Hello
I have a good and a bad new
.
So let's begin with the bad one. It's not possible to make a day/night cycle currently
.
However many good news. Since we changed the render engine, technically it's possible but not the way you might think.
1) In the new engine, lights and shadows are 100% dynamic. So if you change the color of the sun or its position it will change the shadows and the color of the track
2) The sky is used to make the ambient light. It's called Image Based Lighting. It means that if you have a blue sky, everything will have in the track a blue hue. If the sky is red, well the track will be reddish.
3) The sky is also used for the gloss/specular map. It means that if you put an object with 100% reflexion, it will become a mirror and reflect the surrounding sky.
So if you change, just the sky + the color of the sun, a track will switch from day to night. Damn, That's easy isn't it ? :P.
But, currently we can't change the sky dynamically. As vlj said, it would be feasible but that requires some changes.
Also there is a gameplay problem. One race takes ~3min. The player won't be able to see any change. It's way too fast
.
If it was an open world like Skyrim it would make sense but for races that take only 3 min to finish I'm not sure if it's a good investment
However a static day/night cycle is easy. It would be only to add something in blender:
Night, Export sun A and sky A
Day, Export sun B and sky B
So when the player load the track, it would be day or night, but it won't change during the race.
That would be easier and better since the player will clearly notice the change.
Sam