OK, I might be running into an issue here...to make the city look good at night, a lot of lights are needed so buildings and streets are not left in pitch black. How many? Well...do you see the currently lit area? Washington Beach and Ocean Drive here (most light posts are already done in the whole map, but to get the look right a lot of additional lights are needed next to buildings): Almost 3000 lights are making this possible so far, again, just for this bit here...still the remaining right island, the middle ones, and the main left island to go. That means the grand total could go up to 10000 lights easily, and I'm worried about performance, so I'm going to attach the current version, and ask people to please test it at night (it has dynamic lights so at daytime they should be off) and give me feedback to see what options I shall follow. Please note this version is NOT in the main post, only here on this very post for now, since it serves an specific purpose, and until I can guarantee the performance, it will not replace the current main version. Worst case scenario, I'll probably do 2 versions of the map, with and without lights, or maybe 3, a version with lights, but without casting shadows, not sure right now. So all I need to know from the people testing this version is the framerate you are getting, if you play on high/medium/low settings, and the basic specs of your PC, so I can get an average result, and depending on that, I'll see what option is best suitable for everyone, in my case it runs just fine, but I have a Ryzen 7 3800X, DDR4 3000 Mhz 32 Gb RAM, and a RTX 2080 Super, so it's a bad benchmark for a medium to low range PC, which is were I want to focus, since I want this map playable by everyone. Hopefully it doesn't runs as bad as I think! Let me know please EDIT: Special Beta over, will go straight to Phase II in the main post.
Cannot test right now, but: How about using LOD? The low LODs could use baked lighting, with dynamic lights only enabled at close distance. The LOD in this mod is already very good, it could be more helpful here? Going to test the map as soon as I can. Edit: It’s slower than before, but still playable. Got an old GeForce GTX 660 here.
Thank you both for the results so far! Great, that was the card I used for the last 7 years until literally last week, in fact I started the port with it so I know it can handle the basic map, so unless it gets really bad, I think for now I might just do two versions probably, one 'full' and another without casting shadows, hopefully it will get some FPS back. A version without lights may be too radical at this point...
Don't worry, it has little to no discernible performance difference even at the low end. I run my computer at somewhere between low and lowest (see signature for why) and when the lights are off I get 12, when they're on I get 10, so in terms of percentage, 16%, but that's on probably the lowest graphics card anyone might use.
Good to hear Full throttle then! A few things to consider here regarding night lighting: Vertex lighting is what helps giving the map a subtle yet noticeable 'lit' effect at all times, including night, but for some reason sometimes it works at night, and sometimes it doesn't. When it does, even areas without any BeamNG lights will look clear enough, dark, but not 100% pitch black, but I have to say when it doesn't work it looks more real, since everything depends on actual lights (the ones being added, headlights, the moon) in order to see anything. Lamp post are supposed to be yellowish (most of them) but if I only rely on them for lighting is an issue, since R* did a weird job placing them, some places have plenty, and some doesn't have a single one, even full streets, so 'phantom' lights have to be added, to act like a mix of an actual light and vertex lighting, otherwise those places would look unrealistically dark. Casting shadows is definitely a great touch since well...it adds shadows to what's next to the light, but in some places several lights are together and the result may be a little weird sometimes, I'm trying to keep these issues as little as possible, but with such a big map, it's hard to control. Since this is taking long, I may publish a Phase II after all, my goal would be trying to release the right main island fully lit, and then Phase III with the whole map done.
Go ahead, it’s amazing! Yeah, I already noticed weird vertex lights on the Southern bridge. Didn’t report them because the original game has them as well. It was different times Btw, due to the new shadows, I now notice more lamp posts floating than before. Maybe you should check the lamp post position before placing a light, so you don’t have to move both of them later …
Thanks! Still, I think it would be better to please report them, hopefully there are not way too many out of place, but the lighting work is being tedious enough and I can't check every lamp post just in case... And talking about them, 5.700 lights now! Still a couple hunreds to go...or even thousands.
Last update for today, the closer I get, the further I feel I am! Good thing is, the main and hardest parts are done...except Diaz/Vercetti's mansion, which will have a trainload of lights just by itself I really believe the final number of lights will be around 10.000 which is, again, nuts, but as long as people can run it, it will worth the smokin' CPUs and GPUs
I’m a software developer myself, and I’d be happy to see modders pushing my engine to the limits. Computers will become faster, BeamNG will become faster. The slow hardware will pass, but your mod will be there for years. Keep them lights coming!
Starfish Island and the left main island virtually done. I will rely on user's reports to add/modify any light, since it's way too hard for me to keep track of what's done and what no at this point...
Well, the madness is finally coming to an end: Very soon, the final* release of Vice City! *Final as in all the planned feaures are in, of course, new hotfixes will be released as issues may arise, but it will no longer be a beta.
Update live Please report any issues you may find! BTW, one of the changes, the underground garage is now properly closed until one day I can dry it up
wow. this is awesome, holy cow. also i gotta commend whatever wizardry you did to make the download to small, i was expecting a lot bigger
I live among the creatures of the night. And not sure if possible, but a cool easter egg would be to add a BeamNG logo projected into this building, instead of... y'know. As for performance, I'm in favor of a lighter version of the map. It runs fine during day, but at night, my FPS varies between 60 and 2.
Great pics! Well...I think it's time for Plan B then. I uploaded in the main post a lighter version with no casting shadows, which should improve things a little. Next step would be way harder, since it would imply deleting lights, and honestly, I'm not really sure where to cut...
