FTX Global 3d lights UK problem

[brucewtb 247]

I seem to get very few 3d lights when flying anywhere in the UK and Ireland with or without the UK & Ireland regions enabled and with and without UTX Europe.  Everywhere else in Orbx world I get an abundance of lights but not in the UK/Ireland.  Night time is like its the blitz in WWII and there is a blackout - well almost you get a few lights but not much even with full Autogen. Very odd.

 

Suggestions appreciated.

 

Bruceb

[gmoneyprs 2]

I have to imagine it has something to do with using FTX Global in combination with UTX Europe... mixing those two product suites is probably not recommended...

[louisdecoolste 12]

FTX Day / Night is set to day by default, just check on the FTX Night icon and you should see additional lights.

 

If they aren't installed on the desktop by default they are in the ORBX/Scripts folder.

[brucewtb 247]

Thanks guys but FTX day/night is set to night although my understanding is that this has no effect with FTX Global lights.  Just to reiterate, I get this very few lights thing with or without UTX it makes no difference.  Furthermore I get plenty of FTX Global lights with UTX and FTX Norway and the North American regions and Oceania  - it is only in the 5 UK/Ireland regions that there are so few.  Just to make matters more puzzling even with just FTX Global and no hybrid and no UTX - as vanilla as you can get having installed FTX Global  - I get very few 3D lights. But fly across the English Channel and there are heaps of lights.

 

Bruceb

[brucewtb 247]

Well I have had a partial solution to this issue as someone else raised the same no lights in the UK problem on the Orbx forum and Holger's suggestion was to check that the v1.4 update which added 3D lights support had been istalled  Now I purchased my UK /Ireland region last December and had assumed they would include this update which was released in Aug 2014 and FTX Central wasn't flagging any need for an update to this area.  So despite all this I ran the 1.4 update and I now get some 3D lights.  I say some because I still get vastly more 3D lights when I fly in other Orbx regions at night than I do in the UK and Ireland - the difference is very striking between flying over London at night and say Oslo or Paris.

 

Grateful for any other suggestions.

 

Bruceb

[louisdecoolste 12]

Great you got it sorted. As a side note as a real pilot flying over the UK and France on a regular basis one of the limitations of the regional products seems to be that the ground lights are a little soft by default compared to what I see on the ground IRL - you don't say which sim you're using Bruce, but the slant range for light visibility in P3D is definitely lower than it is in FSX. I've used the Global Light configurator to raise the brightness of the ground lights - I did also try the Big light option but it looks like ball lightning and doesn't increase the ground spread. I don't know whether the Regions use a different default setting ?

 

I can 't say I've seen differences in night flying between France and the UK in real life - in France the major conurbations tend to be further apart so you do have large centres well lit, with swathes of darkness between, and IRL one chooses to avoid flying over large towns and cities, especially Paris !

[brucewtb 247]

I think I have finally got this worked out.  In addition to the August 2014 update to FTX UK/Ireland, there was a patch to OLC Europe released in December 2014 that, amongst other things, added 3D lights support to UK/Ireland. I stumbled across quite by accident while scrolling through the Orbx website. You need this patch to fully see 3D lights in UK/Ireland if you have both FTX Global and OLC Europe active.  Something else that was making this all a bit more complicated is that it seems that  a change made In FTX Central sometimes requires a reboot to take effect. I discovered that if, for example, I switched from a FTX region to FTX Global without hybrid that the scenery.cfg file had not updated (you can check this with the Scenery configurator tool) but after rebooting the scenery.cfg change was there. The same applies to the UTX configuration tool.

 

Bruceb

[louisdecoolste 12]

Bruce

 

Current updated versions list for UK, Global, Vector and OpenLC. Taken from the FTX Central V2 Tools Installed Products section. If your version numbers dont match then you may need to update. Strange though that Central didn't prompt this for you ?

 

As for the reboot, do you mean computer, or sim ? FTX should never be amended while the sim is running. If its the computer, you probably need to look at your computer permissions, as the change should be immediate.

Make sure FTX Central has full admin rights, and the same for the scenery .cfg 

 

 

GLOBAL

FTX Global Base Pack FTX GLOBAL BASE PACK - Version 1.30 September 2014

FTX Global openLC Europe FTX openLC Europe Version 1.15 - January 2015

FTX Global Vector FTX GLOBAL VECTOR PACK - Version 1.20 October 2014

 

REGION

England FTX EU ENG England 1.40 - August 2014

Ireland FTX EU IRL Ireland 1.10 - August 2014

Northern Ireland FTX EU NIR Northern Ireland 1.20 - August 2014

Scotland FTX EU SCO Scotland 1.20 - August 2014

Wales FTX EU WLS Wales 1.30 - August 2014

[brucewtb 247]

As for the reboot, do you mean computer, or sim ?

 

The PC and FSX is not active (you get a prompt in FTX Central if FSX is still running).  Doesn't always happen but on switching to FTX Global (no Hybrid) I was puzzled to still get full fat textures.  Rebooting the PC fixed this.  I seem to have all the latest patches now - thank you.

 

All this night lights stuff started because I was after a brighter city night lights display than I was getting with Orbx.  The autogen lights system used by orbx (and now UTX in v2) can look very good at low altitudes but from higher levels cities look unrealistically dim.  To get around this I reinstalled Zinertek's Ultimate Night Environment textures (circa 2007).  These provide much brighter "splash" textures and work well with autogen lights. Although a bit too bright away from downtown or high density city areas, at night you can see city lighting from higher altitudes and distances.  The only problem is that when Orbx regions are enabled these textures are replaced by the much dimmer Orbx "splash" night textures so if you want to use the Zinertek textures you have to use FTX Global and no hybrid at night (or default if you don't have FTX Global).

 

Bruceb