Night Lighting and FS2000

[Guest]

Hi,does anyone know how to add night lighting to ground polygons I'm using for my city. I tried using the seasonal option in the latest build of APT 260, but it hasn't worked.Cheers,Amman.

[Guest]

Amman,If you use Gmax. Then the following applies. If not can't help you.Download the fsregen program found at:http://www.nhreas.com/fsregen.html observing that you must first download the basic full version with a release version of v0_20b. Install fsregen. Then after very carefully reading the installion program and installing it, go back to that site and download the two documents refered to at the top of the page called Lake/Decal.In the Decal document (http pages) you will see a reference to downloading the NEWEST RSREGEN. Download and install it.Then go to:http://www.cue-stom.com/fsim/html/index.shtml and download the newest MIDDLEMAN package.Then after CAREFULLY READING THE MIDDLEMAN readme.txt file, rename the makemdl.exe file and middleman.exe per the instructions.After setting up these packages, and learning how to use them you will find that you can place ground lighting anywhere you want to by creating the ground light objects in Gmax and exporting them, then using the RSREGEN package to POST PROCESS and recompile the bgl file created by Gmax into a new bgl file that will contain various type lights such as blinking beacons/strobes......in different colors that will show up during day light hours as well as at night if set up to work that way.Again, the above applies only if you are using Gmax. And you must be a bit patient and carefull to read all the documentation that comes with these two mentioned tools.hang in there,George B.

[Guest Barney1]

The texture for night lighting ends in [_LM] minus the brackets: in other words, an underscore followed by capital LM.If you notice, the textures for the seasons have the same "parent" name as the summer texture. For use within a scenery program like Airport, you need to re-name the seasonal/nightime textures with the underscore and two letter combination for the applicable season or night lighting as explained if you read further.If the particular summer time texture doesn't have a corresponding _LM texture, you can copy one of your choice and name it whatever is required to fulfill these conditions.For instance, if the texture you want to use is 017b2su1.bmp, the spring texture would need to be called : 017b2su1_SP.bmp. Fall would become 017b2su1_FA.bmp; Winter = 017b2su1_WI.bmp. Finally, the night texture would look like this: 017b2su1_LM.bmp.Place these re-named textures in your Texture Folder, and Apt will pick them up within the polygon menu.CAUTION: before re-naming default files, ensure you do so in a temp folder or at least make backups of the originals!

[Guest JR Morgan]

>Hi, >>does anyone know how to add night lighting to ground >polygons I'm using for my city. I tried using the seasonal >option in the latest build of APT 260, but it hasn't worked. >>Cheers, >>Amman. The seasonal/night options in Apt26 can only work properly if you have truly seasonal/night bitmaps available for it.There is an abundance of Seasonal and Night Lighted ground textures for applying to ground cover polygons located in FS2002's ScenerydbWorldTexture file area. These can be scaled to fit your scale size requirements.If you have created your own textures for ground polygons, then you must create a "my texture"_LM.bmp (substitute the texture bitmap's name instead of the "my texture" example) with appropriate night visible colors the way you want them arranged (streets, glowing spots, etc). Also, you must supply the seasonal Spring, Summer, FAll & Winter versions of your self-made texture bitmaps. In other words you must have at least 5 versions of texture bitmaps for the same ground polygon available, i.e.: *_LM.bmp for night, *_SP.bmp, *_FA.bmp & *_WI.bmp (respectively for Night, Spring, Fall and Winter -- and the original self made bitmap without the "_*" for Summer.With these so-named texture bitmaps in-place in your texture directory, A program such as Apt26 can find them and place them for you onto your peculiar ground cover polygons.To quickly view the scenerydb texture bitmaps, you can use a program like the Martin Wright "TV View" utility to see them and make a choice of which one to use if you like a particular one (easiest choice) -- Otherwise, you must make the aforementioned night, summer, spring, fall & winter suffixed original texture bitmaps that you've created.Martin Wright's excellent utilities can be downloaded at: http://fly.to/mwgfx'Hope this helps; J.R.

[Guest JR Morgan]

Barney --- 'Wish you post had been visible before I "long-windedly" typed the reply I made :-)Regards; J.R.

[Guest]

Thanks, that did it!Cheers.

[Guest]

Copilots,I forgot to mention during my "windy feedback" concerning using Gmax, etc., that there is tool called BGLPlacer that can place lighting objects at any level where it simply uses the standard special lighting objects in fs2k2. If all you want is to place lights at ground or above ground level you may want to give this tool a try. It can be found at:http://zone.msn.com/flightsim/FS02DevDeskSDK00.aspYou will find a package titled Special Effects. After unzipping it, go to the subdirectory called Effects_placement. In this directory you will find two files. One is named BGLC.exe (yep this is the one some of you are using compile code that is produced by the FSREGEN program I and others have mentiond), and the second one is called BGLPlacer.exe.The BGLPlacer.exe is a gui front end that allows you to select the type special effect you want to place in the sim, and there are coordinate windows and elevation windows to allow you to place it exactly where you want the effect to be.Very easy to use program. Very easy to read and understand readme file. In short, within a minute you can place a really nice fire work display anywhere you want. Much more realistic then I had imagined. Ground effect shows rockets being launched, many different type burst, yes with accompanying "bangs". About the only negative I see off hand is that is is not meant to place mulitple lights.At any rate, for those that want to get into placing beacon lights, smoke effects ............whatever........this is a quick dirty way of doing it. Of course, for the newbie. one simply goes to a given location while in the simulator, then SHIFT Z keys so that you get the gs coordinates at the top of the screen. Jot them down then place an object using the tool, then go to world/scenery and reload the scenery files, you should see the effect in the sim.cheers George B. :-)