Hello everyone, I love WCUSA, it's a great map in all. But I feel as if something is missing. If you change the time to night, the lights in the city do not light up. The city feels so empty without the street lights, or anything lighting up. I am not saying it's a bad map, this is just a suggestion. I completely understand on why this might not be added, and that is lag. But I would love to see this. Here are some examples on what I am talking about. This would add so much more life to the city, and would make driving at night a ton more enjoyable. Again, this is currently my favorite map in BeamNG at the moment, I just would love to have more life. Thank you for reading. Another One: Regarding the lag: What if the lights were low quality from a distance, but still visible, just like how it is with vegetation. The city would still look amazing from a distance, because it's from a distance, and the detail doesn't need to be great. As of what I know, vegetation in BeamNG uses this system. I do not know about this system though, because I'm not a developer, so I have no place to speak. This is just an idea. After experimenting in the map editor, I have an idea on what it would look like, I was unable to make the lamp bulbs light up, but I made it emit light. It looks quite good, but I'm neither a dev, or a map maker. So I zero experience with lighting.
From 2014. Completely agree @Glitchy . The lighting in this engine leaves alot to be desired, especially at night and at long distances. BeamNG night lighting could look quite nice but probably a long way off.
you have to keep in mind that WCUSA already is a very demanding map. also is the lighting. every light added, (pointlight or spotlight) will result in less fps, shadows enabled or not. ive tried it myself and the frames were not happy.
I wonder if just having the building windows be light up would cause a performance drop and ignoring the street lights.
it wouldnt, not noticable at least. but lighting up only the windows is impossible since they share their "material" with pretty much all doors, garage gates and some wall surfaces on that map. from a distance it works for the eye having this material emissive and/or a little glowing. (last picture, above post) but the unwanted glowing stuff ruins it especially in more dense areas.
I think lights could work for this map. The key would be to use the least lights (big ones 70-100m) and least shadow casting lights as possible. Also if there was some way of making the non transparent windows and 3D building interiors emissive at night, it would make them light up without costing any FPS. Ive had success making a frame-friendly 24 hour race for Road Atlanta with these tricks. The down side is the score tower has the lights on all the time with the emissive interior.
