Miscellaneous questions from a Newbie (to PD3)

[expat]

Haven't touched FSX since getting PD3 for the first time a few weeks ago. It really is a quantum leap.

I should be - but haven't been - able to figure out some of these sundry issues:



VC lighting: I press Shift + L and there is no light coming on and off in almost all my aircraft - or at least the FSX portovers that otherwise work well, Is there a new/different vc lighting effects file in v4 or some other cause for this?
Smoke - "I" key assigned but see no smoke. Again, not sure why this effect is absent.
Home made airports, traffic and AI add ons - not the packages. In FS9 and FSX I have always made my own custom AI environments using TTools, AIFP and ADEX for traffic and airports. Can I just copy and paste these over from FSX? Will that screw up my install? I am trying to avoid the xml editing method at all costs! Do Traffic.bgl's need to be recompiled somehow as P3D?


My suspicion is that some airport buildings might not appear, the traffic/bgl's should work as they don't use any 32 bit dll's and that the AI aircraft won't work or appear if they are not native FSX models.

Sorry to bother with these but I trust the expertise of you guys here at SOH more than anywhere else!

[falcon409]

Haven't touched FSX since getting PD3 for the first time a few weeks ago. It really is a quantum leap.

I should be - but haven't been - able to figure out some of these sundry issues:



VC lighting: I press Shift + L and there is no light coming on and off in almost all my aircraft - or at least the FSX portovers that otherwise work well, Is there a new/different vc lighting effects file in v4 or some other cause for this?
Smoke - "I" key assigned but see no smoke. Again, not sure why this effect is absent.
Home made airports, traffic and AI add ons - not the packages. In FS9 and FSX I have always made my own custom AI environments using TTools, AIFP and ADEX for traffic and airports. Can I just copy and paste these over from FSX? Will that screw up my install? I am trying to avoid the xml editing method at all costs! Do Traffic.bgl's need to be recompiled somehow as P3D?


My suspicion is that some airport buildings might not appear, the traffic/bgl's should work as they don't use any 32 bit dll's and that the AI aircraft won't work or appear if they are not native FSX models.

Sorry to bother with these but I trust the expertise of you guys here at SOH more than anywhere else!

1.) I only use the designated switches or knobs for cockpit lighting. Haven't used the "L" key since moving to V4
2.) I was never a fan of smoke effects unless they were part of an engine startup sequence. Too many folks added smoke to airplanes that never had it. Very possible that key use has been removed from V4
3.) As long as the traffic bgl's are compiled as FSX, they should work, but as you mention, the aircraft would need to be native FSX at least. As far as scenery goes, as long as the objects are compiled for FSX they should be fine. Anything related to FS9 would have to be recompiled to FSX or P3D (either one will work) or deleted/replaced with another object.

[Daube]

Concerning the VC lights, normally they should work exactly like FSX with the very same keys.
If they don't appear, it might be because of that new option, "dynamic lights", but I'm really not so sure.
The dynamic lights are these new "real" lights that come in P3Dv4. Most noticeable ones are the landing lights, which are finally real lights, not a dumb flat triangle on the ground that doesn't really illuminate anything...
That new option *might* interfere with the old lights, I think I read something like that.... Anyways, try to turn that off and check if your lights are back. It won't cost anything to try :D