No Limits I beam shadows are very poor.

The big beams in this jet coaster station look like they are one solid beam instead of a I beam. I could make the beam with wooden beams to be built like a real I beam but it would not look good at all because the poor shadows. The shadows on supports, especially square and I beam supports and girders are hard to distinguish.

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Here is another example.
In the first picture the beam looks decently shadowed.

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In the second example it looks like it is one solid mass with no depth at all because it is pictured from the other side. It seems like No Limits object lighting is from one side only.

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[coolbeans326]

It's irrelevant. They're coming out with NL 2 which has a vastly more sophisticated lighting engine. Look for your minor tiffy with ibeam lighting/shadow to be fixed come the next update.

I am REALLY REALLY exited to make my jet coasters in NL2!! I am so glad that I will be able to copy and paste Japanese stations, put much better looking catwalks along the whole track and build Meisho supports much faster.

That station looks amazing BTW.

It is modeled after this station.


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I hope that in NL2 that you can have translucent catwalks to make shape-able panels like the glass panels in RCT3.

Haven't you noticed the amazingly good looking shadows your track, scenery and supports casts on the terrain?

Anything regarding shadows and lighting is a mess in NL1. That is one of the big advantages of the new NL engine.

Edit: Because grammar...

These red supports here could have lots of rust texture on them in NL2.

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And that is what you get from a game engine made over 11 years ago. The only reason it's still beating today is because NL has never had any competition after Scream Machines (which stopped getting updated anyway), and NL2 is still in development.

So from that, it's expected that everything in the sim looks horribly outdated by 2013 standards. It's why the I-beams are paper thin, why none of the steel materials have any textures (nor even pixel shader lighting), and why you almost never see even static shadows in the majority of NL projects. The NL 3D engine is about on-par with the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox generation, but is missing a lot of features from that time. That said, transparency and basic reflection effects are already possible and easy to use in NL1. ("Easy" assuming your 3D modeling package was made for the job. Anim8or or SketchUp aren't going to cut it here.)

And it's all getting fixed in NL2, which will give that "modern graphics" look to all of your projects. No more flat lighting, paper-thin beams/rails, untextured steel, etc.

if NL2 ever comes out, been 6 years.