Landing lights...and fog

[dallyborr 2]

You don't need 3D shockwave lights for that effect, only texture. You got the link on a first page in some message. And yeah FS deals with a fog very strange, it also look strange.

[Arnaud 0]

Ack, yeah, sorry I missed John's first post :( . Just grabbed the files at fs.com. Cant wait to look how it looks like, I mean: I do hope it will get me rid of those atrocious light polygons. If it does, I am somehow amazed that since 2003 I never got to put more attention to fixing this. In addition, I will also look closer to Shockwave lights.Will report back anyway.

[3Green 80]

This is what Fog looks like in my sim (1/2 mile). Notice no buildings in the distance.RJ

[vololiberista 205]

This is CAT III aka FS9Vololiberista

[John Hinson 22]

John, your shot clearly shows you're not in fog. You use Active Sky right? While using Active Sky, have you ever flown into an airport with say 1/2 mile visibility at night?

Well, that was my opinion but I followed dallyborr's advice in a previous message:Its very easy to try this thing, just don't turn AS on, and thats all. Than go to weather options, and put theme called "Fogged in". You will see the same thing as we do, during night. You can go back to "User defined" any time.So what you see is FS's pre-defined idea of fog. :o)Yes, I've seen and experienced far more "fog" than that in FS, but the intention was solely to demostrate equivalent conditions to those in Arnaud's screen shots but I think we are clear now that he wasn't using Nick's lights then but hopefully he has them installed now and let's hope all looks better now.Best wishes,John

[Arnaud 0]

Well I've just installed Nick's lights. Unfortunately it of no help here. And yes, the triangular splash is most noticable in very low visibility.Nick's lights indeed makes the whole think looking slightly better, but still.Also, these splash screen come into view only upon certain vision angle (lateral and vertical).But perhaps I am derailing the initial thread, because I am talking specifically about AI taxi/landing lights.Thought those weird splash lights were common between AI/UI.

[Arnaud 0]

Reading again n4gix's post, or Fr Bill, I recall now some testing I made some years ago about this: there are two different things involved here: the spotlight bitmap AND the triangular polygon.On some situation, one can easily see both of them. What we need to get rid of is the later. I'm not even sure its modelled within the model, I fear its coded within FS engine, in which case nothing can be done. I'm still curious as to finding out what's different in John's set up though. because, Nick's or not Nick's, the looks of his AI taxi lights is definitely more acceptable than mine.

[dallyborr 2]

Amazing thing is that those triangles appear only at evening and night, at least for me. Normally when FS need to render spotlight.bmp. As i said before, FS must use, i think, some texture for that fog effect. Question is which one? It must be comeing from...somewhere...or it is some fx. file from effect folder.

[G-SWSM 1]

:( Hi All.This is very interesting. And it's something thats been going on for years, but perhaps this time we might actually see a fix for this.I'm with dallybore on this one however, and it must be an FX file or something thats calling for this to be used somehow. Or, if it's something hard coded into FS9.1 then surely we can get to it. I know there are a lot of tallented individuals out there that have altered stuff in the past to give us some great add-ons, so could they do that with this maybe!.Or is it ? On the other hand I think to myself, if this were "fixable" then why didn't the guy's that gave us the 3D Redux lights package offer or include a fix for this very annoying problem that all of us have.Wouldn't it be great to be able to download a file / mod that simply took care of this for us all without having to edit every single aircraft cfg or similar.Just my thoughts gang :(

[clum 2]

I also see these problems whilst in fog. It effects not only landing lights but also some of the runway end lighting as well.Using 3d shockwave lights. Going to try nicks light fix just now as I never used to have this problem. My fs9 installation changes so much that I'm not sure when this problem popped up.

[dallyborr 2]

That problem persist a long time, but you know, 80% of the people here, use Active Sky as weather engine. Than, it was summer, and it is very little or non chance to catch some fog somewhere. Than came fall, and there it is, fog everywhere...and triangles everywhere. As i said, it don't bother me, cause i turn my lights off durring CATIII landing, just like RL pilots do. But how to tell that to AI, that they have to turn lights off? Only thing that bother me about this "triangle effect" is that they appear once visibility goes under 10 miles, as i said, it is fall, and it is normal that on evening you have low visibility, but it's not normal to see planes pushing white triangles in front.

[Arnaud 0]

Dallyborr, as I posted already, you can switch those AI triangles off by deactiavting the aircratfs landing light off, in the FS menu display option.That will also turn your light off, as well as all the AI lightmaps (alpha controlled logo lights etc).On another note, I'd caution everyone installing Nick's lights: the uninstaller doesnt work for the effects files. Most fortunately I did back up my effects's foldr prior the install, because when I wanted to step back to the default aircrafts lights, it did not reverse to the originals. Had to restore my effetcs folder myself.Hence the reason I've always hated the auto installers...Sometime it works, sometime not.So...to sum all this up, there is no way, as far as we know, to avoid those silly triangles showing up in foggy weather.And I am still unsure they are modelled within the models, although I've read this quite a few times.

[dallyborr 2]

Yeah i know thanks. I just put my minimum visibility on AS options to 10. Problem solved, yeah i know it's not realistic but, hey i can live without fog. It is better from two evil, to chose one.

[n4gix 4,947]

Reading again n4gix's post, or Fr Bill, I recall now some testing I made some years ago about this: there are two different things involved here: the spotlight bitmap AND the triangular polygon.

There are indeed two completely separate things involved here.1. the point source (i.e., the "light bulb") may be added as an .fx file such as that which Shockwave uses. This generates the "envelope of light" that may be seen surrounding a light bulb both in real life and in the sim. Such an .fx file will NOT illuminate the ground however!2. what you see illuminating ground (aka: the "ground splash") is generated automatically based on a polygon in the model file itself. In FS9 each such light requires two polygons Linked as a parent and child. The parent polygon is used to "aim" the light, the child polygon tells the sim to generate a planar "cone of light" that is projected in the direction of the parent polygon's axis. Although in most cases the polygons used are triangles, it has no bearing on the actual shape of the "ground splash," as only the axis points are used by the sim. The polygons may be any size or shape, the "ground splash" will always be a triangle!The sim will automatically generate the "ground splash" based on (1) the name of the Material: LIGHT_LAND or LIGHT_TAXI, and (2) use the "spotlight.bmp" file to provide the color and intensity of the projected light. However, the modeler CAN but seldom does, also provide color and intensity instructions in the Material's specifications when loaded in the Material Editor of Max/GMax, which is quite frankly where it should be done. Here is an image of this in the modeling program:Shot at 2009-11-22

[Arnaud 0]

Thank you Fr Bill, I was hoping you'd throw some more light on the subject from a modeler point of view. I assume it pretty much puts an end to speculation on the suject.I was once told by a fine modeler about it indeed, but that was long time ago and since that time I forgot, also because I had gone away from fltsim for a while.There is a side question though: how Gmax (or FSDS or whatever 3d modeling program) does that polygon? I mean, is there an option to let this lightmap option out just before you compile the .mdl?If so, we could still ask the AI modelers if they could recompile their models without that polygon. At least for AI, who cares about AI having landing or taxi splash light? But it is my understanding that this polygon is needed so that the spotlight bitmap can work in the sim? I believe so, and that's a pity since if we could keep only the spotlight splash that'd be just fine.Anyway thanks for closing the topic :(