Landing lights on retractable gear..

[Brett_Henderson]

I'm working on a model that has the landing/taxi lights mounted on the retractable nose-gear..

Problem is..  when you use lights assigned in the aircraft.cfg file, they're "fixed".. As in.. if you retract the gear but leave the lights on.. they kinda hover out there as a "lights" all by themselves, under the nose  ::) until you turn them off.

I'm at a loss  ???

[Milton]

Just curious here:

Are you sure the landing lights are on the gear, or are they taxi lights?

There used to be a tag to only activate the lights after 45 degree deployment, and went off as they retracted.  Not sure if that was FSDS only or gmax as well.  I saw that around during FS2002 development.

Otherwise, an gauge or xml code would be required to control them.

[Felix/FFDS]

Wouldn't this be the case of creating the light, linked to the appropriate lg strut  with a material "light_taxi" ?

From the FS2004 SDK:
LIGHT_TAXI      A taxi spotlight is drawn, and the diffuse color is the light color.
LIGHT_LAND      A landing spotlight is drawn, and the diffuse color is the light color.

Wouldn't this be a case where it is better to model the light than to add it via aircraft.cfg ?

[Katahu]

I would suggest using the tutorial titled "landing lights". It's located in the Modeling - Gmax section of this page.

http://freeflightdesign.com/tutorials.html

Please note that this tutorial is based on the older version of gmax.

[Brett_Henderson]

Thanks for the replies.. You're all correct, and I've pondered these solutions.  I'll get around to modeling a landing/taxi light "beam" later (if at all (I never did like them)).. The light that you can model is WAY too dim in daylight. I was really fond of the bright landing and taxi lights (individually activateable) I put on that 210 and am going for the same effect here. They're mounted on the nose-gear strut and as we know.. aircraft.cfg lights are "fixed" in space... You can't "child" them to go up with the gear.

I'm trying something along the lines of your suggestion, Milton. I've already written an XML gear knob that will toggle the lights when the gear knob is used.. BUT.. only if you use it from the panel (mouse click). It's useless when you raise your gear with the CH yoke.

I think I need to write a gauge that will check for the contition "GEAR_UP" to toggle the lights.. regardless of how the gear are raised (panel or yoke). Now I've just gotta master the IF syntax..  I'll come back with more info..

Thanks again.. all of you..

[Brett_Henderson]

More info..  

I think I'm on the right track.. A simple XML gauge to check the state of the landing gear and then "execute" the variable "LANDING_LIGHTS_OFF"..

I'm just having trouble with the syntax.

(>K:LANDING_LIGHTS_OFF)  to occur when an "A:" value returns "saying" , "The gear are now up"..

Any XML guys out there to steer me in the right direction ?  I'm really getting a head-ache  

[Travis]

In this case, you want to do what Felix suggested.  Model the lights directly into the model itself.

I didn't even know it was possible to add stuff like that using the aircraft.cfg, otherwise I would have been doing it for years!

BTW, there's a great tutorial on this over at FFDS.

[AuMaV]

Hi
Maybe this will do what you want?


 
 
 
 
   
     (A:GEAR CENTER POSITION,PERCENT) 10 <
       if{ (A:LIGHT LANDING,number) 1 < if{ (>K:LANDING_LIGHTS_TOGGLE) } }
       els{ (A:LIGHT LANDING,number) 0 > if{ (>K:LANDING_LIGHTS_TOGGLE) } }          
     
   
 

[Brett_Henderson]

In this case, you want to do what Felix suggested.  Model the lights directly into the model itself.

I didn't even know it was possible to add stuff like that using the aircraft.cfg, otherwise I would have been doing it for years!

BTW, there's a great tutorial on this over at FFDS.

The lights that are modeled are way too dim in daylight. And if you model the "beam",  the effect doesn't really illumintate anything; in fact, it really obscures things like taxiway lights and runway lights. I'm not a big fan of that.

Here's the lights paragraph from a C172:

[LIGHTS]
//Types: 1=beacon, 2=strobe, 3=navigation, 4=cockpit        
light.0 = 3,  -2.88, -18.11, 2.90, fx_navred
light.1 = 3,  -2.88,  18.11, 2.90, fx_navgre
light.2 = 2,  -3.15, -18.31, 2.90, fx_strobe
light.3 = 2,  -3.15,  18.31, 2.90, fx_strobe
light.4 = 1, -20.60,   0.00, 6.18, fx_beacon
light.5 = 4,  -2.27,   0.00, 1.40, fx_vclight

AuMaV, that code looks just about right. I think it will get around a problem I was thinking about (lights getting turned ON when the gear are raised, if they were already OFF..  lol
..  Thank You !

*off to test it*

[Brett_Henderson]

Ok.. after simplifying that code (and simplifying the problem)..  It's all fixed.. THANKS..

I moved the landing lights out where they should be (on the front of the tip-tanks) and wrote a little XML gauge that toggles the gear-mounted taxi-lights IF the gear are raised AND they're on to begin with. So far, so good..

A little more testing and I'll have a PA42-720 ready for release.