A Question For the Gurus

[dvslats]

Hi all,

Lately I've been converting ships from the FsX Global AI Pck.

What really got me was some of the very interesting lighting effects on those boats in FsX. That put me on a hunt for "Light Masks" in CFS2. That's why this model astounded me.
The past week of investigating if something similar could be done with today's tools brought many dead ends.



So I'm throwing this out here...anyone have ideas how a Light Mask could be added to CFS2 Ships?

My work flow for doing these has been;

mdl to Mcx
Mcx to 3dS (Gmax)
Fix any minor issues
Export X. file to Fs2004 gamepack for an *mdl
MDLC / convert *.mdl to CFS2.

Dave

[Shessi]

Hi Dave,
AFAIK CFS2 doesn't support illumination from aircraft and ships, not true light anyway, it has to be fudged using a light beam modelled into the mdl and the correct tex/alpha applied. So you could do that, but wouldn't look very good. Or if you made the ship a static object then you could put lights on it as a bgl, possibly?

That FALCON 50 CAEA is clever as, as all the panels and internals texs are pics of real illuminated panels, and the landing/taxi lights are as I have mentioned, modelled light beams.

Cheers

Shessi

[dvslats]

Hi Dave,
AFAIK CFS2 doesn't support illumination from aircraft and ships, not true light anyway, it has to be fudged using a light beam modelled into the mdl and the correct tex/alpha applied. So you could do that, but wouldn't look very good. Or if you made the ship a static object then you could put lights on it as a bgl, possibly?

That FALCON 50 CAEA is clever as, as all the panels and internals texs are pics of real illuminated panels, and the landing/taxi lights are as I have mentioned, modelled light beams.

Cheers

Shessi

Hi Shessi,

Well that blows.
I've tried adding Fx_lights in the dp file, [EXTRA.0], from several fs8 packages. These are a no show. Also Jaxon's lights fx for Usio's carriers from his web page.
These show but are not a steady constant light. They're flickering. Like a candle does.
I remembered Collin's USS_Lexington44 had nice deck lighting set so it only appeared at night.
So this would be the modeled lights you mentioned?
Thanks for your info on this.
Dave

[Shessi]

Hi Dave,
Yes basically, the deck lights are just polys with a bright colour and simulated brightness, the reason why they look bright is that they are at displayed at night. There is no light actually 'thrown' from these. The illumination on the rear helo decked assault ship only looks like that because FSX handles 'light/illumination' differently and far more complexly than CFS2, as said to simulate that, an illuminated area you would have to build the source and the beams into the bgl, as with the 'landing/taxi lights on the Falcon.

TBH the easiest way would be to make the ship a placed static object, and then either build other 'light source/beam' bgls to appear at the same location or possibly use something like the Airport prog to place lights as runway lights on the static ship. Placing lights of any sorts on a moving mdl/bgl in CFS2 without a source file I think is a no-go.

Cheers

Shessi

[dvslats]

I'm getting the picture now. Thank you Shessi.