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MSFS20 Taxiway Lighting

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andyjohnston.net

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ca-ontario
Wondering if you can provide a little guidance regarding the edge lighting on taxiways.

The project I'm working on has a main taxiway that runs parallel to the runway. At the south end, it is lit as I expect. Then it changes so there is only center lighting. I have tried selecting each section then using Ctrl+Enter and verifying left and right edge lighting are set to true, but they don't display that way.
 
I can't say. my Dev machine is out of action for the next 24 hours I will look at it when I get it back in operation
 
OK I am slowly getting up and running on the new computer . Some screen shots would help
 
Thanks for investigating. Attached is a great example. You can see the edge lighting at the close end of the taxiway shows...sort of. And then it disappears.
 

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I think there is alot of problems with the taxiway lighting. I have most taxiway lighting doesnt work, some does or sometimes its offset many meters from the edge. I have even deleted and recreated the same taxiway to rectify the problem, same ill effect. Its a mess.
 
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Can you use painted lines? I guess that would generate a lot of hard work to replicate all the lines and lighting?
 
Hi will do a trial this evening regarding taxiways because I think it has to do with the ground under the taxiway. I'll build a new airport with a few taxiways and use the different options. It must have to do with the 3D effekt of these objects. So give me an hour or so and we might have a solution for that.
Regards Guido
 
Unfortunately I was not able to find a solution but can confirm, that only in not clearly defined situations, there are some blue taxiway lights.
 
I’m writing this from memory because I’m away but I’m pretty sure that using the FS In-Tools produces the same issue. If you place a taxiway point with a lighted edge (left or right) the result is a row of blue lights spaced some 25mts from the actual edge. The only way to remove is to not select edge lighting and use the other option to place your own lights. I stumbled on this way back when I first brought an FSX model into FS2020 and there were blue lights everywhere that I couldn’t get rid of. I thought it was the FSX model and tried removing with polys etc but realized it was the edge lighting. It’s not a fault of ADE but rather how FS handles it.
Hope this helps.
 
I am post-editing a project where I did the bulk of the modifications in ADE. I have now imported the ADE project into the developer mode editor to finish up. I need to cover some old (removed) taxiways in the satellite image by covering them with grass aprons. Much easier to do in the sim where you can immediately see the effects of coloration and falloff adjustments in the grass texture. I am also going to reinstall the jetways that ADE removed. The in-sim editor does have a “light line” object that appears to work similar to the apron edge lights in ADE. There is no default “spacing” but it appears that if you draw the line as a series of vertex points, it places a taxi light at each point. (Except the very last one).
 
Ok, it's just a workaround but I found a pretty stable solution how to get the taxiway lights blue when you want them. The trick is to put an apron under the takiway. In this picture you'll see that it's not bad at all but extra work. I had reported this taxi light issue to msfs support but they did nothing - it's in a feature list...
1609738584790.png
 
JRBarrett said:
I am post-editing a project where I did the bulk of the modifications in ADE. I have now imported the ADE project into the developer mode editor to finish up. I need to cover some old (removed) taxiways in the satellite image by covering them with grass aprons. Much easier to do in the sim where you can immediately see the effects of coloration and falloff adjustments in the grass texture. I am also going to reinstall the jetways that ADE removed. The in-sim editor does have a “light line” object that appears to work similar to the apron edge lights in ADE. There is no default “spacing” but it appears that if you draw the line as a series of vertex points, it places a taxi light at each point. (Except the very last one).
Click to expand...
I have tested apron edge lights generated and built in ADE and they do work although I am not able to change the spacing
 
scruffyduck said:
I have tested apron edge lights generated and built in ADE and they do work although I am not able to change the spacing
Click to expand...
I had noted the same, and the “light line” in the native sim editor appears to work exactly the same as ADE edge lights.

If you put down a “light line” that is less than approx 60 meters long, end-to-end, you will only get one light.

The type of light that appears in the sim is different than the ones which appear when using the left/right edge light option “on” when creating a taxi path. The latter method creates a light with a transparent blue lens, and you can see a point source of light when zooming in close to the light fixture at night.

Both ADE “apron edge lights” or MSFS “light line”, produces a light with an opaque blue lens. The two types of light fixture (taxi path or apron edge) appear physically identical when viewed up close during the daytime, but not at night.

In other words, If “apron edge lights” appears in the XML file generated by ADE, the SDK compiler treats it exactly the same as the “light line” XML code generated by the default MSFS editor when the scenery is built.

If ADE embeds a spacing or intensity parameter in the edge light XML code, the compiler appears to ignore those parameters.
 
JRBarrett said:
If ADE embeds a spacing or intensity parameter in the edge light XML code, the compiler appears to ignore those parameters.
Click to expand...
it is actually a hack in the bgl file itself. Don (gadgets) came up with it some years ago and I took it into ADE. I don't know if it would work with MSFS since the code is in the old compile pipeline and I guess I would need to apply it after the MSFS build
 
scruffyduck said:
it is actually a hack in the bgl file itself. Don (gadgets) came up with it some years ago and I took it into ADE. I don't know if it would work with MSFS since the code is in the old compile pipeline and I guess I would need to apply it after the MSFS build
Click to expand...
Was it the spacing function that was a BGL hack, or the apron edge lights themselves?
 
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