X-Plane 10 scenery Q & A

[BWolf7]

I have a question-for a future time, will there be a separate complete airport scenery pack for north, south america, europe, asia, africa etc? For instance will there be a cd rom with the extra scenery on it?

No, most likely.

There was news about providing an update with user submitted airports.

The airports are supposed to be low quality, made with only auto-gen default WED objects. I personally, do not approve of the "plausible world" idea.

Basically, they will not release anything of the sort.. just a downloadable free update.

[qumake]

You were talking about lighting. Very interesting!!!

You were saying that certain formats of lights needed, plus a physical positioning (3D coordinates), ... a vector (determined by dx, dy, dz) to indicate where it was going the light beam.

You were explaining -THX!!!- the existence of X-Plane's axis NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST and its relationship with X, Y, Z... ok

I think that It would be necessary that the light vector coordinates were LINKED to OBJ (3D) ... because if the lights point to the N. .. and I do a rotation in the OBJ (in WED) ... lights STILL pointing towards to N.

So I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that light coordinates are INDEPENDENT of OBJ 3D design coordinates... so you have to configure the light vectors for each OBJ movement...

 

===========

 

A test of lighting in my light-pole. In "Blender coordinates" should be XZY...so my light is situated at 38 meters above center of my OBJ reference point

 

LIGHT_PARAM    apron_light_billboard    0.00000000    38.00000000    0.00000000    0.150 -0.455  -0.150  0.5    6.0

 

0.150 -0.455  -0.150 ---> head to SE and going down...about 25º

 

These kind of lights ALWAYS point at the same direction!!!...so in most cases it generates incoherency with de geometry or structure of the OBJ

 

Regards

[tkyler]

Scenery lights as part of objects will rotate with the object as it is rotated in WED (the DSF file actually).  So if the object has a rotation value, the light will be rotated also.  The North/South/East/West |  xz specification is relative to the local coordinates of the object only so yes, this coordinate is fixed...BUT the object rotation parameter (as found in the DSF file) is not and rotates both the object and the light together.

 

TomK

[tkyler]

Airfighter,

 

It looks like I did not answer your question from a ways back, I apologize I did not see it.   I'll ask Ben if we can stick in that light for 10.30...which will probably be after the new year and see what he says.  I don't "own" the lights.txt file per se...so I have to go through Ben Supnik and Alex Gifford.  usually they have no issues, but every now and then they'll have some reason they will/won't allow a light added to that file.  I'll see what I can do.

 

Tom

[ilias.tselios]

Airfighter,

 

It looks like I did not answer your question from a ways back, I apologize I did not see it.   I'll ask Ben if we can stick in that light for 10.30...which will probably be after the new year and see what he says.  I don't "own" the lights.txt file per se...so I have to go through Ben Supnik and Alex Gifford.  usually they have no issues, but every now and then they'll have some reason they will/won't allow a light added to that file.  I'll see what I can do.

 

Tom

No prob Tom... and thanks for that!

 

But I have another question you might can answer... In my airport the NDB station sits (almost) in the middle of the apron. I have checked that position, sent Robin the exact coords, and got reply from him that it will be in the next update. Fine so far. But, before going to 10.25 beta, I have manage to use my custom NDB object through that library.txt with that:

EXPORT lib/airport/NAVAIDS/NDB_2.obj                    objects:NDB.obj 

Updating to 10.25, I only can see the standard NDB station. Any idea about that? Or might be a bug...?

[tkyler]

The library file gets overwritten during the update....which means even though your object still exists, the library entry no longer does and you must re-insert the entry into the library.txt file.   I myself used to keep a small text file with my custom entries in it and after updates, I'd cut and paste in the custom entries back into the library.txt file.

 

The library system is designed to reuse objects......so if you have a one-off NDB station, then it should be part of the custom scenery package; however, if you do plan to reuse in several scenery packages, then of course use the library but because its "yours" instead of "laminar's" then you can expect that cut/paste operation each update....MAYBE...because if memory serves, you MAY be able to create your own library.txt file with just the custom entry and put it in the same folder as your object.  X-Plane grabs many library.txt files recursively along the way when loading, so you might try a "one-entry" library.txt file and see if that works.  If not, then add the entry to the bottom of another library.txt file and give that a go.

 

TomK

[ilias.tselios]

My bad Tom not been clear. I have my own custom library.txt file for my scenery (and in my scenery folder) and worked fine. It is not working after the update!

This gives me the impression that something has changed (or broken) in the update.

Sent from my GT-P3110 using Tapatalk

[NilsV]

Hi Tom,

I am new to X-Plane scenery development but have more and more fun!

 

I working on a German regional airport near Berlin which I quite well know as a pilot. I made lots of photos and created most of the buildings. I made runways, taxiways signs and so on with WED and placed all the buildings. I defined a boundary and exclusion zones to exclude standard scenery.

All that looks fine.

Now comes the next step: foot ways, roads, fences and polygons for grass and dirt... I do not have orthophotos to use as polygons since there aren't free ones for Germany.

On the image you see the biggest problems: The polygon textures (dds Files of 256x256 px referenced in the pol file referenced in WED) are distorted. And the edges are sharp, what is not very realistic. The sand area in the left is not in the right resolution...

 

 

How can get the textures tiled and not distorted?

How can I dither the edges between grass and foot way?

How can I modify the resolution? (SCALE directive?)

 

The pol file is like: 

A

850

DRAPED_POLYGON

 

LAYER_GROUP airport -1

TEXTURE_NOWRAP gravel.dds

SCALE 25 25

 

 

A question to the roads: I've excluded roads but they are present anyway (may be from OSM generated...). How can I get rid of them inside the airport?

 

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

Thanks

Nils

[ilias.tselios]

A

850

DRAPED_POLYGON

 

LAYER_GROUP airport -1

TEXTURE_NOWRAP gravel.dds  <--- Use TEXTURE only to get your texture tiled. Make sure it is tilable though!

SCALE 25 25 <--- Change the scale so the texture will cover smaller/bigger area ie: 10 10.

 

To get dithered edges it's really tricky; you have to understand properly how the shader work in X-Plane.

 

Check X-Plane's developer blog for that staff.

[NilsV]

Thx for this!

 

What does it mean: "The texture is tileable"?

 

Can it have a symmetric structure? I played around with different textures - all are distorted the same manner )see the parking area in the foreground on my pic). May be, the polygon has to be a rectangle?

 

Nils

[ilias.tselios]

Tileable is a texture that can be repeated many times without looking...weird!

[qumake]

2 - Much more important: is there a way to get a custom_halo that blinks/flashes during daytime/(any time)?...

 

So, is there a way to get custom_halos to flash somehow? I was thinking of using an airplane strobe (provided I cannot add colour to them), but I wouldn't wanna mess with airplane lights inside objects that in fact are NOT aircrafts, ...

 

I'd like to revive this topic because it seems to be very interesting...and I didn't found any reference about it.

 

I try to find a command/sentence that allow me to create a flashing light in which I can change the frequency, phase, size and color of light ... and generate an spill (synchronized with light) that lites surrounding objects. There are some powerful strobes lights at the top of my ATC-tower...and they lites antennas, radars and the other measuring devices that are out there.

 

Probably I could do it with a custom plugin...perhaps this is what Dynamic Strobes Lighting uses...and right now, that is out of my reach!

 

 

Regards!

[athomi]

Is there a way to control the light level especially of runways? (ON/OFF or even better several different intensity levels)

 

I tried the ATTR_lights_level controlled by a custom dataref. I added the statement "ATTR_light_level 0.0 1.0 own/dataref" to Resources/default scenery/sim objects/apt_lights/slow/elevated_edge_WW.obj (didn't changed the objects light definitions) and toggled the dataref state between 0 and 1 but i didn't got any reaction.

 

Where's my fault?

[Sethesus]

Is there a way to control the light level especially of runways? (ON/OFF or even better several different intensity levels)

 

Only way I know of is by plugin.  One of the ISDG guys has made a plugin to do this, and control the intensity with the aircraft's push to talk.  (7 clicks is full intensity, 5 is a little lower etc,).  I'm not sure if he released it or not, or plans to.

[Carlos Garcia]

Is there a way to control the light level especially of runways? (ON/OFF or even better several different intensity levels)

 

Take a look : http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=22179

Edited November 17, 2014 by Carlos Garcia

[athomi]

Take a look : http://forums.x-plan...&showfile=22179

 

Thank for your answer. As far as i can tell, they show or hide the hole object not only the light itself. I'd like to control only the light itself.

[Andyrooc]

ATTR_light_level affects the LIT brightness, not lighting.

 

sim/graphics/scenery/airport_light_level is the dataref you're after if you want to change edge light intensity. You set the level to a value between 0 (off) and 1 (max)

[Carlos Garcia]

ATTR_light_level affects the LIT brightness, not lighting.

 

sim/graphics/scenery/airport_light_level is the dataref you're after if you want to change edge light intensity. You set the level to a value between 0 (off) and 1 (max)

 

Nice !!!

 

Just make a Generic rotary in plane maker with sim/graphics/scenery/airport_light_level , change the key frames to desired values. For exam... 0 is Off and 1 is On.

 

[gabriel2288]

where can you download the scandinavia

[SKintheair]

Hello Tom, I'm developing objs for tall buildings of my home city here in Italy. Here building warning lights are fixed red. I searched up and down the lights.txt file but couldn't find a light that suits my need. All warning lights appear flashing or pulsing. Fixed lights from other sections are not strong enough. I could find a fixed light in radio_obs_const_bb but it's got a vector that make it directional and therefore not seen from every direction. I need a red fixed billboard strong light. Any suggestion?

[letec]

Hello Tom, I'm developing objs for tall buildings of my home city here in Italy. Here building warning lights are fixed red. I searched up and down the lights.txt file but couldn't find a light that suits my need. All warning lights appear flashing or pulsing. Fixed lights from other sections are not strong enough. I could find a fixed light in radio_obs_const_bb but it's got a vector that make it directional and therefore not seen from every direction. I need a red fixed billboard strong light. Any suggestion?

Hi,

This will help?

[SKintheair]

Actually no, obs_red_day and obs_red_night are flashing named lights, here in my city, in Italy, building warning lights are fixed red, non flashing and non pulsating