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FSXA BGL Lights are floating

K

Kack911

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97
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unitedstates
Hi all,

I'm adding BGL lights to my scenery using 3ds Max 8.

I've had no issues with getting all of my ground polys, taxiway lines, skidmarks, and buildings to clamp to the ground in FSX. All the .asm tweaking has been very straight forward, and the layering has worked flawlessly.

Bolstered by my success at creating custom PAPI's and MALSR's, I've moved on creating the various lighting for one of the runways in my scenery.

Unfortunately, the objects I created in Max 8 to control the BGL lights are not behaving the same as all of the other objects I've successfully placed in my scenery.

I created boxes, applied the proper material, exported, added the required .asm tweaks for day/night conditional display, and compiled to .bgl.

The origin of the scene is at the threshold of 24R, and the lights appear correctly there. But but the lights at the 6L end of my runway are floating about 5 feet in the air.

This obviously points to the "round earth" issue, but I don't understand why. Are the BGL_LIGHT commands in the .asm file handled differently than the rest of my Max 8 objects?

Is there a way to ensure that the lights clamp to the ground correctly?

Thanks,

Nick
 

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So i did a bit of testing and found some interesting bits.

I removed the LIGHT_NAV material from my boxes, and recompiled. When I got into the sim, I noted that at both ends of the runway, the boxes were sitting flush with the ground as I would have expected.

It's only after assigning them the LIGHT_NAV material that they don't maintain the proper relationship.

Any ideas on how to fix that?

Nick
 
Hi Nick,

Humm, this is an interesting one. I am not sure how the lights are affected by the curvation of the earth. Did you export them as FS2002 BGL or as FS2004 MDL (not sure if that makes a difference).
 
Hi Arno,

I exported using the FS2002 MakeMDL into .BGL format. I didn't think of trying the FS2004 tools...I'll see if I can track them down.

Nick
 
Hello,

I am having the same issues, instead of floating in the air, they are turning to the right of where they are supposed to be.

I am having also the same issue with animations.

I am using the FS8 Makemdl software and tweaking them accordingly.

Only happens in FSX not in FS2004 :confused::confused:
 
Hey Roland,

I'm going to try the FS2004 version of MakeMDL tonight, and see if that makes a difference.

Bending to the right sounds weird... what in the world would cause that?

Nick
 
I am not sure, but it is mostly the same sort of issue you are experiencing. Instead of floating in the air, mines is towards either the right or left.

What's interesting is that when more closely I am to the center of the point in which I have set to be the center of the object in terms of coordinates, the light is more likely to be where is supposed to be, it is only when I am heading either to the right or to the left that the light is away from its original intended place.
 
I read somewhere that others who were working with lights that seemed to drift away from their intended placement as a function of view distance discovered that they had installed a texture enhancement package that modified the halo.bmp.

The modified file has the light "orb" slightly off center, and as you move away, the error becomes more and mor pronounced.

Check to see if you're running REX, or FEX, or one of the other 69 add-ons that mess with this file. Perhaps that could help you?

My lights appear out of place regardless of how far or close I am, so I think I have a different problem.

Regards,

Nick
 
Hello,

The issue is not because of any other enhancement, I barely use FSX and I mostly use it to develop scenery nothing else, I never installed anything to it, and also when I give it to my friends to test it they have the same issue. Besides the lights being out of place also the animations seem to drift away for some reason.

Could this be because of the curved fsx earth?
 
Hi,

Roland81 said:
Could this be because of the curved fsx earth?
Click to expand...

Could be, but then you should probably also see that there elevation is wrong. So if you look exactly from the top they might appear at the right location, only from another angle you see the offset due to the elevation error.

I am not sure how the BGL_LIGHT points are affected by the algorithms that correct polygons for the curvation of the earth.
 
Hello Arno,

Elevation error could be caused by what factor?

I have flatten everywhere I have the scenery.
 
Hi,

FSX also takes the curvation of the earth into account. So even if you flatten the whole area it is still curved a bit. For an object of a few kilometres in size, that results in around 5 meter of elevation error at the edges.

FSX also has code inside the engine that makes sure polygons follow this curvation correctly, but as I said I am not sure if the light points are affected as they should by that code.
 
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