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FS2004 Can't Get Started

tgibson

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Hi,

Yes, the duplicate lines of lights are gone, which is great. I am indeed talking about the duplicate lights at the ends of the undesignated taxiway segments. This is far fewer to deal with than we started with, so good progress.

Thanks,
 

tgibson

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I am wondering why you are treating undesignated taxiways differently than designated ones? I do understand the selection process where you select all the segments of a given lettered taxiway when clicked and that is fine. But for lighting placement determinations shouldn't the entire taxiway system be handled as a single unit (at least all connected parts of a given taxiway system)? This is what FS and ADE do - they do not distinguish between different lettered taxiways or between designated and undesignated taxiways. While you can certainly segment the selection process if you like, if the end(s) of those taxiways are connected to another taxiway it would be logical to avoid placing lights at the ends that are already connected to that other taxiway, which could lead to lights placed in the middle of a perpendicular taxiway, etc. It would be logical if that light would be suppressed.

That said, I understand the complexity of that situation (I know it took Jon a long time to get it as good as it is now in ADE) and what you have done with v4 is already a generational improvement over previous verrsions, so don't worry if you decide it's not worth the effort. It only takes a little while at most airports to get them just right (and in fact, better than ADE can do, since we can customize these to our heart's content). And we get 3D models as a bonus!

Thanks for a great job,
 

gadgets

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It basically goes back to something I mentioned a couple days ago. In my airports, undesignated taxiways are few and far between and only used for special purposes. That extensively flavored my approach. And, if everyone did the same, the current approach would be (almost) fine. Stock data was an afterthought. But, in retrospect, stock data should have been the main consideration. Those two factors, together, have made the current shortcomings rather obvious.

So, I'm reworking the taxiway outlining code to do as you suggest, i.e., all taxiways are equal. Complicating matters is that, because lights are fairly close to the runway and taxiway surfaces, I can't rely on approximate shapes as Jon is able to do. I have to make my surface shapes match Flightsim's exactly, and have been quite successful at it. But, tying it all together is complicated.

Fortunately, there's only a few hundred lines of code involved and, I'm hopeful I'll have it working again by end of week - if certain people don;'t continue to find other problems:confused:.

Thanks for the kudos. I hope others will take a serious interest once we get the kinks worked out.
Don
 

tgibson

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OK, I'll stop testing (just kidding). :) But I don't have a lot left to test. I am watching old movies and videos now, trying to make out lighting arrangements for airports in the 1950s and 60s to make my airports more accurate.

I agree you are doing a good job, most of the placement is just where I would want it.
 

tgibson

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I don't know if you are supposed to be able to do this, but when I place a MALSR approach on a runway manually, I can get green threshold lights at any spacing I want. After creation, when I click the line of threshold lights and Edit the string, it give me a (blank) box to enter light spacing. When I place a number in there and click OK, the new spacing is not adopted, and the old spacing remains.
 

tgibson

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BTW, I am getting a crash in FS9 after editing my airport lights, in UTIL.DLL and G3D.DLL. It is during Loading Scenery Objects (loading progress bar at 0%). If I rename the Lights BGL file with .orig added the sim loads fine. I will see if I can fix it.

Deleting the MALSR approach (and the green threshold lights separately, since deleting the approach does not delete those lights - bug?) and then adding them back fixed the crashing problem. Don't know why...
 

tgibson

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One question. Using BGL lights I cannot see the VASI when I am making an approach at 2000 ft AGL and supposed to start my descent. I need to be down at around 1200 ft AGL for that. I can add a VASI back to the ADE file which makes it just barely possible to make an approach at 2000 ft AGL. But when you are close to them, the ADE VASI light moves around the BGL light as you look at the VASI from different angles, which looks rather odd.

I assume there is no way to increase the distance the BGL lights can be seen?

Thanks,
 

gadgets

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I don't know if you are supposed to be able to do this, but when I place a MALSR approach on a runway manually, I can get green threshold lights at any spacing I want. After creation, when I click the line of threshold lights and Edit the string, it give me a (blank) box to enter light spacing. When I place a number in there and click OK, the new spacing is not adopted, and the old spacing remains.
I can replicate. Another way to do that is to select the runway, add/edit approach lights and adjust spacing there.

BTW, I am getting a crash in FS9 after editing my airport lights, in UTIL.DLL and G3D.DLL.
If it happens again, please send me your library folder.

I assume there is no way to increase the distance the BGL lights can be seen?
Correct. Have you tried using effects? Those you can customize to some extent.

Don
 

tgibson

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Hi,

Using 4.1.14 now, but I don't know what it fixed. I notice that the undesignated taxiways are now displayed by default.

I still have the crashing BGL files, but I don't know what a library folder is. Is this the Project folder? If so, I don't have that anymore. Will keep that next time.

I have tried using effects, but as you can see from the images I posted in this thread (post #24) when close to the airport the runway lights are tiny and the taxiway lights are invisible unless extremely close to them. The BGL Lights are much larger, even at a distance.

Yes, going to the approach dialog and changing the threshold light spacing there does work, but not if you choose just the threshold light line.
 
Last edited:

gadgets

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Using 4.1.14 now, but I don't know what it fixed.
A P3D error that I introduced in it's predecessor, so I didn't bother mentioning it to you. The archive contains a Version History.pdf that summarizes the changes.

I notice that the undesignated taxiways are now displayed by default.
If they were selected when you close AFLT, they will st6ill be displayed when you reopen that project.

I don't know what a library folder is. Is this the Project folder
Force of habit. I do mean the project folder

when close to the airport the runway lights are tiny and the taxiway lights are invisible unless extremely close to them.
I haven't spent a lot of time on standard effects, since reverse-mipped effects are available in other FS versions and LOD variable lights in P3D. So, maybe Standard effects can use some tweaking. You could increase the Effect Size Multiplier for "White" in colors.txt or you could create a custom effect and use that instead. Instructions in the user manual.

changing the threshold light spacing there does work
Yes. I'm working on that at the moment.

Don
 

tgibson

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Hi again,

Understood about 4.1.14, and undesignated taxiway display.

I have checked both BGL Lights and Standard Effects and the VASI situation is the same with both. Here is an approach at 2000 ft AGL at the point I should start to descend to the runway, using the default ADE lighting - the VASI lights are just visible enough to use:

aflt_default_lights.jpg


And here is what it looks like with either form of FS2004 AFLT lights:

aflt_aflt_lights.jpg


I would try to add 2 or 3 VASIs at the same location to make them brighter, but AFLT does not allow that. As I said, I could perhaps use both a BGL Lights file (for close up) and an Effects Lights file (for far away) at the same time. Your suggestion to try larger effects may help; I'll check. I will look in the manual about increasing the size of the effects, at least at a distance.

Thanks,
 

tgibson

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BTW, the manual states that inverse mipmapped effects can be used with any version of FS, but this appears not to be true? (Page 22).
 

tgibson

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Hi,

I tried increasing the size of the effects. If I increase the white color to 4.0 in colors.txt, the runway edge lights become easily visible at the distance used in the above screen shots. But the effect is huge when at the airport, and the VASI lights *do not increase in size*. I tried increasing the PAPI White and PAPI Red lights in the colors.txt file but unfortunately they do not seem to control the size of the VASI lights either, so I assume that the VASI light size is fixed and cannot be changed.

This leaves me only one alternative, which is to place the AFLT VASI lights right on top of a set of ADE VASI lights. This is a pain because the location of the VASI light symbols in AFLT is not the location of the resulting VASI light - it's offset both parallel and perpendicular to the runway.
 

gadgets

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I don't recall why I disallowed inverse-mipmapped lights in FS9 (probably because FS9 doesn't support a necessary technology), but I'll revisit that this afternoon. I'll also take a look at the application of effects. While I do so, please check out editing of approach threshold lights only in attached.

DOn
 

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gadgets

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I've taken a quick look at inverse-mipmapped effects in FS9 and, while not ideal, they're better than standard effect (I get 6-8 miles visibility). So I'm going to re-enable them. But, I can see there's an issue with PAPI and runway lights which I'll investigate first. I'll send you something to test in a while.

Don.
 

tgibson

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Hi,

Sounds good.

The threshold light editing seems to work fine. Logical it would take you to the approach dialog since they are part of the approach.
 

gadgets

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Please download 4.1.15. It allows use of inverse-mipmapped effects. FS9 handles mipmaps differently from FSX/P3D. The lights are a little dim closeup but visible range is excellent. I may be able to improve the close-up performance but it's a ways down my to-do list. Nothing was wrong with the PAPIs; I was looking at stock PAPI.

Back to undesignated taxiways.

Don
 

tgibson

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The only problem I saw with the VASI lights using Standard Effects is that the size of the VASI lights are not affected by the colors.txt file, which makes it harder to use those.

On to 4.1.15.
 

gadgets

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I'm happy to report I've found the cause of the pulsing models. It's related to PCL., Don't know how to fix it yet.

Don
 
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