• 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.

Apron lighting

Z

zeppy

Messages
13
Country
italy
Hi.
I hope I'm not posting a question already asked, I've searched the forums and I found nothing, but this is a rather big place... ;)

Coming to the point. I have an FS9 airport with apron lighting (flood lighting on the ground I mean) and I'd like to port it to FSX. So far so good with pretty much everything (including ground polygons correctly converted by ModelConverterX for usage in FSX) except for apron lighting.
Using the original apron lighting file nothing happens. If I open such bgl file I see a set of (partially overlapping) polygons (basically one for each lamp), each with a texture which shows up black in ModelConverterX with day lighting and with the correct area of light that fades to black with night lighting. Using the material editor I see that both the texture has its diffuse file and the lightmap file (daylight file name + _LM), though they don't show up as balck in the preview in the lower left corner.
I tried to convert the model using the ground poly conversion tool and checking the LM checkbox, because I thought it was affected by the same problem usual ground polys have with FSX, but it still doesn't show up at night.

Any suggestions on how I could fix this problem?
I've got to tell you, I'm pretty new to this whole convertion/creation thing, so I may be missing something trivial here... :D
 
Yes, I tried that, but nothing shows up at night.
To be precise, in this particular bgl file there are 2 different textures. Both are shown black in daylight view inside ModelConverterX, while one of them is gray in texture preview (I guess it's transparent, since the alpha channel is all black) and the other one is black (the alpha channel is completely white). If I "set default transparent" (on each one) they disappear in the 3D preview, both in daylight and in night view.

Thanks for your help :)

Edit:
I even tried to use the lightmap (the _LM bmp file) as the diffuse map, remove the lightmap and "set default transparency", and it doesn't show up in the 3D preview. Yet, if I change the alpha test level value (which changes when you hit "set default transparency") to 0, I can actually see the correct result, but only in the 3D preview, not inside FS (neither night time nor day).
 
Last edited:
Hi,

I think you might be seeing a difference between FS2004 and FSX. In FS2004 you could have a different alpha channel for the day and night texture. But in FSX the day alpha channel is also used for the night texture. So if the day one is completely transparent, you would also not see the night texture.

Not sure how to work around this. Maybe you could tweak the ground polygon code to only display at night and then have the day alpha channel the same as the night.
 
Thanks for the tip, I'll try that.
Do you think that having a day texture not completely transparent, i.e. just 1 pixel opaque, may work?
 
Hi,

No, it was always use the day alpha channel for the night. So you need to make sure they are the same.
 
Hi Arno.
I tried to solve the problem with a different approach. I used an effect to show the light on the apron; I basically changed one of the white beacon effect files, applying my own texture and changing the size. Using MCX I attached the effect to the light pole model and the apron is indeed lit up at night.
The problem is, the light spot shows up also during the day. Do you (or anyone else) know how to prevent an effect from showing up during the day?

Thanks!

Edit:
Disregard my last question, I've just found the effects properties and followed the discussion here: http://www.ww.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68794 =)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top