New Aircraft light tecnology in lamps?

[Guest]

Hi peoplethis is my first post in avsim forumsSome months ago i was really amazed this a brilliant utility to flight simulator is the Aircraft Realistic Night Lighting by kavec Payandeh (rnle.zip avaiable for sure in flightsim.com, don't know in avsim.com)and i was really amazed with the potencial that this can make to our sceneries in ours fs2002.Well just the autor said, the lights dont need to change the textures of theaircraft. and this make me think in a thing.can we make a lamp to put in the airports with this tecnology?this will probably will end the fake lamps that we use in the airports.i sent a e-mail to the author, and he said to me to contact scenery design forums to know if its possible to make a lamp with this tecnology. I will wait for your answerFlavio LuizFlavio Luiz

[Guest gorchi]

Hi Flavio.Do You want to make reflection on the ground from a light source? Check my picture I have attached. If You want to have such a reflection on the ground like from this lamp, then I must tell You it is quite easy do do it in SCASM. If You have FSDS it is even easier...Best regards,Goran BrumenFS Slovenija 2002 teamhttp://slovenia.avsim.net

[Guest]

Hi GoranThanks for your replybut i think this is not want i have in mind, in this kind of lamp, wehn you put a aircraft or other thing below it,the lamp doesn't iluminate the object.if you see the rlne.zip file i said in my other post, i wanna know if we can really iluminates any kind of object below a lamp, and i wanna know if is possible using the Payandeh tecnology or other tecnologyButThanks for your time in helping meFlavio Luiz

[arno 1]

There is the SCASM Light command or the BGL_LIGHT command in BGLC. Those are similar to the aircraft lights as far as I know (I'll try to find the file you name and see what it is about).These lights can produce the light beam, but it only shines on the ground scenery. Any object, aircraft or other scenery object, will not be lighted by it. This is a limitation of the scenery engine.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]

[arno 1]

Had a quick look. Those lights are created with effects. I haven't tried using such a light in a scenery yet, so I'll give it a try this evening (because it looks interesting :)).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 christian]

I had some thoughts about lights recently:There are several ways to do lights:1) use hardware lights. Opengl and DirectX are both limited to 8 light sources in this case. These lights indeed will do semi-realistic lighting on all objects in the scenery, but as I said there is a maximum of 8. I think FS2002 has a slider that sets the number of lights, so if you have that at 5 then you'll only have 5 lights max... If you have more than the maximum number of lights in a scene, I assume FS2002 will have to drop the extra ones.2) lightmaps: rather than using the hardware lights, you supply your own bitmaps. That's what the nightmaps and lightmaps are. This way you can model more realistic looking lighting, but that won't be dynamically, just static lights (some engines have dynamic lightmaps, but I haven't seen it in FS2002). That's why moving objects in the scenery won't get illuminated as they pass light sources. Using lightmaps, light sources don't emit any light, you have to supply the lightmaps to create the illusion that those light sources emit light...3) per-pixel light: something we'll surely get eventually in MSFS. This way the scenery engine will do all the lighting computations. This looks really great (eg DOOM3), but really eats framerates (and FS2002 doesn't have it anyway). I had some thoughts on this though. Since we only have one light source most of the time (the sun), a Geforce 3 could do per-pixel lighting with almost no framerate loss. For night light sources we may get away with it if we would use only a small number of very localised lights. But that's just all theoritical and up to M$ to implement...I assume the new effect lights are indeed hardware lights, whereas the BGL scenery lights no real lights (ie they don't emit any light)...This means loading a scene up with 20 effect lights won't work...Cheers, Christian

[arno 1]

Hi Christian,I tried such a light last evening, but it doesn't seem to work (now I remember I also tried that before, without success). It seems those landing lights only work on aircraft and not really in the scenery.I also think that the BGL_LIGHT command is not a real light (if I use your list of options). I have made sceneries with more then 8 of them and then they still work. I think they are the best way to use in sceneries. With low visibility they show a beam and they show nice on the ground. The only negative thing is that they only shine on the ground.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 gorchi]

Hi Arno!What exactly do You mean, that landing lights work on aircraft but not really in scenery? If I drive around the airport with landing lights on on aircraft, the ground is lighted but not other aircraft or any other objects. The same case is also with taxi lights. It is really pity, that light is not shown on objects but maybe this will be implemented in some future FS... BTW, speaking of these lacks, have You seen that it rains also in hangar? :)And for the lamps shown in the picture in my first post here, I used landing light in FSDS to produce this effect.Oh and this question about producing light on object was opened few months ago...Best regards,Goran BrumenFS Slovenija 2002 teamhttp://slovenia.avsim.net

[arno 1]

Yes, I remember that discussion from a time ago. I think we have just reached a limitation of the sim :).What I meant with that it works on aircraft and not on scenery, is that the light the origional question is about (with is an effect) doesn't seem to work when placed in a scenery (like firework does for example, which is also an effect file).The lights your are refering to (the ones FSDS probably makes, and the same one I use in SCASM or GMax) are the BGL_LIGHT (or SCASM Light) commands, and those are not made using effect files.The origional question states that on aircraft these ligths show on the aircraft, even if they light is not on the texture (as is done often). So this seems to be different from the BGL_LIGHT command that only shows on the ground (and not on the object it is part of).Because I didn't get it to work in the scenery, I think there might be a different in aircraft and scenery from this point of view.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]

This lamp seems nice - can you provide pointers for instructions how to create it? I have FSDS.

[Guest gorchi]

Hi Rantala!It is really simple. How to make it was also written in help for FSDS V1.6 but I assume You must have V2 now. First You insert Polygon (no matter how many sides You have, 4 is more than enough). Perpendicular axis should be Z axis. Then move the polygon (together with axis) to the source of light (emitter). In FS You will see a little light there. The axis are this origin. Now swith to polygn mode and rotate the whole part to desired angle and flip the polygon (key F) so the polygon vector will show to the ground.The next thing is to place polygon to the ground. So You must switch to point mode and place it to the ground. The next thing to do is to define the part name. Part name can be Light.Landing or Light.Taxi (it produces the same effect). If YOu hae more of them, they will be appended with .1, .2... etc. Leave it that way. You only have to define the color of light. Chose Set material in part properties and choose desired color. The more You darken it, less intensity it will have (by Dave Eckert, chief beta tester, btw). And of course, light is lighted only when it is dark so put condition Dark, (variable 28C, then NOT AND, v1=1). So that's it for now.When You export it, You will find in API something like this (it is from the light You are interested, btw):

; Part: Light.Landing:Part2IfVarAnd( :CNT3  28c  1 )Return:CNT3Transform_Mat(	0.000000 2713.600098 679.999390	0.956305 0.000000 -0.292372	0.223970 0.642788 0.732572	0.187933 -0.766044 0.614701	)Light( m 5 0.0 0.0 0.0 1073741824 0.0 0.0 FC 255 243 202 0.0 0.0 0.0 )TransformEndReturn

What is important here is that the color of light is inncorect in V2.10 (among other bugs). The color is defined above as FC 255 243 202 (I allready corrected it). You will probably see it FC 243 202 255:- R channel is missing - bug!, - then there are G and B channel, - the last one (third number) is alpha channel, which You do not need.The next bug is more dramatic and has the problem with vectoring the light (again bug, I also reported it) so You will have to experiment a little bit to position it properly (by rotating in Polygon mode).So this is a "little tutorial" and I hope it helped You!Best regards,Goran BrumenFS Slovenija 2002 teamhttp://slovenia.avsim.net

[Guest]

Hi Gorani read your little toturial on the fsds and for the first time i see the light (real one) thenk you very muchDavid