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Ground poly and runway lights
- Thread starter jonmkj
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Hi,
You can work around that by making your own, but I don't think that is what you meant. The only other work around would be to make holes so that they can shine through. Custom ground polygons are always on top of the BGLComp XML scenery.
You can work around that by making your own, but I don't think that is what you meant. The only other work around would be to make holes so that they can shine through. Custom ground polygons are always on top of the BGLComp XML scenery.
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You can use SCASM lights I believe.
jtanabodee
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There are ways to do lights over ground poly:
1. Scams.exe program: The program that I use is Airport for Windows. I'm not sure where to get this program but a friend of mine who gave up his work in scenery design gave me this program. It is good to make light over ground poly.
Good
api light can be seen miles away. Decrease in size in distance.
Bad: It hurts frame rate so badly in FSX (Never try that)
2. Bgl light command: You can have your material and set the name LIGHT_NAV_(color) and set the color to suit your need. Make a plane to the place where you want to place the light and apply the material to it.
Good: Easy to make and can be customized to your need
Bad: You need to make your own papi light and tweak the code (not easy). and it is visible only 2-3 nm. Never decrease size, so you can see big chunk of lights clump together when you are far away.
3. Make hole thru : I never try this one but it might work like Arno said. Make transparent with texture where lights can penetrate through. Light from AFCAD file will shine but not easy to make exactly where you need. Since no link program between Gmax and Flight sim. I wish there was one. Don't you think, Arno? I think you might capture the picture from flight sim and paste it to Photoshop. Match the size to satellite photo, then you can know where to put alpha channel to your texture.
4. If you making FSX, try making photoscenery instead of ground poly. Resolution of FSX photoscenery is 7cm/pixel, more than your satellite image. AFCAD light will be over it. But sometimes the photoscenery does not match with AFCAD file. Some little angle orientation of the runway of AFCAD can cause quite big misalignment to Photoscenery. Moreover, the curve of the world can cause big headahe to you. The runway you see in google might not be straight as you see.
Hope my English is clear enough. May be other can add to some points. I don't speak English in Thailand.
Regards,
Tic
1. Scams.exe program: The program that I use is Airport for Windows. I'm not sure where to get this program but a friend of mine who gave up his work in scenery design gave me this program. It is good to make light over ground poly.
Good
api light can be seen miles away. Decrease in size in distance. Bad: It hurts frame rate so badly in FSX (Never try that)
2. Bgl light command: You can have your material and set the name LIGHT_NAV_(color) and set the color to suit your need. Make a plane to the place where you want to place the light and apply the material to it.
Good: Easy to make and can be customized to your need
Bad: You need to make your own papi light and tweak the code (not easy). and it is visible only 2-3 nm. Never decrease size, so you can see big chunk of lights clump together when you are far away.
3. Make hole thru : I never try this one but it might work like Arno said. Make transparent with texture where lights can penetrate through. Light from AFCAD file will shine but not easy to make exactly where you need. Since no link program between Gmax and Flight sim. I wish there was one. Don't you think, Arno? I think you might capture the picture from flight sim and paste it to Photoshop. Match the size to satellite photo, then you can know where to put alpha channel to your texture.
4. If you making FSX, try making photoscenery instead of ground poly. Resolution of FSX photoscenery is 7cm/pixel, more than your satellite image. AFCAD light will be over it. But sometimes the photoscenery does not match with AFCAD file. Some little angle orientation of the runway of AFCAD can cause quite big misalignment to Photoscenery. Moreover, the curve of the world can cause big headahe to you. The runway you see in google might not be straight as you see.
Hope my English is clear enough. May be other can add to some points. I don't speak English in Thailand.
Regards,
Tic
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Hi!
We have created already 3 sceneries. We also faced the same problem. We decided to use the scasm solution.
I have to disagree with jtanabodee, sorry, but we have never experienced frame rate hit. It was even better performance.
Making unique bgl light command and/or effects placing will hit your fps. Making an own PAPI is a hell. Also the disadvantage that you can not make condition for weather only for daylight-night. It means if you have huge fog but daylight your lights will not be turned on.
SCASM will place an invisible rwy over your runway. The surface is invisible but the lights not. You can choose a lot of option: approach lights (all standards), strobes, touchdown lights, center lights, different PAPI's and VASI's etc. etc. SCASM is using the default lighting it means no FPS hit, it is switched on when the weather is bad or it is dark. The angle of the PAPI, position of the PAPI can be changed easily. Works in FS9 and FSX!
SCASM you can download it from here: http://www.scasm.de/ (Tutorials also included)
Earlier I had also problem with the scasm, but with Arno's help I could solve it, maybe this thread will help:
http://fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14940
We have created already 3 sceneries. We also faced the same problem. We decided to use the scasm solution.
I have to disagree with jtanabodee, sorry, but we have never experienced frame rate hit. It was even better performance.
Making unique bgl light command and/or effects placing will hit your fps. Making an own PAPI is a hell. Also the disadvantage that you can not make condition for weather only for daylight-night. It means if you have huge fog but daylight your lights will not be turned on.
SCASM will place an invisible rwy over your runway. The surface is invisible but the lights not. You can choose a lot of option: approach lights (all standards), strobes, touchdown lights, center lights, different PAPI's and VASI's etc. etc. SCASM is using the default lighting it means no FPS hit, it is switched on when the weather is bad or it is dark. The angle of the PAPI, position of the PAPI can be changed easily. Works in FS9 and FSX!
SCASM you can download it from here: http://www.scasm.de/ (Tutorials also included)
Earlier I had also problem with the scasm, but with Arno's help I could solve it, maybe this thread will help:
http://fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14940
I too have tried all methods also for lights and can definietly sympathise with you all.
SCASM method initially worked the best for me with no problems on my PC. However, not everyone runs Nvidia or i7 etc and enough users emailed me with reports of very bad FPS to make me change the lights to another method and revise the scenery. I now don't bother with SCASM as it seems a very old way to do it.
BGL lighting gives way too bright and old looking lighting IMO. You can't see taxi lights from FL300 in real life.
I tried effects coding - better but you need to tweak these a lot for the proper look. Combined with 3D light housings this method looks very nice.
I now use the alpha hole method to get FSX default lighting to show through. Default lighting IMO has always been the best looking by far. The problem has been the transparency obviously dulls the lights a bit but taxi lighting is never seen from 15 miles away anyway.. It's a balance you have to achieve yourself. The clever designers out there can hide the holes in the their photo scenery with clever visual tricks. You can see examples in Fly Tampa and FSDT who are doing this to some degree.
.
SCASM method initially worked the best for me with no problems on my PC. However, not everyone runs Nvidia or i7 etc and enough users emailed me with reports of very bad FPS to make me change the lights to another method and revise the scenery. I now don't bother with SCASM as it seems a very old way to do it.
BGL lighting gives way too bright and old looking lighting IMO. You can't see taxi lights from FL300 in real life.
I tried effects coding - better but you need to tweak these a lot for the proper look. Combined with 3D light housings this method looks very nice.
I now use the alpha hole method to get FSX default lighting to show through. Default lighting IMO has always been the best looking by far. The problem has been the transparency obviously dulls the lights a bit but taxi lighting is never seen from 15 miles away anyway.. It's a balance you have to achieve yourself. The clever designers out there can hide the holes in the their photo scenery with clever visual tricks. You can see examples in Fly Tampa and FSDT who are doing this to some degree.
.
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jtanabodee
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I cound not agree more with flyhalf.
Scasm light and FSX might cause problem with frame rate but I never tried that. Just reading the other threads about this. It seems to happen to some projects but not all. I really don't know the reason, and don't waste my spare time to try this. But in FS9, I'm sure that this is the best method, period!!!.
My project in FSX use the same method, like flyhalf mentioned, making transparency and photoscenery instead of ground poly of satellite photo. But runway I still use ground poly but make transparency so light can shine through. Besides that, you can see the effect of runway water reflexion during raining and you don't need to make light by other methods. You have lights already just make it shine through.
Scasm light and FSX might cause problem with frame rate but I never tried that. Just reading the other threads about this. It seems to happen to some projects but not all. I really don't know the reason, and don't waste my spare time to try this. But in FS9, I'm sure that this is the best method, period!!!.
My project in FSX use the same method, like flyhalf mentioned, making transparency and photoscenery instead of ground poly of satellite photo. But runway I still use ground poly but make transparency so light can shine through. Besides that, you can see the effect of runway water reflexion during raining and you don't need to make light by other methods. You have lights already just make it shine through.
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Hello Guys!
In other topic Arno said that indeed in FSX there were some reports of FPS drops but the issue should be solved with the SP2.
We have an FSX scenery which has been downloaded 1300 times until now, it has the same scasm technique but nobody ever reported a problem.
For scenery design I use my 6 years old AMD3500 (1 core 2,2Ghz), Nvidia 8600GTS 256MB, 2,5 GB DDR2. Never Experienced any problem in FSX. The scenery was tested by other designers too with Radeon cards.
But the technque with the "holes" sounds also interesting.
In other topic Arno said that indeed in FSX there were some reports of FPS drops but the issue should be solved with the SP2.
We have an FSX scenery which has been downloaded 1300 times until now, it has the same scasm technique but nobody ever reported a problem.
For scenery design I use my 6 years old AMD3500 (1 core 2,2Ghz), Nvidia 8600GTS 256MB, 2,5 GB DDR2. Never Experienced any problem in FSX. The scenery was tested by other designers too with Radeon cards.
But the technque with the "holes" sounds also interesting.
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Hi Max,
In my hands, indivual lights seem to cause a big FPS hit in FSX SP2. It is possible that I m seeing this is because i always try to use low-end hardware to test my scenery's FPS. So, i m trying to make use of the default lighting system.
regarding the alpha technique, is there a threshold on the transparency for the light to come through?
or is the intensity depenedent upon the level of transparency of the ground poly?
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jtanabodee
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Hi guys,
I'd like to ask about ground poly in FSX. May be a little off the topic but it relevant to the lights over ground poly.
Do you use ground poly for satellite photo? Or using photoscenery?
What is the benefit of using satellite photo in ground poly?
Since photoscenery is capable of 7cm/pixel. We use ground poly for satellite image in FS9 because photoscenery can support only 4.8m/pixel. But I still see the benefit of using ground poly for runway texture and aprons. Please enlight me.
Regards,
Tic
I'd like to ask about ground poly in FSX. May be a little off the topic but it relevant to the lights over ground poly.
Do you use ground poly for satellite photo? Or using photoscenery?
What is the benefit of using satellite photo in ground poly?
Since photoscenery is capable of 7cm/pixel. We use ground poly for satellite image in FS9 because photoscenery can support only 4.8m/pixel. But I still see the benefit of using ground poly for runway texture and aprons. Please enlight me.
Regards,
Tic
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I tried making a scasm runway in FSSC but the lights looked like blobs from fs 95 or something and my frames droped below 10. tsgucci can you point me in the direction of making a scasm runway properly? All I need is edge lights and the red and green lights at the end of the runway.
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Hi!
What is FSSC?
Just download the scasm. In the scasm folder create a file e.g. example.txt
In this file put the code:
Than you can create a .bat file it should be like this:
scasm.exe example.txt example.bgl
Run the bat file. It will generate the bgl. Voila!
The code above is my original runway. You can change the coordinates, length etc. My proposal that first work with surface 1 or 2 to see where is the runway. When you have correctly positioned it change the surface to -1 than it will be invisible. Be carefull with the Altitude, it is AMSL and in meters. Put the invisible runway as low as possible. If the invisible runway is too high compare to your background, than the user when he will line up on the runway the plane will jump up, sometimes with crash.
Read the online documentation of scasm, how to create approach lights PAPI etc.
Check this topic:
http://fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14940
What is FSSC?
Just download the scasm. In the scasm folder create a file e.g. example.txt
In this file put the code:
Code:
Header( 0 47.00 46.00 18.00 17.00 )
LatRange( 46.00 47.00 )
Area( 5 46.6856666666667 17.1593333333333333 12 )
LayerCall( :drawStuff 24 ) ; main call, let's draw stuff
Jump32( : ) ; finished now, get outta here
:drawStuff
Runway( 46.6856666666667 17.1593333333333333
Alt 126.06528 ; in meters
Heading 164.0
Length 8199 ; in feet
Width 197 ; in feet
Markers 00
Lights 3
Surface -1
Threshold 0
ThrOffN 0
ThrOffF 1427
ExtN 0
ExtF 0
ThrLightsN 69
AprLN 10
VasiBarsN 8
VasiSpaceN 0
VasiDistN 5000
VasiSideN 153
VasiSlopeN 3.0
ThrLightsF 01
AprLF 09
VasiBarsF 8
VasiSpaceF 0
VasiDistF 3627
VasiSideF 153
VasiSlopeF 3.3
)
Return
EndAThan you can create a .bat file it should be like this:
scasm.exe example.txt example.bgl
Run the bat file. It will generate the bgl. Voila!
The code above is my original runway. You can change the coordinates, length etc. My proposal that first work with surface 1 or 2 to see where is the runway. When you have correctly positioned it change the surface to -1 than it will be invisible. Be carefull with the Altitude, it is AMSL and in meters. Put the invisible runway as low as possible. If the invisible runway is too high compare to your background, than the user when he will line up on the runway the plane will jump up, sometimes with crash.
Read the online documentation of scasm, how to create approach lights PAPI etc.
Check this topic:
http://fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14940
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The code worked! But still the lights look like blobs and my frames are way down. Could it have something to do with REX textures being installed?
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Code:
Header( 0 47.00 46.00 18.00 17.00 )
LatRange( 46.00 47.00 )
Area( [B][COLOR="Red"]5 [/COLOR][/B]46.6856666666667 17.1593333333333333 [B][COLOR="Red"]12 [/COLOR][/B])
LayerCall( :drawStuff 24 ) ; main call, let's draw stuff
Jump32( : ) ; finished now, get outta here
:drawStuff
Runway( 46.6856666666667 17.1593333333333333
Alt 126.06528 ; in meters
Heading 164.0
Length 8199 ; in feet
Width 197 ; in feet
Markers 00
Lights 3
Surface -1
Threshold 0
ThrOffN 0
ThrOffF 1427
ExtN 0
ExtF 0
ThrLightsN 69
AprLN 10
VasiBarsN 8
VasiSpaceN 0
VasiDistN 5000
VasiSideN 153
VasiSlopeN 3.0
ThrLightsF 01
AprLF 09
VasiBarsF 8
VasiSpaceF 0
VasiDistF 3627
VasiSideF 153
VasiSlopeF 3.3
)
Return
EndAHi tsgucci, I have a fool question : What are red numbers mean ?
Here is my runway light code, please check for me :
Code:
Header( 0 21.00 20.00 107.00 106.00 )
LatRange( 106.00 107.00 )
Area( 5 20.821167 106.730606 12 )
LayerCall( :drawStuff 24 ) ; main call, let's draw stuff
Jump32( : ) ; finished now, get outta here
:drawStuff
Runway( 20.821167 106.730606
Alt 4 ; in meters
Heading 72.0
Length 7874 ; in feet
Width 197 ; in feet
Markers 00
Lights 3
Surface -1
Threshold 0
ThrOffN 0
ThrOffF 1427
ExtN 0
ExtF 0
ThrLightsN 69
AprLN 10
VasiBarsN 8
VasiSpaceN 0
VasiDistN 5000
VasiSideN 153
VasiSlopeN 3.0
ThrLightsF 01
AprLF 09
VasiBarsF 8
VasiSpaceF 0
VasiDistF 3627
VasiSideF 153
VasiSlopeF 3.3
)
Return
EndAI compiled it and then brought the .bgl into FS9 but it didnt work . My runway center point has a co-ordinate N20 49'1620 E106 43'5018
Thanks a lot