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Another Multiple Objects Question

I

Ian P

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105
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unitedkingdom
Hello folks,

A little advice is requested, if I may be so bold?

I am trying to recreate a World War II Aerodrome Lighting System Mk.1 for FSX, which, as is the nature of these things, will need to be called by SODE in order to only get it to appear when needed.

The problem is this: It comprises a lot of elements, all of which need to be switched on, or off, as required. It's also VERY BIG to say the least: The outer circle of lighting is 23 lamps, 2000yds radius from the aerodrome geographical centrepoint. There are also "funnel lights", comprising six lights in an open "V" shape, on that 2000yd radius for each approach direction and, to make matters worse, four sets of "distant lights" at 3 miles from the aerodrome.

As anyone who has ever used FSXToMDL will have already guessed, it just threw errors at me when I tried to compile this as even quarters of the circle. Therefore, at present, I have compiled a set of "distant lights" as a MDL, the funnel lights as a MDL and a single light as a MDL to represent the lights of the outer circle. But that means every time I want to call the lights to appear, using SODE, I have to call 28 SimObjects: 23 circle lights, four distant light sets and a funnel light set. OK, so only one set of lighting will be visible at any one time, but I haven't even started adding the on-aerodrome lighting yet (another 10 or so elements), this is just the outer lighting!

Does anyone have any ideas how I could reduce the amount of calls that I'd need to make for each call, because this is getting out of hand, now. I can probably combine some, if not all, of the on-aerodrome elements together - it's the outer lighting that's simply too big to be a single MDL.

All ideas greatly appreciated.

All the best,

Ian P.
 
What do you mean too big?... More thank 64k verts for a single material? I doubt it could be too big for a .mdl, my terminal area for BNA has about 172,000 verts and 19 drawcalls, but works like a charm. Maybe I could have a look at your model.
 
Hi Shaun.

It's not a verts problem, by "too big" I mean that the single MDL file would be a circle of diameter 6 miles, if it would compile, which it fails to do.

Right now, I'm struggling to get an effect to attach to any of the objects, which is extremely annoying (that's refusing to compile as well, with a different error), but if you want a file that is basically the best part of a hundred little planes, which I want to turn into lights, then you're welcome to it. :)

Ian P.
 
I don't see how an object this size wont compile. To attach multiple effects (>1) you need to run the multiple attach box script. And do one for day/night and dusk/dawn.

However, effects don't increase size with distance, hence will be nearly invisible at range. So the best thing you want to do is texture the planes with the "new light method"... I.e source "one", dest "one", have the diffuse as a black texture and the _LM as a black texture with a little light on it. Then edit the mipmaps so that it's more visible at a distance.
 
Thanks again, Shaun,

The idea is that the lights aren't visible from a huge distance away - it's a wartime lighting system and, ultimately, part of what I'm trying to achieve with SODE is really limiting the visibility of them anyway (by angle and user action to activate them for a period of time before they turn off again). I just want to get the basics working first and get something displaying, then work from there.

From what you are saying, however, it sounds like the problem is somewhere in my modelling, rather than compilation. I was told that there was a finite size (in terms of dimensions rather than poly/vertex count) above which XToMDL would no longer work, but no-one seemed sure what that size was. However, as I'm now getting a compilation error every time I try to create a single object with an attached effect, rather than one with the whole array together, I think it may be best if I move this one out of SODE and into the Blender modelling forum - it sounds like I might not have the massive problems in SODE that I was fearing.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Ian P,
 
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