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FSX Effects in wrong place?

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unitedkingdom
Hi,

I have a series of 3D taxi edge lights in a single GMAX file which export fine as an MDL and I can place in my scenery via a library and placement bgl.

I'm trying to add an effect to each light for the night time "glow", but when I do this the effects appear ok, but they are not exactly centred on each light, even though in GMAX the pivot of the effect attachpoint and its corresponding 3D light model is in the same place? The offset appears to get worse as I move further away from the refpoint of the mdl.

Is this another of those "FSX curvature of the earth" problems and I'll have to manually edit the effects to get them centred, or an I doing something silly?

Thanks

Phil
 
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290
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germany
Have the same problem with a lighttowers file. It came with the source files of EDDL by Thomas Ruth.
I corrected the possitions of the towers and after exporting and putting it in the sim, the effects are at the wrong possition. But if i look at the same file in ModelConverterX the attachpoints are at the correct possition. o_O

What is wrong here?
 
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arno

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Hi,

Do you have one big file with all lights or does each MDL have the effect attached to the model itself (at the origin)?

I think this could indeed be a curved earth problem, I have read posts about it before, but I did not encounter it myself (yet).
 
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unitedkingdom
Hi Arno,

Yes, it's one mdl with around 100 lights (and 100 corresponding effects) in.

Phil
 
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337
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ireland
Hi Phil

I have had this problem with all my fsx sceneries and yes you are right, it is because of the curvature of the earth. What I do is separate my gmax scene into a number of sections and centre each section over the ref point and export accordingly to the correct position. It takes a while but it works as the sections are a lot smaller.The result is not noticeable.
 
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unitedkingdom
Think out loud here, but would this work? Create a single 3D light with its effect as an mdl with everything centred at 0,0 so the effect is in the right place when exported. Then in my gmax scene use the attachpoint tool to place the whole light multiple times by referencing the light/effect mdl?

Phil
 
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154
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unitedkingdom
Think out loud here, but would this work? Create a single 3D light with its effect as an mdl with everything centred at 0,0 so the effect is in the right place when exported. Then in my gmax scene use the attachpoint tool to place the whole light multiple times by referencing the light/effect mdl?

That didn't work. It appears that you cannot nest an attachpoint within an attachpoint. :(

I may have to revert back to placing separate objects for each light, something I was trying to get away from for better fps performance...

Phil
 
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290
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germany
But the funny thing is that i have lighttowers at the west end of the airport where everything is fine. The on the east end i have big ones and small ones, and only the small ones have the possition problem.

Also the curved earth problem should result in a 5 meter wrong possition(5 meter to far right from top-view) with still correct hight, shouldnt it?
 

arno

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Hi,

Some parts are corrected for the curved earth. I think we are seeing that other parts are not. This can give small offsets in the placement.

I guess the first question is are the objects or the effects at the right location? I might be able to offset the other one then with the code I made for the ground polygons in ModelConverterX.
 
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unitedkingdom
Hi Arno,

That would be fantastic if it could be done. My instincts would tell me the main model would be in the correct position and the attachpoint would be wrongly placed (else all FSX gmax created objects would be wrongly sized) but this isn't based on any hard facts, just my gut feeling :scratchch

I'd certainly be up for testing the functionality if you could add it :)

Phil
 

arno

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Hi Phil,

I would guess the other way around :). Ground polygons made with just GMax are not exactly at the same location as they were in FS2004. You need to process them for the curved earth to get the position exactly right.

Let me see if I can setup some test for this in the future, hopefully I have some time in a couple of days.
 
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290
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germany
I cant tell if the lighttowers ore the attachepoints are in the incorrect possition, because its only some meters.

But i used a plane with with a aerail image to place the towers, and after placing it with ADE, the possitions matched with Gmax and FSX (where i have a vfr scenery).
Still it could be that i dont noticed the differents because the attachpoints/lights are only of a few meters.

Then an other thing: In ModelConverterX, when showing attachpoints, the attachpoints possitions are looking good relativ to the models.

And i checked the position values that can be found in MCx with the one in Gmax, they seem to match.
posve.jpg


Totaly confusing o_O
 
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Messages
290
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germany
OK i now know that its definitely the geomeotry that is in the wrong place, not the effect.

Im building an approach light and as usual i noticed that the effect and geometry dont match up.
I did some test and comparison, placed the object a second time with the object placment tool.

Its just to stupid i can not splitt up the approach lights, at the moment the model is just 570meters long and placing every single pole seperate.. NO -.-

What do profesional developers do? They also have such models, like aerosoft at EDLP (MANY little edge light objects+an effect)
Cant somebody do something about it?

Help is needed :(
 

arno

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Hi all,

I didn't have time yet to look at this issue. But if it is the geometry that is wrong, it would be interesting to see what happens if the same transformation as the ground polygons to correct for the curved earth is used.

Hopefully I find some time soon to look at it, first some ModelConverterX bugs to fix :).
 
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290
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germany
How do i check if this is the case?

Ill post and explain the screens here that i made, maybe it helps figuring out the amount of offset.
The runway has a orientation of 52.740° and i placed my approach light object with the object placement tool at the runway edge with the heading 322.74 (they were placed along the X-axis not Y in 3ds)

Pictures of farthest left(west) and right(east) lightpole(left is left ;) ):
offset11.png
offset21.png

offset12.png
offset22.png

Both poles are about 300m away from the 0-possition of the model (not the center of the object).
As you can see the geometry seems to be a bit rotated counterclockwise (marked the base of the pole) AND worse: it shrinked in the length.

PS: the pole base is thicker than the top
 
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Messages
290
Country
germany
I found another sittuation where effects get misaligned. I think it has nothing to do with the wrong possition of the geometrie. I think it is a problem with the loading/spawning of an effect via a controller.... or maybe not.

Anyway, i dont want to post it here again so this is the link to the thread i posted this situation:
http://fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?p=234774
 

arno

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Hi,

No, not yet. But since I finished a new feature of ModelConverterX yesterday, I might have some time tonight.
 
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