• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

P3D v4 Aircraft lights interaction with scenery

Messages
10
Country
australia
I completely understand that this must have been discussed previously ‘somewhere’, however I can’t readily locate the discussion, so I do apologise.

I’ve been using P3Dv4 for several years, and the majority of aircraft don’t illuminate the runways, taxiways, aprons and ground. It seems weirdly that some freeware aircraft do in fact illuminate, but most payWare don’t.

Is there a way to correct this? Even if I could be pointed to prior discussions would be appreciated.

Sean Harrison
 
[Post removed. My cat was trying to be helpful but as he's blind, he hit the wrong key].
 
Last edited:
My (PILOT'S) B-314 illuminates the water/ground (P3D v4, v5 and v6). I did it by having four external fx for the two taxi lights and the two landing lights, similar to the way that nav lights are attched to models. If the aircraft have landing/taxi lights that are driven by fx then it is possible to add ground illumination by extending the fx file. There is a downside to doing it this way: during daylight hours as you approach the ground you'll get a slight colour distortion where the light splash is. The better way is to have separate light and light splash fx files so that the light splash only illuminates during dusk, night and dawn. I'm not an XML coder, but I'm sure that it can be done by detecting night with lights on and then trigger the splash effect. However! there is a huge assumption in the above that is that the landing lights are triggered from the LANDING_LIGHTS or some other lighting variable in P3D. This may not be the case: I suggest you check the aircraft.cfg file to see if there is a clue under the [lights] section. In my case I drove all of the light fx using [smokesystem] fx so again, it's worth looking for clues as to the light names there. Like the [lights] section, it is possible to detect if a [smokesystem] fx is on or off.

As you are adding to the aircraft without modifying the original release (except for the aircraft.cfg and panel.cfg files), I don't believe that you would be breaking any copyright rules. YCMV (your country may vary :D ).
 
Back
Top