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AFCAD Lighting
- Thread starter dan
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Hi Dan,
a proper answer to your question would be interesting indeed. AFAIK the only way to see the AFCAD lighting in combination with ground polys is to cut holes into the polys or to make parts of these transparent. But then the results do not satisfy me (at least in my current project) as the lights seem to be squeezed or even to be coverend by something. I once thought in a similar way like you are describing. To modify the height of the airport would be fine way if it worked. But then you may get troubles with the ground polys.
But perhaps anybody has an idea. It would solve a lot of issues for me too.
greetz
gianni
a proper answer to your question would be interesting indeed. AFAIK the only way to see the AFCAD lighting in combination with ground polys is to cut holes into the polys or to make parts of these transparent. But then the results do not satisfy me (at least in my current project) as the lights seem to be squeezed or even to be coverend by something. I once thought in a similar way like you are describing. To modify the height of the airport would be fine way if it worked. But then you may get troubles with the ground polys.
But perhaps anybody has an idea. It would solve a lot of issues for me too.
greetz
gianni
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Why don't you create your own lights? 
But if you want to use the default lights without the polys - maybe this works:
Give your photoscenery a transparency of 1% - then the only thing that shines through should be the lights. But I maybe wrong...
But if you want to use the default lights without the polys - maybe this works:
Give your photoscenery a transparency of 1% - then the only thing that shines through should be the lights. But I maybe wrong...
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Hi Horst,
interesting attitude! Do you mean with "transparency 1%" that in the material editor the transparency value should be set to 99%? Would be wonderful if that worked!
The creation of own lights indeed isn't that difficult but I do not know how to make PAPI-lights. Did not found any solution for that up to now. So for my project I am dependent on AFCAD....
greetz
gianni
interesting attitude! Do you mean with "transparency 1%" that in the material editor the transparency value should be set to 99%? Would be wonderful if that worked!
The creation of own lights indeed isn't that difficult but I do not know how to make PAPI-lights. Did not found any solution for that up to now. So for my project I am dependent on AFCAD....
greetz
gianni
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Yes, PAPIs are quite tricky...
My idea was: The dustom runway lights seem to be some sort of fx. So they should blend through a transparent texture, no matter how deep the transparency is. As I said: I may be wrong - but it should be worth a shot.
I can't remember at the moment: is it 99% or 1% transparency?
My idea was: The dustom runway lights seem to be some sort of fx. So they should blend through a transparent texture, no matter how deep the transparency is. As I said: I may be wrong - but it should be worth a shot.
I can't remember at the moment: is it 99% or 1% transparency?
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Gianni said:
Would indeed be interesting to see if this works, but I doubt it. The photoscenery would still be drawn after the runway (and the lighting), so making it slightly transparant would not really change that fact.
Gianni said:The creation of own lights indeed isn't that difficult but I do not know how to make PAPI-lights. Did not found any solution for that up to now. So for my project I am dependent on AFCAD....
They could relatively easy be made with a few lightpoints, that you let change color based on the position of the aircraft. That code could use the SEPERATION_PLANE command to check the position, like I do with the docking systems.
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arno said:
The only problem is, you can't use fx that way and have to live with the "normal lights" which aren't as realistic as I think.
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Hi gents,
I am sorry but the way Horst indicated does not work. I set the opacity value to 99%, but there was no change in the appearance ot the lights. To bring AFCAD lights 'over' xml-styled polys there must be another way.
What I do not understand is how AFCAD manages this: aren't the polys which can be drawn with AFCAD xml-styled too?
weird
gianni
I am sorry but the way Horst indicated does not work. I set the opacity value to 99%, but there was no change in the appearance ot the lights. To bring AFCAD lights 'over' xml-styled polys there must be another way.
What I do not understand is how AFCAD manages this: aren't the polys which can be drawn with AFCAD xml-styled too?
weird
gianni
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Hi Gianni,
Getting them over XML polygon is no problem. The problem is to get them on top of 3D objects. Any polygon that you make with GMax/MakeMDL is seen as a 3D object and not as a ground polygon anymore. These 3D objects are always drawn after the XML code that defines the airport and that results in your display problem.
Getting them over XML polygon is no problem. The problem is to get them on top of 3D objects. Any polygon that you make with GMax/MakeMDL is seen as a 3D object and not as a ground polygon anymore. These 3D objects are always drawn after the XML code that defines the airport and that results in your display problem.
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Yes, it is a secret. I really can understand that the ones who know about the solution do not tell us how to go around that problem for commercial reasons. But I am quite sure that we can solve it someday.
What confuses me is that I have not found a logical explanation for that:
* How are the lights techically linked to the runways (xml-styled) in AFCAD?
* Are they really technically linked?
* Given that I make a polygon in xml-style what would I have do to attach lights or a series of lights to it?
* If the lights were not linked to the poygons why is the position of the lights dependant of the height of the (xml-styled) runway?
on the other hand?
* as Arno is telling us GMAX-made ground polys are seen as 3d-objects in FS9 and therefore they are drawn afterwards. Is there a way to manipulate the polys "back" to be interpreted as being 2d-objects?
It would be too nice to understand that
gianni
What confuses me is that I have not found a logical explanation for that:
* How are the lights techically linked to the runways (xml-styled) in AFCAD?
* Are they really technically linked?
* Given that I make a polygon in xml-style what would I have do to attach lights or a series of lights to it?
* If the lights were not linked to the poygons why is the position of the lights dependant of the height of the (xml-styled) runway?
on the other hand?
* as Arno is telling us GMAX-made ground polys are seen as 3d-objects in FS9 and therefore they are drawn afterwards. Is there a way to manipulate the polys "back" to be interpreted as being 2d-objects?
It would be too nice to understand that
gianni
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Hi Gianni,
I think the lights are just an integral part of the runway. When you ask the scenery engine to create a runway, the lights are a part of it. I also think they are hardcoded in the scenery engine, so we can not reproduce the same lights with our techniques (but this is all just a guess, so please prove me wrong if you can
).
By creating the polygons with XML commands. Like the aprons you can draw in AFCAD for example. We are just trying to make scenery that looks much better then the default, but to do that we need to use scenery commands in a few they are not really supposed to be used. And as a result of that we hit problems like this.
Gianni said:
I think the lights are just an integral part of the runway. When you ask the scenery engine to create a runway, the lights are a part of it. I also think they are hardcoded in the scenery engine, so we can not reproduce the same lights with our techniques (but this is all just a guess, so please prove me wrong if you can
).Gianni said:
By creating the polygons with XML commands. Like the aprons you can draw in AFCAD for example. We are just trying to make scenery that looks much better then the default, but to do that we need to use scenery commands in a few they are not really supposed to be used. And as a result of that we hit problems like this.
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Hi Arno,
I am afraid that I am not in the position to prove anything as I am no programer at all. I was just thinking about the logical way but I would not have the possibility to put these ideas into action - or into tweaks or codes.
Making ground polys with fs2004 gamepacks in the xml-style led me to problems as these polys on top of the mesh made it necessary to use the zbias-prefix to avoid bleed through effects. Then this caused the raising ground effect. As much as I know there is no solution for this problem for the time being.
Even it was solved yet, would it be possible to link lights to these kind of polys?
greetz
gianni
I am afraid that I am not in the position to prove anything as I am no programer at all. I was just thinking about the logical way but I would not have the possibility to put these ideas into action - or into tweaks or codes.
Making ground polys with fs2004 gamepacks in the xml-style led me to problems as these polys on top of the mesh made it necessary to use the zbias-prefix to avoid bleed through effects. Then this caused the raising ground effect. As much as I know there is no solution for this problem for the time being.
Even it was solved yet, would it be possible to link lights to these kind of polys?
greetz
gianni
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Hi,
I also tried once to make the ground polygons transparent and when you set a value of 30% transparency, then the lights show up. But not at full intensity, so they are also 'transparent', because they only bleed through the ground polygon's for 30%.
But this effect is not wanted off course. Did anyone already try to raise the altitude of the afcad file? I didn't try that yet, but if we think logically, then the afcad would be higher than the custom ground polygons. The only problem you would get then, is that the afcad textures would show up on top of the custom ground polygons.
Maybe the only person that can help us is Lee Swordy, the creator of the AFCAD program. He should know the internal structure of an AFCAD file very well, because this is not the regular ASM format I suppose.
Thomas
I also tried once to make the ground polygons transparent and when you set a value of 30% transparency, then the lights show up. But not at full intensity, so they are also 'transparent', because they only bleed through the ground polygon's for 30%.
But this effect is not wanted off course. Did anyone already try to raise the altitude of the afcad file? I didn't try that yet, but if we think logically, then the afcad would be higher than the custom ground polygons. The only problem you would get then, is that the afcad textures would show up on top of the custom ground polygons.
Maybe the only person that can help us is Lee Swordy, the creator of the AFCAD program. He should know the internal structure of an AFCAD file very well, because this is not the regular ASM format I suppose.
Thomas
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Yes, Thomas, that is the question. But there seems to be no way to raise the altitude setting of the runway above the ground without generating a lot of troubles.
Also the transparency workaround has some shortfalls: As indicated before not only the intensity of the lights is affected. The lights are "squeezed" somehow.
What's about Lee? I somewhere read that he has stopped his precious development work for personal reasons.
greetz
gianni
Also the transparency workaround has some shortfalls: As indicated before not only the intensity of the lights is affected. The lights are "squeezed" somehow.
What's about Lee? I somewhere read that he has stopped his precious development work for personal reasons.
greetz
gianni
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gents, let me please think loudly:
if AFCAD2-files really cannot be manipulated; and the transparency method does not help, then maybe something with "excluding" might be the way.
I once asked here in the forums wether it is possible to combine two things. Currently I am not sure whether this questions was ever answered, so let me try again to discuss it:
*If I made ground polys with the fs2002 gamepack that bear the photo-texture and cut out the parts where the lights from the AFCAD-runway are located, I would see them without any limitation.
*As the parts to be cut out would have to have a certain size (for the time being I was not able to locate the accurate position of the PAPI-lights in FS9) the underlying texture of course would be visible. And this obviously I would dislike.
* To go around this I plan to make a ground poly (now with the fs2004 gamepack) and to attach those parts of the photo-texture to it, which i have cut out just recently. To avoid flickering and blend through I would give these materials the zbias prefix. As much as I understood the lights from the AFCAD runway would be visible now as they are drawn prior to the fs2002 polys (which would not be any longer at the coordinates of the lights ).
Would that be possible, what do you think?
gianni
if AFCAD2-files really cannot be manipulated; and the transparency method does not help, then maybe something with "excluding" might be the way.
I once asked here in the forums wether it is possible to combine two things. Currently I am not sure whether this questions was ever answered, so let me try again to discuss it:
*If I made ground polys with the fs2002 gamepack that bear the photo-texture and cut out the parts where the lights from the AFCAD-runway are located, I would see them without any limitation.
*As the parts to be cut out would have to have a certain size (for the time being I was not able to locate the accurate position of the PAPI-lights in FS9) the underlying texture of course would be visible. And this obviously I would dislike.
* To go around this I plan to make a ground poly (now with the fs2004 gamepack) and to attach those parts of the photo-texture to it, which i have cut out just recently. To avoid flickering and blend through I would give these materials the zbias prefix. As much as I understood the lights from the AFCAD runway would be visible now as they are drawn prior to the fs2002 polys (which would not be any longer at the coordinates of the lights
).Would that be possible, what do you think?
gianni
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Interesting. But there must be another possibility. I can't imagine that this method would not lead to any troubles (blurring textures,...).
I guess the trick is the drawing order. The drawing order of the lights ist obviously higher than the default-(runway-)textures. It should be possible to push the photoscenery between those two layers.
I guess the trick is the drawing order. The drawing order of the lights ist obviously higher than the default-(runway-)textures. It should be possible to push the photoscenery between those two layers.
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Hi Dan,
Are there any where you can see the approach lights by day maybe? This picture clearly shows the ground polygons, but from that PAPI I find it hard to see if it is really default or not.
dan said:
Are there any where you can see the approach lights by day maybe? This picture clearly shows the ground polygons, but from that PAPI I find it hard to see if it is really default or not.