Landing light beam on ground (that white triangle)

[Daube]

Hi all,

For info, this is NOT about 3D lights on the plane, but about the "illuminated ground" part of the landing light. That ugly white triangle(s) on the ground, that is

Recently I have tried, without success, to find a replacement for the landing lights beams on the ground. The triangles appearing in front of my planes on the ground are really looking terrible. In fact, they even prevent me from seeing anything on the ground, because the triangle is almost opaque and way too clear. In the end, it's easier to taxi at night WITHOUT landing lightst than with them...

So I tried to find a replacement texture for these triangles. In FS9, I could find some, I can remember that I was using some nice stuff which came from a package I can't remember anymore. However, instead of white triangles, the landing lights looked like a nice round/oval beam on the ground.
In FSX or P3D, I couldn't find such a package, so I tried to make my own. But since I'm really not a texture artist, this is more difficult than I expected.

A bit of technical information:
- The texture which is drawn in that triangle is called spotlight.bmp.
- In FS9, that texture in simple BMP file.
- In FSX or P3D, it's DXT1.
- In FS9, it seems that the texture is displayed from bottom up. In P3D it's the contrary: the top part of the texture is the nearest from the plane.

I took some FS9 package I found in avsim and tried to modify the spotlight.bmp provided inside.
Basically, I flipped the texture upside down, converted it to DXT1 and moved the "start" of the beam picture a bit down so that it would not reach the borders of the triangle (so that the borders are not visible anymore, so that the thing doesn't look like a triangle anymore).

The texture was low resolution 256x256. I'm pretty sure it can be bigger but didn't have the energy to try anymore. It took me so much time to find a correct position for the start of the texture, I wasn't motivated to do anything else after that

Anyways, here's how far I got until now. The lights look much better and they are finally usefull for taxiing, since they don't mask the ground anymore. They are still lacking a bit of brightness, and they are still a bit too much distant from the plane, but they are enjoyable enough. I'm simply wondering if anybody has any freeware recommendation for this ?

[Milton Shupe]

Landing lights for taxiing?

[Daube]

Well, I know I'm supposed to use taxi lights and not landing lights.
But it seems to me that landing and taxi lights are a little bit the same in FS, aren't they ? They work the same way, but just react to a different switch.
Or is there anything else ?

With the default Baron in P3D, the taxi switch doesn't illuminate the ground, so it's virtually useless. But I think I have some other aircraft in which the taxi light behave like landing lights, just less intense... Or am I confusing ?

[airattackimages]

I like where you're going with this. Looks great!

[Maty12]

Well, I know I'm supposed to use taxi lights and not landing lights.
But it seems to me that landing and taxi lights are a little bit the same in FS, aren't they ? They work the same way, but just react to a different switch.
Or is there anything else ?

With the default Baron in P3D, the taxi switch doesn't illuminate the ground, so it's virtually useless. But I think I have some other aircraft in which the taxi light behave like landing lights, just less intense... Or am I confusing ?

Generally landing lights are meant to be used only in landings, and may not be made to be on for a long period of time. The PBM's, for example, should not be kept on for more than 5 minutes on the ground, due to their high intensity. Think of it as having your high beams on while driving through the city.

[Maty12]

Well, I know I'm supposed to use taxi lights and not landing lights.
But it seems to me that landing and taxi lights are a little bit the same in FS, aren't they ? They work the same way, but just react to a different switch.
Or is there anything else ?

With the default Baron in P3D, the taxi switch doesn't illuminate the ground, so it's virtually useless. But I think I have some other aircraft in which the taxi light behave like landing lights, just less intense... Or am I confusing ?

Generally landing lights are meant to be used only in landings, and may not be made to be on for a long period of time. The PBM's, for example, should not be kept on for more than 5 minutes on the ground, due to their high intensity. Think of it as having your high beams on while driving through the city.

That being said, I'm guilty of using them for taxi a lot of times and am also tired of the white triangles.

[Daube]

Thanks for the replies

I have made a few more tests and recognized that a lot of planes in FSX/P3D simply don't illuminate the ground with taxi lights. In that case, how does one taxi at night ?
Anyways, I will probably write a small tutorial to explain how I proceeded. I haven't fully understood how these landing lights textures really work, but I got enough knowledge for anybody to start messing around with them.
However, I will not be able to share my modified lights, because as I wrote earlier, I used and modified the package made by somebody else, and i didn't ask any authorizations to distribute. So I cannot upload it or anything like this.

[DickB]

That looks much better. I for one would appreciate a tutorial.

[huub vink]

In that case, how does one taxi at night ?

Thanks for your work and it really looks very promising. But to answer your question.... that's why you find these nice blue lights along the taxi tracks .

Cheers,
Huub

[falcon409]

Nice work Daube. I have to admit that what you've done thus far is a much better alternative than the glaring triangles that are common to most aircraft in FSX. Too many times I end up turning off the lights and just taxiing from the external view so I can see where I'm going. . .a lot of these lights are so bright that they obliterate the area in front of you and make spotting a turnoff difficult until you're right on top of them. A tutorial would be great, it might open up the possibility for some really creative alternatives to that "triangle".

[n4gix]

For the sake of stating the technical details, there is one - and only one - "landing / taxi light" in FS9, FSX, ESP or P3D and that is the "fx_landing.fx" effect file. As noted by the OP, the bitmap that actually generates the "ground splash" is named "spotlight.bmp" (or .dds). It's a pity that this specific name is hardcoded in the sim engine and is not specified in the actual .fx file. Thus any changes to "spotlight.bmp" will affect all aircraft, not just the one you may be interested in especially.

The modeler will apply an "attachpoint" to a tiny ngon in the exterior model (.mdl). Properly done, that "attachpoint" will have both an <effect> "Effect" tag and a "Visibility" <visibility>tag. The "Visibility" <visibility>tag will control whether the landing light switch or the taxi light switch will activate the effect.

Unfortunately, many of the default models only have one such "attachpoint" assigned to the landing light switch, which is why of course the taxi light switch doesn't do anything!</visibility></visibility></effect>

[Daube]

Ah ok, I get it now.
Thanks a lot for clarifying this, very appreciated.

[Daube]

Today i made some more tests, including with other planes. And the news are not really good

Basically, I have transformed the beam texture into a dummy recognizable pattern, basically something like that:



I wanted to understand a bit more precisely "what part goes where" in the beam on the ground. This is the result, seen from the "satellite view" (seen from above, the plane is where the red cross is, and the nose points upward):



The A letter sometimes appear in very small right in front of the wheel. The B letter mostly dissappears, and the C letter shows correctly.
The even worse thing is that other planes make it look even stranger. I believe some addon makers might have tried to overcome the strange texture mapping by mapping it themselves, which mean my manual adjustments jut got counter-productive :/

In the end, I guess it will not be possible to get rid of the triangle shape for all planes. What works for the default Baron simply doesn't work for others. The best that can be done is to lower the luminosity of that stupid triangle, so that we could at least see something through it...

[DickB]

I can't thank you enough for opening this thread. This is something that has been bugging me for years. I searched for the texture that was being used for this effect and couldn't find it (Thanks to Bill's post above I now know why !) I was aware of spotlight.bmp/dds, but only as the texture used for the landing lights on some a/c. I didn't realise it was also being used to create the ground effect as well.

I've been playing with the file myself and seeing very similar issues. The first thing I did was darken the image by 50%. That in itself was a massive improvement. I could see the ground ! Sure, the 'triangle' was still there, but that doesn't bother me quite so much. If all else fails, that will do nicely.

I did try playing with the image itself. I reduced the size of the 'visible' portion to 50%, and that was good in that it softened the edges of the triangle and reduced the projection distance, but also introduced some annoying colour patterns in the beam. Looking at your images above I can understand how that would happen. I'm thinking of converting the image to greyscale and see what that does.

Thanks again and keep up the good work !

[Navy Chief]

I can't thank you enough for opening this thread. This is something that has been bugging me for years. I searched for the texture that was being used for this effect and couldn't find it (Thanks to Bill's post above I now know why !) I was aware of spotlight.bmp/dds, but only as the texture used for the landing lights on some a/c. I didn't realise it was also being used to create the ground effect as well.

I've been playing with the file myself and seeing very similar issues. The first thing I did was darken the image by 50%. That in itself was a massive improvement. I could see the ground ! Sure, the 'triangle' was still there, but that doesn't bother me quite so much. If all else fails, that will do nicely.

I did try playing with the image itself. I reduced the size of the 'visible' portion to 50%, and that was good in that it softened the edges of the triangle and reduced the projection distance, but also introduced some annoying colour patterns in the beam. Looking at your images above I can understand how that would happen. I'm thinking of converting the image to greyscale and see what that does.

Thanks again and keep up the good work !

Any further progress on this? Looks promising! NC

[Daube]

Unfortunately, there were no more progress. I gave up after I saw that the texture was moving inside the triangle. Which means there's no way to find a solution which fits all situations :/

[Navy Chief]

Unfortunately, there were no more progress. I gave up after I saw that the texture was moving inside the triangle. Which means there's no way to find a solution which fits all situations :/

Thanks Daube.

I am guessing that making such a mod for even one aircraft would be impossible due to changing scenery textures? NC

[Milton Shupe]

Unfortunately, there were no more progress. I gave up after I saw that the texture was moving inside the triangle. Which means there's no way to find a solution which fits all situations :/

Thank you for your efforts. This is a meaningful thread on a topic that needed investigation.

[Navy Chief]

Yes, thank you Daube, for even attempting to make improvements. I do not possess such talents, but I am so grateful for those who do!

What got me to bring this topic back up was when I initiated a flight with Razbam's A-7E Corsair II. I had just added Shockwave 3D light effects to it, and was testing them on the runway. I noticed the "triangle" of light when I turned the aircraft landing light off. The triangle looks too uniform (I guess is the correct description).

It's always been part of FSX, but every once in a while we notice these irregularities. Maybe because of all the improvements in other sims that cause us to compare them with FSX? NC

[Daube]

Thanks for the kind words, gentlemen

[DickB]

Just an update from me. Converting the file to greyscale did not get rid of the colour patterns. I eventually settled on a version of the file darkened by 30% and with the 'visible' part of the image reduced by 50%. I still have the triangle, but it's softer and more transparent, and not unrealistic for the aircraft I fly (WW2 bombers). I even convinced myself that the patterns in the beam are consistent with the old style bulbs used in the landing lights on these old a/c