Taxi light
In my last tutorial, you have learnt how to make RUNWAY light by Scasm.exe. [1] Now it is time for the rest of the airport that is still in the dark, the taxi edge light.
There are variety of the methods of making Taxi Edge Light:
Method 1
Make individual light, attached with effect and place the instance many time by xml.
This is good for small airport with hundred of taxi lights, but not thousand in big international airport, since many xml placement will cause fps drop.
The difficulty of this is you have to place them many times and it is time consuming method.
You can have difficulties placing along the straight line to make it perfectly straight, or even more difficult, perfectly curve along the turn
Method 2
Make the whole taxi lights in gmax and export them in one file.
This will keep XML minimal just only one time placement.
Then use maxscript from Nick Whittome [2] .
But the effect can cause frame rate drop dramatically.
I did that and I found 50% drop[3].
Method 3
Make the same way as the second method but eliminate the use of effect.
This will be the best from frame rate but less visibility range.
You can see your light only withing a few hundred meters.[4] Please read #12.
Best Method
I think I found a sweet spot between visibility range that you get from effect and the ease of placement.
Please read this PDF - Taxi Edge Light Tutorial [5]
