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Effect appears only if I start the flight next to it

Clutch Cargo

Clutch Cargo

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unitedstates
Ok, as I said in my other recent post I was able to get my light effect to work following "Fog's" template. Looks great but now here is a new little issue. If I start at the location of my poles and effects no problem. But if I start a flight say 10-15 miles away to test the effect it is gone? It NEVER appears even if I fly or slew up to it?

At first this would appear to be a distance or time parameter that needs adjusting but I have tried several attempts with the Fogs template with no success. What am I missing here?

thanks,

Clutch
Project 9Dragons
 
Howdy Clutch, I have the same problem with mine. I saw somewhere on here where you can fix it by using a controller in the .fx file. I haven't gotten around to messing with it yet, but there are threads here that explain how and it's also (poorly) covered in the SDK. When you get it all figured out post it here so I can copy & paste :D .

Jim
 
WoW, there IS a lot on this subject here. This apparently has been known for ages. I'm sure some of the old-timers here saw my post and just chuckled saying "ah, let him find out for himself". Usually, I do research first before asking questions but I was under the assumption the "Fog" template was perfect and complete to begin with. I see there can be a lot of variations to achieve the same effect.

Spent the good part of today just reading all the threads in the Effects forum. Good reading actually. Can save a budding modeler months of trial & error.

Ok, you ready to copy and paste the following code? May take ya a while:

25

That's it. Under [Particle.0] Copy "25" and paste it over 19 on
Type=19 :p This tip comes from simmer Fern.

This is what I am testing right now. So far it seems to work 99% of the time. Either flying away or towards the effect. No need for the Controller I guess. I heard that can have an negative impact in FPS so I am trying to avoid it if possible. I did see it fail once when I was coming out of some Replay mode and took it out of slew. Maybe it was just confused (like it's developer!)

Testing with it right now with about 60 combined lightpoles and the effect at my airport Kai Tak so the effects are very close in proximity. So far so good. I will try the Controller way if this fails in some manner. Give it a shot and see if it works for you. (Hope your good at all that coding I've given ya :D )

CLutch
"Long Live the Tak"
 
I'll see what I can do. It's gonna be tough, but I think I can handle it :) . I'll let you know if it works on mine too.

Jim
 
Well... I can't get it to not work now whatever I do. :rolleyes: I went so far as to make a copy of the untweaked .fx and exported a light under another filename so I could put two lights on the field, one with the tweaked effect and the other with the original. They both worked every time I tried it. Maybe I'm not "flying in" from far enough away (about 20 nm). I'll mess with it some more. Thx for doing the legwork on this.

Jim
 
No you are plenty far away. Most say it happens around 10 miles out. The only issue with the 25 for 19 is that the effect stays on all the time and of course we want it off during the day.

Toda I am trying different ways to solve this. May still require a controller so I try one today to see the impact. Or may continue will a little tweaking. For me, I am using SBuilding to place the effect. Very quick and easy but it appears to allow only one condition at a time for a parameter.

Just a lot of trial & error today I guess.
 
I've changed the value to 25 and the effect is now visible even if I take off from 40 miles away. The effect is not visible during daytime.
 
Yours wont shut off in the daytime? I haven't noticed that one yet. I just confirmed that the tweak does seem to work. Got tired of flying in so I tried slew and sure enough the tweaked effects were lit and the remaining Type=19 effects were out.

Did you happen to see this in the SDK:
Type=19: The type of particle. Type=19 is a sprite and is currently the only type that is recognized. Do not edit.
Click to expand...
...but then I've never really been one to blindly follow instructions anyway :) .

I've used a couple default attached light effects (fx_obslight2) without the DAY=0,NIGHT=1 parameters. They were out with the rest of them when I slewed in at night, but I tried it a couple times during the day and they seemed to work fine. I wonder if this problem is limited to night only or if it just hasn't happened during the day yet?

From what I've read the controller can cause multiple instances of the effect to pile up, I assume if you don't get the duration in the controller properly matched up with the lifetime in the effect. If that happens obviously it'll kill framerates, but I can't see where just a single instance of the effect should be any harder on frames through the controller than if you placed the effect alone. I guess we'll find out.

Jim
 
Just an update: I added the Controller as I could not find a way to have it work completely and to have it off during the day and on for Night, Dusk, and Dawn. So far I have made a few incoming flights and it is working as planned.

I have not seen the issue yet of the effect duplicating upon itself when using the Controller. Maybe I need to stick around at the airport a bit longer.

Now I am in the process of doing a lot of hand coding my xml to put in a double entry of the effects parameter. The bigger test for me is coming up to see what impact this will start having when I add dozens of lights. I will post what I have done a bit later if all works out.

back to modeling...:)
 
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