Reflections not allowed on scenery objects?

[Guest]

Hi,I'm pretty profficient at designing scenery and scenery objects with FSDS 1.6. I've recently upgraded to 2.11 and found that only compiles APIs when there is no reflection assigned to textures. Otherwise, it outputs a totally valid API that works OK on the simulator.As soon as I set special flag "Reflect" to a texture in the "Texture list" box, the API won't compile. Although a dialog with "Success" message appears, nothing is generated. I was thinking the reflections are possible only on aircraft models that one export as MDL :-( ? Is this correct?--Daniel R. Careri

[Guest luissa]

Hi,I think the SDK refers to reflections as a feature of aircraft textures. This is probably the reason why FSDS does not compile an API when you have the "R" flag on a texture. But it generates a valid BGL with reflectivities if you set the output to be BGL. So it would be nice if Abacus would provide an update.Another problem that I have also reported in this forum is what I think is a bug in BGLAnalyze with the TextureList() command. Therefore you can not decompile the GBL and make an API from it. When you do not have night textures it is very easy to edit the API and make the day texture to be reflective. Basically you set the texture to be lighted at nigh and than you change the text API file in just 2 lines. But if you want day, night and reflective textures, then the manual editing is more envolved.Regards, Luis

[arno 1]

I never tried FSDS, but in GMax you can only get reflections when you set the texture type to AIRCRAFT_TEXTURE. Because this is the default value of MakeMDL the reflection there also works for scenery objects, but technically when you use the correct texture type for scenery then the reflection will not work.I think with some tweaking of the API (changing texture type and adding the reflection) you must be able to also get the reflection in your macro.

[Guest GerrishGray]

Hi LuisI missed your earlier post about BGAnalyze and TextureList() - could we have the reference please.Your third paragraph sounds very interesting. Do you by any chance have a coding example of the conversion of an API to reflective textures, as you describe?CheersGerrish

[Guest GerrishGray]

Hold that Luis - I found your previous post thanks!Yes, reflective textures can be made to work on 3D scenery objects by converting the texture type to 1 (AIRCRAFT) instead of 6 (BUILDING) - gMax's well-known built-in mistake. A potential problem with this technique is that it reduces the visibility range of the object, but this can be overcome by judicious use of LOD models (the model used at greater range needs to have textures with type BUILDING - or even be non-textured, of course).What exactly is the bug regarding TextureList() in BGAnalyze that you mention - could you be more specific?ThanksGerrish

[Guest luissa]

Hi Gerrish,Here is a source piece (manually edited after FSDS2 output):BGLVersion( 0800 )TextureList( 0 1 FF 255 255 255 0 20.000000 "aerobus.bmp" 256 FF 255 255 255 0 20.000000 "aerobus_LM.bmp" 512 FF 255 255 255 0 20.000000 "aerobus.bmp" 6 FF 255 255 255 0 20.000000 "bus1t.bmp" 256 FF 255 255 255 0 20.000000 "bus1t_LM.bmp" 6 FF 255 255 255 0 20.000000 "roda.bmp" 256 FF 255 255 255 0 20.000000 "roda_LM.bmp" )If we compile this source and decompile again using SCASM_2.88/BGLAnalyse_3.00 we get: BGLVersion( 0800 ) TextureList( 0 1 FF 255 255 255 aerobus.bmp ; texture 0 0 FF 255 255 255 aerobus_LM.bmp ; texture 1 0 FF 255 255 255 aerobus.bmp ; texture 2 6 FF 255 255 255 bus1t.bmp ; texture 3 0 FF 255 255 255 bus1t_LM.bmp ; texture 4 6 FF 255 255 255 roda.bmp ; texture 5 0 FF 255 255 255 roda_LM.bmp ; texture 6 )I would like to suggest another improvement in BGLAnalyze (in the case that Winfried read this) which would be to use more than 2 decimal digits in, for example, RefPoint( ... scale ... ).Kind Regards, Luis

[Guest GerrishGray]

Hi LuisThanks for that. I see what you mean (although my copy of BGLAnalyze does not omit the 0 20.000000 arguments in the way you show)! I hadn't spotted this one before. I never actually recompile direct from BGLAnalyze-generated code (although I find the tool absolutely invaluable - it's definitely the best of the decompilers).Why don't you write direct to Winfried at winfriedorthmann@yahoo.com - I always find him very responsive when I report bugs or make suggestions.CheersGerrish

[Guest]

Thank you Luis, Arno and Gerrish,I guess this confirms my suspicions. So, the only change that has to be made to the api is to replace the texture type from 6 to 1. LOD models are no problem, as I wanted to make them anyway, because I want to keep my scenery as FPS friendly as I can.Another interesting thing I've seen on FSDS2 is that when you load a previous version project, it cames with extrange materials assigned to some parts, some even include transparency (?). I had to create a blank project, export the DEFAULT material, load this material on the project in question, and manually assign DEFAULT to all parts. Weird! *:-*--Daniel R. Careri

[Guest]

Another interesting question for FSDS2 users out there: How do you make a light? In FSDS 1.6 I used to make a cube, selected type Dots, choose color and make brilliant. That gave me 8 brilliant dots that glow in the dark. Then I deleted the dots I didn't wanted, and that was all.In FSDS2, I'm pretty confused with materials, and I've read the Help part concerning them, but still don't understand how that applies when the object is not composed of polygons, but is made of lines or dots.I've tried several logical combinations, and all I obtained were pinkish or purplish glowing dots when I tried to make Green, Red or White!--Daniel R. Careri

[Shaka 2]

It depends on what you are trying to do with the light. If you want to make a spot light that illuminates other objects, then it might be easier to "fake it" using textures, etc.I was playing around with a light in my scenery, and I was trying out "light_land" etc. to see what effect they would have in FS2002. Well, I was generally unimpressed, so I tried just naming the part "light", and I got something more like what I was looking for. I gave it an emissive colour of light yellow (or whatever colour you want), and I set the pre-process to "night". I did the same thing withsome taxiway lights that I made.Now that I think about it, the name probably didn't have anything to do with it. Just play around with the emissive colour and the pre-process section of the part.I've included a small screenshot. The effect is subtle enough that the lights don't dominate the scenery like the old-style beacons used to.