External lights disappearing?

[Promethium 0]

Hey allOk this has got me stumped i modified the NAV and strobe lights effects to be visible form the VC which worked fine....... for a while. Now if i am viewing the the lights from the cockpit and am sitting on the ground i can see them fine but if i take off get more than 22ft above the ground they go from looking fine to appearing to shine through the model geometry to all disappearing????????? i cant think of what has changed to cause this i messed with the static_pitch and static_cg_height but that had no effect when i restored a back up i restored all my cfg file, air file and model backups as well but nothing helped. other default and addon aircraft all display properly. also i have found if i change my viewpoint with active camera to a point outside of the plane (while still in the VC view mode) at some angles they reappear ??????Any thoughts or ideas on this would be greatly appreciated cos as i say its got me stumpedCheersPaul

[N2056 33]

Paul by chance does your plane have a short wingspan? I am working on a small (21' span) plane, and I have had that issue for a long time. There is apparently a bug that does that if the lights are too close to the eyepoint. You will find that if you shift your eyepoint away from the lights they will appear! I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't.

[Promethium 0]

Hey oIts dose have a short wingspan only 26'. i have indeed seen the behavior u describe if i move the eyepoint further away with active camera they reappear but the thing is its only just started doing this it was working fine up till now????? at least i'm not the only one having this problem thought i was going more crazy than i usually am :(.Thanks for the post at least i know that its a bug with the sim and not with my, what could be best described as "programing" B) if you have a eureka momment over this let me know and i will do likewise (i'm down but not beaten yet :( ) and if there is another bright spark out there with the answer a thousand thank you's if you can share your wisdom :( CheersPaul

[dmaher 0]

hey...I have this issue too...wingspan 25' :( I noticed it while using the Attach Point Tool.It seems to me this is a VC camera clipping plane issue that is unique to Attach Point elements.3D cameras don

[Promethium 0]

Hi Danny :( Thank you very much for the explanation for this and now that i think about it it makes perfect scene i remember seeing the exact same thing with the rain effect in the VC mode. i will have a play around and see what happens and now i know whats going on know where to start looking :)Thanks heaps will let you all know how i get on Paul

[Promethium 0]

Hey oOk spent all day yesterday and today experimenting with this and have come to the the conclusion that the clipping plane is not effected by any variable normally available to the average user :( (well none that i could find) . I found that a light effect must be at least 16 or so feet from the camera (Not the center of the model) to be visible at all times. So for a aircraft with a short wingspan that means VC visible lights will disappear above about 22ft AGL. I tried a number of things to get a reasonable facsimile of a light effect using the 3D model and what i came up with was making the nav light lenses at the ends of the wings glow bright using the BRIGHT_ material in GMAX which i made only visible when the NAV lights are on. This was done to the interior model only so at least there was something glowing out on the wingtips when in the VC. if anyone wont's any detail on what i did just send me a message. and if anyone else has a better solution i would very much like to hear it :( Cheers Paul

[dmaher 0]