mdm248111 said:
and just making the taxiway light model itself have a night texture that shows the bulb lit up
I tried this, and they JUST don't show bright enough as they shrink with distance FAST.... thus the need for an effect or halo, or X-plane (not the sim, the object) to put a glow on.
mdm248111 said:
There simply aren't big glowing "orbs" of light around each light in real life.
because of the distance issue, the surrounding glow is to show the 'blue' at a farther distance as a real light WOULD show from a-far... I use an attached effect I modified for the blue, as well as the texture used for the effect for the shape I wanted. I also use only ONE emmisive, to hopefully narrow the performance hit all the effects pose... being I dont have large airports, it doesnt seem to hit frames... I never tried this with large amounts of effects.
mdm248111 said:
However, this doesn't solve the problem of having hundreds of instances of that model. Would having them all in one .MDL file be more performance friendly?
Thus, the conundrum.... LOD's can be applied to take care of a distance draw, but, if you use drawcall batching for performance, it eliminates the availability to use LOD's... I personally tried the drawcall batching, and didnt like the way it displayed the lights, as they faintly flickered at distances (even with mips), and caught too much eye attention, I liked how the LODs drew them at a realistic distance... My airports aren't that big, so I don't have a ga-jillion of them to deal with...
Putting them all in one MDL will help with placement, but placing that model correctly, especially if its split up into many such subbed model sets, may pose issues with sanity (placement accuracy)... if you make ALL the lights in one model, it will have ref point draw issues, I think, I havent tried this lately, but its an all or nothing kind of 'decision' by your viewpoint in the sim... Lately, I make lights and such small objects single mdl's and place them with LODs for draw efficiency. Personally, I think this works best...
To answer the forum posted question, I make taxiway light models with or without a lit base, and attach a blue effect with day/night dawn/dusk perimeters, and it works best performance and draw distance-wise, as well as the way it looks in the scenery, BUT this is subjective, and many may not like the way it looks and have another process and approach...