Simmo W

Yes Carlos, the 'part owner' along with Chip, who is the main engine room of it right now, until I shake off the scenery bug. Should be soon, years go by quickly!

Ha, I was waiting for that to be found Carlos! Yes, if you use too much grass, it can affect your health :-) But mild doses- give it a try. ESP along taxiway edges, anywhere that'd most likely be seen by the pilot. But i find xp10's grass textures very crisp, almost not needed, other than more variety.

Haha, and that's the Cirrus!

Thanks Ola! Yeuck to those last 3!

Thanks Glen. So does anyone know if they intend to fix? Or do we all need to protest like I've seen at MS Flight's Facebook page?!

Cool. Canu post a pic or two so I can decide if it's ok to 'upgrade'? Tx

Just posted an update on lighting to the blog.

I'm not going there.. Ok, that'd be good. But i already have trackir, although it's not perfect.

I might be short sighted, but why? So we can flap our wings? Or use a part of my body as a joystick? Oh dear, I'll be in trouble again'

Thanks for confirming my fears guys. I'm rivetted on b7 then, till you all confirm it's fixed!

All good points Wow. It's a very big world to fix. Too big. But hopefully they'll respond to specific requests in the main areas. I've heard Beta 10 has caused cloud problems. I ain't moving from 7 until I hear it's safe to do so! I love the clouds, it's half of the sim experience. If they ultimately reduce their quality due to the performance issues, I'll certainly be complaining.

Ha! At least the electricity supply is REAL close by.

Of course! Would you like curtain shadows too? or animated moths casting shadows on ground? Too many parameters to try! What do you mean by the city lights? you mean the autogen ones near the streets? No can do, not this puppy anyway. I could try just adding a couple of lights as you say. Just have to add it to the long list of tests. But I will be experimenting soon with varied groundspill lighting, esp where you'd expect shopfronts to be. Magical stuff. I AM TRYING TO KILL YOUR GPU, BUT FAILING!

You need to find the object for this, at the bottom of its .obj you should see what light is used. Pretty sure it's a named light (flashing?), so you can't change that light's params.

Finally, I think I've nutted out the logic. Identified all the param lights via a simple search. The no to the left of each defines how many params are needed. I used The full_custom_halo_ ...that last _ was the key! Then change the rgb no's and u can get things like this! But a min of 2 lights near each object.

See their latest video? Fly thru hoops, complete challenges, ooh what joy! It's a game.

Nice. Pity there's no voice audio, couldn't hear you swearing!

Hehe. More like a MMO/RPG with an AppStore mentality! It reminds me of an old Joke - how do you make a small business (real quick) ? Let Microsoft run a large business for awhile.

Yup, can't hurt to try the freebie, just like any other MS network dross. I just watched their latest video. woohoo dude, Rad moves! What airspace rules?

Yes, in a way it is sad. But some will be ecstatic! Ain't many alternatives now. If only Laminar realised the opportunities sitting in front of them right at this minute! I was just browsing the Orbx forums, and while their sceneries always look great, my god, after flying the betas for awhile now, those FSX clouds look so awful!

Ok, spent another hr trying different lights. I couldn't get a custom light to work, what is really needed is some examples for us to follow. Named lights are dead easy, no parameters to enter, just name correctly and position in BLENDER and they export well. The image shows effect of having 3 -4 parameter lights around the top of a building,'full_custom_halo' type.I tried and tried but could not use the rgb variables to change the colours. Really stumped me, as I was pleased to at least get green! Again, some egs would be good, I'll certainly do some once it sinks in. If one of these is between 2 buildings, both receive the light, nice. I just need to vary the colours..

Too right, those parameters are rather awkward! A GUI to assist matters would be much better. A blender script one day? Drop down selections of lights? COUGH, ben? Tom? COUGH! I never thought I'd be saying this, but...I love blender now, it's so quick and good for repetitive actions. Well, v2.6 is anyway. Nice price too :-) and to think, I almost bought AC3D...

I think you're almost there Ola. As ever, Tom is always right :-) The first 3 numbers shouldn't need entry if generated by blender or your 3d software- they're just the coordinates of where the light is situated. The next 3 are the direction vectors. At first I found it confusing, but after awhile it's alllllmmmoooosst second nature! Middle no. Was my problem- its the angle of the light up or down-eg 0 is no angle upwards or downwards, best for wall illumination say. But then not, as it doesnt spread as nice. Just a lot of experimenting with the different light types and positioning is required. Eg for the building lights, putting the light too close to the wall causes the spill to be too small. It's only early days, I'm just gonna try a few named lights to see their effects, good fun but time consuming. Hmm, It might be quicker to copy an object and light 50 times and just copy as many light types from the lights.txt file as possible to the generated obj file for a quick comparison! I might try that tomorrow and post a screenie. But so far, I'm thinking that for general subtle building exterior illumination, good use of photoshop is 90% as good as the global lighting. I think mixing a few hdrs in will give a great mixed effect. Street lights, for ground illumination, well u can't beat the hdr look! So we should both keep experimenting and show everyone the results, be the innovators. What I'd really love to do is hang a big spill light on top of some of my sky scrapers, and modify the rgb colours so I can get a nice natural roof lighting feel. Those who've seen Sydney's skyline will know what I mean. So if u work that one out, let me know! Like a powerful obs_red_night but with colours and throw variable. Grrr, I can already guess it'll have to be a 'custom' light. This is amazing stuff though. Seeing a building lit naturally, knowing I got the coding and position right- wow! U don't see these effects in fsx - hell, in very few games! I went through the city at ground level, with the buildings in good position, you get a real feel of GTA or need for speed!

That's a spacious 'pit CK! You should cover all that wall space with, say, a 60 inch screen!

??Cricket??? Well we are doing well against the indians at the test series! Too many cities, not enough time.