Ability to set heading in ADE?

[Aaron Parsons]

Will there ever be the ability to set the heading of objects, maybe even the lat/lon reference point so that you can place the item in ADE and control the Heading of items like Split lights from ADE? that way, you only have to compile 1 split light and you can rotate it accordingly in ADE instead of having one for each end of EVERY runway in the airport at EVERY airport....100 airports with 2 runways each means 2 red/white lights * 2 runways * 100 airports = 400 different models, now do the white/yellow lights, the green/red lights, the centerline red/white lights....holy crikey thats a lot of bloated data for FSX to load...

 

[gadgets]

holy crikey thats a lot of bloated data for FSX to load

Your math is perfect. But what's your concern? Have you created custom lights for an airport where the manipulation of the light data created an unacceptable FPS burden? With AFLT's "array" capability, why would you bother placing runway end lights and approach lights individually?

Given the capabilities and sophistication of airport design tools such as ADE and AFLT and their wide usage, don't you think such obvious alternatives have been explored and, if not implemented, consciously rejected for good reason. In the case of oriented airfield lights, what you are suggesting is not possible because the SEPARATION_PLANEs used to orient the lights (the only suitable technology available for that purpose) do not respond to object heading. SEPARATION_PLANE orientation must be "hard-coded".

If you have a reasonable requirement that cannot be handled by AFLT or a question as to why something is the way it is (or isn't), I'm happy to discuss it and, perhaps, update the tool to include it. However, uninformed "shots" such as you have taken here are not welcome.

Finally, your repeated reference to "100 airports" suggests a commercial application. Should that be the case, I would suggest you re-read my EULA. It expressly prohibits commercial use of the freeware version of AFLT.

Don

 

[Aaron Parsons]

The separation_plane issue ensures that what I would like is not completely achievable, but I have come up with an interim solution. Items that are not completely unique but are only differing based on heading of the separation plane, I have created many varieties, the only difference being their heading, e.g. WigWag 360, WigWag 010, WigWag 020, WigWag 030 and so on...same for split lights for runway centerline lights and edge lights. Items like REILs and taxiway lights and other omni based lights have just one instance in the library. That library can be placed in the global scenery folder instead of having a separate copy for each scenery created.

I plan on making about 6 or seven airports that I routinely fly to, so a single library with as few elements as possible is what I'm trying to achieve. For the elements such as VASI/MALSR and the like, I will still have to resort to pre-generating the items and having them in a library specific to the project, but those items are few and far between.

 

[gadgets]

Not clear what you mean by "interim" since the SEPARATION_PLANE limitation is not something that can be addressed. However given your initially stated concern about the amount of data FSX must load, I'm rather surprised at your selected workaround since what you propose will require FSX to load far more data than it will ever need at any point in time.

Incidentally, AFLT does not require you to have one library per project - though doing do does make the data somewhat easier to manage, If you only need one library, then only make one library. AFLT gives you full control over what does or does not get included.

Don