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FS2004 again a strange problem attaching effects

Messages
163
Country
italy
I tried to search on this forum if anyone had this problem before, but I don't found anything, I will explain the problem, hope to be clear...

Usually I prefer to attach effects to my scenery buildings directly in gmax using the SDK "attach tool" or "multiple attach" if I have many lights.
You can see it working for example in my last Houston Downtown scenery
fs9%202009-11-09%2002-01-20-26.bmp.jpg


very easy in gmax, wherever you want a light you put a box, run the attach tool, export in mdl than create the Bgl and all is ok, but.....

but this work randomly, I will explain, I'm creating various sceneries around the world, and I found that this method to attach effects don't work the same depending on where you place your model....
I don't know why, but one of the last building I done is located in Milan downtown, it have an helipad with lights, I placed all the boxes with effects, but the effects are not showing! I've placed the same milan building in houston and lights are up, you can imagine of an exclude or something in Milan area, but I use a default Fs9 Installation without any addon, just default plus my building, so no excludes are present.

The model you place in fs9 is in some way "position dependent", but this is not all..... after I placed the model in Milan with effects that not shows I used the "walk and follow" plugin to move around the building, and I discovered an interesting thing, my effects shows but they are BELOW the ground, exactly I have my 36 lights all placed in the same position ( I see a big light ) exactly under my building placed in the 0,0,0 point.

I tried to place my building in various places and randomly the lights are show in the correct position (36 lights on the Helipad perimeter) and in other places all the lights collapse in the same position in the ORIGIN point of the model, mostly under ground level, but I used the same *.mdl with the same *.xml, just changing coordinates.

This problem is making me crazy, because I don't found ANY correlation between the point I place the building with the fact that effects shows or not, but the real problem is why in some location effects shows all in one point below the ground????? :mad:

Someone had this problem sometimes?? when you build a model and don't see your effects show, have you ever tried to see below the ground??

Thank you, Andrea
 
Messages
7,450
Country
us-illinois
Hi Andrea:

I have minimal experience with using the Attach Point tool with effects on scenery models from long ago, but I'm wondering: since light Effect visibility is more controllable as to visibility distance etc. when placed as a separate object using XML, if you placed the light Effects that way (matching the intended scenery complexity for the building) perhaps that might allow more predictable results.


Also, perhaps it might be easier to place the helipad lights as separate objects or a row of objects using the Scenery Design Editor (SDE) functions of Airport Design Editor ("ADE9X" ...which IIRC, does not restrict use by payware developers), to achieve easier control over Effect visibility.


I have had mystifying and unpredictable results with "point of view" visibility for light Effects when trying to place airport type lights using Flight1's Instant Scenery, and found that rows of such lights placed using ADE9X worked better.

Hope these ideas might help ! :)

GaryGB
 

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
32,859
Country
netherlands
Hi Andrea,

You mention there are no excludes active, so that means you also did not place an exclude in your own scenery? As you might be aware, there is a bug in FS2004 that causes effects to be excluded also be an exclude of the same scenery.
 
Messages
163
Country
italy
I confirm no excludes in my own scenery, and default fs9 installation. so no addon sceneries at all... and Milan is not a "special" default scenery like Las Vegas, Rome, or other cities that have a minimal different default microsoft scenery.
I have only my own model with effects placed on the heliport, 36 lights on a circle with diameter 31m, at 41m above ground level, Milan is at 350feet asl.

If I place my model in the correct position all effects are show in the same point, and this position have exactly the coordinates I put in the xml file, but all lights are show in 1 single position (not spread around the circle) and they are below the ground, I guess exactly at 0 asl, instead of 350'+41m
But if I place the same model (only changing coordinates in the xml and rebuilding) in another position ( in my case I tried with houston) lights are all in the correct position around the heliport at the correct altitude....

I tried changing a parameter in the xml, instead of alt="0" and altitudeIsAgl="TRUE", I put alt="106.7M" and altitudeIsAgl="FALSE",
and I placed the object in milan, the result is the building still show in the correct position, and all lights still collapse in 1 point, but this time not below the ground but at 0 meters agl, not at 41 as they are supposed to be.

Seems that in some places around the globe, effects are displayed in an "absolute" position (so the coordinate position of xml at 0 meters agl) and in some other places effects are displayed exactly in the gmax "relative" position, but this is very strange, seems that fs2004 have 2 coordinate systems, but this obviously make no sense....
 
Messages
163
Country
italy
Last week I discovered another funny thing about this problem....
Now in my scenery I have a lot of buildings, a couple of them have lights added as separate bgl, with an "ad hoc" xml controller, and other have the lights placed directly in gmax, some of them with the problem depicted above some others don't have this problem.

Well did you remember my problem? If I load my flight near the city center, I have this situation:
  1. ligths placed inside gmax
    • some of them are displayed in the correct position
    • some other are displayed below the ground
    (don't know why.....)

Well the new discover is this.... :
I started a flight far from the city, after the flight (without closing FS) I go over the city to see my scenery and I had a surprise....

the lights placed with gmax that usually are displayed correctly this time are not displayed,
but the lights that normally are displayed below the ground this time are correctly displayed on top of the building this is CRAZY!!!!
I closed FS and restarted and all is back to the previous situation.

so we have this problem:
  1. starting near the scenery
    • lights 'A' correctly displayed on top of buildings
    • lights 'B' displayed below ground
  2. starting far away, then flying to the scenery
    • lights 'A' now are below ground
    • lights 'B' are now correctly displayed on top of buildings
............ now I going to be crazy with that issue.... really I don't understand where is the problem, I placed lights in the same way for all my buildings, but effects are displayed or not depending on the position, and now I discovered that effects behaviour is also dependent on where you start the flight, and is an alternate behaviour....

(effects are the same one, so is not a problem of the controller, same effect is applied to all buildings, but randomly is displayed on some buildings and not on other)
 
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