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FS2004 Ground illumination missing

Guenther, sending me pictures of something NOT happening doesn't tell me a great deal.

First of all, assuming you used ADE to specify the GPs, I have to ask, did you check "Illumination" in the compiler dialog, did a .bgl file with its filename suffixed with "_GI_GP" get generated and did you also copy that file to your VOHY scenery folder. If you did all that, please send me your ad4 file so that I can investigate.

If you didn't us ADE, the I'll need your Gmax and Gmax-generated files and a description of your process in order to determine anything.
 
Sorry Don, I am totally confused by the GPs.

I just added a standard Light: Ramp_6-Head_striped to the AFLT screen and expected to get it in the FS9 scenery.
:confused:
 
Sorry Don, I am totally confused by the GPs.
Click to expand...
I assume you mean my mention of GPs confused you. And I'm not surprised. For whatever reason, I reacted as if you were referring to ADE-GP.

But, my new response is rather similar to my previous one. There's little I can do but confirm there is no illumination in your second screenshot until I receive your AFLT Project file
 
Received your files and have run them. As you say, no illumination. I'll investigate
 
Problem was that the illumination .bgl was not copied into the scenery folder. It looks like I disabled the copying during earlier testing and neglected to re-enable it.

If you look in your AFLT\Work\Illum\VOHY you'll find a file named illum.bgl. That's the missing file. Copy it into your scenery folder and your illumination GPs will appear. However, you're not going to be impressed since FS9's inability to handle DXT5 files necessitates substitution in FS9 of DXT3 equivalents and the display is, consequently, rather coarse.

But, at least we now know the cause. I'll re-release soon.
 
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I think I use Bill's Ramplights instead:


Bills1.jpg
 
I think I use Bill's Ramplights instead:
Click to expand...
There are two major issues with AFLT ground-illuminating standards:
  • When I extracted the standards from my airports for use in AFLT, I forgot that, in my airports, light heads are not part of most of the models but, rather, they are displayed via attachpoints on the models. I made no provision for this in AFLT, hence, the light heads are missing. This doesn't detract from the ground illumination, but does detract from realism of the scene.
  • It appears in my zeal to release ground-illuminating standards, I neglected to fully test other than apron lighting standards - and even then, I didn't notice the missing light-heads.
Neither is going to be a simple fix. Since it seems your activity was simply an experiment to test the relative merits of AFLT vs Bill's ramp lights, and since no one else seems to be using the feature or are doing so without the apron standards having light-heads, I really wonder whether the level of effort required to fix these issues is worthwhile.

If you use the FSX Alpha Channel for FS9, you get better results...
Click to expand...
What do you mean by "the FSX Alpha Channel". Are you saying FS9 recognizes and processes DXT5 compression?
 
I used DXTBmp and extracted the Alpha Channel from FSX illum_flood.bmp and saved it to desktop.
Then I used DXTBmp again and imported this Alpha Channel to FS9 illum_flood.bmp and saved the bmp as "extended bitmap, 888-8" (32Bit).

Now this smooth alpha channel with about 70 colors gives a better picture than the 16Bit Alpha Channels (s. picture).
Others than the illum_flood.bmps have an Alpha Channel with fewer colors so this method does not bring much.

Perhaps a paint program is able to smooth 16 grey color steps to more (about 256 are no problem, I suppose).

BTW: the FSX illum_flood.bmp has a complete different shape too.

Of course it is comletely up to you, what you deliver.
My tests are only for my further use of these lights in other Projects (if they work).
 
Thanks for the clarification re the FSX alpha channel. In fact, what you did was create a 32-bit texture - which, I agree, provides a much "nicer" illumination GP.

I was unaware that FS9 would process 32-bit textures. It is a simple matter to create them and I will do so if, when I complete my investigation, the amount of effort in fixing the remaining issues is reasonable in the current context. Incidentally, the missing base model errors have already been fixed.
 
Good news, Don :)
but if my tests and error reports of FS9 are annoying, just tell me.
I could well understand if you stop fs9 support.
 
The situation is not quite as bad as I had feared. For FSX and P3D , the light-heads are displayed. So, while I haven't investigated how it's done, I presume I can repeat the process for FS9.
 
Good to hear it. Just be sure that you don't have any exclude BGL files covering that area. They will remove the heads as well (in FS9).
 
No excludes involved Tom. Had there been, the towers as well as the heads would be missing.

As I mentioned above, in my airports - the origin of all the AFLT standards - the heads were applied via attachpoints - an approach not useable in AFLT. I had added the heads to the FSX models - which was my development test base - but had neglected to update the FS9 base models.
 
I am happy to report that all light standards now display with heads and specified ground illumination in all versions FS9 thru PV4. There seems to be an issue with PV5 which I'll address once the issue below is resolved.

But, I am left with a difficult issue affecting all versions. That is, standards in close proximity sometime conflict with each other, resulting in flickering or missing ground illumination.

I am making progress!
 
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