MSFS Placing a rotating red beacon on top of tall building

[sleepy_t]

Dear forum,

I just started creating assets for MSFS and am learning Blender while creating these.
I did successfully created a television tower with the correct texturing, height, etc. It's working well in the FS.

But because of the height I would like to have a red beacon on top of the building.
It does not really work with the MSFS in-built "Has beacon" checkbox, I only get a white beacon in the middle of the object.

Is there a way in Blender to include this beacon for export with the Blender2MSFS?
I am sorry, if this is a noob question, but as I am still learning Blender, I am yet still missing some vocabulary. Maybe you could guide me in the right direction on how to achieve this.

Greetings and thanks a lot!
Tobi

 

[Vitus]

With the last update to 0.36.1 I included the ability of exporting lights. So yes, you can simply plop a Blender light into the scene and it'll show up in the sim. There's even a custom property to animate the light to rotate around. Check the wiki for a little bit more on that:

Blender2MSFS - FSDeveloper Wiki

www.fsdeveloper.com

Also make sure to update your toolkit to the current v. 0.36.1 to avoid problems. The process itself is really straight-forward.

 

[sleepy_t]

So I finally managed to get it working! Thank you!
Still having a problem. When I am not really close to the beacon, it is not lit up. As soon as I get close to about 50m it finally is lighting up.
I've tried different settings in Blender, like Power up to 50000W, radius from 0.5m to 2m. But the distance it lights up does not change. Is there some other setting I need to use?

Also, could you please explain what the MSFS specific light params are, i.e "Flash phase"?

 

[YohanNaz]

From the SDK docs:

• Frequency : It’s the number of “flashes” in 1 minute
• Duration : The duration of one flash in second.
• Phase : The phase is the offset in seconds of the frequency. Example : if my Frequency is set to 6 and my phase to 0, they’ll have one flash every ten seconds and start at 0 second (6 flash / 1 minute = one flash every 10 seconds ) If my frequency is set to 6 and my phase to 3, they’ll have one flash every ten seconds but start 3 seconds later. It’s useful to synchronize or desynchronize several lights inside the same .gltf or make the light flash in different intervals.
• Rotation : Number of revolution per minute

 

[sleepy_t]

Thank you! I've looked in the MSFS SDK, but in part "Lighting Model" it just states: "TODO"
Didn't know I've to look at the 3DS Max section

Sadly, it states nothing about the distance a light shows up.

 

[Tangerine]

Does anyone know standard settings for a flash light? cant make it work at all

 

[cez64]

Did you find any solution for the distance a light shows up? Have the same problem.

 

[sleepy_t]

Did you find any solution for the distance a light shows up? Have the same problem.

Yeah, I just scale the beacon really big using the scaling gizmo. As it is just a light emitter it is not visible as a huge bulb, but the effect is that it is visible from farther away.

 

[cez64]

Thanks, I tried this method and it works but..... beacons are visible far away only when they light up and this happens only from 50 m. Once they light up they emitting light for a far distance. Please check this once again.
Thanks

 

[sleepy_t]

These are my settings for the lamp I created in Blender. Don't know if it's of any use for you, also don't know if this "Custom Distance" value is recognized by MSFS. But it seems to me, that my lights are lighting up way earlier that 50m. At least several kilometers before.

 

[sleepy_t]

The distance is irrelevant, it's not exported to the GTLF. Sorry, do not know the reason for your problem.

You could check out my RedBeacon in my OWL Landmarks package. Try it in your scenery.

Problem is, I did not yet manage to create a real light source. I only see the reflections of the lamp on 3D objects, for example my tv tower I had to put 4 blinking lights on top of it to light up the top, to create the illusion of a beacon on top of it.
One just sees the reflections, not the real light source.

Don't know why, I am also still a blender and 3D asset design noob. Maybe someone has a good suggestion for me.

I wanted to use a spot light, just light on top of a light house, so your are "hit" by the light beam in the eye when it hits you But all I see are the reflection of the light when it touches buildings, not the real beam nor the light source.

 

[cez64]

thanks. My problem was "custom distance" set to 40 m.

take a look at this tutorial:

 

[sleepy_t]

Great! So the custom distance *is* relevant. Could not find it in the GLTF, but great it's working now!

 

[cez64]

Unfortunately, it didn't work. I set a "custom distance" set to 10000 m. When editing the scenery, the light is actually visible from a distance as we move away, but after uploading the finished package to the Community folder, the beacon light up from a very close distance, and after it lights up it is visible for a long-distance... I will keep on trying

 

[cez64]

Where can I find your OWL Landmarks package?

 

[sleepy_t]

GitHub - racoonapps/FS2020-OWL-Landmarks: OWL Landmark objects for MS FS 2020

OWL Landmark objects for MS FS 2020. Contribute to racoonapps/FS2020-OWL-Landmarks development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[cez64]

well done! The beacon is visible from 3 miles. Maybe it depends on some other settings in MSFS properties in Blender?
check my scenery and beacon lighting: https://flightsim.to/file/1472/heat-and-power-plant-pge-cracow

 

[sleepy_t]

Have you tried playing with the wattage in Blender?
How many lights have you positioned? I am using 4 point lights around the chimney, not spotlights.
And then I scaled each of them in the MSFS scenery editor.