2 simple questions:

[Sid2008]

Hi, please take a minute to answer these 2 simple questions:
1) I want to take a part or some plygons in my plane's VC and put a texture on it so it appears to glow a little...alomst like a tiny bulb in a car's dashboard. How can i accomplish this?
i build for both FS9 and FSX.

2) I did my taildragger airplane's suspension according to Milton's tutorial but when it sits on the ramp with engines off, it shakes all over as if it has the chills. What is going on here?

Thanks for your time.
Sid

[hairyspin]

Can't help with Q1 but the shakes may be due to a stray contact point - perhaps a scrape point the model is teetering on instead of sitting nicely on the gear?

You have ACM I think, have a look at the model in its viewer for contact points.

[Sid2008]

Thanks Hairyspin, I do have ACM and i will check the contact and scrape points.
Sid

[hairyspin]

Quite by coincidence, there's a post about this over at FSDeveloper. If the contact points give no success, you may have to look at the MOI figures in aircraft.cfg.

More info here:- http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22153 (http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22153)

[Sid2008]

Thank you hairyspin. Is there a way to make a part so textured that it gives the appearance of glowing?

[Milton Shupe]

Hi, please take a minute to answer these 2 simple questions:
1) I want to take a part or some plygons in my plane's VC and put a texture on it so it appears to glow a little...alomst like a tiny bulb in a car's dashboard. How can i accomplish this?
i build for both FS9 and FSX.

2) I did my taildragger airplane's suspension according to Milton's tutorial but when it sits on the ramp with engines off, it shakes all over as if it has the chills. What is going on here?

Thanks for your time.
Sid

Sid,

The gauge backlighting requires no additional objects in the model. The VC has a planar onto which gauges are displayed. The texture you apply to that has a name that starts with a $ like $vc01. In that material and texture, you must select a self illumination option or something to that effect, and assign a texture to it, like vc01_L.bmp.

That self illumination texture then resides in the texture folder as a vc01_L.bmp texture. Note same name as the the file=vc01.bmp except with the _L.

[Vcockpit01]
file=vc01.bmp // this texture must reside in the Panel folder
Background_color=0,0,0
size_mm=1024,1024
visible=1
pixel_size=1024,1024
texture=$vc01 //this is the bmp assigned to the planar in front of the vc panel

The self illumination texture works as a light additive property. At night the normal vc panel will be dark. The light values on the vc01_L are added to the light on the dark VC panel to brighten the gauges.

So, what I do is copy the vc01 bmp, darken it about 50% or so, flip it vertically (required to be upside down), then add a medium to light gray to all gauge circles or areas you want lighted. Put this in the texture folder(s).

Hope this helps and sorry if it may be gmax speak instead of FSDS.

For all other VC or exterior parts, you can add lighting effects in the alpha channels of the textures related light maps. The alpha of these textures must be pure black.

For example, cabin_t.bmp and cabin_L.bmp - The _L is a light map that would provide additive lighting to the normal texture when the nav lights are turned on.

Milton

[Sid2008]

Thank you both, Hairyspin and Milton.
I was able to trace down an errant contact point, which when fixed, solved the shivering problem of my aircraft. I am also going to play with the moments of inertia and see if it "tames" my bird a little.

Sid