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Taxiway lights

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14
Country
us-kentucky
Guys:

After many months of trying to get Asobo to add missing taxiway lights (all of them!) to KSDF airport in Louisville, Ky., they have still not been added after the latest update (1.11.6). I am coming to the conclusion that if I want them I am going to have to do it myself.

So, for all of you who have become familiar with the current SDK, may I ask what in your opinion would be the best way to accomplish this task? Should I wait for the next iteration of ADE, or is there a fairly simple way to go about this using the SDK in it's present form? I'm asking what the best way to proceed is.
 
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Its not simple, nothing about the SDK is what I would call "simple" but it can be done. However with the current limitations of the SDK I haven't found a reliable way. Just setting the taxiway to have edge lights is a disaster. You never know where it is going to place them. There are light paths that are supposed to be lines that you draw that will place lights along those lines but take for instance a taxiway that is 1000' long. There will be two light paths, one on each side. It seems the SDK/Game will never draw the lights in the same place twice so actually getting them lined up seems impossible. One airport I did I created a lot of very short light paths so that it would only draw one light. I then copied that path and placed it everywhere I wanted a light. It works well but with so many light paths I am not sure what the performance hit, if any, is. I wish Asobo would give us a good working taxiway light, runway light, runway end light, etc. model that we can just place as needed. I have been working on creating my own but the results have not been satisfactory so far.

On a side note I am making airports in Kentucky right now. I am working on the western side of the state and working east. I should have some uploaded to the more popular sharing sights (Avsim, FlightSim, etc.) soon. I have about 10 done but waiting on some bug fixes in the SDK before release.
 
Thanks for the reply and info. I have spent several days looking into the SDK and watched a few videos on getting started on projects, and indeed none of it seemed to be simple to use. At one point while exploring developer mode I could see the airport "behind" the screen developer info but was unable to migrate to the airport to attempt to edit the taxiways. I decided I would probably screw up the airport installation and then struggle trying to re-install the airport, with no easy way to do that.

I will continue to look into using the SDK, but am pleased you are working on updates to airports in Ky. I'll wait for your finished results and hope that you are able to get taxiway lights integrated into KSDF. I still find it extremely annoying that this hasn't been corrected in the sim at this time. I have been quite gracious with Zendesk on asking this to be corrected but it's fallen on deaf ears up to now.

Thanks!

BTW, are there scenery objects available in the SDK, such as generic bridges, buildings, etc. that can be placed in scenery areas by creating a new project?
 
If you are just getting started I would watch this video. He shows how to set up the folder structure (which is very important) for an airport. This seems to work very well and he has a bunch of videos covering the SDK and how to use it to do various things. Yes there are some generic objects that you can place without having to make your own.

 
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