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P3D v2 Transparency issues

U

UnitedExpress4180

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us-colorado
1.) I am working on creating some taxiway lights for my scenery, but for some reason, even though my textures have transparencies properly set, I still see the planes that make my light when they should not be visible.
14068840721_ed7fd45b84_h.jpg


I have made sure that the alpha channel for my light texture is set to full black (full transparency), but for some reason the planes are showing up completely opaque regardless.

2.) I have also discovered that my 3d objects appear to float above the ground. At the reference coordinate in MCX, things appear to be correct, but the farther away I move from this point, the higher my objects float. At the other end of the airport, the taxi lights are floating more than a full meter off the ground. I'm guessing this may be an error on the part of MCX's earth-curvature correction, but my coordinates are correct, and there's no option to set the object altitude, so I'm not sure how to solve it?

EDIT: Ignore #2, I believe I have figured out why I was having problems with floating objects and it appears to have been corrected. However, I still have not figured out #1.
 
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Okay, new issue: I've fixed the transparency issue mentioned above, however now my lights do not want to display at all. The taxiway light itself shows up fine, however at night, the planes with the illumination texture do not appear.
 
Oddly enough, even after doing that, now I just get this:
14074327712_ec32d53037_o.jpg


When I tilt the camera down, every custom object I've added becomes invisible where the taxi light passes in front of it.
 
You need to have diffuse texture in black only. No need to have alpha channel both diffuse and self-illumination (night) texture.
 
Nothing about z-write, z-alpha, z-bias, alpha test, just leave it as default.
 
After doing that, now it displays...sorta. If the light passes in front of any of the ground poly, then it disappears behind it. If you'd be willing to have a quick look, I'm attaching a copy of the file, because I honestly can't figure it out.
 

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Well, after a few days of head scratching, I've figured it out: there is no solution. I spent a few hours combing various resources online, and discovered a thread on Lockheed's website by one of the guys over at 29 Palms having this very issue. Apparently it's a z-write bug that showed up with P3D 2 that still hasn't been fixed, so it looks like I'll have to try something else.
 
Oh sorry that I didn't look at the head of the thread that it is P3Dv2. I thought it was FSX.
 
Is the situation for taxiway lights , transparency problem with ground polygons... still same for P3D V2?

Or has there been any advances, any solution alternatives?
 
I answer my own question.
Yes, it is possible to have the taxi/runway lights working also in P3DV2 as like in FSX, with Tic's above mentioned method..

There must be other ways, but my way was to add a LOD and compile the mdl with .xanim.
Voila' :)

P3Dv2%20lights_zps85rjb50g.jpg
 
I suppose I should have updated this a while ago (actually, I forgot I even made this thread, but anyhoo...). It took me a lot of experimenting, but I figured out I needed to tweak the material settings a bit differently from what they would be for FSX. Mostly has to do with using z-bias and disabling any z-writing. Essentially, the lights are treated like a P3D groundpoly during exporting. It's not perfect, but it's workable.
 
I've been facing the same problem!

I released my own scenery now. And still now P3D v2 Compatible because this issue!

Although I think I've found a fix for it.

Im gonna try and see. And tell you later.
 
Ok. The ground reflection should not be a problem in P3Dv2. It works similar to FSX. I do use an alhpha channel with a base texture that "blends" with the ground poly during daylight. Remember that for night textures, the alpha is controlled by the alpha of the day texture.
Then for night relfection, just change the base color by adding a _LM.

For actual light bloom effect, I just did away with creating a transparency. I never got it to work properly. Instead I use the Bloom effect settings in the Display Settings of P3D/FSX. Works great for taxilights.
 
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