Military AI Works

Thanks Lucas.

I have tried using an attached Material before, as per the SDK and I've just tried it again. However, as before, I can't get the light to illuminate at night. The SDK Special Material Names lists "BRIGHT_" (emits light) and I have tried that too as a prefix, ie "BRIGHT_LIGHT_NAV" as the material name, but still no illumination.

"LIGHT_TAXI" works fine and I have used that for many years.

Am I missing something please?

John

Thought about this overnight and realised I was not setting up the material correctly. Having tried it this morning, it worked (sorry tested on a Gazelle not a Lakota).

I'm not sure I like the result though - the Nav light is quite bulbous and gets bigger at a distance:







It actually looks a bit better in the screen shots than in the sim.

My preference is not to do it, but what do you think please?

John

To overcome the somewhat large size of the default light, what happens if you bury the light in the fuselage so that it only partially shows?

Would this make any difference?

The material is on a very small flat plane that is difficult to semi-bury in the fuselage. Even when the plane is positioned just under the surface, the light still shows large but with an added anomaly that I like even less:



The size of the plane seems immaterial. I have tried even smaller ones too with no improvement.

I'll stick with Nav lights on FSX and P3D AI helicopters only I think.

John

Fair enough, John. You seem to have covered that.

The only other thing that I can think of is the texture for the default lights.Do we know what it is and can we therefore change it for a better one?

It's not a texture Steve, it's a material and no texture (.bmp) is specified. I have no idea where the material is buried in the sim and how to change it.

Fair enough. I have exhausted my knowledge on the subject. I have to believe that there are so many good modellers around that somebody would have worked out how to achieve this by now.

I'm not sure how many have been developing AI helicopters with animated lifts.

True but quite a few have done aircraft with folding wings and they would have the same issue.

I have attached lights to Puma/Cougar and Mig-29K folding wings in fs9 , might look a bit bigger and brighter but I simply couldn't leave them without it.
Still this is my way and opinion , every modeller has right to do it own way.