New package pics !!

[Guest R_Driscoll]

http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/64558.jpgLimitedhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/64559.jpgUnlimitedhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/64560.jpgSecond pairhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/64561.jpgNote split line - ground not levelled yet.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/64562.jpgTo be continued ...

[agtim 0]

Hi Robert,congrats, looks great, I just missing the hills, think will have to check elevation around this airport :-wave agtim

[Guest jonpoint]

Rob,Thimply thstunning ;)Really, this is fantastic! Can't wait to finish the current 'load' and do some cool stuff for UK. Like night lights...You see, I'm still trying to turn mine off/down! I have had some limited success in Seattle, due to the lights using 2 specific colours from the palette. By toning them down (adding a bit of blue to yellow makes them slightly 'green' but much dimmer) I have reduced the worst of it. The white ones are harder to tame!What this has lead me to is that I believe it is within our abilities to hand-edit the 'nitelites', if only we could access them. I assume they are stored similarly to ground textures but without the detail - like a 'night mip' in normal models. Think of the 'day' mip as the normal ground texture and the 'night' mip as the nitelites. When night falls, the day mips are still being displayed, just darkened. The night mips are sorta overlayed. I realised this when I did a nightmip for a new FBO and the 'No Smoking' sign is still visible, even though in the night mip, it's black.Of course, the lack of available transparency in nightmips means that I had to give up in the end :-(Anyway, maybe Andre or Cristian may have more ideas on this. If someone were to give me a set of targa files, I can't see why they couldn't be darkened and 'hand lit', so to speak. Then I could pass them back (to real people who actually know what they're doing...) for processing.Given the ~1000 hours I've put into FU3 over the last year, it's not insurmountable. Frankly, it freaks me out how much we've all done - certainly twice what was achieved last year (except for Chris, who always achieves a lot ;) ). If Flightgear had such loyal contributors, it would overtake M$F$ overnight :-hah:-wave******************* Jonathan Point *******************

[Guest R_Driscoll]

As usual you raised a lot of good points Jon. Probably you know all this already, but this is my current understanding:There are (at least?) three types of night lighting in FU3 (so generous!):1) night texures for models: make a copy of the model BIN file and place it in GENLITEMAPS. Take the original GIF's used by the model, convert to black/white images, colour by intensity to represent night lighting, then use FIXMIP to convert to correct palette (there is a night-lighting switch in FIXMIP. DON'T look at model in ModelView, since this is not designed for night lighting, but test directly in FU3. Missing MIPs cause CTD's.2) add lights as per Tomi Lehto's method and tools, or as modified by Jon Point the man. These give high intensity lights that can be used for headlights, streetlights, building lights etc - i.e. light sources rather than light reflections.3) "street lighting" - the terrain lighting seen in the big cities, created by a special overmap of the terrain based on heat-sourced imaging of the terrain (i.e. done by LGS from satellite imagery. This is definitely in Andre's domain (agtim) - when he stops mucking around with unimportant stuff like building planes and fixing my mess in UKS, he will work Wonders here.These three work together (OK with lightning flashes) to form a superb night-flying experience (yes, and aircraft lighting. I forgot aircraft lighting). With UKS, we can get the first two types of lighting, but it would be great to get the third - proper city lighting, as well. I tried to make some TYPE 1 lighting for London, (i.e. using night textures for models), but it was slow.I used to think night models were not compatible with transparency, but they work fine on some graphics cards. I am using a TNT nvidia and never saw night transparency (the ability to see through a model at night) until by chance when playing with the new flt3.cfg file, it started working correctly. I had just switched to multipass for all hazing and changed one of the punt flags - and suddenly the EXCEL centre in LCA showed a glowing red sunset through the external framework - look at the building whilst sitting at the terminal and you'll see what I mean. and glidernut had the nerve to tell me that's how it always was!So if you're building a night model that needs transparency, remember to set both the night models and the transparency flags.All the best,RobD.

[Guest qvdg]

Fantastic Rob - another great destination in UKS.CheersQvdG

[Guest glidernut]

My werd, you hav been bisy, its looking incredably realistik.Its amazing how you manage to get it looking so much likethe real thing.glidernut.:-wave