Pituca

Hi Guys, I took the opportunity to register here, in order to offer you a more direct wire, and to respond to the one or other point visibly to all. For sure I'm glad and proud of Chip's review. When he says things like "the best in x.plane...", I am a bit surprised, since I have seen excellent work from others, in particular some new upcomimg projects, which look breathtaking. And most of the planes published I don't even know. So for my part I can't tell where realization of which feature is the best and in which model. But if Chip feels this way, I am happy and the last to correct him... However I don't think one should compare the interior lighting of a 3D panel with the one of a 2D panel. They are very much different in construction and appearance, as well as in the optical impression and the "feel" they generate. Responding to Cameron I want to clarify one technical detail: LIT-textures are not in use anymore in the actual 2D panel lighting system, though the old technique is still supported, if installed. I only use daylight textures, which get their shading by a shadow layer, and their luminosity by the ambient light and/or light sources. XP supports up to 3 indipendantly adjustable lighting layers, also defined by mask layers, each covering the entire panel. These are the means by which I created the illumination effects, not using a single LIT-texture. - Another thing is construction of light emitting objects, mostly instruments, but also backlit labels and luminiscent light reflections, in particular those above the monitor displays. They have GLASS (instrument) lighting assigned, in rare cases I assign ADDITIVE lighting to old, non-generic instruments, which permits usage of one LIT layer in combination with the others, which acts almost like GLASS. I even am dispensing with the BACKLIT lighting mode for generecs, which also uses a LIT texture, in favor of an additional GLASS item showing the emitted light. Those light emitting objects can be individually assigned to a knob which does the dimming from zero to max. 24 such knobs are available. I used just a few. So you can adjust brightness of each display unit, instrument or group of instruments individually. - Combination of a light emmiting generic object (e.g. a reading light) with a lighting layer, allows to build your brilliant light source (lamp) independantly from it's "shine", which puts a spot on the panel and slightly lightens the entire cockpit a bit. Put the 2 control knobs one above the other, only one visible, and you get the light source and it's emitted light dimmed together. Since the mainstream is focusing on 3D panels, I think this very powerful, new 2D lighting system has not been noticed by many aircraft authors.