The problem is that often I don't know what people don't know but want to know. So when I get an email question whose answer is not already posted somewhere, I make a wiki page and dump the info.
This stub is in response to some work I did this morning. In particular, lights in X-Plane often have visibility much larger than the objects they come with. This used to be true for the cars, but I broke the code in 921 and didn't notice. In 921 headlights do persist beyond the car object's visibility distance, but not by much. 930 will fix this, restoring the "string of lights" look on the roads at night.
I've also tuned the headlights to be visible from a wider viewing angle, to try to make them more noticeable from above. (In real life, the lights illuminate an area of the pavement, which is visible, but we don't do this.)
If there is a scenery subject that is poorly or not-at-all documented, shoot me an email and I'll stub out a Wiki page - it's a first step to getting comprehensive documentation.
(Note that I have not added pages for tutorial steps like "how do I add a manipulator to my object" because I am doing the tools work for ac3d now ... better to write a tutorial for manipulators the easy way with ac3d than to write one on the hard way - editing the OBJ - and changing it later. That is to say, I am trying to documetn tools, not temporary work-arounds!)
4 comments:
Hi Benjamin-
Are automotive headlights "objects" ?
The reason I ask is because I'm wondering if there is perhaps a way to create an elongated oval object that appears in front of a car at night to fake headlamp light distribution without actually lighting anything up?
Just curious.
thanks,
Andrew
Headlights are named lights, and to make the autos look good at night, they need to be hw-accelerated lights. Unfortunately we don't have a light of that shape. You could replace the autos with a polygon that was flat and shaped like the halo you want, but having to draw the OBJ (and not use the named light system) would hit fps pretty hard.
Hi Ben:
You'll recall this coming up recently in the Org's Scenery forum: Use of Default Scenery objects.
I'd like to propose that authors be permitted to re-use default scenery objects to design scenery just as authors may use default cockpit objects to design panels.
There is no practical or logical difference in application, is there? Why permit one activity and not the other?
Quite a bit of localized scenery re-design could be accomplished quickly by using default objects with custom textures--particularly for freeware, where perhaps expectations for total fidelity to a given region's unique architecture would be commensurate with the price tag on the package...
Cheers.
Daveduck - panels involve using our art assets by REFERENCE. The same thing is currently allowed with the library. The current EULA does not permit creating derived works out of art assets for either scenery or panels.
I can't make announcements about potential future changes to the EULA.
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