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FSXA Grass and lights...

Shaun

Shaun

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unitedkingdom
I have put a ton of grass and vegetation around my airport. Much of it is around the apron edge lighting and runway lights. The material value is greater or equal 128 z-write, standard.

The problem is that the grass is written infront of what ever lighting is used: SCASM, standard or texture lighting. Effects are out of the question.

How do other developers overcome this? I see flytampa has lots of grass, i'm sure they don't use effects on their runway lighting etc...
 
I don't know either.
But IMHO, I think the way to solve this is using effect and attach to your taxi light poles.
The problem is PAPI light, custom made one has low visibility range. It can be seen only in 2 Nm.
 
But effects don't change size with distance.

I could make a model with effects and have several with different size effects as LODS.

I know FSDreamtram have grass by the runway and a custom lighting technique which, like scasm and afcad lighting, shows the individual lights larger at a distance.

How have they achieved this I wonder...
 
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Well I have found a perfect workaround...

One "runway light" model with an effect for the Closest LOD (Set at 150), which means it's visible when you're near it. The effect (navwhite) shows up over grass.

Eight other "Texture" "One/One" LODS which are light orbs only, which go from small to very large.

LODs set at 50, 45, 40 , 35, 30, 25, with no empty LOD, as they do show up as less than a couple of pixels from miles off.

When the "texture only" LODS kick in (over 300m away) they don't show the grass from behind them.

Put it in a library and place them all individually with ADE using guidelines.

Works a charm!
 
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10321610_323106337842398_4913150296922077692_o.jpg

It's alive!!!
 
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