A suggestion for the new Space Center

[tygoo7]

One thing that bugs me with 0.21 is when it is night time on kerbin and you go to the space center, its still night time, but when you go to the VAB or the SPH it is daytime? Maybe they could add the same scene for the VAB and SPH like what they did for the Space Center.

[Beeman]

I hadn't even noticed that 'cause I don't really pay attention to such things but it does seem a bit odd. Probably just an oversight on their part and will undoubtedly be remedied at some point in the future.

[skyace65]

yeah it's like that because the VAB and SPH aren't persistant like your view of the space center is, your not getting a real time look at the world. they could fix it but I'd rather they do some more game optimizations first, and I really hope next update they fix the ocean and kerbin being 2 separate planets, that would stop so much lag. until than I'd rather not have the game tracking another thing in the background. I mean in theory they could edit the SPH and VAB models so that the inside of them is part of the model and have rocket building take place there, but that would take so much effort I think it's something that should be done during the beta

[Supernovy]

AFAICT, doing this would take a significant change to the way lighting works in the editor scenes, so I wouldn't expect it soon.

[razark]

It would be amazingly easy to solve this issue.

Just close the doors. Then it doesn't matter if it's day or night outside.

[Andersenman]

It would be amazingly easy to solve this issue.

Just close the doors. Then it doesn't matter if it's day or night outside.

But there are windows in the VAB roof, and roof and south-western door of the SPH are translucent.

[Tw1]

It would be amazingly easy to solve this issue.

Just close the doors. Then it doesn't matter if it's day or night outside.

But that would be boring! I like looking out and seeing the launchpad, where my creation is going to meet its destiny, and either explode or go to space later.

[razark]

But there are windows in the VAB roof, and roof and south-western door of the SPH are translucent.

Again, easy to solve.

But that would be boring!

I said "easy", not "good".

[woppeldopple]

Replacing light with darkness for the background scene doesn't sound very complex to me. ^^

[vexx32]

That's because you ain't a programmer, sonny

[leilders]

Replacing light with darkness for the background scene doesn't sound very complex to me. ^^

I suggest you read this, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/entry.php/747-The-Making-Of-New-KSC. It's not as simple as turning off a light source

[woppeldopple]

I suggest you read this, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/entry.php/747-The-Making-Of-New-KSC. It's not as simple as turning off a light source

Another thing we worked on was exterior lighting. Old scenes had a directional light acting as a sun, so terrain stretching into the horizon was evenly lit and shadows of the building were coarse and sharp. We didn’t want such a view to spoil things outside of our beautiful interior, so another trick is used. Instead of uniformly distributed directional sunlight I create a spotlight, much similar to ones you have in the part list, but with much higher intensity and extreme effective range, around 1000 meters. This spotlight is then used to illuminate the exterior outside of the doors. The circular nature of it is not visible with the very narrow field we have available looking through the doors, so the whole thing looks like real sun is producing a very soft shadow of the building and the light is softly fading away into the fog in the distance:

Sounds exactly like that ineed ^^

[leilders]

But you forget the windows! Those are also "providing" ambient light.

The whole interior lighting is static and not calculated in real time, thus by making it dark outside Bac9 has to redo the entire interior lighting. Thus not so simple as turning off "Kerbol".

(I'm not saying he shouldn't do it, just that it will be more work than a quick fix )

Edited July 31, 2013 by leilders

[Munbeast]

That's because you ain't a programmer, sonny

Well I am a programmer sonny. This is an incredibly easy job. How to do this in simple steps.

1. Get current time.

2. Fade between the external spot light and internal light based on time. Midnight = 100% internal light, 0% external light and obviously the opposite for midday.

This would take ten minutes to implement in Unity. Sure, it's a bit of a hack, you wouldn't be able to see the sunrise and stuff, but it would be a less jarring hack than the current hack.

[Ernest3.14]

I suggest you read this, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/entry.php/747-The-Making-Of-New-KSC. It's not as simple as turning off a light source

But you forget the windows! Those are also "providing" ambient light.

The whole interior lighting is static and not calculated in real time, thus by making it dark outside Bac9 has to redo the entire interior lighting. Thus not so simple as turning off "Kerbol".

I suggest you read those posts. Also, there are plenty of programmers on this forum, some of which are very competent

[Scoundrel]

I agree with the OP in that I'd like to see VAB time match Game time. Unfortunately the light is baked rather than dynamically generated, though that doesn't mean they can't find a solution down the road... when we'll likely see it as KSC polish. Also, IMHO there's tons of other things that they need to get sorted out first.

[Anton P. Nym]

Well I am a programmer sonny. This is an incredibly easy job. How to do this in simple steps.

1. Get current time.

2. Fade between the external spot light and internal light based on time. Midnight = 100% internal light, 0% external light and obviously the opposite for midday.

This would take ten minutes to implement in Unity. Sure, it's a bit of a hack, you wouldn't be able to see the sunrise and stuff, but it would be a less jarring hack than the current hack.

You may be a programmer, but I don't think you've had much experience in this sort of coding. (I am not a coder but I converse with animators... I know a bit about the obstacles, but not enough to talk about solutions.) The routine you worked out would work fine for controlling lights illuminating real-world objects, but not computer models of same. The incident light isn't the issue; it's the reflectiveness of the objects in the scene that takes the real horsepower to crunch, and recomputing those on the fly would (in the current state of the game) make for unacceptable performance hits. That's why the current VAB/SPH internals use "baked-in" lighting, which avoids having to recompute reflectiveness etc.

I strongly suspect the final product will reflect the day/night cycle, after they've had a chance to optimise how things work.

-- Steve