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FSXA Rotating Beacon

I thought I would give it a try to take the default FSX beacon light effect (as Gary described above in his post) and try to create it as a stand alone beacon light so you could use your custom beacon with it. I can indeed get nice rotating beams with the LOD models providing light from a great distance, just as in the default beacon. What I can't seem to do is make it invisible during the day, so instead it's turned on all the time. I tried using the general_light visibility condition and even created my own XML part code using (E:TIME OF DAY, enum) (1 = Day, 2 = Dusk/Dawn, 3 = Night). But according to Arno these variables do not work to control visibility when placed into BGL files, only if you use SimConnect - which is way above what I know.

The next to last post in this thread is where I got Arno's information.

www.fsdeveloper.com

P3D v4 - Daytime Only Visibility Condition

I think what you are saying, is that the tug is not placed as a scenery object, which is true, I believe. I create it as a scenery type model, but it is called through SimConnect. Since it does not render as a scenery model, the new P3D v4 visibility condition was never invoked.
www.fsdeveloper.com www.fsdeveloper.com

Sorry,
 
I think that to be able to use my custom beacon I would be willing to try it. I may be able to create a SODE xml for it with the SODE creating the hours its on and off. I have successfully done this with a hanger at my last airport so that the door is open during the day with a photoreal texture of the real inside of the hanger and then a hanger mdl with the door closed and the apron illuminated at night. AND IT WORKS!!!!! That may be the way to do this. If you send me an MDL with it with rotating and beacon attached and I will give a go. You have to do it because as you know I can't do anything for whatever reason. I CAN do the SODE files. If it works I'll share it with you and anyone else we want to.
 
I've thought about it overnight and it might also be possible to change the day texture's alpha channel to solid black, which should make it completely transparent during the day. However, at dusk and dawn it might be somewhat faint, since FS combines the day and night textures during that time.

The other problem is that the visible beacon will rotate all day and night. I don't know of a way to stop it turning during the day.

The files are attached.

The beacon lights use the default ConeLight.dds and ConeLight_lm.dds texture files; these may need to be moved into the texture folder next to this beacon light's scenery folder? You can try it without copying first and see if they are loaded from their default location, unless you want to try the black alpha channel trick. They are in the FSX/Scenery/Global/texture folder.

I did not attach any effects to the object. While the default beacon does have them attached they do not display much in FSX. And if I include them in this object they make large light balls around the beacon.
 

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I will give this a shot later and again thank you for persevering. I don't like to give up either when sometimes you feel soooo close. That is what I finally was able to achieve with the SODE and the hanger. I will post here after I check it out.l Just opened it up in MDCx and all I get is a bloack and white striped cone for the MDL. I don't know what to do with it? Please explain how I merge this with the custom beacon mdl.
 
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You don't merge it, you place each object separately.

You are getting black and white squares because you did not copy and paste the textures I talk about in my post into the same folder as the MDL file. And if you want to see the texture in GMAX you would need to convert those DDS textures to 24 bit BMP (DXTBmp can do that) and place them in the same folder as the GMAX file.
 
I don't care about GMAX but I will try and place each object separately as you say including textures in the folder. After much fiddling, I was able to accomplish what we have wanted. I converted both MDLs to BGLs in MDCx because I don't like how ADEx doesn't keep the MDLs as soon as you reopen the airport. You have to add them to the list each time. I have the Beacon tower with the Flight Light 80 beacon on top and the beacon cones with their textures in the airport texture folder and here is the result which looks great IMO.
Custom Beacon Composite.jpg
 
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If you want to merge them into a single object you could do that in GMAX, using File/Merge. Not sure how that would work out, though. There would be some fiddling required since they do not have identical pivot point locations.
 
It might work better to have them in a single object, and a static object as well. The appearance of the combined object might be better (or it might be worse) and the the static object could be displayed during the day using SODE, the animated one at dusk, dawn, and night. I've attached those MDL files. Use whatever works best.

Hope this helps,
 

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