Darkness inside buildings.

[DistortAMG]

Another hugely requested feature, Planet Coaster does an ok job of this by adjusting the global lighting to night time when inside a building via a trigger. It could be improved on though. Achieving darkness inside a building can be technically challenging though and requires some clever thinking. You could achieve it through ray tracing but that is hugely taxing on both the CPU and GPU, cycles that for this type of game need to utilised else where, so I do not think that is the answer. I would take a guess and bet that something like ray traced global illumination was ruled out pretty quickly due to the huge CPU and GPU overheads required. Fine for a FPS game, but not for a game that is quite dynamic I would have thought.

Nolimits 2 Rollercoaster simulator has an interesting approach to this problem and it works very well, giving very dark buildings for dark rides. I feel a similar system could perhaps be utilised for PC2.

The developer explains briefly how it is achieved in NL2 here:

I am not sure if the Cobra engine would allow local dimming of the global lighting within specific areas but if it did a system like this might work well. I assume it does, because tunnels go dark, so perhaps adapt the tunnel dimming to work with piece by piece where it is activated once a specific number of wall and roof pieces are in place.

1. Have a specific piece by piece wall type that has an outside face and an inside edge, the inside edge is the buildings internal side where the dimming of global lighting will take place. You could even expand on this and let us select which side of any piece by piece wall, floor and roof piece is intended if at all, to be the inside edge of a building. It would be good if it could automatically detect this, but that could be quite complex to implement. I do not know if you could make the system clever enough to know when wall pieces and roof pieces are connected together to automatically know a building has been created.
2. Build a building to your custom size and specific size that you need.
3. As long as each side and roof of the building has say more than 90% of wall, roof pieces in place, it can then trigger local dimming of the global lighting system inside the building. Having it not need 100%, so a solid cube or shape of a building, is crucial, because it allows rides and paths to enter and leave the building.

In any case, I feel the approach NL2 have used holds some good ideas that could be adapted and used for PC2 to actually implement it, it is relatively cheap too. I feel the challenge in a method like this and for a game like Planet Coaster would be implementing in a way that is relatively straightforward and simple to use by the end user. Totally doable, but some clever thinking is required for sure.

 

[DisneylandFreak]

Another hugely requested feature, Planet Coaster does an ok job of this by adjusting the global lighting to night time when inside a building via a trigger. It could be improved on though. Achieving darkness inside a building can be technically challenging though and requires some clever thinking. You could achieve it through ray tracing but that is hugely taxing on both the CPU and GPU, cycles that for this type of game need to utilised else where, so I do not think that is the answer. I would take a guess and bet that something like ray traced global illumination was ruled out pretty quickly due to the huge CPU and GPU overheads required. Fine for a FPS game, but not for a game that is quite dynamic I would have thought.

Nolimits 2 Rollercoaster simulator has an interesting approach to this problem and it works very well, giving very dark buildings for dark rides. I feel a similar system could perhaps be utilised for PC2.

The developer explains briefly how it is achieved in NL2 here:
View attachment 397822

I am not sure if the Cobra engine would allow local dimming of the global lighting within specific areas but if it did a system like this might work well. I assume it does, because tunnels go dark, so perhaps adapt the tunnel dimming to work with piece by piece where it is activated once a specific number of wall and roof pieces are in place.

1. Have a specific piece by piece wall type that has an outside face and an inside edge, the inside edge is the buildings internal side where the dimming of global lighting will take place. You could even expand on this and let us select which side of any piece by piece wall, floor and roof piece is intended if at all, to be the inside edge of a building. It would be good if it could automatically detect this, but that could be quite complex to implement. I do not know if you could make the system clever enough to know when wall pieces and roof pieces are connected together to automatically know a building has been created.
2. Build a building to your custom size and specific size that you need.
3. As long as each side and roof of the building has say more than 90% of wall, roof pieces in place, it can then trigger local dimming of the global lighting system inside the building. Having it not need 100%, so a solid cube or shape of a building, is crucial, because it allows rides and paths to enter and leave the building.

In any case, I feel the approach NL2 have used holds some good ideas that could be adapted and used for PC2 to actually implement it, it is relatively cheap too. I feel the challenge in a method like this and for a game like Planet Coaster would be implementing in a way that is relatively straightforward and simple to use by the end user. Totally doable, but some clever thinking is required for sure.

Nice explanation. I think darkness inside buildings is a feature a lot of planco players would want. I myself love building darkrides and for me this is a must have feature. I think with the whole wall piece thing it might work.

 

[Ramm]

The game engine probably has something like this that it blocks light from the terrain too.

I remember making maps in hammer1 and hammer2 and there was this BlockLight tool brush. Maybe they can add this to a specific scenery roof piece.

You basicly only need 2 of these. One 4x4 wall piece and one 4x4 ceiling piece that's just black and is called block_light or something and you can put it on your buildings.

 

[wyldremix]

I've been contemplating this idea for awhile as well and would love to be able to construct buildings that keep light out and reflect sounds from within. The complexities of making this happen with a building comprised of so many pieces as opposed to the ground that in effect stays one solid piece when making tunnels have to be a big challenge. I'm just thinking about the number of seams between each piece that would potentially allow light and sound to pass and how that could be filled in, seems daunting to me. If it's not a feature right away, maybe they have ideas and it could be a surprise update with a spooky/dark ride [DLC] release.

 

[RubberKerfuffle]

I would honestly give anything for total darkness inside buildings at this point as I love building dark rides

 

[wowman]

jumping on the bandwagon here. This would be a much needed option.

 

[DisneylandFreak]

I may have found something of interest in the gameplay footage. There is this coaster station in the gameplay that is nearly fully enclosed. And there is something rlly big black where the train exits. To be 100% clear this could just be a large black animated door,but it seems weirdly volumetric.And there is a fence where the station supposedly ends. I want Forums opinion on this

What I'm thinking is that this maybe is some form of new effect you can place down that affects a certain area.

 

[rct-uwe1]

I would say that this is just a shadow.
The white fence is the support structure of the station. Above it a dark floor and the white control panel. Without having a closer look, it's likely that the walls supporting that kind of roof are just some wooden beams.
The color change of the track in the small pic is interesting...

 

[DisneylandFreak]

I would say that this is just a shadow.
The white fence is the support structure of the station. Above it a dark floor and the white control panel. Without having a closer look, it's likely that the walls supporting that kind of roof are just some wooden beams.
The color change of the track in the small pic is interesting...

Do you think that differently coloured track could be a transfer track? It looks like there is a lot of empty space to the right of that track piece or it's just a very black station.

 

[Crowdpleaser]

I have been thinking about this... I don't know what is shown in the picture is the darkness we are hoping for, but I think the reworked Engine (since Planet Zoo) might be able to pull this off. You see when it rains the rain gets stopped by structures. A similar thing might be done for light. I don't know how the light calculation is done, but if it is similar to the rain then MAYBE it knows to occlude the light rays. We can hope.

 

[DisneylandFreak]

I have been thinking about this... I don't know what is shown in the picture is the darkness we are hoping for, but I think the reworked Engine (since Planet Zoo) might be able to pull this off. You see when it rains the rain gets stopped by structures. A similar thing might be one for light. I don't know how the light calculation is done, but if it is similar to the rain then MAYBE it knows to occlude the light rays. We can hope.

The shadows definitely seem darker and more roof like objects have them even something like the sailcloth coverings.

 

[Crowdpleaser]

I know that Sunlight and placeable light was handled differently. The sunlight created shadows, the placed lights didn't. And they weren't stopped by placed Walls and such. Maybe it is the same with Planet Coaster 2, but i hope at least that Sunlight will be blocked by walls and Roofs or whathaveyou. Even if the placed Lights basically shine through walls.

 

[Nemmie]

I hope they've solved the problem of light shining through the walls. Lighting scenes in darkrides, especially ones with compact layouts will be so much better and easier if the lighting can be blocked by walls.

 

[DisneylandFreak]

I hope they've solved the problem of light shining through the walls. Lighting scenes in darkrides, especially ones with compact layouts will be so much better and easier if the lighting can be blocked by walls.

I hope darkrides in general are a lot easier to build in the sequel. Trackless darkrides shouldn't be built with tracks. There should be more indoor pieces with the scenery sets. Indoor Lighting should be heavily improved. More darkride types,etc.

 

[rct-uwe1]

I have been thinking about this... I don't know what is shown in the picture is the darkness we are hoping for, but I think the reworked Engine (since Planet Zoo) might be able to pull this off. You see when it rains the rain gets stopped by structures. A similar thing might be done for light. I don't know how the light calculation is done, but if it is similar to the rain then MAYBE it knows to occlude the light rays. We can hope.

I hope they've solved the problem of light shining through the walls. Lighting scenes in darkrides, especially ones with compact layouts will be so much better and easier if the lighting can be blocked by walls.

Maybe with the actual engine we'll be able to build real dark rides. I'm hoping to get walls which are blocking or partly blocking (walls with windows) light...
With that rain cover feature (and new sun cover) from PZ and the light blocking terrain there should be a way to adapt this to light blocking scenery...

 

[thebowman]

I think darkness inside buildings but not only in buildings but also for example dark water slide tubes is by far the most important suggestion because there is no other way to build realistic dark rides, water slides, indoor roller coasters, indoor restaurants, indoor shops, .... I consider it a bug from the first game and it should definitely be fixed till the release of Planet Coaster 2.

 

[DisneylandFreak]

Confirmed to be in the game thru a planet coaster 2 tiktok.

 

[Evolution]

Actual dark rides are confirmed ingame. I've seen it in some peoples videos. I'm so stoked for this game!

 

[DistortAMG]

Actual dark rides are confirmed ingame. I've seen it in some peoples videos. I'm so stoked for this game!

They were confirmed in Planet Coaster 1 too, so that confirmation doesn't exactly means buildings will be dark for everyone and I don't think they will be...specifically not for console and low end PC players.

Frontier announced the other day in the Unlocked stream they were using ray traced global illumination to achieve darkness inside tunnels and what would be buildings too. You can sort of see in the stream by Rudi too where he achieves darkness inside a building that they are using some form of RT tech.

I was happily surprised be to be fair. I did not think they would use RTGI due to the performance overhead it uses, but it is without a doubt the best way to achieve the goal of darkness in buildings.

Unless they have some special implementation of RTGI I would bet money that this won't come to current gen consoles, meaning the inside of buildings won't be fully dark. Why? They have no where near the power to do it. Ray tracing capability on the PS5 and Series X consoles and AMD hardware in general is rubbish. They can barely manage RT reflections without a serious compromise to FPS and resolution, let alone the much more demanding RTGI. There is a reason almost all games on consoles that feature 'ray tracing' mostly use it for either shadows or reflections with serious comprimises else where. Current gen consoles just cannot do ray traced global illumination well at all, which is confirmed by Frontier to be the tech they are using to achieve darkness inside buildings. Even AMD GPUs on PC cannot do RTGI or RT well at all.

The clues were there all along to be fair, in the PC requirements for the game. Minimum requirements ask for the Direct X 12 API, the recommended requirements asks for the Direct X 12 Ultimate API. The key difference being, Direct X 12 Ultimate supports ray tracing and standard Direct X 12 does not. There is some other features too but I think that was a pretty strong clue from the pre order day that they were planning some sort of ray tracing.

Seeing as ray traced global illumination is the technology confirmed to be used to allow darkness inside buildings, I would take a bet that console players will not be able to achieve proper darkness inside buildings. It is basically guaranteed that PC players who do not meet the recommended requirements will not be able to do it due to lack of API support, not to mention hardware support too. I will even go a step further and bet that even AMD GPU users on PC who meet the recommended requirements and have the DX12 Ultimate API will not be able to achieve it properly due to AMD's rubbish ray tracing hardware capability (including consoles). This might change with AMDs new GPU architecture though, the same architecture going into the PS5 Pro, RDNA4.

I would like to be proven wrong, but the math usually does not lie. i suppose they could throw a curveball and have a very weak implementation of it on console, but surely even that would push the piece counter quite high quite quickly. As even small areas with RTGI would hugely impact performance, something that has to be kept in check on consoles, something Frontier have no choice in. Given it is a sandbox though and you could place as many buildings as you want, it would make no sense to have it on consoles when all it would do is max out the piece counter very quickly, due to the large loss in performance.

We will see I guess.