Simviation Forums

A quick question..
Why does my effects (AB, Mach, contrails, ect) turn on and off when I turn on the lights? Well I know they are under the lights section in the CFG, but is it right? Is there an alternative way?

I've never worked with those types of effects personally, but from what I understand the gauges that control all of that "call" the effects from their placement in the CFG file.  Which means you could place them in the Effects section and modify the gauge to call them from there (I think).

Thanx  Travis,will play around.

Yes, indeed, effects that are called from light switches will be seen as operational all the time when you switch the lights on.

The way to control it is to write a XML gauge that sits in your panel.cfg as an 'invisible' gauge which applies logical conditions to when the effects will appear. For example, if you had an effect that caused a heat blur to appear behind an engine, you would write the XML such that the heat blur was not turned on until maybe the engine N1 value was above a certain level. Or with wingtip/flap contrails, that the environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, speed) were right.

So you'd decide which light would control which effect (for example switch 10 nominally controls cabin lights), then write some XML that would control a particular effect by switching light switch 10 on or off depending on the gauge logic. Then add the XML gauge to the panel.cfg in the normal way.

I have been searching for this thread for at least the past MONTH!!! I have been having A/b problems on my FS9 F14.

Thank you for all the info and answers, It will certainly help a lot!

Glad to be of service, Cap'n.

Regarding the sound: have you got the COP_Sounds.gau referenced in the panel.cfg also? You'll need this to get the sound to play. The reference line will look something like this:

gaugeXX=dsd_xml_autocabin!dsd_xml_sound2,  2,2,5, 5, .\Sound\Autocabin\Autocabin.cfg

This is a line from my AutoEnvironment package which triggers sounds based on a configuration file (autocabin.cfg in this case) which links XML commands to sound files. It's located in a specified folder within the main Sound folder. This should all be specified in the plane's readme file.