Suggestions on night lighting...

[Guest moomox]

I'm wondering if someone out there might have some suggestions on how to do proper night lighting with PSP. I can get the lighting effect to work out fine, but when viewing the texture in FS2002, the textures look really aweful...They become pixelated and look like they have a reddish hue.If you have any suggestions, i'd like to hear them...ThanksDavid

[Guest]

This one is shot in the dark, but it seems to me that your problem is in resizing (downsizing) the rez of the picture during the conversion , or you change the depth of the color (24bit to 8 bit) in order for them to be visible in fs. What kind of conversion program are you using (imagetool, dxtbmp or none of them)?Ted

[Guest moomox]

I'm using 24 bit BITMAPS. I'm using DXTBMP to convert them to dxt1.I've also tried dxt3, 555, 444, etc etc...To get the lighting effect, i'm using PSP. I'm wondering how FS2002 displays the nightmaps... It's almost as if it is overlapping daytime with nighttime textures. Which in turn gives me a weird looking night texture with blocky artifacts. During the daylight hours, the textures look great!http://www22.brinkster.com/canmetar/fs2002.htmWhat other info can I provide to help...David

[Guest]

Looking at the pictures under the link all seems to be OK. Send an example. Any special graphic card? Drivers? Settings for lighting in FS? Blocky artifacts usually appears using DXTbmp when transparency is used and and only when color green is not 100% pure. Ted

[arno 1]

Hi David,I don't know if you used GMax to make the scenery?The MakeMDL SDK mentions there are NightMaps and LightMaps. One of them displays a different texture at night, while the other mixed the texture with the day texture (so you only have to draw the lights in it then). I always confuse which one is which :), but it might have something to do with your problem.Arno

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Member Netherlands 2000 Scenery Team[a href=http://home.wanadoo.nl/arno.gerretsen]http://home.wanadoo.nl/arno.gerretsen/banner.jpg[/a]

[Guest]

I was thinking the same thing....export with "nightmap" checked in makemdl, but NOT lightmap, and you should see just your _lm texture.B

[Guest moomox]

Sorry for the late reply... Computer problems at home...GrrrrI'll try these suggestions out once my PC is up and running again. I have been using the Nightmap option when exporting from Gmax, so I wonder if Lightmap might be a better idea? Anyhow, i'll post the results when I can.Thanks for the help!David