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AFLT4 removes lights from other scenery

D

DMorbey

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3
Country
scotland
Hi,
I installed AFLT4 and made a lighting setup for Perth airport Scotland. I am also running extreme Aberdeen and Extreme Edinburgh and had made several of the tv towers around the NE Scotland, all with lights. Now these are gone and also the runway and PAPI lights from the extreme airports. I have removed all the files I can find that AFLT4 seems to have added, and deleted the shaders folder, but still no lights. Also before deleting AFLT4 it loaded and produced a popup even when using scenery far from the airport with the AFLT4 additions. I'm running P3D4.5. I would appreciate your help in getting back the airport and tv mast lighting without having to reinstall all. Thank you.
 
Most unusual! For P3Dv4, AFLT generates a folder named "AFLT for P3D" in the Prepar3D v4 Addons subfolder of your Documents folder. Delete that folder and all affects of AFLT should be removed. If you "stripped" the airport .bgl, you will, of course, have to replace the "stripped" .bgl with the original. AFLT doesn't affect any other files or folders - including shaders.

The popup you refer to is, I assume, the small, two-button dialog mentioned in the user manual. If that is still popping up, you haven't removed the AFLT for P3D folder and AFLT is still controlling SimConnect.
 
Thank you for the reply. I had removed all the AFLT files but the object file was still in the Perth Airfield folder. As soon as this was removed the Gary Summons Aberdeen airport lights all worked again. You may like to know that in the Perth file I used runway end lights, runway side lights, PAPIs and the green taxiway recessed lights. All of these disappeared from the Gary Summons scenery, except for the green taxiway lights which continued to show in his scenery. I would be grateful for your thoughts. I'm still using Windows 7 Pro so I wonder if this is the (or part of the) isssue? Regarding the AFLT lights, I was unable to get the PAPIs showing constantly when using the size change method. I worked using the manual, but they were either far too big close when visible at all distances, or when reasonably sized close up, showed at a distance and then disappeared during the approach to reappear when close to the runway. The green recessed lights were also huge. Perhaps this is again due to Win7? or to my wide screen 2560x1440 monitor? Thanks for your time in looking at these problems.
 
I have the same problems with the VASI/PAPI lights. What I do is keep those lights in my ADE file and add the AFLT lights in the same place, which gives me the best of both worlds. It’s tricky since the distance numbers are not the same in each program, but I’ve developed a standard set of numbers that work OK. See my other thread for details.
 
DMorbey, I doubt this has anything to do with Win 7, though I must admit I'm a little surprised that AFLT even executes under Win7, since AFLT is compiled under NET.framework 4.5. That being said, I am not surprised that all your lights were suppressed when the AFLT-generated .bgl was in the scenery folder. The purpose of that .bgl is to suppress all the stock lights that you include in your AFLT custom lights.

What appears to be the underlying issue is a Simconnect issue. Simconnect was running, since the little dialog you mentioned was displayed, But, for whatever reason, the AFLT custom lights were not displayed. If you let AFLT install the lights, I know of no reason why they wouldn't work. If you installed them manually, well, that's certainly a possible culprit. Without having all your files and knowing where t5hey were saved, there's no way for me to be more specific. (And, to be clear, I'm not suggesting you send me your files.) What I can tell you is that no one else has reported such a problem

I know nothing of " Gary Summons Aberdeen airport lights". But the very name suggests a possible conflict with AFLT. When you combine add-ons, strange things can happen. .

Finally, as to the size of the PAPI lights, AFLT supports three different styles of lights. But all require a compromise between range and close-up size. Tom has mentioned his work-around (when using BGL_LIGHTS as the source). Unfortunately, since you are using PV4, BGL_LIGHTS are not available. But, I would remind you that the user has complete control over light size and intensity when using effects or the 3-plane objects as lights. Perhaps a little experimentation would produce worthwhile results.

Hope this clarifies.

EDIT: Incidentally, if you prefer the stock PAPIs (or any other category of light) just delete those elements from the AFLT display. AFLT will only "strip" the categories of lights that you program with AFLT.
 
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Almost done. I thought you'd like a quick peek.

As you will see, there are still a few issues to be addressed but, generally, it works as I intend.

Don
 

Attachments

Wow, I am impressed. The lights are all nicely spaced, and there are very few issues. Great!

This picture of SAN will demonstrate the two most obvious things I see. First, the runway lights are placed onto the intersecting taxiway surface. Second, in several locations at this airport the taxiway lights do not extend all the way to the runway, but stop short of it. In at least one location this is not true, however.

aflt_remaining1.jpg


Again, nice progress being made!

Hope this helps,
 
the runway lights are placed onto the intersecting taxiway surface
Click to expand...
They should have been suppressed. (They were in the initial version and will be again!). If the user wants, the resulting gaps can be filled in with surface lights. Thanks for picking that up.

in several locations at this airport the taxiway lights do not extend all the way to the runway, but stop short of it.
Click to expand...
That's because the connecting links do not have lighting assigned. And it doesn't appear that Flightsim places lights there either with the current link configuration. (At least, I don't see them)

To the extent that I can fix the idiosyncrasies that still exist, it should be done before the weekend.

Don
 
Got it, the ones that look good do have lights assigned to those links.

OK, so i should make sure that all such links have lighting assigned to them. That should be doable.
 
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