Comments on: Detail vs. Diurnal

By: NorseGamer

NorseGamer — Sun, 12 May 2013 11:11:40 +0000

The challenge is that a Home scene has a finite amount of memory to work with; I was shooting the Hollywood Hills nighttime scene at the office today, and the depth of the lighting is astonishing. It really does feel like a proper nighttime scene.

All of that lighting would be scrapped in order to find enough memory to implement diurnal controls. So you’d have the day/night cycle, but the lighting wouldn’t look right. And that could potentially break the illusion.

In an ideal situation, there’s enough memory to go around for everything — diurnal controls, weather controls, lighting, et cetera. The challenge is when there *isn’t* enough memory, and you have to pick and choose what you think the consumer base will find most appealing, along with what’s inherently best for the scene itself.

Generally speaking, I’m a fan of being able to customize and interact with as many elements of a setting as possible. That said, there’s a strong case that can be made for making the setting itself as visually immersive as possible, even at the expense of more overt whizbang features. And, to be fair, Hollywood Hills (daytime and nighttime) have been upgraded with new functionality as well: there’s the new swimming feature — which looks *amazing* — and for SCEA consumers, there’s the built-in RadioIO panel that plays music throughout the entire space. These are user-requested features which made it into the finished product, and they really do add a ton of value to the experience.

By: SealWyf_

SealWyf_ — Sat, 11 May 2013 12:14:43 +0000

There probably would be some way to match weather if the user has specified a location. Not sure it would be worth it, though. And since most of my online time is in the middle of the night, my synched apartments would never see daylight.

By: KrazyFace

KrazyFace — Sat, 11 May 2013 07:42:51 +0000

I remember my first virtual sunset. It was when Zelda, Ocarina of Time had hit the shelves, and man was I blown away. I actually stopped playing to just stand there and watch it pass, imagine my amazement when I realized that at night, all the nasties come out! Heh, then later I discovered that I had CONTROL of the day and night by playing songs on my pad/Ocarina!!!

Since then, such powers in games and options in virtual worlds just dont have the same impact, but hey, that’s typically true of most things in life; the first time is usually the best time.

I’m glad LOOT have taken the time to give us this option, and I understand why they made it a *new* space, but to me, it kinda misses the point really. Since those days of Zelda (and thanks to most other sandbox games) I have this constant thing over me in static virtual worlds that keeps saying “this isnt real” after I’ve visited for the umpteenth time and the same cloud is in the same place, and the sun/moon haven’t moved since I was last there.

For me, the ultimate thing for lighting in Home would be akin to the Animal Crossing games, whereby the time of day is set by the system clock of the user. Not only does this bring ambience and fluidity to the environment, but it ties it into YOUR real world, blurring the lines of being inside the machine, and outside in reality.

Now, if only they could match the weather…