Flight1 172/Default VC night lighting...

[Guest Roger Dial]

We modeled the 172R's backlit gauges. Dillon wants post lights instead. The bitmaps for the VC dash are in the panel folder. The alpha maps are in the texture folder. Knock yourself out. Anyone can modify this panel anyway they want. The complaint in the past has ALWAYS been that people can't add their custom gauges, radios, garmin, radar or whatever without black spots where the original gauges were located at night. This method allows anyone with a paint program to modify the panel graphics to their heart's content, EVEN including backlit dummy gauges that are only painted on.The gauge refresh rate is better this way. The resolution is very crisp. Anyone who has ever struggled with placing gauges in a VC will be ecstatic when they open the VC in FS Panel Studio and see how easy it is to place gauges. Post lights, flood lighting or ANY pattern of lighting can be added by simply working with the alpha bitmaps in the texture folder. There is only one downside at the moment. The VC gauge lighting is linked to the landing light, which I didn't catch until after release. There may be a workaround for that but... I am NOT going back to the old method of backlighting. I've used this method for many years for VC panel development and removed all instances prior to release. I've never used it for backlighting until the 172R. The lighting is for a 172R, hence, no post lights and I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater because of one possibly fixable niggle with the landing light. The pluses far outweight the negatives over the old method. The lighting never changes in a 2D panel no matter which way the plane is facing. The light changes dynamically for a VC depending on where the light source is. Shown is one at night at 120 degrees and one at 300 degrees. I fail to see where you see such a discrepency between the 172R 2D panel lighting and VC panel lighting, unless it's just for the sake of arguing.I'm not adding post lights. There are no post lights. If you want post lights, fire up your favorite paint program and have at it.Roger DialFlight One Software

[Dillon 2,198]

Roger I don't want post lights either and I'm perfectly fine with adding my own lighting once I find a picture for reference of the 172R at night.What about the light switch problem??? A this point that's all I'm asking get fixed... I can't fix that one myself...

[jrhoads 6]

Ok, I am not sure what part of this conversation you dont understand Dillon. We did this a certain way to accomodate the larger concerns to us which were support of 3rd party backlighting on the gauges.We are not changing this...Ok let me check something.... (kick kick kick)Yep. It's official the horse really is dead. I'm not kicking it anymore.No more from me.Jim Rhoads