Hi,

 

I've been busy completing the new autogen lights for FS9 EVO. Almost done! The lights are integrated into the textures and thus do not displace autogen. They are also compatible with UT although I keep UT Road lights to the large roads for a better look and more autogen. The screenshots show day vs. night or dusk shots of the same area.

 

 

Sascha

 

 

 

Nice work. Maybe it's a good thing I have kept FS9 installed (though I'm not using it).

 

John

That looks very good.

You also have red roofs on the autogen, just as it should in Europe.

 

When do you expect its ready for release ?

 

 

When do you expect its ready for release ?

 

Well I was aiming for a holiday release. Real-life work is already slowing down before the christmas break so I am looking at more time to spend on FS. I am optimistic!

 

Sascha

What the heck is going on here? How can FS9 be way better looking than P3D?

In my opinion FS9 is still the best sim. Especially with FS9 Evolution.

 

Best regards

Lukas

The lights look AMAZING!  Great work on these Sascha.

 

Hoping you had a Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year beginning.  I've been flying and enjoying FS9 EVO over the holidays. ~Glenn

Hi there Glenn!

 

The newest Evo is coming up this week, for even more enjoyment I hope!

 

Sascha

Bit of an old topic but,

Am I the only one that finds that the autogen lights vastly decrease performance, despite reducing my halo.bmp to an almost ridiculously small size? 

Chris

Hi Chris, did you also use the included default.xml? I cleaned that of a lot of objects. The lights do affect framerates, because the light objects are unnecessarily complex (complete poles with lamps and all). But as I am not a 3D modeller, I can't build even a simple object (which would be all that is needed). All my attempts failed. I asked some known modellers if they could help out but nothing came of it. 

 

As it is, on most newer systems there don't seem to be any problems.

 

Cheers,

Sascha

Hi Sascha,

You have a PM from me. I'd like to pride myself in thinking I'm an experience flightsim 3D modeller, I could easily get you an object

Chris

Chris and Sascha,

 

your posts make me extremely hopeful for a new light object, as I suffer from a certain performance drop with 3D lights activated over dense cities, too, and I continue to use FS9Evo with the "default.xml" file de-activated.

 

There seems to be another problem with these lights: When overflying a mid-size city, the FPS drop is acceptable or almost not recognizable. But after some miles of flying, when looking back in direction of this city, FPS drop into extremely low values (around 5). This effect disappears with de-activated 3D lights. So - not technically spoken - the light object seems to be still active and processed some 50 miles or more away from its actual location. This effect was in fact more disturbing than the moderate FPS drop over the city itself.

 

Perhaps a new object could be implemented soon with a FS9Evo update - together with spring textures? Im hoping very much!

 

Thanks and regards,

Harald

Hi Harald,

This is because, if I had to guess, the objects used currently are

1. Not given any LODs

2. Using more than one polygon to begin with

The current lights seem to use a fully detailed pole, which uses a lot of polygons and therefore causes massive drops over even mid sized cities. The object I'm planning to make will only be one polygon, only one side will ever be rendered and it will always face the user, and use the same halo.bmp effect. It will look exactly the same, but with much much better performance.

Chris

Thanks Chris for this explanation. I think your light object will make FS9Evo incredible indeed, because for me as non-native-english speaker is incredible > awesome.

And by the way, I'd like some more 3D objects controlled by default.xml, and that is how I understood Saschas modification: it removed not all, but some of them in certain landclass categories.

How about different light colours, as included in the normal (not the light) default.xml? That looked extremely well.

Wow! I'm glad you think so highly of me trying to do something to help   I'll do my best!

Creating custom light colors wouldn't be a problem, just a matter of making my own textures for the lights instead of using the standard halo.bmp and a bit more work on Sascha's part to get them placed. Personally I don't mind a bit to make my own textures, it's a simple process, it's up to Sascha to include multiple colored lights.

 

Thanks for the support, I won't let you down  ^_^

 

Chris