Please shed some light .... on landing lights / effects

[delta_lima]

Sorry for the bad title pun, but it's actually at the root of my question.

Is there a way to retrofit a lighting effect to an aircraft whose landing light doesn't properly "paint" the ground and/or surroundings? I believe there's more to this than merely grabbing an effect you like and throwing it onto the plane's [lights] section.

For example, the recent RFN F-8 Crusader has a spectacular landing light effect - it illuminates the ground and the immediate surfaces (such as other aircraft on a carrier deck) in front of it quite beautifully.

By contrast, the landing lights on neither the FSXBA F/A-18 nor the Dino F-14 really cast much useful light at all, and do not "paint" anything at night.

No problem, right? It happens that in neither case, the landing light is "external" to the model (not baked in), so I could just substitute the default landing light effect with the RFN's and it'd be fine, right? But no, it doesn't light up either, even when using the same light effect that did work on the RFN model. Is there something else I need to do, like "point" the effect, or in some way get it to actually cast light, and not just light up a tiny light circle of light?

I'm curious too, as a follow-up question, of how to get lights to be more "volumetric". For example, back in the day, Shockwave sold an addon to do this; but I've noticed occasionally a model will come along (I think the Navion or Global Swift) that has a great landing light effect - but for some reason, the doesn't "port" to another model nicely.

I'm running P3Dv4.5 - but I suspect this issue has applicability across the various P3D platforms as well as in FSX.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

dl

[expat]

Never thought "proper" naval aviators used landing lights . .

[delta_lima]

With the amount of sim time I'm getting these days, I'm pretty far removed from a proper aviator of any sort, especially of the naval variety ...

Yes, good point, I know about light off when coming aboard carriers.

But I'm not always on a carrier, and it was more a generic question about how to get improve the way landing lights paint the ground - some surprisingly don't at all, and that's what I'm trying to sort.

[Dangerous Beans]

I believe the light on the ground from landing lights is a polygon built into the model.

[Old Timer Nick]

I'm not a modeler and have never had any luck trying to change one, but I often add lights for landing, taxi, cargo, or whatever via the aircraft.cfg

You can add a better landing light to the same location where the modeled landing light comes down if you play around with the coordinates. Usually you can figure out which assignment to give it so it will activate with the current landing light sw.

From my experience the quality of the lighting effect is directly related to the effect file you choose. It is by design I believe

My personal favorite is this one. It should be a default in your P3D effects folder. fx_c130_landing

Great ground lighting and a long reach. It does not interfere as much as the glare from the shockwave lights.

OTNick

[expat]

My personal favorite is this one. It should be a default in your P3D effects folder. fx_c130_landing

Great tip - thanks!