sides of the highway, thats nearly 6 lanes wide. It will be good when you fix it buy i, unsubscribing until then

pnk, let me know what you think after this next update which should release either tonight or tomorrow. And also, I'm wondering if you might have another light mod that is interfering with this one. This is the only complaint I've had. I do know that there are some light mods for the roof lights that make this mod not work right.

As of now this mod basically negates any darkness, resulting in the ground ahead of the player to look as if it was illuminated evenly from all angles with no shadows. Range of the headlights is also way too long. On top of that the overly aggressive 90* deg lighting angle outside the cab that causes weird things to happen with auto exposure.

If you could somehow tone down all of those at once, keeping the range just a bit wider and longer than vanilla this would be a perfect addon for better gameplay.

Another issue the game has is it allows the headlights to shine through solid objects. The light passes right through guardrails and concrete barriers. It even shines through other vehicles. Like I said, we just have to ignore these issues until SCS decides to look into it.

If you are talking about terrain at the sides that is lower than the road surface, the game code itself sends the light down the hill and way out. It shouldn't be as bright off in the distance like it is, rather it should diminish or not light up those areas at all. I can't control that, it is a minor fault of the game. On level ground, the light only shines a little bit off the pavement. In order for the lights to work as well as they do, we just have to ignore that. Maybe SCS will work on the lighting some more, eventually. If I make the lights 50 percent dimmer, they won't be any good. This next update is a slight bit dimmer because I've already stated in the changelog that they are a little too bright. But, they won't be 50 percent dimmer. I'm working on getting a good light on black asphalt without having too much brightness on white concrete.

Could you release a version 50% weaker than this? As it stands this light mod makes any uneven terrain/driving on raised ground unplayable. Normal running lights illuminate everything as if it were daytime in vicinity of 80m from the player's perspective. I appreciate the thinking behind the mod, but so far it works the best in areas with street lamps... (Also brights illuminating 'distant' mountains is a bit too much)

Joeyao, there is something you should check. Go to Options->Graphics->Light visibility ranges. Make sure it is set to High. Anything lower will reduce the amount of light in the depots and on the streets.

Joeyao, there is nothing I know of for providing more light in a depot. However, I am looking into the possibility of making a new mod that will provide a light where the roof beacons normally go. These lights would act as flood lights and would shine a lot of light on both sides of the truck.

Thanks, is there any mod to set more light for freight yard or company depot? It is usually too dark when I need to get into the tiny parking lot.

Thanks, very good

@maurice: Great idea and fantastic work.

i found out what the problem was. I have some led bars on top from the illegal scania mod. When they are turned on the low beams are stronger and when I turn them off the long beams are much stronger.
So they are a bad match. Thanks for a great mod btw

JeppDetErMeg, the low beams are NOT stronger than the high beams. Let me know what truck are you using and I will check it out.

Why are the low beams stronger than the high beams ?

so good！

PziCrow, the way my light masks are designed, it is not possible to smooth or feather out the edges because the coloring in the mask that is used is almost as dark as it can be. For instance, the left and right edges use 02 and 03 values and an 01 won't feather it at all. I have tried it and the edges look real rough and choppy, not very good at all. If the values were higher such as 20 or 30, then some real nice feathering could be done. In the past, I have tried using higher values everywhere on the mask, but then it gets hard to control the brightness down the center of the road without using extremely low color temperature values. However, I am always working on these and might come up with a different solution. My headlights are done completely different from everyone else's. Thank you for the comment, it is really helpful to hear what people like and dislike.

Looks nice, but the edges of the lights are very "edgy". Could use some smoothing out.

woa~is perfect

STEPHEN

nice mod

nice mod
good for night driving

Esta good.

Tony Soprano, I'm not sure what you mean. If it is the RJL trucks that are supported by my other mod for Modded Trucks, the RJL trucks have support for both Halogen and Xenon headlights, but they have no way to select them. If you are referring to the lights on the roof, those will be corrected in the next update which should be available this weekend.

can u make rjl for xenon real ?

thankyou

I plan on releasing another update to this headlight mod next weekend. Here are the highlights: Better light distribution down the road. The lighting is more equal between the various colors of pavement, brighter and more noticeable on dark black asphalt and less bright on white concrete. The amount of light projected looks very similar on each type of pavement.The beams light up a narrower path on down the road without affecting the wider path near the front of the truck. There is hardly any reflected light escaping out into the distance on both sides. This used to be quite noticeable in desert areas. It is currently in the testing and fine tuning stage.

Thanks for the detailed response Maurice. Its a shame the game engine is so limiting because your work is fantastic. I can't wait to see where this project goes

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As for narrowing up the high beams, that was easy to do in the first release, not so easy in the second release. If you get outside of the truck and look at the headlamps when the high beams are on, it looks like the low beams are also on. That is a completely separate function in the game. For the actual beams, the game actually only turns on the low beams or high beams, not both at the same time. When my code switches to high beams, it is actually simulating the low beams to make them look like they are also on. It has to have the same angle as the low beams. I've been able to reduce the appearance of the high beam angle which you can see as the brighter area, but not as much as maybe you would like.

The good thing about this is that development hasn't stopped. I will continue finding ways to refine these headlights.

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A set of headlights with a low cutoff line would only be realistic in regions or countries where it is mandatory. It is there to help protect from excess glare to oncoming drivers. The car I'm driving right now in real life doesn't have a cutoff line and it also lights up the entrance to my driveway nicely when I turn into it late at night.

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If I add a distinctive cutoff line across the top, it will ruin the whole affect of these headlights. It actually does have a cutoff line, it's just not as noticeable. You can see it if you get next to another truck. It runs from one side and goes up in a gradual arc and over to the other side. What would happen if I flatten the top of the arc is that it will then create a bad dark area to the left or right when turning. Due to how the internal game code works, it does a lot of spreading and curling of the light beams in certain areas. This makes it very difficult to get the beams how you want them to be. I could make another headlight mod with a lower cutoff line, but then it wouldn't be much different than most of the other headlight mods.

Maurice. Just for realism I thing the dipped beam should have a cut off (particularly on LED and projector headlights) horizontally. And maybe for main beam to be a narrower (I only have a motorbike licence)

Thanks hottt3. This mod is for all you guys (and gals) out there. I find it real hard to believe that SCS hasn't focused on making better headlights after all these years. Maybe that is why there are so many street lamps in ETS2. They don't need good headlights, they make up for it with street lamps.

Keep up the good work! My award goes to you.

Bosseye, thanks for the comment.

There is still more work to do. It is a real compromise trying to make the headlight beams look good on all types of pavement, from dark, black asphalt to white concrete. I'm not real happy with the white concrete as it causes the light to project too far. But, if I reduce it, then the black asphalt isn't lit up enough. But, I think I know a way to reduce the lighting on the white concrete without hurting the dark asphalt and various shades of gray asphalt. If successful, it will come in a future update. Meanwhile, we just have to put up with a little too much lighting distance projected on the white concrete.

Maurice. I drove for the first time just, and it's INCREDIBLE, exactly what you're going for (realism)