Hi All

 

Just wondering if somebody can help regarding the light objects in the WED library.

 

Under 'lib - airport - lights' it has two folders of objects, one called 'fast' and one called 'slow' and the folders seem to list the same objects. What is the difference in using fast or slow?

 

I hope somebody can explain.

Simon. The "fast" lights are the "light bulbs" only with no 3D object whereas the slow lights also contain the 3D object. The terms "fast" and "slow" refers to their effect on rendering speed...but these are older name conventions and do not necessarily mean that using "slow" lights with 3D objects will result in slow rendering.....but rather only implies they are slower than the "light only" version...if by 1-2 FPS only. An example of these lights are the blue taxiway edge lights. A "fast" light would just be a blue light floating in space...but the "slow" version would actually have the 3D light stalk sticking out of the ground. These 'lib > airport > light' lights are generally airport and approach type lighting and not tall lights like you would find on ramps or in parking lots. If you want ramp/apron/parking lot type lights that are tall, then you want to look in lib > airport > common_elements > lighting.

 

Tom Kyler

Laminar/IXEG

Tom

 

Many thanks for clarifying that for me, I did wonder whether it would be to do with rendering speed. I knew they were airport 'surface' lights and approach lights, and not the tall apron/ramp lights, but thanks for pointing me to the place for these. I've just started dabbling with WED1.2 and is's quite daunting trying to find where everything is.

 

I must say once you have a go with it, it does become quite straight forward to use, I'm just about ready to try and master using the bezier curves which should be interesting!

 

With the impending release of 10.10, will there be more objects in the library?

 

Once again many thanks for the help.

With the impending release of 10.10, will there be more objects in the library?

 

Simon,

 

There will be more objects in the library, but most of the new objects will be facades and thus, will not have any previews in WED. We will get facade previews into WED at some point in the future. In addition to the new facades though, there are several new cargo objects in the ramp equipment section. Other than these sections, there is not much else. There is still lots of room to grow the library and I will return to developing more pieces and better organization in the near future. The reason we are focusing on facades is they have to most flexibility to recreate the basic footprint shapes of buildings at airports....so we want as much diversity in style as we can fit into our texture space working with facades....so users can at least trace building shapes and still get a building of reasonable height and general loook of what they are trying to achieve without resorting to custom work.

 

Tom Kyler

Laminar/IXEG

Tom

 

Thanks for the heads-up, that all sounds good.

 

I have yet to learn how to use facades, so I will have a go at that soon. I am actually enjoying using WED and enhancing my X-Plane. Maybe eventually I'll feel confident enough to share the fruits of my labour!

 

Once again thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, and keep up all your good work.

There will be more objects in the library, but most of the new objects will be facades and thus, will not have any previews in WED.

 

 

Tom,

 

Where would one go to ask for/recommend certain items and improvements for the base XP10 object library?

 

I've got some ideas for the design team which would probably be useful for all grassroots WED designers, and getting them into the default library is important so that the resultant airports can be passed along to Robin and added to the master, shipping airport database.

 

(*I'm sure the items I would want are in libraries like OpenScenery, but scenery work created with those libraries will never get into the master database)

 

Curious,

-Greg

Greg, anywhere you can find me is good enough. My work on the library is postponed for only a short bit but I am about to get back on it. I am certainly open to any suggestions and views and here in the forums is as good a place as any. There are practical limitations to what we can or can't do, but certainly we can discuss and see what we can do.

 

-Tom Kyler