Hello,I have been searching the forums for this answer. How do I put a working rotating beacon on top of an object such as a control tower or water tower? I have placed them before using the rotating beacon tutorial available in many of these scenery design forums. But those are already on a small stand. The objects in Instant scenery do not seem to light up at night. I use Instant Scenery and ADE9 as my main scenery addition programs. A search in the forums shows this topic came up a few years ago but all the links in those topics are not working. Any help in this area would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance,Ken

Hi Ken:Here's a few links that might help you with placing a rotating 'civilian' airport beacon:http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthrea...rotating+beaconhttp://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthrea...rotating+beaconhttp://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthrea...rotating+beaconHope these threads help you as much as they helped me ! :( GaryGB

Hi Ken:Here's a few links that might help you with placing a rotating 'civilian' airport beacon:http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthrea...rotating+beaconhttp://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthrea...rotating+beaconhttp://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthrea...rotating+beaconHope these threads help you as much as they helped me ! :( GaryGB

Hey Gary,Thanks for your response. I got it figured out how to put the beacon on the control tower. The same method as placing it on the stand except replace to GUID number to match the tower you want (604b317e39384a34b50adc16324baf0f instead of 7f38bfbc4a40e2953c3f5c8482fa2c87). I have sucessfully placed a couple of them now. I've tried placing a beacon on the generic water tower (f2ef2cd2539c49c3812d128167d6ebb0) but for some reason I cannot get that object to show up.Thanks,Ken

Hey Gary,Thanks for your response. I got it figured out how to put the beacon on the control tower. The same method as placing it on the stand except replace to GUID number to match the tower you want (604b317e39384a34b50adc16324baf0f instead of 7f38bfbc4a40e2953c3f5c8482fa2c87). I have successfully placed a couple of them now. I've tried placing a beacon on the generic water tower (f2ef2cd2539c49c3812d128167d6ebb0) but for some reason I cannot get that object to show up.Thanks,Ken

Hi Ken:Thanks for sharing the feedback on your discoveries ! :( I'll have to test the base object GUID change in light of your interesting new findings; I'll also try to see what the deal is with the water tower, and if I get a chance to derive some further insights on how to make it work, I'll post them back here.BTW: I'm curious if you've gotten any other "airport" beacons (ex: military) to rotate their light beam using comparable XML coding methods ? :( Happy scenery building ! :( GaryGB

Hi Ken:Thanks for sharing the feedback on your discoveries ! :( I'll have to test the base object GUID change in light of your interesting new findings; I'll also try to see what the deal is with the water tower, and if I get a chance to derive some further insights on how to make it work, I'll post them back here.BTW: I'm curious if you've gotten any other "airport" beacons (ex: military) to rotate their light beam using comparable XML coding methods ? :( Happy scenery building ! :( GaryGB

I added a military beacon at Minot AFB using this method. I just changed "CIVILIAN" to "MILITARY" and I got a beacon with 2 whites and 1 green.<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><FSData version="9.0" xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd"> <SceneryObject lat="47 25.89" lon="-122 18.43" alt="0" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="NORMAL"> <LibraryObject name="7f38bfbc4a40e2953c3f5c8482fa2c87" scale="1.0" /> <AttachedObject attachpointName="attachpt_beacon"> <Beacon type="CIVILIAN" baseType="AIRPORT"/> </AttachedObject> </SceneryObject></FSData>Change the CIVILIAN to MILITARY, change lat lon to where you want it.This is where I changed the Library Object Name to the GUID code for placing on top of control tower. Still working on the water tower. I'll try some different towers this weekend.Ken

... Still working on the water tower. I'll try some different towers this weekend.

Your efforts to attach a beacon to a water tower should be futile, as I would bet the water tower doesn't have the attach point setup in the MDL file. No attach point, nothing can be attached to it. The airport beacon tower and the airport ATC towers have MDL files that will accept something being attached to it, the water towers...?

Your efforts to attach a beacon to a water tower should be futile, as I would bet the water tower doesn't have the attach point setup in the MDL file. No attach point, nothing can be attached to it. The airport beacon tower and the airport ATC towers have MDL files that will accept something being attached to it, the water towers...?

I didn't know that. Thanks for the information.Ken

Your efforts to attach a beacon to a water tower should be futile, as I would bet the water tower doesn't have the attach point setup in the MDL file. No attach point, nothing can be attached to it. The airport beacon tower and the airport ATC towers have MDL files that will accept something being attached to it, the water towers...?

If this is for FSX a rotating beacon can be placed on anything. You do not need the attach point. The attach point is so a beacon will sit on something at the correct altitude without a seperate Lat/Lon.The XML code to set a rotating beacon on a structure of your choice (water tower) is<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><FSData version="9.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd"><SceneryObject lat="-12.7848493264784" <<<------ your water tower Latlon="143.304919052313" <<<<------- your water tower Lonalt="4.17576" <<<<<<------ altitude the beacon will sit atpitch="0"bank="0"heading="0"altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" <<<<------ You can leave TRUE since the beacon altitude code does not understand AGL imageComplexity="NORMAL"><Beacon type="CIVILIAN" baseType="AIRPORT" /></SceneryObject></FSData>Change my Lat/Lon and altitude to match where your water tower or any other structure is located. Set the altitude of the beacon. Compile to a bgl with a name such as Airport beacon. The design inside the beacon placement code does not care about AGL. The reason is the beacon is designed to attach to an object that is modeled with the attachment height. When you use my XML code to place the beacon the AGL is nullified so TRUE can stay in place. Normally when AGL =TRUE the object always clamps to the ground. To make a object sit lower or higher then ground altitude we would normally set AGL=FALSE then the altitude setting is honored. Since a rotating beacon is designed to attach to the attachment point it does not care what the AGL ='s is set for.Leave it set to true as I show in the XML code and it will still elevate to the altitude you specify.and yes it will rotate since we are calling for the actual rotating beacon in the XML (based on night or IMC airport conditions) and not a GUID for a static beacon.Note: For FS9 the XML code is slightly different.jim

If this is for FSX a rotating beacon can be placed on anything. You do not need the attach point. The attach point is so a beacon will sit on something at the correct altitude without a seperate Lat/Lon.The XML code to set a rotating beacon on a structure of your choice (water tower) is<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><FSData version="9.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd"><SceneryObject lat="-12.7848493264784" <<<------ your water tower Latlon="143.304919052313" <<<<------- your water tower Lonalt="4.17576" <<<<<<------ altitude the beacon will sit atpitch="0"bank="0"heading="0"altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" <<<<------ You can leave TRUE since the beacon altitude code does not understand AGL imageComplexity="NORMAL"><Beacon type="CIVILIAN" baseType="AIRPORT" /></SceneryObject></FSData>Change my Lat/Lon and altitude to match where your water tower or any other structure is located. Set the altitude of the beacon. Compile to a bgl with a name such as Airport beacon. The design inside the beacon placement code does not care about AGL. The reason is the beacon is designed to attach to an object that is modeled with the attachment height. When you use my XML code to place the beacon the AGL is nullified so TRUE can stay in place. Normally when AGL =TRUE the object always clamps to the ground. To make a object sit lower or higher then ground altitude we would normally set AGL=FALSE then the altitude setting is honored. Since a rotating beacon is designed to attach to the attachment point it does not care what the AGL ='s is set for.Leave it set to true as I show in the XML code and it will still elevate to the altitude you specify.and yes it will rotate since we are calling for the actual rotating beacon in the XML (based on night or IMC airport conditions) and not a GUID for a static beacon.Note: For FS9 the XML code is slightly different.jim

Jim is correct. You do not need an attach point for a rotating beacon. However you do need to supply the exact coordinates and altitude for the beacon placement.

Jim is correct. You do not need an attach point for a rotating beacon. However you do need to supply the exact coordinates and altitude for the beacon placement.

Ok, as I am a novice at this, let me see if I have got this straight.I would place the water tower using ADE or Instant scenery. Then I would use Jim's file to place the beacon in a point in space that would hopefully line up with and be on top of the water tower?Thanks,Ken

Ok, as I am a novice at this, let me see if I have got this straight.I would place the water tower using ADE or Instant scenery. Then I would use Jim's file to place the beacon in a point in space that would hopefully line up with and be on top of the water tower?Thanks,Ken

Yes - that should work. We are adding support for beacons and effects in ADE and they should be in the next full release

Yes - that should work. We are adding support for beacons and effects in ADE and they should be in the next full release

Ok,I give it a try. Thanks for the response.Looking foreward to the ADE update, it has replaced AFX for airport upgrades.Thanks,Ken

I have read this thread with much interest as I am also trying to get a tower I placed in my AFCAD using ADEX 1.47.07 to rotate with a couple of lights at night.If I cannot change the GUID or attach the rotating beacon to the tower in ADEX, how else would I edit the XML code using ADEX or some other way?

I have read this thread with much interest as I am also trying to get a tower I placed in my AFCAD using ADEX 1.47.07 to rotate with a couple of lights at night.If I cannot change the GUID or attach the rotating beacon to the tower in ADEX, how else would I edit the XML code using ADEX or some other way?

If you have an xml file, you can open and edit it with Notepad - it is just a text file in a very precise layout.