Aiming landing/taxi lights

[ubalmoral]

How do you aim landing/taxi lights added to aircraft?
I read something on this at one time, but can't find it again.
Or, how do you get them to respond to the number pad commands?
I added lights to the Republic SeaBee (really fun plane!) but they don't point the right direction.

[Milton]

I did a tutorial on this for gmax modelers that includes a nice technique for adjusting.  Use very low visibillity (1/4 mile) at dusk so the light beams show vividly.

http://www.freeflightdesign.com/tutorials/AdjLights.zip

Adjust in the sim using cntrl (+shift?) and the numeric keypad with numlock off.

[ubalmoral]

Actually, the problem is that there are no beams to adjust.
The lights glow on the plane, but there's no lighting effect on the ground.

[juri]

i have the same problem. no matter what i do, the lights are just bright dots. there is no "cone".  how do i get it right???  >:(

-juri

[Milton]

The landing and taxi light beams are part of the model.  If the model doesn't have them, you are out of luck unless you are good with building effects and replacing the default ones.

[juri]

i'm building models of my own with gmax, what should i do to get the cones visible? i've made landing and taxi lights according to the tutorial (by chris something), but the light cones are ridiculously small...

-juri

[Milton]

If you are using the gMax 1.0 and early MakeMdl, the size of the primitive dictates the size of the beam it seems.  I have seen triangles 30 feet tall. ;-)

Later gMax and MakeMdl combo's did not need that.

Make sure the land_light material that is assigned to the primitive is given a white or off white color.

Place the local coordinate pivot for the primitive where you want to light source to come from.

Link the primitive to a parent object.  Set the parent's local coordinate pivot so the Z axis is opposite the desired beam direction.

Hope this helps.